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support, when you are ready, grieve and let go. Don't waste what energy you
do have for recovery trying to make the deaf hear.
Exercise- Family Assessment
List those in your family and extended family who are available for support.
What is it about each person that can be helpful to you? What are their
strengths (example: empathetic, fun to be with, good thinker)? What
weaknesses does each have that might make it difficult cult for you to interact
with them (example: impatient, judgmental)?
Making New Friends
If you were not very good at making friends before you were recruited into the
cult, you may have trouble still. Others did so much recruiting and teaching that
they are now very comfortable talking to strangers. The hardest part of making
new friends for most ex-cultists is threefold:
1. Trusting anyone ever again
2. Explaining the cult experience
3. Letting it take time
Ex-cultists who have spent most of their life within a cult will need to learn the
basic social skills of making friends and interacting with people. How to interact
with people when not recruiting them? How to accept a request for a date or
how to ask someone out on a date? How to know what you need and to
negotiate for what is appropriate for you within relationships?
One of the problems with making friends is that in most cults everyone had
been an instant friend, an instant brother and sister, an instant family. (The
instant, perfect family-marketing the cult as a fast fix in a fast-food society.)
But relationships are not formed instantly in the real world and for very good
reasons. Not everyone is trustworthy to the same degree. Not everyone needs
friendship in the same way. Not everyone sees their responsibility in a
friendship the same way. In the real world, people can be very different. The
challenge in making new friends is to assess the differences, and this takes
time.
Build Trust Slowly
It can be very hard to trust people after you have been so betrayed by the cult.
It's helpful and important to realize, though, that in a real friendship you build
trust with someone. This is a very different idea from the instant-fix idea of the
cults. Building something takes time. Building trust means that you trust a little
bit at a time and then check that your trust is being honored and returned by
the other person. Then you trust a little more, check trust a little more, check,
etc.
If you're lonely and in pain from the experience, which often happens, the

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temptation can be to trust wholly and all at once. This can be like Russian
roulette. If the person is emotionally mature and trustworthy, you're pretty safe
trusting them. If they have some psychological problems and are not
trustworthy, then you will be hurt again and discouraged. Here is where you
need to learn to evaluate the person's trustworthiness.
Behavior and Words
What do you look for in order to evaluate someone's trustworthiness? Check to
see if the behavior matches the words. This is the first check. For example, if
you are meeting someone is he or she on time? If not, is he or she honest about
the reason for being late? Does he admit it is a bad habit or does he rationalize?
Often someone who rationalizes is not honest with himself and, therefore,
cannot be honest with you.
What happens when people are late because they got stuck in traffic. Is this
rationalization? If your cult taught, as mine did, that getting stuck in traffic is
your fault because you weren't listening to God (or whatever), then you might
find yourself reacting to your friend's reason for being late as if you were still in
the cult. You might discredit the person and tell yourself he is not very
trustworthy (he is too "weak"), when really what's needed is to untangle more
of the cult's teachings.
This is a pretty good example of how subtle recovery can get. Examining your
thinking and conclusions is what I mean by mental discipline.
Sometimes it's like untangling a ball of string the cat's been playing with-time-
consuming, frustrating, and exasperating.
Making new friends provides many opportunities not only for the love and
support of others, but also for the interactions that can help to highlight your
own faulty reasoning and residual ideological cobwebs.
Where Are They?
Where are these new friends? I found many in a community chorus I got
involved with after returning home. I'd always loved singing and needed to
reconnect with that part of myself. As I went to rehearsal every week, spoke
with people at break, and performed in concerts in the area, I began to feel part
of the local community. I would run into someone at the grocery store and say
"hi." Slowly, I didn't feel quite so isolated and lonely. (See Carnegie, 1936.)
As I got to know a few people, and would hear their life stories, I realized that
others have had great pain, too. Maybe a miscarriage, infidelity, lost job, death
of a child, assault, theft, and other misfortunes helped me to put my experience
in perspective. I tried never to minimize my experience, but was able to learn
from others how to cope with crisis, integrate it, learn from it, and then go on
with life.
Try Something New
Try a new hobby or sport. Take a course at the local community college. My
dancing or music or help out at a community theatre production. If you're not