Matthew May Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA Sage Journals Society and Mental Health December 29, 2017 Abstract Religious affiliation is generally associated with better mental health. The nonreligious, however, currently constitute one of the fastest-growing religious categories in the United States. Since most of the nonreligious were raised in religious…
Starting Out in Mainstream America
Starting Out in Mainstream America (Livia Bardin, M.S.W.), offers information about life in the USA today. Adjusting to any new culture can be slow, difficult, and painful. If you are entering or preparing for re-entry into mainstream American life after a long absence, or perhaps for the first time, you may…
Essay: Coping With Trance States
Patrick Ryan Cult Observer, Volume 10, No. 3, 1993, “Guest Column: Coping With Trance States”; and first appeared in the Summer 1992 issue of TM EX NEWS. Trance states, derealization, dissociation, spaceyness. What are they? What strategies can we use to cope with them? By trance states we mean dissociation,…
Born or Raised in Closed, High-Demand Groups: Developmental Considerations
An increasing number of individuals are entering mainstream society who were born and/or raised in cults or closed, high-demand groups. In my work as a mental health professional specializing in trauma and recovery from spiritual abuse, I regularly encounter these individuals.
Coping with Triggers
Dissociation is a disturbance in the normally integrative functions of identity, memory, or consciousness. It is also known as a trance state.
Re-Entry Therapy, Information & Referral Network (RETIRN)
Since 1983, the Re-Entry Therapy, Information & Referral Network (RETIRN) has been providing counseling, forensic (legal), consultation, information and referral services to individuals and families adversely affected by high demand groups, manipulative and totalistic social, political, transformational and/or religious movements, such as:
- destructive cults (e.g., religious, political, therapy, marketing cults).
- mass therapies (e.g., large group awareness trainings).
- Satanism/Occultism (“black” magic).
- certain “New Age” groups that engage in harmful and/or deceptive practices.
We are proud of our association with the International Cultic Studies Association (formerly American Family Foundation), the premier cult research and education organization.
RETIRN services include:
- Family counseling: help in deciding what action to take when a loved one is involved with a cult.
- Re-entry therapy: individual, family, and group psychotherapy for former cultists and their families.
- Forensic examinations on issues related to destructive cultism (including child custody, competency, and infliction of psychological distress).
- Consultation and training to mental health professionals and agencies, educational and religious organizations.
- Public speaking: highly experienced and stimulating speakers for civic groups, clubs, and other organizations.
- Cult-sensitive psychological testing & diagnostic evaluations: for assistance in treatment planning.
- Information and referral to additional sources of support and help, including legal referrals.
- Exit counseling: noncoercive, voluntary information and counseling sessions for current members of totalistic groups. We are proud of our relationships with recognized, competent, and ethical cult consultants and exit-counselors.
RETIRN Affiliated Consultants include:
- Steven Eisenberg,
- Patrick Ryan,
- Joe Kelly,
- Carol Giambalvo, and
- David Clark.
Contact:
RETIRN Associates are consultants, psychotherapists, and counselors, many of whom themselves are former cultists or have been exposed to destructive cults or other coercive influence techniques. They have specialized training and/or experience working with people who have been harmed by individuals and groups that utilize powerful manipulative techniques to coerce sudden and rapid changes in personality, behavior and/or beliefs (usually without informed consent). RETIRN assists cultists and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
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United Kingdom
+44 (0)1443-400456
Aspects of Recovery
Recovery from cults is a multifaceted process; initially it is the separation from the group, group practices, and meetings that bound us to the group. Therapy helps address the emotional aspects of group involvement – feelings of betrayal, abuse and vulnerability to recruitment. It helps to develop and understanding of how the group’s doctrine was used to manipulate and encourage commitment.
Our focus in this article is the development of an intellectual understanding of the characteristics of cultic groups – how they differ from non-cultic groups – and of the tactics often used to engender a high level of commitment, a key element of recovery.
