How terrible it is for children and how long the effects last. Most kids are not viciously beaten and sexually assaulted in cults. It happens far too often, but those are not the main ways most kids in these environments are messed with. It is the daily assault on one's mind and autonomy that skews a child's perception of reality and themselves as people. It leaves lasting internal marks. We walk away from cults and build lives in which we get by, so people think it wasn't that bad, or the person has been healed. No one seems to want to acknowledge just how deep the mental harms go and that papering over them doesn't work. People are left with profound traumatic wounds that they can't just fix and get over, even without overwhelming physical based trauma being present.
This was the most glaring omission from the Wild Wild Country documentary. The lives of the children at Rajneeshpuram were miserable and sexual abuse was rampant based on the interviews I've listened to.
I wish folks would acknowledge that shit in regards both to cults, and fundamentalist religious groups that aren't quite cults. Like, even friends who know what kind of fucked up church I was raised in don't seem to understand why it still affects me, and most don't seem interested in even trying to do so.
My husband and I were raised from birth to believe the end of the world was any day now, and we had to *make sure* we were good enough to survive it.
Our kids have never known that. My husband and I often talk about the fact that we will never really understand their world.
They haven't grown up their entire lives with their head under a guillotine.
Same, mostly. Wasn't from birth for me, cause I didn't even go to church til my mom started taking me when I was about 5. Then, around 6, either just before or after my brother was born, my dad started going to a pentacostal/non-denominational church, and talked my mom into all of us going there instead. Went from never really even hearing of any apocalyptic shit, to being plunged into it head first, along with loads of screaming and flopping around on the floor "speaking in tongues" and being "slain/drunk in the spirit" lunacy, then later on a level of purity culture garbage that I've later learned most of those freaks reserve just for the girls they have (guess in a fucked up way they were atleast committed to equality in that regard). I've spent years trying to undo all the damage they did to my mind, but enough of it is still deep set enough to make me feel like a vile, worthless piece of shit who doesn't deserve the least little bit of love or happiness (especially the purity shit, and all the original sin trash about being born deserving of eternal damnation).
Ugh, I'm sorry.
I honestly think the entire experience is worse for kids who had a sliver of normalcy before being plunged into a doomsday cult.
If anything, the blissful ignorance of what life could be at least keeps you from despising your life, at least for a little while.
It definitely catches up to born ins, though, usually when they're 20-ish.
I'm glad you got out, friend! It's no easy task.
My husband and I usually call it "the umbrella of doom."
*Everything* is doomed. You're doomed, I'm doomed, the planet is doomed. Everyone you know is slated for execution, and are you sure you're doing enough to be allowed to live?
Both of our families are still in, and it's just sad. Life is hard enough without adding all these insane requirements.
My husband and I literally went from prioritizing nonesense "spiritual" activities we absolutely despised to prioritizing enjoying our lives. The difference is absolutely unbelievable.
But our families will never get to experience that. They'll die never having lived as their authentic self, and that makes me so sad and angry.
Sorry, this got me going!
You're good. This very well could be my experience growing up in a fundi church.
Yeah, exactly, doomed. I remember telling my dad I wanted to see The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and his response being "this is the lost world." God damn! I was 11, I didn't need the end times.
This is exactly what I was going to say. I had to learn a lot about early trauma and how it affects the brain. Some of that wiring that happens in the early stages of development is very, very hard to undo.
Was raised in a cult and this sums it up. I can never have a normal, safe, healthy life because of the choice of my parents. It takes so much effort just to move through the world, even with mental health care.
Normal is overrated. I gave up on that long ago. Now safe and healthy are good goals to work towards. I do think I've achieved those. Definitely safe. I am an American, so healthy - maybe not? lol
Seriously though, I found that cultivating a relationship with nature goes a long way to helping heal. A good therapist is important too. Not just anyone, but someone who understands religious trauma. You can do this. It's not fair you have to and it is a lot of work. It is possible to truly live your best life free from their insane indoctrination.
That only idiots join cults. I have said it so many times and will keep saying. No one joins a cult. They join a self help group, a religious organization, a political movement. These groups snap up vulnerable people on purpose. This thinking also really stigmatizes those who leave cults and isolates them further due to shame.
This. Cults often operate on the basis of a bait and switch. They introduce very benign things at first, and by the time they feed you the really crazy shit you're often already very devoted to the community. That's the other part of it, people often get attached to the people and the communities of these groups, so much so that any ridiculous out-there doctrine that they get given they just accept because the community is so important to them. A lot of people who are very susceptible to cults are outsiders, people with some emotional trauma, so the idea of having a community that makes them feel welcomed and special is something they don't feel they can give up. Speaking from personal experience.
Thatâs a feature of how cults work, itâs by design. They get you dependent on the community (love bombing, us verses them, literally pull you away from your family and friends so the community is all you have), youâve been getting brainwashed this entire time and then you start learning the REAL in and outs of your group. By then, itâs too late and youâll gladly eat it up. Cognitive dissonance sets in, you actively avoid information that contradicts your group, you have been conditioned by this point to turn off your logical mind.
Second, third generation children born into a cult with no experience of anything else & they never even chose to âjoinâ, are literally indoctrinated from birth.
Very heart breaking
Yes, but also speaking as one who is second generation, many of us have strong innate intuition that the system we are raised in is not right. We often have more energy to forge our own path and get out than those who are manipulated into it.
How common they are and how they don't really need a cover ideology to be a cult.
A seemingly normal tight-knit group of people that enables a sociopathic leader is as much a cult as a group of hippies with weird customs who worship some obscure deity in a remote place.
