How do I know if I am in a cult?
Dear Hope,
I got involved with a group when I was in my late teens and early 20s. I went to the first meeting because a friend of mine had been there and he seemed so excited and happy afterwards. He spoke differently and I felt like I wanted to know whatever it was that he knew. He wouldn't tell me - he said I had to experience it to understand - so I went to the first meeting, which was free. It was weird but I was so curious about what else they had to offer that I signed up for the first class. 2 years, thousands of dollars, and countless personal development classes later, I had no money, no family, and no friends left, and instead of enlightened I was lost.
I don't believe I was stupid or vulnerable - I signed up because I was searching for something different, to enrich my life and give me a sense of purpose. I could just as easily have signed up for an art class or gone to a psychologist or taken up mind-altering drugs, but I chose a path of new age personal growth instead, during which time period I was stripped of my identity, given a new one, and left completely dependent on my fellow graduates to make even the simplest of decisions because I no longer trusted myself.
It didn't happen all at once - it was achingly slow. For weeks we would sit and do exercises that were emotionally stressful - we would spend long hours meditating, confessing our deepest insecurities, and talking about our families which would often get flipped on us and used to shame or embarrass us. It honestly didn't matter what answer we gave, it was always wrong. I remember one exercise where we were asked to play a game called lifeboat where we had to decide who got to stay and who had to drown, based on what we knew of each other personally. After we explained our choices, everyone was wrong - those of us who picked ourselves were selfish, those who picked two others had martyr complexes, those of us who suggested we would try and save everyone or die trying were yelled at for living in a dream world where we would just bring everyone down with us if we were in charge. If they would have given us the "right" answer it might have helped, but they just left us there feeling like complete shit.
We spoke our own language. Certain words became "charged" and held special meaning to us. It was like an elite club we belonged to and we would all nod at each other knowingly when those buzzwords got used, especially if others were around - we believed we were enlightened and they couldn't possibly understand what we really meant. I would gesture my hands whimsically and say things in my newly acquired soft-spoken lilt like, "my soul meets yours," which was our fancy way of saying, "I feel you, bruh..." but it sounded much more poetic. Just as the group had told me, as I grew my friends wouldn't "get" me any more. I invited them to join but they declined, and I felt like if they didn't want to come with me, I needed to leave them behind.
Several weeks in, we did an exercise that involved writing a journal about our parents, acknowledging all the times they had hurt or judged or betrayed or abandoned us. We turned our journals in and the facilitators then turned our own words on us. We were guided in a meditation and in that space of shared pain, we all became abused, neglected children. I was hyperventilating and had to leave to vomit twice. Despite having had a wonderful relationship with my father, I was completely convinced that he had wounded me to the core and I no longer needed him in my life. As instructed or my homework that week, I invited him over to confess how little he had given to me and asked him to not speak to me anymore.
Removed from my family and friends, I spent all my time with my new circle. There was a couple who ran the company, but it was the facilitators who impressed me. At their behest, we took more and more classes together and felt like we were on this grand journey of self-discovery, and we felt sorry for those we were leaving behind and were not yet on the path to enlightenment. I never wanted it to end - I was addicted, and kept waiting for the time I would feel like the facilitators, who walked around like they had their shit so together. I wanted what they had. There was no graduation in sight, of course - we just kept having new classes to take about accessing our intuition and reclaiming our inner child and taking ownership of attracting unhealthy relationships. Onward and upward we went...
And then it ended. I got pregnant and no longer had the time or money to invest in the group and its programs. Instead of lifting me up, the invitations stopped coming. I was devastated. Pregnant, estranged from my family and friends, and shunned by the organisation, I felt utterly alone. I had to stop speaking in "code" to be understood by my "old" friends, who were leery of me for months, afraid I was going to go off on some airy-fairy tangent that made me sound like I was from a different planet. Slowly, as I let go of the language and started making decisions not based in groupthink, I was able to reconnect with myself and my friends and start rebuilding my relationships the family I had formally discarded. My father forgave me, of course, but he was always cautious. He admitted he had always been afraid of losing me again, something he didn't tell me until the year before he died, and I will carry that pain and shame with me until I, myself, shuffle off this mortal coil.