Deception
Deception lies at the core of mind-manipulating and cultic groups and programs. Many ex-members and supporters of cults are not fully aware of the extent to which they have been tricked and exploited.
The following checklist of characteristics helps to define such groups. Comparing the descriptions on this checklist to bring your attention to aspects of the group with which you were involved may help bring your attention to areas of group life that are a cause for concern.
If you check any of these items as characteristic of the group, and particularly if you check most of them, you might want to consider reexamining these areas of the group and how they affected you. Keep in mind that this checklist is meant to stimulate thought. It is not a scientific method of “diagnosing” a group.
Checklist of Cult Characteristics
We suggest that you check all characteristics that apply to you or your group. You may find that your assessment changes over time, with further reading and research.
q The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.
q The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
q The group is preoccupied with making money.
q Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
q Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
q The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).
q The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).
q The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.
q The group’s leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).
q The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).
q The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
q Members’ subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.
q Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
The Distinction Between Cultic Groups and Non-Cultic Groups
Making the distinction between cultic groups and non-cultic groups is significant. Group propaganda often tries to blur the distinction between cults, sects, communes and society’s organizations, (“The Catholic Church is a cult.” “The Marines are a cult.”).
“I have had to point out why the United States Marine Corps is not a cult so many times that I carry a list to lectures and court appearances. It cites 19 ways in which the practices of the Marine Corps differ from those found in most modern cults….
Cults clearly differ from such purely authoritarian groups as the military, some types of sects and communes, and centuries-old Roman Catholic and Greek and Russian Orthodox Orders. These groups, though rigid and controlling, lack a double agenda and are not manipulative or leader-centered. The differences become apparent when we examine the intensity and pervasiveness with which mind-manipulating techniques and deceptions are or are not applied.
Jesuit seminaries may isolate the seminarian from the rest of the world for periods of time, but the candidate is not deliberately deceived about the obligations and burdens of the priesthood. In fact, he is warned in advance about what is expected, and what he can and cannot do….
Mainstream religious organizations do not concentrate their search on the lonely and the vulnerable … Nor do mainstream religions focus recruitment on wealthy believers who are seen as pots of gold for the church, as is the case with those cults who target rich individuals …
Military training and legitimate executive-training programs may use the dictates of authority as well as peer pressure to encourage the adoption of new patterns of thought and behavior. They do not seek, however, to accelerate the process by prolonged or intense psychological depletion or by stirring up feelings of dread, guilt, and sinfulness …
And what is wrong with cults is not just that cults are secret societies. In our culture, there are openly recognized, social secret societies, such as the Masons, in which new members know up front that they will gradually learn the shared rituals of the group … In [cults] there is deliberate deception about what the group is and what some of the rituals might be, and primarily, there is deception about what the ultimate goal will be for a member, what will ultimately be demanded and expected, and what the damages resulting from some of the practices might be. A secret handshake is not equivalent to mind control.
How the United States Marine Corps Differs from Cults
- The Marine recruit clearly knows what the organization is that he or she is joining … There are no secret stages such as people come upon in cults. Cult recruits often attend a cult activity, are lured into ‘staying for a while,’ and soon find that they have joined the cult for life, or as one group requires, members sign up for a ‘billion year contract…’
- The Marine recruit retains freedom of religion, politics, friends, family association, selection of spouse, and information access to television, radio, reading material, telephone, and mail.
- The Marine serves a term of enlistment and departs freely. The Marine can reenlist if he or she desires but is not forced to remain.
- Medical and dental care are available, encouraged, and permitted in the Marines. This is not true in the many cults that discourage and sometimes forbid medical care.
- Training and education received in the Marines are usable later in life. Cults do not necessarily train a person in anything that has any value in the greater society.
- In the USMC, public records are kept and are available. Cult records, if they exist, are confidential, hidden from members, and not shared.
- USMC Inspector General procedures protect each Marine. Nothing protects cult members.