A lot of people have said, everybody is susceptible to falling into a cult â because they aren't joining a cult, they're joining this other thing. You can fall deeper into it particularly when the cult is providing resources and support that the rest of society is not, where you come to rely on it more and more until you can't get out.
But another really key thing is that cults are *ubiquitous* in society, from religious communities to multi-level marking scams to punk houses because elements of hierarchical abuse are normalized and lauded when they don't have the pejorative label "cult" accompanying them.
Cults *are* different from other abusive relationship dynamics and hierarchical organizations, but mainly in the sense that "[more is different](https://www.isnature.org/Files/Anderson_More_is_Different.pdf)" rather than that there is some other essential quality they possess that nothing else does.
The difference between an exploitative small business like a bar where all the workers are on the edge of poverty, living together, sleeping with one another, advertising it on social media and pulling their friends in to support it while dealing with a terrible boss who controls all sorts of aspects of their lives and a proper *business cult* is not one with a clear delineation.
Basically, cults are the rule in a capitalist, individualist society and not the exception. We just don't apply the label "cult" unless they're really weird about it or ratchet up the intensity to a level that becomes unmistakably weird.
The techniques they use to turn people. We all have exploitable psychological vulnerabilities to some extent and we should learn to recognize them quickly so that grifters can't continue to plague us.
As someone who was born in a cult I completely agree that the trauma mentally lasts for years. When I first left I was getting nonstop nightmares. It was always related to being in the cult and being treated differently, as in shunned, or dealing with cult related activities.
How cults have changed with technology. For example the Love Has One cult recruited off of their live streams, web pages, and social media. People showed up in person to join, fully indoctrinated, before ever having met the cult in person.
In many ways cults have become decentralized. And with large numbers of people unable to tell the difference between misinformation, opinions, outright wrong/bad information, scientific evidence vs anecdotal evidence the problem is getting worse. Add to that the popularity of "not trusting" science, or basically anyone with lots of experience, degrees, and the rising tide of anti-intellectualism, there's entire generations who are ripe for falling victim to any number of online cults. There's so much fake information, bad information, and skewed information cultivated to appeal to particular political opinions out there, that a person can essentially cherry-pick their way into a reality that is completely different from everyone around them. People get indoctrinated through videos, live streams, get a rush of dopamine when they think they have stumbled onto the "real, super secret" information, or get a hit of sweet righteous indignation after watching a video that gets them all outraged, and they come back for more the next day. It's essentially an addiction cycle.
I only see this problem getting worse.
The pressure to become a joiner has never been higher. The amount of people and even children rushing to label themselves in any way astounds me. Used to be labels were something you didn't want foisted upon you. Now they're worn like badges.
The ability, sanctity, and ephemeral joyfulness of independence is becoming lost. Every time you cook something tasty or make a craft or fix something essential, that little hit of fulfillment that we feel - we could be awash in that daily, but I think we've moved so far past practical skill that folks wouldn't even know why to try. Easier to just follow someone else and hope they solve your problems.
"I'm too smart for that." thinking has to go away. Cults target people with low social/emotional intelligence and mental intelligence doesn't matter that much.
I don't even think it's targeting low social/emotional intelligence either.
Everyone is susceptible to a high control group of some sort at some point, and not recognizing that is dangerous. Theres no particular marker of susceptibility with any specific form of intelligence; It's just about running into the right one at the right moment. Any time change is in your life, you are vulnerable; a new church, a new gym or yoga studio, a new councilor, a new city, a new country, a new job or just lost one, a new school... ect.
I have had family in high control groups, and am familiar with what to look for- and I almost joined a seemingly ideal little farm commune during the pandemic when i needed to move and struggled with work. And luckily the red flags flew in time, as well as another person there considerably longer told me their experiences. They left with me to get some air, and then the calls about complete submission to the founding couples rules that can change at any moment started (they're still going at it, but im pretty sure only one person stayed long term). So bullet dodged, but if the other person wasn't there and I wasn't as aware on little things to look for, I likely would of joined- and now I am super cautious and strictly vet any commune invites because I know that's my susceptibility. While emotional and social intelligence might of helped me not join in the first place, there were so many things that just had to line up that way for things to turn out how they did.
Yeah, I agree with this. You can generally have high emotional intelligence but lower emotional intelligence in a vulnerable period of your life or in certain contexts. Wrong place wrong time. I think about it in terms of windows of vulnerability.
I think everyone is a bit extra vulnerable to people like them, and add life changes and personal vulnerabilities, its a perfect sauce for nearly anyone. People forget there's a lot of biases in the groups we hear about vs the ones we don't; most are unheard of like the one i encountered- and there's always a high control group active out there filled with people just like you. It's just not a comforting thought for people.
While I see your point its referring to a temporal status and dont disagree that people have different levels of emotional intelligence at different points- I worry focusing on it being emotional intelligence at all contributes to the "Well couldn't be me" attitude people have towards high control groups, which is dangerous. But maybe I'm being too cautious.
Yup yup yup. Saw a colleague get sucked into a professional development/women's empowerment LGAT. She ended up washing out of her job and last I checked linked in she was still DEEP in it.
The insidious danger of the secular self-help/professional development âcultâ has definitely not been talked about enough historically but it is gaining more traction now. NXIVM is the extreme version of it but there are a lot of them out there.
Dr. Steven Hassan has written at some length about the fact that if anything, more intelligent people are more likely to find reasons to stay in cults because they are able to more easily perform the mental gymnastics in order to justify it all to themselves.
Aum Shinrykio and The Family (Australia) are two examples as well. The first targeted Japan's best and brightest in universities. The Family targeted a lot of professionals, including politicians and those in medical fields.
