Archive for Families of cult victims

13 Jan 2013
Cult recovery • Families of cult victims

The Number One Strategy for Family Members

So…you’re the family member or friend of someone who has left a cult. You are thrilled beyond measure that your loved one has managed to get themselves out of a very toxic and abusive, not to mention dangerous, situation.

You are probably aware that the cult leader that your loved one was involved with is an emotionally and psychologically manipulative and abusive controller. You know that your loved one was coerced into the cult (no one joins a cult without being coerced) and that they stayed in that toxic, abusive, dangerous situation because they were taught to believe that if they left their life, their soul and possibly the fate of the world, was in jeopardy.

You know that cult leaders are bad dudes, even when they’re women. They are charismatic, controlling, authoritarian personalities who use and abuse people in the most horrific ways for their own self-serving purposes (to inflate their egos, their wealth and their sense of power and self).

And you’re probably very, very angry at the cult leader that your loved one was involved with. And rightly so. The cult leader has hijacked a portion of your loved one’s life, possibly turned your loved one against you, definitely tied their brain in knots with thought-reform techniques, and caused them trauma and suffering in ways you may never even be able to imagine.

The cult leader is a person who, if life were fair, should be hanged from a tree by his/her toenails and covered in honey and fire ants.

However…and this is a really BIG however…your number one strategy as the family member or friend of someone who has been in a cult is to NOT attack or malign the cult leader in any way when your loved one first returns to the real world.

Here’s why: There is a sense of loyalty that exists between cult members and their leader that lasts beyond the borders of the relationship. The easiest parallel I can draw (although it’s not perfect) is to imagine that you are getting divorced or are leaving a long-term relationship. (Not an abusive relationship, just a regular one that didn’t work out.) You have your reasons for ending the relationship, and even though you are doing so you probably still have feelings for the person you are breaking up with. You remember good times you had with them. You remember their positive qualities. You are probably still fond of them, and may even still love them to a certain extent.

Now imagine that your best friend begins verbally attacking your ex-spouse as soon as you’ve left the relationship. “I never liked your wife. I always thought she was crazy. She was such a bitch to you.” etc.

How would you feel? Defensive probably, right? We all grow out of that as we grow away from the relationship, but under certain circumstances, no matter what the relationship was like, we usually feel a bit defensive about it after we’ve left because it was a part of us. We defined ourselves for a period of time as being in that relationship. We need time and space and healing to take place in order to not feel quite as attached as we did when we were in the relationship.

Now, to get back to our cult scenario: An ex-cult member feels that kind of loyalty to the cult leader, times 50. Among other thought-reform dynamics that the cult leader has set up, one of the most prominent is that cult members are taught to feel that whatever is wrong in the world, or in their lives, or in the cult, is their fault. The cult leader is never at fault. The cult member has existed in a culture of extreme self-blame for as long as they were involved with the cult.

And so, even though they’ve left the cult, they will feel they have failed. The ex-cult member will feel they have let the cult leader down, let the other members of their group down, and possibly let the Divine down. Along with these feelings they will believe that the cult leader is not to blame for what transpired.

It is only with time and healing work that the ex-member will realize these things are not true.

Your ‘job’ as the ex-member’s loved one is to be loving and supportive, ask neutral (not blaming or probing) questions and, above all, offer unconditional love. Attacking the cult leader and blaming the ex-member for his/her involvement will not help your loved one to heal.

In Chapter Eight of his excellent book Combatting Cult Mind Control, Steve Hassan goes into detail about how family members and friends of ex-cult members can help their loved one, and how they can harm. If you have someone in your life who was formerly in a cult, I highly recommend reading this book, and especially Chapter Eight. Hassan talks about taking a “curious yet concerned” posture.

It won’t be easy. I know that. But it will be one of the most healing and loving things you can do for your loved one.

In short, take your anger about the cult leader elsewhere. Vent to friends or other family members or a therapist, by all means. I’m not asking you to not feel angry. But when talking to your loved one, please, please remember to be loving and supportive of them and their feelings, and completely neutral on the topic of the cult leader. A few years down the road, your loved one will be able to see that he/she was in a cult and at that time you can express the truth of whatever you’re feeling.

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(Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

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23 Oct 2011
Families of cult victims • How Cults Work

Frustration… and what we can do

Recently I’ve been talking to a family who has discovered that they have a loved one who is in a cult. What I’ve rediscovered through the conversations with them is how incredibly frustrating it is for those of us who have a loved one in a cult.

Frustration because of helplessness. Frustration because of injustice. Frustration because of feeling that the cult member can’t hear us. The list goes on.