I ran into the group once at the mall once. They were recruiting under the guise of public service works. My child was a toddler by then, and they barely acknowledged me. They spoke briefly with me and when I did not respond as I had been programmed to, they accused me of losing my way, of not "standing in a place of integrity" about my life's journey, and then literally, physically turned their backs to me. Their words and voices no longer seemed gentle and knowing, and I was filled with regret because I knew I had once sounded as pretentious and condescending to my family and friends. Initially I was traumatized, but the more distance I put between me and them, the better I felt.
Several months after this, the entire organisation crumbled. As is the nature of these types of groups that promote following impulse and calling it intuition, no one could keep it in their pants - between the STIs and affairs, the group collapsed under the weight of its own self-serving perversion, arrogance, and ignorance.
I have the luxury of being distant enough from it now to view the experience with clarity and gratitude, though I have to admit it was a good 10 years before I realized that I had probably been in a cult. Staying in longer would have destroyed me - I was extraordinarily unbalanced, depressed, and confused during that time period. I was angry and embarrassed about it for a long time because I definitely felt like I had been taken advantage of and used - "fleeced" is a good word for it.
While I would never advise anyone to sign up for a cult experience, I can say that I did learn some valuable life lessons. It wasn't the group that taught me that, though. It was in fact only through leaving and reclaiming all that I had been told to reject that I learned who I was and what was really important to me.
Sincerely,
I Think I was Actually in a Cult.
Dear ITIWAIAC,
Thank you for sharing your story. First let me say that there's no free advertising for groups that are potentially harmful and haven't yet been publicly identified, so all identifying details have been removed. Also, to protect your anonymity, I've assigned an acronym that no one can pronounce to replace your name.
I'm afraid to say, your story isn't all that unique. Every year, thousands of people sign up for personal growth or new age spiritualism classes and end up in groups that they aren't quite sure if they are cults or not, often not discovering that until they leave. The Atlantic released this short documentary about a group called EnlightenNext and their survivor stories sound similar to yours.
The word "cult" does not imply "good" or "bad" - it is merely a word used to describe a group who share the same ideology that doesn't fit neatly within the existing mainstream system. It's still not enough to just say a group isn't "mainstream" to determine if it is a "cult" and even if you are in a "cult" it doesn't necessarily mean that you are in immediate danger - the purpose of the influence is sometimes benevolent, as you can see in the diagram below.
Scoring is basic - generally, the higher the total is, the more you should be concerned. There's manual scoring embedded in the quiz for now as I am still programming the back-end calculator. Hopefully in the near-future I will be able to generate an automatic report that calculates results, but you are welcome to get a sense of how it works by using an example of your own. Try the military, a parachute club, or any church - what do the results tell you?
QUIZ - AM I IN A CULT?
Unfortunately, unlike ITIWAIAC, not everyone goes in and comes out unscathed. Many end up in groups that are abusive, leaving lifelong physical, psychological, mental, and emotional scars. In coming weeks we will look at a few organisations in a more in-depth way, but this quiz will become an important analytical tool so I'm going to explain how I applied it. Please note that although it is a work in progress and will change as I test it against other groups, in its current state it functions sufficiently for superficial observation.
BITE MODEL
A relationship only requires two people, so this model may (technically) apply to a group of two if needed, though that would normally fall under domestic violence. Dr. Steve Hassan's BITE model is generally a useful tool for measuring if an organisation makes use of coercion. In and of itself, coercion is not "good" or "bad" it just is. Any formal or informal group can be evaluated against the BITE model, from your hockey team and book club to your fraternity, church, and employer, and some will certainly score high but not be considered "dangerous." Ones you might not expect to score high include Sunday School, parenting, in-patient psychotherapy, and most addiction rehabilitation programs, so coercion is not the only thing to look at. I've separated and expanded a section to specifically reflect sexual control, as I felt that there were enough specific control mechanisms around reproduction and sexual conduct that it warranted scoring separately.
DANGEROUS AND ILLEGAL ACTIVITY
Because there is a growing database of known groups to work with using comparative analyses, what researchers look for when identifying if a cult is "dangerous" are certain markers that predict outcomes such as murder, suicide, and sexual abuse of children. If you've scrolled through the quiz, you will see that some of these groups engage in some pretty dangerous activities but again, these alone are not sufficient because, for example, a base jumping club who makes illegal jumps off buildings and mountain trams may score high in this area, especially if several jumps have gone awry and there are multiple deaths within the same club. The highest score I've put in thus far is Khmer Rouge, but that may change as the quiz evolves and I add new information.