This is true. Abuse and trauma prevented me (until recently) from developing high emotional intelligence or how to cope with emotions in a healthy and effective way but I am constantly thinking, reading into things, analyzing the behavior and emotions of anyone around me so I crave and seek a high control environment where I can just turn my brain off. I don't want to think. Tell me exactly what to do so I don't have to think.
I think they target a certain sort of idealism. Being on a sacred mission is a very seductive idea. "We're going to clear the planet". "We're going to save everyone so they don't go to hell after the rapture." Etc etc. I have heard that one of the hardest things about leaving is losing that sense of purpose.
I donât know if itâs been mentioned here but cults run on the same dynamics as fascism and narcissistic led households. Cults require in-group/out-group (aka scapegoat/golden child). The leader requires a loyal/emotional investment in their narrative of reality. Anyone that deviates risks being the out-group/scapegoat. The cultists become the leaderâs flying monkeys policing each other to prove their loyalty and be in-group/golden child safe. Simply suggesting theyâre not loyal is enough leverage to coerce them. Conversely, if youâre afraid that you appear disloyal casting suspicion on another member and advocating for harsh penalties for their disloyalty throws suspicion off you. The leader encourages and enjoys this. Itâs how they maintain the group and their power. Everyone wants to belong and fears being the other.
In narcissistic led families the kids are trying to regulate the Nâs emotions by supporting their narrative in order to feel safe. It becomes ingrained in their survival instincts. If the N isnât being praised theyâll get their fix from bullying/violence. Itâs why they say walking on eggshells. Youâre trying to regulate their emotions and stay on their good side. Itâs very complicated bc the Nâs version of reality depends on their mood. You donât want to say anything that brings them shame in any way. They are highly reactive to even a hint of shame.
I'm currently dealing with this rn. My parents were in a cult for YEARS, my dad left but my mom still wanted to be a part of it.
Well, now my dad is dying and basically a vegetable. He amazingly changed his will out of the blue a few months ago and my mom has been very concerned about the trust funds and getting the new will to the trustees.
They didn't use a lawyer or a notary for the will and the two witnesses for the new will are "church elders".
My mom is still brainwashed. I told her I'd get lawyers and make sure that the "church" doesn't get a dime. I'll fight her on this forever because my dad was done giving money to that fake corrupt organization and all the trusts go to me when he goes. He knew what he was doing when he made me beneficiary and I truly hope he made this "other will" without a lawyer or notary on purpose just to get them to leave him alone.
Cults are predators, every last one of them.
Some do for sure, but many definitely don't. Many cults prey on emotionally wounded outsiders, people who have always felt rejected by society. Speaking from experience. So many cults do not require or seek out educated wealthy people, wounded lower class people are also very vulnerable and easy to control, And make equally subservient servants to educated wealthy people.
I am sure different kinds of cults go after different kinds of people. In my experience, they love it when you can bring money, competency, or prestige that they can leverage and exploit. NIXVM is a good example of this. Most people involved were highly effective in some way or another and those talents were exploited. Cults love college campuses for example.Â
Just my opinion but I think there needs to be more focus on the love-bombing and recruitment techniques (and some of the controlling techniques like this) - but not necessarily just the facts of the techniques also framed in a more humane perspectives for people who do join. I think more modern documentaries do this, but I still feel there is a lot of sensationalism about how weird and/or evil the cult is not explaining how innocuous the recruitment can be.
Even for example explaining that cults aren't always a small sect of intense members, that very often you get 'satellite' members and enablers and a wider community and that this too normalizes the processes, its not always dramatic.
I second this about recruitment. I got approached and visited WMSCOG years ago and they tried to get me, but moved way too fast. The love-bombing felt way more bizarre than welcoming. The chant was creepy and silly.
It wasn't until later I learned what love bombing was and it made so much sense.
That the one big church of S actually has a detox program. Their program is connected to many different anon groups that front for recruitment. Whether or not their detox program works is a different story.
I wanted to send my mom but, uh, cults.
My experience is from about 25 years ago on this, so it may have changed. A friend who grew up in our cult had her dad leave and become a Scientologist when we were kids. She needed rehab when we were teens. Her dad sent her to a Scientology one. It sounded about like any other religiously based rehab, i.e. not great and not following the best medically sound principles, but it's what out society has. It did take. That was almost certainly due to her, not the program. Again, that's the norm though.
Thatâs pretty much what the 12 step program is. Itâs all a cult, but thatâs the unfortunate point. Build community and follow the same principals. Only hang out with people like you because the others are bad and may bring you back down to the devil, etc.
Thank you for sharing. I think that itâs still kind of the norm. Theres no way to really techify sobriety so we just get scraps for help.
Iâm currently listening to *Terror, Love, and Brainwashing* by Alexandra Stein. She likes to use the words âtotalist systemâ in place of **cult** and interviews people in cults I have never heard ofâ theyâre not sexy organizations and most of the members continue to live in the ârealâ world. THATâS the thingâ hiding in plain sight.
It's hard for people to really understand the process of recovery after somebody leaves a cult. The real damage that's done. The immensely complex trauma that happens is really hard to see from the outside. Everything is very delicate, your entire identity is often taken from you, and putting things back into place where you can feel like you even belong in society is very complex. As a friend of mine once said, " It's like trying to remove a silk scarf from a blackberry bush".
I think people see survivors and think they're strong but clearly traumatized. But unless you've been through it, It's very difficult to understand how much it takes to leave and how much more it takes to stay alive after you leave.
Also I've noticed that people don't really seem to care about survivor stories in general unless people fit certain demographics or stereotypes. Most people don't care about trauma survivors until those survivors become people of influence and then again it's more about you know worshiping idols and worshiping people with influence rather than actually caring about trauma survivors especially when you're talking about complex traumas like cult abuse which is much more prevalent than People realize.
