Cult, A Love Story is an award-winning memoir, which intimately and powerfully chronicles one woman’s journey from falling under the spell of a manipulative guru to the hard-won and triumphant break with, and recovery from, thought reform.

“This excellent memoir reveals how a charismatic, manipulative spirit medium can use love for God and neighbor as a hook to drag a small group of devotees into her cynical web of impossible goals for self-perfection. After a heroic struggle for insight, Alexandra Amor was one of the cult members who broke the abusive spell.”

Joesph Szimhart, Cult Information Specialist

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Read an excerpt from Cult, A Love Story

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…just sayin’.

I’ve been mesmerized for the last couple of days by videos of talks given by Dr. Brene Brown. She is a “vulnerability researcher” who has, through research and interviews, discovered many interesting things about human connection, shame, vulnerability and joy.

Vulnerability, she says, is the birthplace of joy. But it is also what leads us to feel shame. If we feel vulnerable we are risking rejection. To the human animal rejection means, “I am not worthy of love and belonging.”

She also says that “When we experience pervasive disconnection, there is suffering.” This brought tears to my eyes and made me think immediately of my cult experience, because in a cult we are not only disconnected from others, we are completely disconnected from ourselves.

There is this perverse paradox that exists in cults where one part of our self feels that we are connecting deeply – with God or a higher power, with the meaning and purpose that the cult gives us, and with our fellow cult members. But the reality is that this is the cult rhetoric talking. We have been trained that we must think this way and that if we don’t, there is something wrong with us, not with the group we belong to.

Connection is entirely lacking in a cult because we cannot and must not be our authentic, essential selves. We exist in a cult only to please and support the cult leader. Our needs, our dreams, our joy, our beliefs, our past, our thoughts do not matter and we learn very early on to suppress them entirely. To even reflect on one’s own desires or beliefs or feelings or truth is such heresy that it took me years after leaving the cult to not feel deeply guilty and conflicted about something as simple as having an opinion about a movie or a meal.

Cult members walk and live amidst the people they believe they were destined to be with, those few souls in the world who truly understand them because they share the same goals. Yet each person is walled off, prevented from thinking or feeling or connecting because to do so would undermine the cult leader’s authority and control. If a cult member occasionally allows him or herself to notice this, they shut that thought down, and tell themselves that if they experience discomfort it is their failing, not the failing of the system they are in.

And so, there is the deepest kind of suffering in cults. No connection with self and no connection with others.

I invite you to treat yourself to some of Dr. Brene Brown’s video talks on the TED website.

What do you think about the role of vulnerability and connection in our lives?

Where can you create connection where it might not now exist?

Is there somewhere in your life where you feel vulnerable, but are willing to risk standing in that vulnerability to feel a deeper connection with someone or with yourself?

What do I mean by “doing nothing”? Exactly that. Martha Beck, my favorite life coach and Mormon Church survivor, says that emptying our time is as important as emptying our bladders. We couldn’t and wouldn’t go a day without emptying our bladders, yet we often go days and weeks without emptying our time.

Only when we have some empty time can the healing process we’re going through in cult recovery be fully effective.

Here’s an analogy. Maybe you’ve been to a yoga class which ends with a practice called Savassana. Savassana happens at the very end of the yoga class. All the participants lie down on their backs on their mats, eyes closed, practicing stillness of mind and body. I used to have a yoga teacher who said, “If you don’t have time to stay for Savassana, then don’t come to class. It’s that important.” The theory in yoga is that after we’ve bent ourselves into pretzels and practiced the poses with great attention, our bodies need time to process what has happened.

Just as in yoga class, in cult recovery our bodies, minds and souls need time to process what has happened to us. And we can’t do that if we are constantly filling up our time and our bodies with new information, to do lists and activities. We need to be still, be quiet and be with no obligations, no pressure and no expectation of results.

Yet at times in cult recovery it can be difficult for us to be still. That’s ok. We can be still and mobile at the same time. Any repetitive motion that does not require us to think about what we’re doing can support us to be still in mind and soul and counts as empty time; for example, walking, running, swimming or rollerblading.

The cult I was involved with emphasized meditation as a spiritual practice. Needless to say, when I first left the cult it was impossible for me to meditate given all the negative connotations I had with that practice. And yet, instinctively I knew I had to have some still, quiet, empty time in my life to allow my soul to heal. So I took to the woods. I drove myself, almost every day, the half-hour or so to a huge rainforest park in the city where I live and spent an hour or so walking in the blissfully quiet, soothing, healing woods.

This empty time required nothing of me. I couldn’t do or say anything wrong. I didn’t need to be afraid of judgment or recrimination (as I had been in the cult). I could just walk and let my body and soul repair and grieve and learn to live again.