ORGANISATION
Groups have different decision-making structures - some are top-down with the leader and inner circle making most or all decisions without input from lower members. Orwellian groups that lack transparency and pretend to be democratic yet have some members more equal than others in all decision-making are not democratic. Even if it starts out completely egalitarian, it is rare that an organisation remains entirely democratic, especially as times wears on.
Groups also need to make money to support themselves, and both how and why they collect money plays a part in determining the function of the group. Some groups are known to make most of their money from their own members, who are supposed to invest in more training or to sell all the product they must stock (Amway), while others simply bring their own wine and sit in someone's living room to talk about their book of the week. Others take up a voluntary collection (tax-deductible, AA - not tax deductible), or make their income from illegal activities such as selling drugs (Santa Muerte). A charter school (usually fundamental Christian but also Scientology) will also look much different than a public school, the same way that an unaccredited independent college will differ greatly from a recognized educational institution, despite many shared attributes.
It will be rare that any organisation falls into only one category but generally the ones labelled as "dangerous" are the ones that exist solely for the purpose of leaders or members gaining sex, power, or money.
Some final notes:
SIZE AND ENDURANCE DON'T MATTER
A "cult" can have 5 or 500,000 members. Large groups like Jim Jones's Jonestown and the Children of God have longevity and size on their side, but cults like Roch Theriault's Ant Hill Kids and Charles Manson's Family were both fairly short-lived yet did massive amounts of damage with under 20 followers each. By contrast, Eckhart Tolle was televised to 35 million Oprah viewers and has never had an act of violence, theft, or murder associated with him.
GROUPS EVOLVE
Just because a group starts peaceful and benevolent doesn't mean it can't go in that direction. There are instances where the group forms and operate peacefully until something changes, usually the leader becoming greedier for power, money, or sex. This means that it is essential to re-evaluate groups that might score somewhere in the middle of the pack but have the potential to escalate, like John de Ruiter's College of Integrated Philosophy which began with him doing the occasional sermon at his church in small town Alberta to having multiple wives, a permanent multi-million dollar facility, and an international following. There are now at least two recorded suicides in his fold, with very mysterious circumstances surrounding the second one - here is Anina's story.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
1) Safety first. First off, you need to make sure that you are safe. As a matter of course, if you have engaged in unprotected penetrative sexual activity with someone who was involved with multiple partners it is wise to get tested for STIs and (if you are female) pregnancy. Coming forward about a spurious group comes with certain dangers, which the Church of Scientology has actually written into their doctrine as the "fair game" policy. While it was allegedly repealed in 1968, it remains in practice.
Those trying to protect the leader as well as the leader him or herself will often employ a variety of tactics including:
Character assassination - making things up about you, using details of your personal history to call your integrity, intelligence, or sanity into question
Vexatious litigation - launching court cases that will never stand in court but will take up lots of everyone's time and money
Harassment - badgering, stalking, name calling
Spying - picking through your garbage, online and in-person stalking
Threats - emotional, physical, psychic - they will send demons, damn you to hell, and tell you you are going to suffocate under the weight of your own guilt or conscience if you expose them
Physical attacks - even the ones you think are all bark and no bite doesn't protect you from their faithful devotees who may not have as many scruples, so caution is required.
When a group is protecting itself, it is seldom the leader carrying out the violence. Devotees will do the dirty deeds, and some of them are downright dastardly - Jim Jones made parents poison their children before taking it themselves (909 dead), the Rajneeshees literally poisoned the water hole with a deadly virus, and Aum Shinrikyo's followers released nerve gas in a Tokyo subway. Do not make any assumptions about your safety.
2) Back up everything. Move your email to a cloud, make copies and scans of anything that you may be required to provide as proof. Text messages, emails, forums, files, documents - keep a copy of everything in a safe place. Delete nothing. If you already have deleted files or emails, you may wish to recover them if there is any way possible. Take photos or scan things that you only have hard copies of as well. If you have a trusted resource who is external to the situation, you may wish to send them copies, however use caution when selecting this person especially if they were or have been involved in the organisation as well and may be either another target or a spy.
3) Consult with a lawyer. If there in no intent to press civil or legal charges this can be very dangerous territory. If the leader or group threaten legal action, you are wise to check in with a lawyer. Claims of sexual, physical, financial, or emotional abuse that are not taken to court (criminal) are especially precarious, even moreso when a 3rd party other than media is the one to speak up first. Claims that cannot be defended if the accused sues for libel can be costly, with you paying not only your own but your abuser's legal fees which would truly be adding insult to injury. Legal fees run up to $10-$15K per year for these cases until they are resolved, including when the case is simply dismissed.
