Recovery from Abusive Groups Page 57
b. Arranging for initial and follow-up job interviews
c. Interviewing skills
d. Appropriate work clothes, expectations, and behaviors
4. Finding health care. These skills might include:
a. Assessing a doctor, specialist, and dentist
b. Setting up initial and follow-up appointments
c. Getting regular exams
d. Processing an insurance application and claim form
e. Taking medication
f. Learning and practicing good dental, nutritional, and exercise habits
5. Managing money. These skills might include:
a. Setting up a budget
b. Opening a savings and checking account
c. Reconciling bank statements
d. Paying bills
e. Establishing credit
It may be very painful for you to see your forty-year-old family member
overwhelmed, even immobilized, at the idea of a doctor's appointment, getting
an apartment, or opening a checking account. The questions may seem so basic
to you, but remember he has been in another world for a long time.
You can help with this potentially overwhelming array of basic skills. Take the
time to teach the necessary skills without judging or criticizing.
Teach with patience, humor, and encouragement. Avoid being controlling or
overprotective and encourage self-reliance.
Respecting Their Accomplishments
When I was deprogrammed in 1980, the theory was that to let the loved one
admit anything good could come out of the cult experience was to encourage
them to return. Those who work with ex-cultists have since realized that this
theory was wrong. Ex-cultists need to be able to take the good with them from
their experience. There may not have been much of it, but there was some, and
the ex-cultist is entitled to it.
Like many other ex-cultists, I was exposed to people, places, skills, and ideas in
the cult that I probably would not have known otherwise. I learned many things,
such as how to survive on $20 a month spending money, how to sleep in a semi
with an overactive wet-nosed dog, how to run large meetings, survive in the
wilderness, shoot firearms, work long hours, and jog ten miles. For every good
b. Arranging for initial and follow-up job interviews
c. Interviewing skills
d. Appropriate work clothes, expectations, and behaviors
4. Finding health care. These skills might include:
a. Assessing a doctor, specialist, and dentist
b. Setting up initial and follow-up appointments
c. Getting regular exams
d. Processing an insurance application and claim form
e. Taking medication
f. Learning and practicing good dental, nutritional, and exercise habits
5. Managing money. These skills might include:
a. Setting up a budget
b. Opening a savings and checking account
c. Reconciling bank statements
d. Paying bills
e. Establishing credit
It may be very painful for you to see your forty-year-old family member
overwhelmed, even immobilized, at the idea of a doctor's appointment, getting
an apartment, or opening a checking account. The questions may seem so basic
to you, but remember he has been in another world for a long time.
You can help with this potentially overwhelming array of basic skills. Take the
time to teach the necessary skills without judging or criticizing.
Teach with patience, humor, and encouragement. Avoid being controlling or
overprotective and encourage self-reliance.
Respecting Their Accomplishments
When I was deprogrammed in 1980, the theory was that to let the loved one
admit anything good could come out of the cult experience was to encourage
them to return. Those who work with ex-cultists have since realized that this
theory was wrong. Ex-cultists need to be able to take the good with them from
their experience. There may not have been much of it, but there was some, and
the ex-cultist is entitled to it.
Like many other ex-cultists, I was exposed to people, places, skills, and ideas in
the cult that I probably would not have known otherwise. I learned many things,
such as how to survive on $20 a month spending money, how to sleep in a semi
with an overactive wet-nosed dog, how to run large meetings, survive in the
wilderness, shoot firearms, work long hours, and jog ten miles. For every good