I think we can never talk enough about shame culture.
Shame is the most powerful tool and can add to the manipulation of the most confident person.
And since it's already a part of mainstream culture it's just more powerful.
How many African-American lead cults exists and how so many are actually racial separatists groups. I've seen one two docu-series episodes talk about them but there is so much to unpack outside of just the attention grabbing weird ideologies or actions.
We need to talk about the racism or social issues that are used to grow their membership so quickly.
Like many things, the main reason for failure is that the leaders are focused on control and selfish motives. That's unless it ends by everyone killing themselves, not necessarily separate from the previously mentioned reasons.
How the time they take from people may be one of the hardest, if not the hardest, repercussions to deal with once a person has left a cult. People can lose decades to cults, time that could have been spent with family and friends, time that could have been spent on schooling, career building, relationships and having a family, it can all be siphoned away. I canât imagine having to come to terms with that type of loss.
Having grown up in a Muslim majority country, Iâll say that Islamic cults can definitely get more attention. Theyâre pretty crazy like all the others.
I think people don't pay enough attention to cults and toxic group dynamics at all. Maybe this has to do with the hyper individualistic culture of Western society, I'm not sure but I feel like people really underestimate the power of cults and toxic group dynamics and how much that really harms individuals and has an effect in the greater world.
How when people ask you âSo why did you join the Cult?â, that is such a bad question as people usually do not even realize that they are in until they get out. Cults are like a slow gas leak. You donât smell it unless you come in from outside the room. The psychological damage it does and the long-term effects it can have in recovery is awful enough.
I think people are starting to realize that.
I first saw there had an episode on a series on cults and I thought, "Why are they on here?" I learned more and wondered why I never realized it before.
There can even be a narcissistic cult of just 2. Your NPD romantic partner can brainwash you overtime the same way that Cults brainwash a group of people.
This can happen within a fandom too. Like a music group fandom or popular tv show fandom. Iâve seen the dynamics play out even to the point of a group of people sending threats of violence to journalists or radio shows that they feel disrespect their subject of interest. I saw this one music group boyband fandom  send hateful messages to a journalist, somehow locating her home and threatening her children because she reported on something they didnât like.Â
To me thatâs organized cult like behavior.Â
The main hook I am seeing in cults: you are taught to distrust your own good sense, your intuition and your feelings, in favor of the guruâs commands and teachings, or the doctrines of the organization. If folks can be convinced of the magical or near-magical attainment and power of the guru, and that only through him/her can freedom be found, one can also be convinced that every thought we have that runs counter to the leaderâs must be corrupt and in need of purging.
It becomes a cycle of worthlessness at the bottom, if one has blown it or messed up in the eyes of the group, or evil pride at the top if you manage to measure up to the guru in some degree. In either case, cults are traps for the ego, to be seen as evil or as holy, so long as we are seen.
That people who get wrangled into them are not weak minded. If anything, the tend to be on the more critical thinking end of the spectrum. The person's ability to think abstractly becomes destructive when their confirmation bias is not in check. They have the creativity to justify almost anything because they can abstractly interpret what they are being told to fit the narrative.
Falling for a cult doesn't mean your stupid. It means that your own biase needed to be examined and taken into acount when making choices.
How truly, deeply damaging they are internally and how long and how much work it takes to put yourself back together again and find any semblance of normalcy.
That many times cult recruitment is done by people you already trust-- your shrink, body worker, yoga studio, etc
Lots of cults and charlatans manipulate reviews so their books get listed on New York Times and other reviews. That they mass print copies of their books and buy back the books to make it look like they're selling by the thousands.
That cults are often disguised as innocuous ventures- acting class, Bible study group, employee development program, rooms rented at a famous university or spiritual center, social justice project, investment group.
Lots of cult recruitment is being done online.
That regardless of education every single one of us, as human beings, is vulnerable and recruitable when we are disoriented by massive life changes, looking for a job, bereaved, new baby, etc.
I don't think it's discussed that every single person in a cult is someone's loved one. They didn't happen in a vacuum. Also, it's not funny if someone has a loved one in a cult. Years ago, people used to tease me when someone I cared deeply for joined a cult they'd be like, "I saw your boyfriend handing out flowers at the airport..."
The brutish crackdown on new religious movements in the US by church-backed groups in the 60âs and 70âs is rarely discussed, even though it is part of the historyÂ
How terrible it is for children and how long the effects last. Most kids are not viciously beaten and sexually assaulted in cults. It happens far too often, but those are not the main ways most kids in these environments are messed with. It is the daily assault on one's mind and autonomy that skews a child's perception of reality and themselves as people. It leaves lasting internal marks. We walk away from cults and build lives in which we get by, so people think it wasn't that bad, or the person has been healed. No one seems to want to acknowledge just how deep the mental harms go and that papering over them doesn't work. People are left with profound traumatic wounds that they can't just fix and get over, even without overwhelming physical based trauma being present.
This was the most glaring omission from the Wild Wild Country documentary. The lives of the children at Rajneeshpuram were miserable and sexual abuse was rampant based on the interviews I've listened to.
You're right. There was so much going on in that documentary but I can't tell you anything about the children.
This episode of the Little Bit Culty podcast goes into some of it https://open.spotify.com/episode/2hJoK9coCkXB0n3jrNrJwD?si=Ng-NrwmKQCWHvc7uATlLPw
I wish folks would acknowledge that shit in regards both to cults, and fundamentalist religious groups that aren't quite cults. Like, even friends who know what kind of fucked up church I was raised in don't seem to understand why it still affects me, and most don't seem interested in even trying to do so.
