Saturday, October 31, 2020

Can One Crowbar Others out of a "Good-Looking" Cult?

If your loved one or family member(s) is at stage one of the five stages of recovery with respect to this "addiction" (see more on that below), you're pretty likely not going to get far if you use any sort of "pressure." Attachment to others and worry about status in the "club" are often just too deeply conditioned, instructed, socialized, habituated, and normalized into their brains' default mode networks. One needs to grasp Social Proof & the Teflon True Believer and Codependence as "Soft-Core" Cult Dynamics... and Cult Dynamics as "Hard-Core" Codependence to understand the loyalty of the cult member.

Articles like those on Articles on Cult Dynamics may help to provide you with ammunition you can use if you see any chinks in their armor, but my supposition is that you won't unless or until one of them moves far enough up the side of the Cultic Pyramid to start feeling really uncomfortable, so you have to simply observe what is going on without acting before the member is ready. (There are such things as "cult interventionists," but they are terrifically expensive because the process is so lengthy, and the percentage of successful interventions is low.)

So. See Cult Membership is an Addiction Process... and a Process Addiction and The Typical Path of Cult Involvement to understand clearly what is going on before trying anything. And bear in mind that members on the middle levels of the pyramid often become amenable to moving out of the first into the second stage of recovery when things get sufficiently uncomfortable. But the addict -- like all addicts -- has to get "sick and tired of being sick and tired" before real progress can be made. To help that along, one may be able to use Lance Dodes’s “Eleven Questions after they've been at the second stage for a week or two. And if they get to the third... The Psychology of the Cult Experience (1982) and the horror stories of others on Reddit and elsewhere who bailed from the same cult or one that is as similar to it as possible.

Relative to the fourth stage of recovery, see...

Can People truly Recover from Cult Indoctrination and Manipulation?

Religious Trauma Syndrome (which applies to any "spiritual" cult)

Do I need Exit Counseling or Deprogramming?

Still Stuck in the Muck of RTS? There IS a Way Out. (which applies to any "spiritual" cult)

SIQR, the 10 StEPs & Recovery from Religious Trauma Syndrome: A How-To Guide (which applies to any "spiritual" cult)

Managing Cult Withdrawal in not-moses’s reply to the OP on that thread

Treating Cultism as an Addiction

Modern Deprogramming is NOT Old-School Deprogramming and my two replies to the OP on this Reddit thread

Information is power in these deals. The more you know, the better the chances of success with a family member or loved one.

Resources & References


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