I remember feeling levels of frustration because of all these things that was so powerful it felt like my body might implode. To love someone (or many someones) so much and to watch them be manipulated into giving their lives (not to mention their money) away to a guru who is clearly using and abusing them causes so much justified anger and frustration that it is almost unbearable.

I’ve received a couple of emails from family members and they say, in one way or another, “But it’s so UNFAIR. It’s UNJUST. How can this be happening?”

Of course they’re right and I agree. …but this is where frustration comes into the picture because there is so little we can do to help our loved ones.

A cult member won’t listen to logic; you can’t walk up to someone in a cult and say, “Dude, you’re being manipulated and controlled. You need to get out,” because the cult leader has taught the cult member to (a) view anyone outside the group as a threat and (b) that leaving the cult means leaving God (or whatever higher purpose the leader says is being served). Logic stops working for cult members very early on in their indoctrination.

And you can’t criticize the cult leader because the cult member feels such loyalty to her that, as we have seen in the past, the cult member will in some cases literally die to serve her.

And you can’t point out that your loved one deserves to: live freely and determine their own life’s trajectory; have autonomy over their thoughts and actions; and not accept abuse in any form in their life. Why can’t you point these things out? Because the cult member has been forced to accept the belief that these things don’t matter. Only The Cause matters (whatever that is) and if their freedom and happiness and family have to be sacrificed to serve The Cause, then so be it. This is a sacrifice worth making.

**

So there you are with your hands fully tied, unable to talk sense into your loved one. Mind control is kryptonite where sense and logic are concerned.

So what do you do next?

You get extremely frustrated, if you’re anything like me. You rage at the universe and the unfairness of it all. You spend nights lying awake, pissed off, wondering if there’s anything, anything, you can do. You weep. And then you weep some more. And you wonder if you weep enough will that change your loved one’s mind?

It doesn’t.

What now?

From bitter experience, here then are my top three tips for what we can DO when we have a loved one in a cult.

1. Get educated. What will help your loved one, is if you know what he or she is experiencing. Learn as much as you can about cults and how mind control works. That way you will be able to feel empathy for your loved one, and that empathy will help slightly alleviate the teeth grinding frustration you feel. (I always recommend reading Take Back Your Life and Combatting Cult Mind Control.)

2. Stay supportive and loving. Your loved one likely won’t respond, but it is very important to provide loving support and connection to them, so that should they ever decide to leave the cult, they will know that they have somewhere to go. If they starting having thoughts of leaving the cult, but realize they have no friends or family outside the group who are still in touch, it is harder for the cult member to leave. By sending your loved ones birthday cards or a friendly email every once in a while, you are maintaining a very important connection and one that they will hopefully use in the future.

3. Take care of yourself. I can’t emphasize this point enough. The frustration and confusion you feel are very stressful. Having a loved one in a cult is probably one of the most stressful life experiences you’ll ever have. Get support. Talk to a healing professional, preferably one who knows about cults and how they work. (I recommend Rosanne Henry.) You deserve to have someone to talk to about this.

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17 Oct 2009
Cult recovery • Families of cult victims • How Cults Work

Rebuilding our authentic selves

When you leave a cult the process of rebuilding or creating your self – the way you define who you are and what you believe in, the things about yourself that you know to be true – is a slow, sometimes agonizing, piece-by-piece process. It doesn’t happen overnight.

If you know someone who’s been in a cult, it’s important to remember this. When we leave a cult situation we don’t just suddenly snap back to ‘normal’. And, in fact, we have to find a new normal and a new self.

Rebuilding this self happens in increments. Slowly old beliefs loosen their hold and we make new discoveries about what we believe to be true about life and self and God. Leaving a cult often means we are void of many the beliefs and understanding that make us human. I remember walking for months through life not knowing what I believed to be true about almost anything.

The reason for this piecemeal recreation is that while living in a cult out of necessity we develop a “cult self”, to coin Steven Hassan. Our cult self is the identity that believes all the cult guru has taught us and who has integrated all the gurus teachings and absorbed the guru’s abuse. Our authentic self, says Hassan, never disappears while we are in a cult, it is simply drowned out by the presence of a cult self.

When we leave the cult, that cult self goes through a process of dying. And the authentic self has to figure out what it believes or thinks or understands to be true in any given situation. At least that was my experience.

It takes time. And each new situation brings up feelings and beliefs that need to be dealt with from the point of view of the regenerating authentic self. The cult survivor does not just jump fully formed into a new life. As survivors we need to learn to be patient with ourselves as this takes place. Or if you have a loved one who’s left a cult, please be patient with that person. They are working really hard to become themselves gain.