Empty time is important in every life, I believe. I think it is one reason we get so excited about vacations; they are a chance to have the empty time we crave so desperately.

On your journey of cult recovery, I encourage you to create even 10 minutes each day of empty time. If you are able to sit still in quiet contemplation, great! If not, walk or run or swim. For years my empty time practice has involved staring out the window, letting my mind unspool and my body and soul relax and process what the day has held.

Think of it this way: You can’t fill a glass with new, fresh water if it’s already full of the filth that was poured in their by your cult leader. Strategies we use to empty that glass of the dirty water are therapy, writing, talking, and crying. Emptying your time is another, very important strategy for healing. I invite you to give it a try.

…now that I’ve shared all that, I’ll go have some Empty Time myself!

–

(Photo courtesy of dan and FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

In the cult that I belonged to our primary goal was always “fighting the Darkness”. Our cult leader drilled into us that there were energetic battles taking place all over the universe, including here on earth, and that our purpose was to be warriors of the light, fighting the dark forces that could invade every heart and mind.

It sounds like a noble concept. Kind of like Star Wars for the spiritually inclined. However, in the process of fighting that darkness, I found I became dark. I also saw that darkness take over my friends and loved ones in the group.

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Without realizing it we were learning to practice the opposite of this principle.

**

Love, Light and Truth: this was our motto and our mission. But we were taught to approach this mission with jackboots rather than with actual love, light and truth. For example:

- The cult leader insisted that telling “The Truth” was the most important characteristic of a spiritual warrior, yet we lied to one another and to those outside the group when it was convenient.

- Our cult leader held high the value of love, but she treated us with abuse, both verbal and spiritual. She called it “Tough Love”.

- As a group we were taught to shun and reject those who did not conform; treating them as though they did not exist even if they were standing right beside us.

- Our purpose (fighting the darkness) never extended to doing anything positive in the communities where we lived. We didn’t volunteer for organizations that help those less fortunate; we didn’t donate money or resources to charity; we didn’t reach out to those in need in our own back yards.

We weren’t “being the change”, we only talked about it.

**

I looked at myself toward the end of my time in the cult and realized I had become a bully; raging at those lower down in the group hierarchy than myself.

I became critical, anxious, angry, discompassionate, emotionally caustic, belittling to myself and others, and judgmental. My heart felt completely walled off and I felt emotionally cold all the time.

All these things, I was eventually able to realize, were the exact opposite of Love, Light and Truth.

I had become the monster I was trying to fight.

That’s when I left. I didn’t know of Nietzsche’s quote yet, but when I read it today it made me reflect on the journey I took to leave the cult. It sums up so succinctly the hypocrisy that existed in our cult and why I left.

**

I will finish with a proverb, thinking of my cult compatriots, sending them love and praying for their freedom, as always:

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

So first let me say, “Congratulations!” If you have left a cult you are one brave and strong individual. Leaving the cult was quite possibly the single-most challenging thing you have ever done or will do. The good news is that the cult experience is now behind you. The news you may not want to hear is that rebuilding yourself is going to take work. But wait! Before I lose you, know this; the rebuilding work is challenging but it is so rewarding and ultimately so fulfilling that you may eventually wonder why everyone doesn’t do it.

Here, then, is a very brief outline of some of what you might encounter in the process of cult recovery. (I’ve numbered these phases below, but they tend to overlap and also stop and start. Don’t take the numbering system literally.)

First, you need to take care of your physical needs. Do you have a job? Do you need a place to live? Are you safe from the cult or do you need to do something to ensure your safety (like moving to a different town/city)? Moving forward emotionally will not be possible until you have answers to these questions and have begun to feel that you know where your next meal is coming from and where you’ll sleep tonight.

When you have what feels like a stable physical foundation around you, the second phase of recovery might be asking yourself questions like, “What is true?” and “Who am I really?” and “Who can I trust?” Depending on the nature of the cult you were involved in questions about God may come up and you may need to think about rebuilding that relationship as well as the one with yourself.

These are deep and important questions and they take time and patience to answer. I encourage you to be especially patient and gentle with yourself at this time (which may be years, if not decades, long). It takes as long as it takes. Often cults instill in members a sense of urgency – that is one technique that contributes to thought-stopping, which is a key element of the control a cult places over its victims – and it may take some time for you to stop feeling like every question has to be answered and conquered now, Now, NOW! I am here to remind you, there is no urgency. Take all the time you want. The universe is in no hurry and it will wait for you.