4) Do not engage. If you are planning to ACT, the last thing you want to do is REACT to any baiting that gets tossed your way. The more you engage, the more you tip your hand. There's a saying that the best way to hang someone is leave them enough rope to do it themselves so instead of responding, find your happy place and go full cone of silence. Forward threatening emails to your lawyer or trusted outsider, and consider getting a cease and desist letter prepared by your own attorney if the threats do not stop. Not only will remaining disengaged prevent you from doing or saying something out of anger and frustration, it will preserve your energy for more important things like healing your heart and lending support to others who may be going through the same thing.
5) Keep it in perspective. Coming out of an experience like this is painful, but it's not the end of the world. You can start taking back your identity, your head space, and even your home. I am personally a big fan of the whole-house exorcism, wherein you sweep the energy from every inch of your house from floor to ceiling. Use a real broom, and if you catch some cobwebs and dust on the way out, even better. Do this with loud music, dancing, and all the laughter and tears you need. Bring it all to the threshold of your home and unceremoniously push it out, slamming the door when you're done. To start living in your own head again, I suggest that you start using your old name or pick one that you identify with now, because you are not the same person anymore.
Up next:
"Dear Hope,
Why is sexual abuse of students by gurus so common?"
I got involved with a group when I was in my late teens and early 20s. I went to the first meeting because a friend of mine had been there and he seemed so excited and happy afterwards. He spoke differently and I felt like I wanted to know whatever it was that he knew. He wouldn't tell me - he said I had to experience it to understand - so I went to the first meeting, which was free. It was weird but I was so curious about what else they had to offer that I signed up for the first class. 2 years, thousands of dollars, and countless personal development classes later, I had no money, no family, and no friends left, and instead of enlightened I was lost.
It didn't happen all at once - it was achingly slow. For weeks we would sit and do exercises that were emotionally stressful - we would spend long hours meditating, confessing our deepest insecurities, and talking about our families which would often get flipped on us and used to shame or embarrass us. It honestly didn't matter what answer we gave, it was always wrong. I remember one exercise where we were asked to play a game called lifeboat where we had to decide who got to stay and who had to drown, based on what we knew of each other personally. After we explained our choices, everyone was wrong - those of us who picked ourselves were selfish, those who picked two others had martyr complexes, those of us who suggested we would try and save everyone or die trying were yelled at for living in a dream world where we would just bring everyone down with us if we were in charge. If they would have given us the "right" answer it might have helped, but they just left us there feeling like complete shit.
Several weeks in, we did an exercise that involved writing a journal about our parents, acknowledging all the times they had hurt or judged or betrayed or abandoned us. We turned our journals in and the facilitators then turned our own words on us. We were guided in a meditation and in that space of shared pain, we all became abused, neglected children. I was hyperventilating and had to leave to vomit twice. Despite having had a wonderful relationship with my father, I was completely convinced that he had wounded me to the core and I no longer needed him in my life. As instructed or my homework that week, I invited him over to confess how little he had given to me and asked him to not speak to me anymore.
I ran into the group once at the mall once. They were recruiting under the guise of public service works. My child was a toddler by then, and they barely acknowledged me. They spoke briefly with me and when I did not respond as I had been programmed to, they accused me of losing my way, of not "standing in a place of integrity" about my life's journey, and then literally, physically turned their backs to me. Their words and voices no longer seemed gentle and knowing, and I was filled with regret because I knew I had once sounded as pretentious and condescending to my family and friends. Initially I was traumatized, but the more distance I put between me and them, the better I felt.
Several months after this, the entire organisation crumbled. As is the nature of these types of groups that promote following impulse and calling it intuition, no one could keep it in their pants - between the STIs and affairs, the group collapsed under the weight of its own self-serving perversion, arrogance, and ignorance.
I have the luxury of being distant enough from it now to view the experience with clarity and gratitude, though I have to admit it was a good 10 years before I realized that I had probably been in a cult. Staying in longer would have destroyed me - I was extraordinarily unbalanced, depressed, and confused during that time period. I was angry and embarrassed about it for a long time because I definitely felt like I had been taken advantage of and used - "fleeced" is a good word for it.