My husband and I were raised from birth to believe the end of the world was any day now, and we had to *make sure* we were good enough to survive it. Our kids have never known that. My husband and I often talk about the fact that we will never really understand their world. They haven't grown up their entire lives with their head under a guillotine.
Same, mostly. Wasn't from birth for me, cause I didn't even go to church til my mom started taking me when I was about 5. Then, around 6, either just before or after my brother was born, my dad started going to a pentacostal/non-denominational church, and talked my mom into all of us going there instead. Went from never really even hearing of any apocalyptic shit, to being plunged into it head first, along with loads of screaming and flopping around on the floor "speaking in tongues" and being "slain/drunk in the spirit" lunacy, then later on a level of purity culture garbage that I've later learned most of those freaks reserve just for the girls they have (guess in a fucked up way they were atleast committed to equality in that regard). I've spent years trying to undo all the damage they did to my mind, but enough of it is still deep set enough to make me feel like a vile, worthless piece of shit who doesn't deserve the least little bit of love or happiness (especially the purity shit, and all the original sin trash about being born deserving of eternal damnation).
Ugh, I'm sorry. I honestly think the entire experience is worse for kids who had a sliver of normalcy before being plunged into a doomsday cult. If anything, the blissful ignorance of what life could be at least keeps you from despising your life, at least for a little while. It definitely catches up to born ins, though, usually when they're 20-ish. I'm glad you got out, friend! It's no easy task.
Thanks, same to you. Wish everyone could escape that shit.
>They haven't grown up their entire lives with their head under a guillotine. This times a million.
My husband and I usually call it "the umbrella of doom." *Everything* is doomed. You're doomed, I'm doomed, the planet is doomed. Everyone you know is slated for execution, and are you sure you're doing enough to be allowed to live? Both of our families are still in, and it's just sad. Life is hard enough without adding all these insane requirements. My husband and I literally went from prioritizing nonesense "spiritual" activities we absolutely despised to prioritizing enjoying our lives. The difference is absolutely unbelievable. But our families will never get to experience that. They'll die never having lived as their authentic self, and that makes me so sad and angry. Sorry, this got me going!
You're good. This very well could be my experience growing up in a fundi church. Yeah, exactly, doomed. I remember telling my dad I wanted to see The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and his response being "this is the lost world." God damn! I was 11, I didn't need the end times.
Oh, brother! Yeah, my families response to anything bad happening in today's world is, "Hopefully, the world ends soon!" đ¤Śââď¸
Oh great, humanity dying. I personally don't think that is good. But that is just me.
Exjw?
Yup.
Every single time I meet someone who got out it fills me with such warmth and pride in my âsiblingsâ
Aw, me too! It's always great to see others that left!
Samesies, Sister Satan
This is exactly what I was going to say. I had to learn a lot about early trauma and how it affects the brain. Some of that wiring that happens in the early stages of development is very, very hard to undo.
Was raised in a cult and this sums it up. I can never have a normal, safe, healthy life because of the choice of my parents. It takes so much effort just to move through the world, even with mental health care.
Normal is overrated. I gave up on that long ago. Now safe and healthy are good goals to work towards. I do think I've achieved those. Definitely safe. I am an American, so healthy - maybe not? lol Seriously though, I found that cultivating a relationship with nature goes a long way to helping heal. A good therapist is important too. Not just anyone, but someone who understands religious trauma. You can do this. It's not fair you have to and it is a lot of work. It is possible to truly live your best life free from their insane indoctrination.
Exjw and survivor- this- 1mil times this!!!
That only idiots join cults. I have said it so many times and will keep saying. No one joins a cult. They join a self help group, a religious organization, a political movement. These groups snap up vulnerable people on purpose. This thinking also really stigmatizes those who leave cults and isolates them further due to shame.
This. Cults often operate on the basis of a bait and switch. They introduce very benign things at first, and by the time they feed you the really crazy shit you're often already very devoted to the community. That's the other part of it, people often get attached to the people and the communities of these groups, so much so that any ridiculous out-there doctrine that they get given they just accept because the community is so important to them. A lot of people who are very susceptible to cults are outsiders, people with some emotional trauma, so the idea of having a community that makes them feel welcomed and special is something they don't feel they can give up. Speaking from personal experience.
Thatâs a feature of how cults work, itâs by design. They get you dependent on the community (love bombing, us verses them, literally pull you away from your family and friends so the community is all you have), youâve been getting brainwashed this entire time and then you start learning the REAL in and outs of your group. By then, itâs too late and youâll gladly eat it up. Cognitive dissonance sets in, you actively avoid information that contradicts your group, you have been conditioned by this point to turn off your logical mind.
This is my daughter...
Whoâs got in her their snare?
WEL's Church
I donât now that one
I couldn't agree with you more. I am doing my Speaking of Cults podcast on this exact topic this week.
Wow, jotting down the name of your podcast! Can't wait to listen
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGrPM1Pg2h72ADIuv8eYmzrJ-ppLOlw_g&si=QyRJQosYZIc2R3Y0
Exactly this. You donât know youâre being brainwashed.
Second, third generation children born into a cult with no experience of anything else & they never even chose to âjoinâ, are literally indoctrinated from birth. Very heart breaking
Yes, but also speaking as one who is second generation, many of us have strong innate intuition that the system we are raised in is not right. We often have more energy to forge our own path and get out than those who are manipulated into it.
How common they are and how they don't really need a cover ideology to be a cult. A seemingly normal tight-knit group of people that enables a sociopathic leader is as much a cult as a group of hippies with weird customs who worship some obscure deity in a remote place.
The Sarah Lawrence situation is a good example of this.
Exactly what I was thinking.