A third phase you may encounter in cult recovery is what I call the “Information Gathering” phase. When I was a few years into my cult recovery, I came to a place emotionally where I had the strength to look back and think to myself, “What the hell was that?!” That’s when I started to look into the possibility that what I was involved in hadn’t just been a weird meditation group, but something more, something I could define and understand.

If you reach this phase, the internet is a great place to start (and you may be already there, since you’re reading this article. Information gathering in whatever form that takes, is in my experience, incredibly healing. By reading others’ stories of their cult involvement and by coming to understand how cults work and how you were drawn in you will realize you are not alone, you were not stupid or naïve, and that it is possible to heal and to actually benefit from that healing process.

Yes, it’s true, there are tremendous benefits involved in cult recovery. I wouldn’t trade my experience in cult recovery for anything. I encourage you to get the support you need (preferably from a therapist who is familiar with how cults work) and to give yourself the time and space to dive deeply into the process. You’re worth it!

Cult members learn very early on that obedience toward the cult leader is paramount to our continued membership and acceptance into the group. We learn that we must accept what our leader says without question and, perhaps more importantly, cannot pick and choose what parts of the cult’s philosophy to believe; a cult is an all-or-nothing game. (Every cult leader applies this condition to members because it a) stops cult members from thinking and b) trains us to be completely obedient. Critical thinking is not allowed.)

When we leave the cult we begin to learn (or re-learn) what matters to us as individuals, not as a member of an authoritarian hierarchy. We begin to value what matters to us. And eventually, if we work hard at it, we learn that we can value what matters to us even if it means displeasing an authority figure. This is a huge and important milestone for cult survivors and one I continue to celebrate every time it happens in my post-cult life.

Here’s an example: I began searching for a new spiritual community a few years after leaving the cult I belonged to because spiritual community was something I was missing very much in my life. At one point, I took some evening classes exploring a faith that seemed like it might be a good fit for me. The teacher was a retired gentleman, obviously very well read and well educated, who had been a part of this faith since his late teens. He was warm and gentle and kind. He welcomed the group of students I was a part of into his home for the classes and I liked him immediately. This was a good sign, I thought.

Part-way through the series of classes the topic of homosexuality came up and it was revealed that this particular faith believes that the only form of sexual expression should be within a marriage and that ‘marriage’ is defined as between one man and one woman. I was deeply upset right away. I don’t believe that marriage should be defined as being between one man and one woman. I believe that God/the universe/the Great Creator made us all exactly and perfectly the way we are, including those of us who are gay or transgendered, and that we all have the right to express that love via marriage. I left the class that night and wept in my car on the way home, conflicted and disappointed. I wanted so badly to find a new spiritual community and this had seemed like the right one, but I hated it that this particular faith thought there was something wrong with my gay friends.

I continued going to the classes though, wanting to explore my questions further. On the last night of class, the teacher asked if each of the students wished to sign up that night to become members of the faith. All the other students in the class did, but I did not, because of this conflict. I felt that I wanted to continue exploring the faith and to see if I could gain a greater understanding about the issue of homosexuality, and I was not ready at that very moment to commit to something I felt conflicted about.

I could see the look of disappointment on the teacher’s face when I said I would not be joining. He embraced each other student warmly in a hug after they signed their membership cards, calling them “Brother” or “Sister” while I sat, by myself, left out of the celebration. I flashed back to my cult days. The days of working desperately hard to never, ever disappoint our cult leader for fear of being shunned or receiving abuse or any number of other adverse consequences.

But I held on. I held on to my hard won freedom. I realized in that moment that the teacher could be as disappointed in me as he wanted, but I was not now and not ever going to sacrifice a deeply held value in order to make someone else comfortable. I had done that for too long and at too great a price in the cult.

This was a milestone, I realized later. It revealed to me many things. Among them that I had grown a new backbone. That I had learned some of what mattered to me and what I was and was not willing to do to stand behind those values. And also that I had come to know who I was in many ways – something I hadn’t known when I was in the cult. In the cult I was an amalgamation of what mattered to cult leader. It was a good moment, that moment of seeing disappointment in me from an authority figure and choosing to stand by my own values anyway. I look back on it fondly.

In the end, after more classes and discussion I did not end up joining that faith, but even if I had, I would have been proud of my new found willingness to look in the face of authority and say, “I’m doing what’s right for me in this moment. And I don’t need you to be happy about it.”

It was a big deal. Perhaps one only another cult survivor can understand.

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.

Plus, the e-version is only $9.99.

Click here to go to the page where you can learn more and download.

PS I uploaded this video on the e-book page but just for fun I thought I’d share it here too. (Some days I am really impressed with technology

Many thanks to Anne Melnyk (Ms. Juicy herself) for the opportunity to write the blog post.

Have a great weekend everyone!