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23 Sep 2009
Cult recovery • Families of cult victims

Positive Elements of Cult Life

When I was blogging the other day about John, the fellow who I recently found out left the cult I belonged to, I was reminded of and began reflecting on what could be called the “positive” elements of life in a cult.

I know it could seem illogical for me to talk about anything positive about a cult, but bear with me.

Cult life can’t be all bad or no one would stay for 30 seconds, let alone for decades. When I reflect on what it was that kept me in a cult situation for so long much of it had to do with the fact that I was manipulated and coerced into believing that if I left the cult leader (or even questioned her) I’d be working for the devil. But a small part of what kept me tied to her was also the sense of community and spiritual purpose that I got from belonging to the group.

And I have to say, that after almost ten years after leaving I can still feel the void where that sense of purpose used to be.

It was an all-consuming sense of purpose. My cult leader had me convinced that we were the chosen few people on the planet who were saving the universe from the forces of evil and darkness. That kind of devotion to a cause is not trifling. It is passionate and alive and burns feverishly inside its possessor.

Life on the outside of a cult is never that certain. It is a much less black-or-white morality that I live with now. Real life, life without a manipulative guru pulling my strings, is messy and complicated in a way that cult life is not. And sometimes, honestly, it’s a lot less fulfilling. In the cult, even the most unrewarding, boring day could be chalked up as one more victorious step taken by those of us who believed we worked exclusively for God.

The trade-off for this fiery, passionate, absolute sense of purpose is freedom. The freedom to screw up. The freedom to make a mess of my life. The freedom to explore my relationship with the divine on my own terms. The freedom to not put up with any kind of abuse from anyone in my life. The freedom to think and feel and believe whatever I want without repercussions. The freedom to be who I most authentically am.

But it is a trade off. And I can understand how someone without much sense of self or someone who felt empty and without value (like I did years ago) would trade their freedom for this sense of purpose. And I intimately understand why people put up with abuse in order to have that sense of purpose, because I did that too.

If you never found your place in life and then a spiritual leader told you you belonged with her and that you mattered to God, that might be enough to get you to sign up for for the course in crazy that she was offering. It worked on me.

I’m not saying it makes logical sense. But I am saying that it does happen. And that having a sense of purpose is a force to be reckoned with.

Those of my readers who have been in a cult will understand this. Those who have family members or loved ones involved in a cult will hopefully have a little more understanding now about what keeps their loved one tied to the leader, even if it means enduring some terrible situations.

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30 Aug 2009
Families of cult victims

Using the ‘c’ word

Last week I had to have a difficult conversation that involved introducing the ‘c’ word to some friends.

That’s ‘c’ for cult, of course.

My friends are the parents of someone who is still involved with the cult I left 10 years ago. The reason I needed to introduce the ‘c’ word to them was this; they knew I was writing a book and they knew it was about my experience with the ‘group’ that their son is involved with. I had not given them much more detail than that during the 18 months that I was writing the book.

But now we’re at the point of no return. The book is about to be published and it has the ‘c’ word right there in the title. So I felt an obligation to sit down with these lovely people and explain why I was using that word and what it meant.

I have to say, this was one of the more difficult conversations of my life.

Most especially I didn’t want to cause my friends pain and worry. Their son is very heavily involved in the cult and shows no signs whatsoever that he would ever consider leaving. Until now I think his parents have tried to believe the best about the group that he’s involved with, but if I had to guess, I would say they’ve also tried to avoid thinking about the big picture behind the bizarre things that their son has been involved with because of the group and the guru (arranged marriage and adultery, just to name a couple).

I tried to be as tactful as I could when I explained why I was using that word, and I explained a bit about how one defines a ‘cult’. It’s a pretty heavy word and it is one I do not throw around lightly. But in the case of the experience I had, and the one my friends’ son is having now, it is entirely appropriate.

In the end I was left feeling a little powerless. I had brought this word into my friends’ lives, dropped it like a steaming, stinking turd onto their living room floor, and I was not able to offer any solution for cleansing the word from their lives after that. It’s out there now. I can’t take it back. They’ll have to live with it from now on.

There’s not really anything they can do to rescue their son; he lives in the very remote fishing lodge in the Canadian wilderness that his guru owns and runs and she has, naturally, undermined all the relationships he has with family and friends outside the group, including those with his parents (and with me, but that’s a much longer story. You can read my book to get the deets on that.)

I’ve not often had to have a conversation like this with anyone. One where I knew someone’s life would be altered, and not for the better. “You won’t be the same after this,” I thought, as I began the conversation.

It was painful and sad to have to carry that darkness with me over their threshold and leave it with them.

I guess this is just a very small bit of the collateral damage that my guru has caused. Such terrible pain that she’s caused in the lives of people she’s never even met.

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