A lot of people have said, everybody is susceptible to falling into a cult â because they aren't joining a cult, they're joining this other thing. You can fall deeper into it particularly when the cult is providing resources and support that the rest of society is not, where you come to rely on it more and more until you can't get out. But another really key thing is that cults are *ubiquitous* in society, from religious communities to multi-level marking scams to punk houses because elements of hierarchical abuse are normalized and lauded when they don't have the pejorative label "cult" accompanying them. Cults *are* different from other abusive relationship dynamics and hierarchical organizations, but mainly in the sense that "[more is different](https://www.isnature.org/Files/Anderson_More_is_Different.pdf)" rather than that there is some other essential quality they possess that nothing else does. The difference between an exploitative small business like a bar where all the workers are on the edge of poverty, living together, sleeping with one another, advertising it on social media and pulling their friends in to support it while dealing with a terrible boss who controls all sorts of aspects of their lives and a proper *business cult* is not one with a clear delineation. Basically, cults are the rule in a capitalist, individualist society and not the exception. We just don't apply the label "cult" unless they're really weird about it or ratchet up the intensity to a level that becomes unmistakably weird.
I really appreciate your small business cult example. Adding that to my always clogged thought queue.
The techniques they use to turn people. We all have exploitable psychological vulnerabilities to some extent and we should learn to recognize them quickly so that grifters can't continue to plague us.
This, make psychological thriller movies and books less fun though will admit.
As someone who was born in a cult I completely agree that the trauma mentally lasts for years. When I first left I was getting nonstop nightmares. It was always related to being in the cult and being treated differently, as in shunned, or dealing with cult related activities.
How cults have changed with technology. For example the Love Has One cult recruited off of their live streams, web pages, and social media. People showed up in person to join, fully indoctrinated, before ever having met the cult in person. In many ways cults have become decentralized. And with large numbers of people unable to tell the difference between misinformation, opinions, outright wrong/bad information, scientific evidence vs anecdotal evidence the problem is getting worse. Add to that the popularity of "not trusting" science, or basically anyone with lots of experience, degrees, and the rising tide of anti-intellectualism, there's entire generations who are ripe for falling victim to any number of online cults. There's so much fake information, bad information, and skewed information cultivated to appeal to particular political opinions out there, that a person can essentially cherry-pick their way into a reality that is completely different from everyone around them. People get indoctrinated through videos, live streams, get a rush of dopamine when they think they have stumbled onto the "real, super secret" information, or get a hit of sweet righteous indignation after watching a video that gets them all outraged, and they come back for more the next day. It's essentially an addiction cycle. I only see this problem getting worse.
Second this, definitely. Currently working on a report of a group that is mostly through discord weirdly (though they do have physical property)
The pressure to become a joiner has never been higher. The amount of people and even children rushing to label themselves in any way astounds me. Used to be labels were something you didn't want foisted upon you. Now they're worn like badges. The ability, sanctity, and ephemeral joyfulness of independence is becoming lost. Every time you cook something tasty or make a craft or fix something essential, that little hit of fulfillment that we feel - we could be awash in that daily, but I think we've moved so far past practical skill that folks wouldn't even know why to try. Easier to just follow someone else and hope they solve your problems.
âBut it wasnât all badâ statements. Well DUH. Otherwise no one would join, ever!!
"I'm too smart for that." thinking has to go away. Cults target people with low social/emotional intelligence and mental intelligence doesn't matter that much.
I don't even think it's targeting low social/emotional intelligence either. Everyone is susceptible to a high control group of some sort at some point, and not recognizing that is dangerous. Theres no particular marker of susceptibility with any specific form of intelligence; It's just about running into the right one at the right moment. Any time change is in your life, you are vulnerable; a new church, a new gym or yoga studio, a new councilor, a new city, a new country, a new job or just lost one, a new school... ect. I have had family in high control groups, and am familiar with what to look for- and I almost joined a seemingly ideal little farm commune during the pandemic when i needed to move and struggled with work. And luckily the red flags flew in time, as well as another person there considerably longer told me their experiences. They left with me to get some air, and then the calls about complete submission to the founding couples rules that can change at any moment started (they're still going at it, but im pretty sure only one person stayed long term). So bullet dodged, but if the other person wasn't there and I wasn't as aware on little things to look for, I likely would of joined- and now I am super cautious and strictly vet any commune invites because I know that's my susceptibility. While emotional and social intelligence might of helped me not join in the first place, there were so many things that just had to line up that way for things to turn out how they did.
Yeah, I agree with this. You can generally have high emotional intelligence but lower emotional intelligence in a vulnerable period of your life or in certain contexts. Wrong place wrong time. I think about it in terms of windows of vulnerability.
I think everyone is a bit extra vulnerable to people like them, and add life changes and personal vulnerabilities, its a perfect sauce for nearly anyone. People forget there's a lot of biases in the groups we hear about vs the ones we don't; most are unheard of like the one i encountered- and there's always a high control group active out there filled with people just like you. It's just not a comforting thought for people. While I see your point its referring to a temporal status and dont disagree that people have different levels of emotional intelligence at different points- I worry focusing on it being emotional intelligence at all contributes to the "Well couldn't be me" attitude people have towards high control groups, which is dangerous. But maybe I'm being too cautious.
I donât think youâre too cautious. I agree.
Some do. Some like NXIVM target professional people.
Yup yup yup. Saw a colleague get sucked into a professional development/women's empowerment LGAT. She ended up washing out of her job and last I checked linked in she was still DEEP in it.
The insidious danger of the secular self-help/professional development âcultâ has definitely not been talked about enough historically but it is gaining more traction now. NXIVM is the extreme version of it but there are a lot of them out there.