While I would never advise anyone to sign up for a cult experience, I can say that I did learn some valuable life lessons. It wasn't the group that taught me that, though. It was in fact only through leaving and reclaiming all that I had been told to reject that I learned who I was and what was really important to me.
Sincerely,
I Think I was Actually in a Cult.
~~~
Dear ITIWAIAC,
Thank you for sharing your story. First let me say that there's no free advertising for groups that are potentially harmful and haven't yet been publicly identified, so all identifying details have been removed. Also, to protect your anonymity, I've assigned an acronym that no one can pronounce to replace your name.
I'm afraid to say, your story isn't all that unique. Every year, thousands of people sign up for personal growth or new age spiritualism classes and end up in groups that they aren't quite sure if they are cults or not, often not discovering that until they leave. The Atlantic released this short documentary about a group called EnlightenNext and their survivor stories sound similar to yours.
The word "cult" does not imply "good" or "bad" - it is merely a word used to describe a group who share the same ideology that doesn't fit neatly within the existing mainstream system. It's still not enough to just say a group isn't "mainstream" to determine if it is a "cult" and even if you are in a "cult" it doesn't necessarily mean that you are in immediate danger - the purpose of the influence is sometimes benevolent, as you can see in the diagram below.
Scoring is basic - generally, the higher the total is, the more you should be concerned. There's manual scoring embedded in the quiz for now as I am still programming the back-end calculator. Hopefully in the near-future I will be able to generate an automatic report that calculates results, but you are welcome to get a sense of how it works by using an example of your own. Try the military, a parachute club, or any church - what do the results tell you?
QUIZ - AM I IN A CULT?
Unfortunately, unlike ITIWAIAC, not everyone goes in and comes out unscathed. Many end up in groups that are abusive, leaving lifelong physical, psychological, mental, and emotional scars. In coming weeks we will look at a few organisations in a more in-depth way, but this quiz will become an important analytical tool so I'm going to explain how I applied it. Please note that although it is a work in progress and will change as I test it against other groups, in its current state it functions sufficiently for superficial observation.
BITE MODEL
A relationship only requires two people, so this model may (technically) apply to a group of two if needed, though that would normally fall under domestic violence. Dr. Steve Hassan's BITE model is generally a useful tool for measuring if an organisation makes use of coercion. In and of itself, coercion is not "good" or "bad" it just is. Any formal or informal group can be evaluated against the BITE model, from your hockey team and book club to your fraternity, church, and employer, and some will certainly score high but not be considered "dangerous." Ones you might not expect to score high include Sunday School, parenting, in-patient psychotherapy, and most addiction rehabilitation programs, so coercion is not the only thing to look at. I've separated and expanded a section to specifically reflect sexual control, as I felt that there were enough specific control mechanisms around reproduction and sexual conduct that it warranted scoring separately.
Because there is a growing database of known groups to work with using comparative analyses, what researchers look for when identifying if a cult is "dangerous" are certain markers that predict outcomes such as murder, suicide, and sexual abuse of children. If you've scrolled through the quiz, you will see that some of these groups engage in some pretty dangerous activities but again, these alone are not sufficient because, for example, a base jumping club who makes illegal jumps off buildings and mountain trams may score high in this area, especially if several jumps have gone awry and there are multiple deaths within the same club. The highest score I've put in thus far is Khmer Rouge, but that may change as the quiz evolves and I add new information.
Groups have different decision-making structures - some are top-down with the leader and inner circle making most or all decisions without input from lower members. Orwellian groups that lack transparency and pretend to be democratic yet have some members more equal than others in all decision-making are not democratic. Even if it starts out completely egalitarian, it is rare that an organisation remains entirely democratic, especially as times wears on.
Groups also need to make money to support themselves, and both how and why they collect money plays a part in determining the function of the group. Some groups are known to make most of their money from their own members, who are supposed to invest in more training or to sell all the product they must stock (Amway), while others simply bring their own wine and sit in someone's living room to talk about their book of the week. Others take up a voluntary collection (tax-deductible, AA - not tax deductible), or make their income from illegal activities such as selling drugs (Santa Muerte). A charter school (usually fundamental Christian but also Scientology) will also look much different than a public school, the same way that an unaccredited independent college will differ greatly from a recognized educational institution, despite many shared attributes.