- A military legal system is provided within the USMC; a Marine can also utilize off-base legal and law enforcement agencies and other representatives if needed. In cults, there is only the closed, internal system of justice, and no appeal, no recourse to outside support.
- Families of military personnel talk and deal directly with schools. Children may attend public or private schools. In cults, children, child rearing, and education are often controlled by the whims and idiosyncrasies of the cult leader.
- The USMC is not a sovereign entity above the laws of the land. Cults consider themselves above the law, with their own brand of morality and justice, accountable to no one, not even their members.
- A Marine gets to keep her or his pay, property owned and acquired, presents from relatives, inheritances, and so on. In many cults, members are expected to turn over to the cult all monies and worldly possessions.
- Rational behavior is valued in the USMC. Cults stultify members’ critical thinking abilities and capacity for rational, independent thinking; normal thought processes are stifled and broken.
- In the USMC, suggestions and criticism can be made to leadership and upper echelons through advocated, proper channels. There are no suggestion boxes in cults. The cult is always right, and the members (and outsides) are always wrong.
- Marines cannot be used for medical and psychological experiments without their informed consent. Cults essentially perform psychological experiments on their members through implementing thought-reform processes without members’ knowledge or consent.
- Reading, education, and knowledge are encouraged and provided through such agencies as Armed Services Radio and Stars and Stripes, and through books, post libraries, and so on. If cult do any education, it is only in their own teachings. Members come to know less and less about the outside world; contact with or information about life outside the cult is sometimes openly frowned upon, if not forbidden.
- In the USMC, physical fitness is encouraged for all. Cults rarely encourage fitness or good health, except perhaps for members who serve as security guards or thugs.
- Adequate and properly balanced nourishment is provided and advocated in the USMC. Many cults encourage or require unhealthy and bizarre diets. Typically, because of intense work schedules, lack of funds, and other cult demands, members are not able to maintain healthy eating habits.
- Authorized review by outsiders, such as the U.S. Congress, is made of the practices of the USMC. Cults are accountable to no one and are rarely investigated, unless some gross criminal activity arouses the attention of the authorities or the public.
- In the USMC, the methods of instruction are military training and education, even indoctrination into the traditions of the USMC, but brainwashing, or thought reform, is not used. Cults influence members by means of a coordinated program of psychological and social influence techniques, or brainwashing.”
Adapted from Cults In Our Midst: The Hidden Menace to Our Everyday Lives, Margaret Singer with Janja Lalich, Jossey-Bass, 1995. Reprinted with authors’ permission.
AFF News, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1996
Post-Cult Problems: An Exit Counselor’s Perspective
Classification of Ex-Members
There are several classifications of ex-members, based on how they left the cult. Former members usually fit into one of the following:
1. Those who had interventions.
2. Those who left on their own, or walkaways
3. Those who were expelled, or castaways
Walkaways and castaways need the most help in understanding their recovery process. Former members who were cast out of a cult are especially vulnerable; often they feel inadequate, guilty, and angry.
Most cults respond to any criticism of the cult itself by turning the criticism around on the individual member. Whenever something is wrong, it’s not the leadership or the organization, it’s the individual.
Thus, when someone is told to leave a cult, that person carries a double load of guilt and shame. Sometimes walkaways also carry a sense of inadequacy. Often they can think through these feelings intellectually, but emotionally they are very difficult to handle.
Tools for Recovery
In my experience, the most helpful tool for recovering ex-cult members is learning what mind control is and how it was used by their specific cult. Understanding that there are residual effects from a mind control environment and that these effects are often transitory in nature helps diffuse the anxiety. Clients, especially walkaways and castaways, feel relieved when they learn that, given the situation, what they are experiencing is normal and that the effects will not last forever.
Also integral to the recovery process is developing an attitude that there are some positives to be gained from the cultic experience. When former members learn about mind control, they can use that understanding to sort through their cultic experience, to see how they came to change their behavior and beliefs as a result of mind control. They can then assess what out of that experience is good and valid for them to hold onto.