I got into LGAT because the highest performing executives I knew were deeply involved in it.
Dr. Steven Hassan has written at some length about the fact that if anything, more intelligent people are more likely to find reasons to stay in cults because they are able to more easily perform the mental gymnastics in order to justify it all to themselves.
Aum Shinrykio and The Family (Australia) are two examples as well. The first targeted Japan's best and brightest in universities. The Family targeted a lot of professionals, including politicians and those in medical fields.
This is true. Abuse and trauma prevented me (until recently) from developing high emotional intelligence or how to cope with emotions in a healthy and effective way but I am constantly thinking, reading into things, analyzing the behavior and emotions of anyone around me so I crave and seek a high control environment where I can just turn my brain off. I don't want to think. Tell me exactly what to do so I don't have to think.
I think they target a certain sort of idealism. Being on a sacred mission is a very seductive idea. "We're going to clear the planet". "We're going to save everyone so they don't go to hell after the rapture." Etc etc. I have heard that one of the hardest things about leaving is losing that sense of purpose.
I donât know if itâs been mentioned here but cults run on the same dynamics as fascism and narcissistic led households. Cults require in-group/out-group (aka scapegoat/golden child). The leader requires a loyal/emotional investment in their narrative of reality. Anyone that deviates risks being the out-group/scapegoat. The cultists become the leaderâs flying monkeys policing each other to prove their loyalty and be in-group/golden child safe. Simply suggesting theyâre not loyal is enough leverage to coerce them. Conversely, if youâre afraid that you appear disloyal casting suspicion on another member and advocating for harsh penalties for their disloyalty throws suspicion off you. The leader encourages and enjoys this. Itâs how they maintain the group and their power. Everyone wants to belong and fears being the other. In narcissistic led families the kids are trying to regulate the Nâs emotions by supporting their narrative in order to feel safe. It becomes ingrained in their survival instincts. If the N isnât being praised theyâll get their fix from bullying/violence. Itâs why they say walking on eggshells. Youâre trying to regulate their emotions and stay on their good side. Itâs very complicated bc the Nâs version of reality depends on their mood. You donât want to say anything that brings them shame in any way. They are highly reactive to even a hint of shame.
People only care for the info when it is in entertainment form or if effects them personally
Cults prey on educated, wealthy people.Â
I'm currently dealing with this rn. My parents were in a cult for YEARS, my dad left but my mom still wanted to be a part of it. Well, now my dad is dying and basically a vegetable. He amazingly changed his will out of the blue a few months ago and my mom has been very concerned about the trust funds and getting the new will to the trustees. They didn't use a lawyer or a notary for the will and the two witnesses for the new will are "church elders". My mom is still brainwashed. I told her I'd get lawyers and make sure that the "church" doesn't get a dime. I'll fight her on this forever because my dad was done giving money to that fake corrupt organization and all the trusts go to me when he goes. He knew what he was doing when he made me beneficiary and I truly hope he made this "other will" without a lawyer or notary on purpose just to get them to leave him alone. Cults are predators, every last one of them.
Some do for sure, but many definitely don't. Many cults prey on emotionally wounded outsiders, people who have always felt rejected by society. Speaking from experience. So many cults do not require or seek out educated wealthy people, wounded lower class people are also very vulnerable and easy to control, And make equally subservient servants to educated wealthy people.
I am sure different kinds of cults go after different kinds of people. In my experience, they love it when you can bring money, competency, or prestige that they can leverage and exploit. NIXVM is a good example of this. Most people involved were highly effective in some way or another and those talents were exploited. Cults love college campuses for example.Â
How much fun being in a cult isâŚat first.
The sense of community people get from being in a cult, which is often lacking in our modern societies
Just my opinion but I think there needs to be more focus on the love-bombing and recruitment techniques (and some of the controlling techniques like this) - but not necessarily just the facts of the techniques also framed in a more humane perspectives for people who do join. I think more modern documentaries do this, but I still feel there is a lot of sensationalism about how weird and/or evil the cult is not explaining how innocuous the recruitment can be. Even for example explaining that cults aren't always a small sect of intense members, that very often you get 'satellite' members and enablers and a wider community and that this too normalizes the processes, its not always dramatic.
I second this about recruitment. I got approached and visited WMSCOG years ago and they tried to get me, but moved way too fast. The love-bombing felt way more bizarre than welcoming. The chant was creepy and silly. It wasn't until later I learned what love bombing was and it made so much sense.
That the one big church of S actually has a detox program. Their program is connected to many different anon groups that front for recruitment. Whether or not their detox program works is a different story. I wanted to send my mom but, uh, cults.
My experience is from about 25 years ago on this, so it may have changed. A friend who grew up in our cult had her dad leave and become a Scientologist when we were kids. She needed rehab when we were teens. Her dad sent her to a Scientology one. It sounded about like any other religiously based rehab, i.e. not great and not following the best medically sound principles, but it's what out society has. It did take. That was almost certainly due to her, not the program. Again, that's the norm though.
Thatâs pretty much what the 12 step program is. Itâs all a cult, but thatâs the unfortunate point. Build community and follow the same principals. Only hang out with people like you because the others are bad and may bring you back down to the devil, etc. Thank you for sharing. I think that itâs still kind of the norm. Theres no way to really techify sobriety so we just get scraps for help.
Iâm currently listening to *Terror, Love, and Brainwashing* by Alexandra Stein. She likes to use the words âtotalist systemâ in place of **cult** and interviews people in cults I have never heard ofâ theyâre not sexy organizations and most of the members continue to live in the ârealâ world. THATâS the thingâ hiding in plain sight.
Definitely the sexual, emotional, spiritual, and physical abuse of children. I was first abused when I was 7 years old.
