Cult Recovery

You Don't Have to Prove It Was a Cult

Leaving a cult or high-control group leaves you trying to make sense of what happened, what you still miss, who you were inside it, and how to trust yourself and others.

You don't need to play trauma Olympics. Just because someone else had an experience you think was worse doesn't mean you weren't also hurt.

Instead of trying to prove whether your group was "bad enough" to call a cult, consider the different forces of power and control that shaped your experience. How much freedom did you really have to disagree? What happened when you questioned the group or its leaders, or what prevented you from doing so? What were the consequences of stepping outside the expectations?

And if cults didn't have significant positive aspects to them, they wouldn't be very good at attracting people.

High-control groups can offer truly marvelous experiences. You may have been surrounded by dedicated, impressive people who cared deeply about what they were doing. You experienced a sense of purpose, belonging, intimacy, or adventure. And it may have been difficult, or even impossible, to have those experiences elsewhere.

Those experiences can also come at a significant cost—one that may have been deliberately hidden from you, or that you couldn't fully see until you were already committed.

You don't need to deny or minimize what was meaningful about your experience in order to take seriously the ways you were harmed. You can miss the people, purpose, belonging, or experiences you had there without wanting to go back. Both can exist.

If you're still trying to make sense of whether "cult" is the right word for your experience, you can read my article, Were You in a Cult?

How Did I Let This Happen?

As implied in the name, high-control groups are very good at control. They develop systems of manipulation that can be incredibly effective.

They don't just prey on people who are stupid or weak. They prey on the things that make humans human.

We want to belong. We trust people. We want to feel understood. We look for purpose and meaning. High-control groups can target those vulnerabilities to gain and maintain power.

That doesn't mean every person who pressured, recruited, or manipulated you was deliberately trying to hurt you. They may have been operating within the same system themselves. A system can teach people to exert control over one another while believing they're helping, protecting, or guiding them.

And yet, one of the most common responses to being manipulated or abused is shame: How did I let this happen? I should have known better. I should have left. I should have seen the warning signs.

But you're looking back with information you didn't have when you were making those decisions. The red flags that seem obvious now didn't necessarily look like red flags when you were living through them.

You could try to protect yourself from ever being manipulated again by becoming suspicious of everyone, never depending on anyone, and never allowing yourself to be vulnerable. But that would come at an enormous cost.

If you want to live a life in relationship with other people, you can't guard yourself against every possible threat. Our vulnerabilities are part of what allows us to connect with each other. They're also what can make us vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation.

Nobody Else Will Understand

You may have spent years being told that people outside the group couldn't understand. They didn't know what you knew. They couldn't be trusted. They might try to pull you away because they weren't capable of seeing the truth.

Then you leave, and you discover something frustrating: sometimes people outside the group really don't understand.

Someone asks why you didn't just leave. They become fascinated by the strangest parts of your story. They assume you must have been gullible. Or you spend so much time explaining the group's beliefs, language, and structure that you're exhausted before you ever get to the part you actually wanted to talk about.

And sometimes the people who understand that world best are the people you had to leave behind.

Therapy can bring up the same concern. How could someone who wasn't there possibly understand something that shaped so much of my life?

Some of what you've been through I won't understand. There will be experiences that are particular to your group, your relationships, and the world you lived in.

But a lot of what you've been through will be emotionally familiar. Grief. Shame. Anger. Betrayal. Loneliness. Missing people. Wanting to belong. Being afraid to trust someone again.

That's where connection can happen—not just with me as your therapist, but with other people in your life. They don't have to have lived your experience to recognize something of themselves in what it felt like to be you.

When You Regret What You Did Inside the Group

One of the harder parts of leaving a high-control group can be looking back at the ways you participated in the system yourself.

You may have recruited people. Enforced rules. Shunned someone who left. Shared information that got someone in trouble. Pressured people you cared about to make choices you now wish you hadn't.

It's not as easy as you might think to sort everyone into victims and perpetrators. Someone can be both. The phrase "hurt people hurt people" expresses this quite aptly. The people who harmed you may have been harmed themselves, and you may have harmed other people while operating within the same system.

That doesn't mean you get to shirk responsibility for your actions because someone hurt you first. You can take responsibility for what you did, make amends when appropriate, and change how you treat people going forward.

And you can do all of that while still acknowledging the harm that was done to you.

You don't have to choose between taking responsibility for your actions and having compassion for the version of yourself who made those choices.

Learning What Healthy Boundaries Look Like

High-control groups can seriously distort your sense of what healthy boundaries look like.

Inside the group, you may have been expected to share things most people would consider private. Other people may have felt entitled to information about your relationships, sexuality, finances, beliefs, or decisions. Saying no could be interpreted as selfishness, secrecy, disloyalty, or evidence that you had something to hide.

Then you leave and have to build relationships with people who operate by completely different rules.

You might wall yourself off because you never want anyone to have that kind of access to you again. Or you might overshare, ignore your own discomfort, or let someone else decide what your boundaries should be because that's what feels familiar. You can find yourself moving back and forth between letting people too far in and not letting them in at all.

Healthy boundaries aren't something you're supposed to automatically know once you're out. They're a skill you can develop, and part of that is having somewhere to get curious about where you might be over- or under-boundaried.

The goal isn't to build better walls. It's to become more comfortable deciding what you want to share, what you want to keep private, what you're willing to give, what you're allowed to say no to, and who gets access to which parts of you.

Learning to Trust Yourself Again

"Trust yourself" can sound like pretty terrible advice after leaving a cult.

You may be questioning your judgment more than ever. You trusted people who harmed you. You believed things you no longer believe. You may have made decisions you deeply regret. And now you're supposed to trust yourself?

It can be tempting to make sure this never happens again. Never trust too quickly. Never give someone too much influence. Never get swept up in a community or an idea. Pay close enough attention and maybe you'll catch every red flag before anyone can hurt you.

But there's no way to be in relationship with other people without making yourself vulnerable to them.

Trusting yourself doesn't mean trusting everyone else. And it doesn't mean becoming so good at spotting manipulation that no one can ever hurt you again. It means trusting that you can take risks, pay attention to yourself along the way, and respond when something isn't right.

You might get hurt again. Someone you trust might let you down. A community you believe in might disappoint you. Being open to people and experiences means accepting some possibility that they will hurt you.

The difference is that this time, you get to decide when to open the gate and when to close it. Someone else doesn't get to decide for you how much access they should have to your life.

The question becomes less "How do I make sure this never happens again?" and more "How do I trust myself enough to decide which risks are worth taking?"

Because some of those risks are worth taking. Connection, intimacy, community, love, and belonging all require us to let other people in.

Therapy After Leaving a Cult or High-Control Group

I don't have a predetermined idea of what recovery is supposed to look like for you.

You don't have to reject everything you learned in the group. You don't have to forgive anyone. You don't have to stay angry. You don't have to stop missing people. And you don't need to reach the same conclusions as someone else who left the same group.

We'll make room for the whole story: what harmed you, what you valued, what you regret, what you lost, and what you're still trying to understand.

A Note About My Work

My work with cult and high-control group recovery is focused on people who have already left. I don't provide exit counseling or interventions for people who are currently involved in a group, or consultation for family members trying to help someone leave.

Looking for books, podcasts, websites, or films about cults and high-control groups? I’ve collected some on my Resources page.

If religion was a significant part of your experience, you may also want to read more about religious trauma.

Interested in Working Together?

If you've left a cult or high-control environment and are interested in working through some of what happened, I'd be happy to talk with you about what you're looking for in therapy and whether we might be a good fit.