This talk is an opening, a crack to let light into considerations of racialized survivor experience with hopes to expand this conversation, and invitations to research the lives, challenges, healing journeys, and to visibilize the living bodies of cult survivors of color.
The aim of this presentation is to analyze the process by which former members recognized and named forms of control, experiences of abuse and experiences of violence during her or his life within a religious cultic group after leaving the group.
How do people get trapped in cults? One tool cults use is emotional and mental coercion to exercise undue influence keeping people stuck in the group. Even without physically holding people prisoner, it is possible to hold them by building a closed system of beliefs and isolating them from other ideas.
I work with many people who were terrified about getting help again and waited for years to come for therapy or participate in my support group because their last counseling experience had been so traumatizing, abusive and manipulative.
It’s human nature to make up stories, and we all make up our own story. We piece it together with the events we feel shaped our lives. Once we have a fixed story, we learn to play the role of the protagonist.
Opus Dei, Legionaries of Christ/ Regnum Christi Federation, Neo-Catechumenal, Charismatics, Focolarini
and schizotypal disorders. While these symptoms can affect all former cult members, they are particularly problematic among young people who have left cults, and especially those born into one
Clinical psychology and professional counseling can serve as a profound aid in cult recovery, training in the counseling professions often leaves new clinicians unequipped to handle lasting questions of faith and self-trust in the aftermath of spiritual abuse.
Based on my investigation into the Zion Society cult in northern Utah where 32 children were rescued after years of sexual abuse by the 120-member group.
Kate Amber, cult and domestic abuse survivor, certified in Executive Leadership in Violence and Abuse Prevention, ADA Advocacy and The Psychology of Coercive Control, is the Founder/CEO of End Coercive Control USA (ECCUSA).