Recovery from Abusive Groups Page 9
information control at a point when the individual is vulnerable and it raises a
doubt that can no longer be repressed, a gnawing feeling that something is very
wrong. That doubt, when nurtured, starts to make some "thinking space." This
is why I suggest to family and friends to use any situation with the cultist to
create a crack while avoiding direct confrontation. Interject some piece of
information that requires reflection and evaluation.
This might include:
• Reaffirmation of love and care
• Stimulating a favorable memory
• Asking a question about the cult that cannot be answered yes or no
Thinking is to the brain what exercise is to the body, and thinking is what starts
to open a crack in the cultist's closed mind.
Ex-cultists, who have had a formal intervention, often think that walkaways
have it a little easier in recovery because walkaways do not have the trauma of
the intervention process. Many walkaways will tell you, though, that the price
they have paid is one of extra lost years. Also, most of the thousands of
walkaways do not receive any exit counseling, often because they do not realize
they have been in a cult. They often wrestle for years with this major life
trauma without the appropriate help or guidance as to how the problems they
are facing may be cult-related.
Interventions
Until recent years, many ex-cultists were helped out of the clutches of these
insidious groups through forced deprogrammings or through non-forced exit
counselings. I did not appreciate the significant difference between these two
intervention methods until I stumbled into the realization that much of the fear
and anxiety I was experiencing as an ex-cultist (now known as Post Traumatic
Stress Syndrome) was due to the method of intervention-two forced
deprogrammings each with a conservatorship.
A conservatorship is a legal document which gave my parents legal guardianship
of me even though I was an adult. My parents took this measure to protect
themselves. If the deprogramming did not work and I returned to the cult and
was "encouraged" to sue them as many cultists have been instructed to do by
their cult leaders, my parents could have lost everything they owned. A
conservatorship is harder to get today than it was ten years ago.
Let me explain a little about these two very different methods of intervention
(See Clark, Giambalvo, Giambalvo, Garvey, &Langone, 1993 and Giambalvo,
1992).
Deprogramming
Forced deprogrammings involve the use of security personnel to abduct and
hold cultists against their will while a confrontational discussion takes place
information control at a point when the individual is vulnerable and it raises a
doubt that can no longer be repressed, a gnawing feeling that something is very
wrong. That doubt, when nurtured, starts to make some "thinking space." This
is why I suggest to family and friends to use any situation with the cultist to
create a crack while avoiding direct confrontation. Interject some piece of
information that requires reflection and evaluation.
This might include:
• Reaffirmation of love and care
• Stimulating a favorable memory
• Asking a question about the cult that cannot be answered yes or no
Thinking is to the brain what exercise is to the body, and thinking is what starts
to open a crack in the cultist's closed mind.
Ex-cultists, who have had a formal intervention, often think that walkaways
have it a little easier in recovery because walkaways do not have the trauma of
the intervention process. Many walkaways will tell you, though, that the price
they have paid is one of extra lost years. Also, most of the thousands of
walkaways do not receive any exit counseling, often because they do not realize
they have been in a cult. They often wrestle for years with this major life
trauma without the appropriate help or guidance as to how the problems they
are facing may be cult-related.
Interventions
Until recent years, many ex-cultists were helped out of the clutches of these
insidious groups through forced deprogrammings or through non-forced exit
counselings. I did not appreciate the significant difference between these two
intervention methods until I stumbled into the realization that much of the fear
and anxiety I was experiencing as an ex-cultist (now known as Post Traumatic
Stress Syndrome) was due to the method of intervention-two forced
deprogrammings each with a conservatorship.
A conservatorship is a legal document which gave my parents legal guardianship
of me even though I was an adult. My parents took this measure to protect
themselves. If the deprogramming did not work and I returned to the cult and
was "encouraged" to sue them as many cultists have been instructed to do by
their cult leaders, my parents could have lost everything they owned. A
conservatorship is harder to get today than it was ten years ago.
Let me explain a little about these two very different methods of intervention
(See Clark, Giambalvo, Giambalvo, Garvey, &Langone, 1993 and Giambalvo,
1992).
Deprogramming
Forced deprogrammings involve the use of security personnel to abduct and
hold cultists against their will while a confrontational discussion takes place