When former members live in an area where there is an active support group meeting, it is often helpful for them to participate. Support group meetings provide a safe place for ex-members to discuss concerns with others who are dealing with similar issues. In this environment, no one will look at them like they have two heads.
Common Issues in Post-Cult Recovery
Some of the recovery issues that keep recurring in my work with ex-cult
members are:
1. Sense of purposelessness, of being disconnected. They left a group that had a powerful purpose and intense drive; they miss the peak experiences produced from the intensity and the group dynamics.
2. Depression.
3. Grieving for other group members, for a sense of loss in their life.
4. Guilt. Former members will feel guilt for having gotten involved in the first place, for the people they recruited into the group, and for the things they did while in the group.
5. Anger. This will be felt toward the group and/or the leaders. At times this anger is misdirected toward themselves.
6. Alienation. They will feel alienation from the group, often from old friends (that is, those who were friends prior to their cult involvement), and sometimes from family.
7. Isolation. To ex-cult members, no one “out there” seems to understand what they’re going through, especially their families.
8. Distrust. This extends to group situations, and often to organized religion (if they were in a religious cult) or organizations in general (depending on the type of cult they were in). There is also a general distrust of their own ability to discern when or if they are being manipulated again. This dissipates after they learn more about mind control and begin to listen to their own inner voice again.
9. Fear of going crazy. This is especially common after “floating” experiences (see point 18 below for explanation of floating).
10. Fear that what the cult said would happen to them if they left actually might happen.
11. Tendency to think in terms of black and white, as conditioned by the cult. They need to practice looking for the gray areas.
12. Spiritualizing everything. This residual sometimes lasts for quite a while. Former members need to be encouraged to look for logical reasons why things happen and to deal with reality, to let go of their magical thinking.
13. Inability to make decisions. This characteristic reflects the dependency that was fostered by the cult.
14. Low self-esteem. This generally comes from those experiences common to most cults, where time and again members are told that they are worthless.
15. Embarrassment. This is an expression of the inability to talk about their experience, to explain how or why they got involved or what they had done during that time. It is often manifested by an intense feeling of being ill-at-ease in both social and work situations. Also, often there is a feeling of being out of synch with everyone else, of going through culture shock, from having lived in a closed environment and having been deprived of participating in everyday culture.
16. Employment and/or career problems. Former members face the dilemma of what to put on a resume to cover the blank years of cult membership.
17. Dissociation. This also has been fostered by the cult. Either active or passive, it is a period of not being in touch with reality or those around them, an inability to communicate.
18. Floating. These are flashbacks into the cult mind-set. It can also take on the effect of an intense emotional reaction that is inappropriate to the particular stimuli.
19. Nightmares. Some people also experience hallucinations or hearing voices. A small percentage of former members need hospitalization due to this type of residual.
20. Family issues.
21. Dependency issues.
22. Sexuality issues.
23. Spiritual (or philosophical) issues. Former members often face difficult questions: Where can I go to have my spiritual (or belief) needs met? What do I believe in now? What is there to believe in, trust in?
24. Inability to concentrate, short-term memory loss.
25. Re-emergence of pre-cult emotional or psychological issues.
26. Impatience with the recovery process.
In my experience, there is no difference in the aftereffects experienced by those people who had family interventions or those who walked away or were expelled from a cult. Most ex-cult members _ no matter the method of leaving the cult _ had some or all of these residuals. The difference is that the individuals who had interventions are more prepared to deal with them, and especially those who went to a rehab facility.
It is important to note and to bring to the attention of the ex-cult member that each individual’s recovery process is different and there is no “How To Recover from a Cultic Experience.” In fact, the desire for a quick and easy recovery may be in itself a residual effect of the cult.
Excerpted from “Post-cult Problems: An Exit Counselor’s Perspective” by Carol Giambalvo, in Recovery from Cults: Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse, edited by Michael D. Langone (1993. W.W. Norton & Company.) Reprinted with permission. Also available from AFF, or ask for it at your local bookstore.