It will be rare that any organisation falls into only one category but generally the ones labelled as "dangerous" are the ones that exist solely for the purpose of leaders or members gaining sex, power, or money.
SIZE AND ENDURANCE DON'T MATTER
A "cult" can have 5 or 500,000 members. Large groups like Jim Jones's Jonestown and the Children of God have longevity and size on their side, but cults like Roch Theriault's Ant Hill Kids and Charles Manson's Family were both fairly short-lived yet did massive amounts of damage with under 20 followers each. By contrast, Eckhart Tolle was televised to 35 million Oprah viewers and has never had an act of violence, theft, or murder associated with him.
 |
| Manson's minions: Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, laugh as they walk to court |
GROUPS EVOLVE
Just because a group starts peaceful and benevolent doesn't mean it can't go in that direction. There are instances where the group forms and operate peacefully until something changes, usually the leader becoming greedier for power, money, or sex. This means that it is essential to re-evaluate groups that might score somewhere in the middle of the pack but have the potential to escalate, like John de Ruiter's College of Integrated Philosophy which began with him doing the occasional sermon at his church in small town Alberta to having multiple wives, a permanent multi-million dollar facility, and an international following. There are now at least two recorded suicides in his fold, with very mysterious circumstances surrounding the second one - here is Anina's story.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
1) Safety first. First off, you need to make sure that you are safe. As a matter of course, if you have engaged in unprotected penetrative sexual activity with someone who was involved with multiple partners it is wise to get tested for STIs and (if you are female) pregnancy. Coming forward about a spurious group comes with certain dangers, which the Church of Scientology has actually written into their doctrine as the "fair game" policy. While it was allegedly repealed in 1968, it remains in practice.
Character assassination - making things up about you, using details of your personal history to call your integrity, intelligence, or sanity into question
Vexatious litigation - launching court cases that will never stand in court but will take up lots of everyone's time and money
Harassment - badgering, stalking, name calling
Spying - picking through your garbage, online and in-person stalking
Threats - emotional, physical, psychic - they will send demons, damn you to hell, and tell you you are going to suffocate under the weight of your own guilt or conscience if you expose them
Physical attacks - even the ones you think are all bark and no bite doesn't protect you from their faithful devotees who may not have as many scruples, so caution is required.
When a group is protecting itself, it is seldom the leader carrying out the violence. Devotees will do the dirty deeds, and some of them are downright dastardly - Jim Jones made parents poison their children before taking it themselves (909 dead), the Rajneeshees literally poisoned the water hole with a deadly virus, and Aum Shinrikyo's followers released nerve gas in a Tokyo subway. Do not make any assumptions about your safety.
2) Back up everything. Move your email to a cloud, make copies and scans of anything that you may be required to provide as proof. Text messages, emails, forums, files, documents - keep a copy of everything in a safe place. Delete nothing. If you already have deleted files or emails, you may wish to recover them if there is any way possible. Take photos or scan things that you only have hard copies of as well. If you have a trusted resource who is external to the situation, you may wish to send them copies, however use caution when selecting this person especially if they were or have been involved in the organisation as well and may be either another target or a spy.
4) Do not engage. If you are planning to ACT, the last thing you want to do is REACT to any baiting that gets tossed your way. The more you engage, the more you tip your hand. There's a saying that the best way to hang someone is leave them enough rope to do it themselves so instead of responding, find your happy place and go full cone of silence. Forward threatening emails to your lawyer or trusted outsider, and consider getting a cease and desist letter prepared by your own attorney if the threats do not stop. Not only will remaining disengaged prevent you from doing or saying something out of anger and frustration, it will preserve your energy for more important things like healing your heart and lending support to others who may be going through the same thing.
5) Keep it in perspective. Coming out of an experience like this is painful, but it's not the end of the world. You can start taking back your identity, your head space, and even your home. I am personally a big fan of the whole-house exorcism, wherein you sweep the energy from every inch of your house from floor to ceiling. Use a real broom, and if you catch some cobwebs and dust on the way out, even better. Do this with loud music, dancing, and all the laughter and tears you need. Bring it all to the threshold of your home and unceremoniously push it out, slamming the door when you're done. To start living in your own head again, I suggest that you start using your old name or pick one that you identify with now, because you are not the same person anymore.
I will have more advice on how unplug after leaving a coercive group or relationship in future posts, but that is all for today.
"Dear Hope,
Why is sexual abuse of students by gurus so common?"
