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.

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.

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.