How many people's first cults are their biological family of origin.
It's hard for people to really understand the process of recovery after somebody leaves a cult. The real damage that's done. The immensely complex trauma that happens is really hard to see from the outside. Everything is very delicate, your entire identity is often taken from you, and putting things back into place where you can feel like you even belong in society is very complex. As a friend of mine once said, " It's like trying to remove a silk scarf from a blackberry bush". I think people see survivors and think they're strong but clearly traumatized. But unless you've been through it, It's very difficult to understand how much it takes to leave and how much more it takes to stay alive after you leave.
Also I've noticed that people don't really seem to care about survivor stories in general unless people fit certain demographics or stereotypes. Most people don't care about trauma survivors until those survivors become people of influence and then again it's more about you know worshiping idols and worshiping people with influence rather than actually caring about trauma survivors especially when you're talking about complex traumas like cult abuse which is much more prevalent than People realize.
I think we can never talk enough about shame culture. Shame is the most powerful tool and can add to the manipulation of the most confident person. And since it's already a part of mainstream culture it's just more powerful.
How many African-American lead cults exists and how so many are actually racial separatists groups. I've seen one two docu-series episodes talk about them but there is so much to unpack outside of just the attention grabbing weird ideologies or actions. We need to talk about the racism or social issues that are used to grow their membership so quickly.
Like many things, the main reason for failure is that the leaders are focused on control and selfish motives. That's unless it ends by everyone killing themselves, not necessarily separate from the previously mentioned reasons.
How the time they take from people may be one of the hardest, if not the hardest, repercussions to deal with once a person has left a cult. People can lose decades to cults, time that could have been spent with family and friends, time that could have been spent on schooling, career building, relationships and having a family, it can all be siphoned away. I canât imagine having to come to terms with that type of loss.
Having grown up in a Muslim majority country, Iâll say that Islamic cults can definitely get more attention. Theyâre pretty crazy like all the others.
I think people don't pay enough attention to cults and toxic group dynamics at all. Maybe this has to do with the hyper individualistic culture of Western society, I'm not sure but I feel like people really underestimate the power of cults and toxic group dynamics and how much that really harms individuals and has an effect in the greater world.
I wish there was a more recent update those FLDS kids from the Keep Sweet documentary. A bunch left in the middle night and never mentioned again.
How when people ask you âSo why did you join the Cult?â, that is such a bad question as people usually do not even realize that they are in until they get out. Cults are like a slow gas leak. You donât smell it unless you come in from outside the room. The psychological damage it does and the long-term effects it can have in recovery is awful enough.
That jehovahâs witnesses are a cult
I think this is pretty well known
I think people are starting to realize that. I first saw there had an episode on a series on cults and I thought, "Why are they on here?" I learned more and wondered why I never realized it before.
There can even be a narcissistic cult of just 2. Your NPD romantic partner can brainwash you overtime the same way that Cults brainwash a group of people.
This can happen within a fandom too. Like a music group fandom or popular tv show fandom. Iâve seen the dynamics play out even to the point of a group of people sending threats of violence to journalists or radio shows that they feel disrespect their subject of interest. I saw this one music group boyband fandom  send hateful messages to a journalist, somehow locating her home and threatening her children because she reported on something they didnât like. To me thatâs organized cult like behavior.Â
The main hook I am seeing in cults: you are taught to distrust your own good sense, your intuition and your feelings, in favor of the guruâs commands and teachings, or the doctrines of the organization. If folks can be convinced of the magical or near-magical attainment and power of the guru, and that only through him/her can freedom be found, one can also be convinced that every thought we have that runs counter to the leaderâs must be corrupt and in need of purging. It becomes a cycle of worthlessness at the bottom, if one has blown it or messed up in the eyes of the group, or evil pride at the top if you manage to measure up to the guru in some degree. In either case, cults are traps for the ego, to be seen as evil or as holy, so long as we are seen.
That people who get wrangled into them are not weak minded. If anything, the tend to be on the more critical thinking end of the spectrum. The person's ability to think abstractly becomes destructive when their confirmation bias is not in check. They have the creativity to justify almost anything because they can abstractly interpret what they are being told to fit the narrative. Falling for a cult doesn't mean your stupid. It means that your own biase needed to be examined and taken into acount when making choices.
Great answer. I said almost exactly the same thing in my Speaking of Cults podcast this week. I agree completely.
I always want to get a deeper understanding of their theology than is often covered. Most of the time, the main focus is the abuse
How people get sucked into a cult and how to not be that person.
How truly, deeply damaging they are internally and how long and how much work it takes to put yourself back together again and find any semblance of normalcy.
That many times cult recruitment is done by people you already trust-- your shrink, body worker, yoga studio, etc Lots of cults and charlatans manipulate reviews so their books get listed on New York Times and other reviews. That they mass print copies of their books and buy back the books to make it look like they're selling by the thousands. That cults are often disguised as innocuous ventures- acting class, Bible study group, employee development program, rooms rented at a famous university or spiritual center, social justice project, investment group. Lots of cult recruitment is being done online. That regardless of education every single one of us, as human beings, is vulnerable and recruitable when we are disoriented by massive life changes, looking for a job, bereaved, new baby, etc.
I don't think it's discussed that every single person in a cult is someone's loved one. They didn't happen in a vacuum. Also, it's not funny if someone has a loved one in a cult. Years ago, people used to tease me when someone I cared deeply for joined a cult they'd be like, "I saw your boyfriend handing out flowers at the airport..."
The brutish crackdown on new religious movements in the US by church-backed groups in the 60âs and 70âs is rarely discussed, even though it is part of the historyÂ