working through the cult experience

[arpy1]

ok, so i am biting the bullet a bit, becos i haven't attempted anything like this before.

it's been a bit of a journey to reach the point where i could talk about this here becos i still feel like people will look down on me for having been in a xian cult for years. i still feel embarrassed and ashamed. but i need to work through this; i can't sidestep it by trying to get to the centre of the onion, to use the familiar metaphor, i have to go layer by layer. this is a big layer for me. so i hope you'll bear with me.

i'm not going to attempt a linear story. that's too much. so what i would like is to be able to share the now journey as bits crop up. so...

just started last night to read Pete Walker's book 'surviving to thriving' and it's already blowing me away. 

Altho it is primarily dealing with family oriented trauma, I am finding that if I add the main leader's name (N) to the word 'parents' or sometimes substitute it even, I can understand a bit more what happened to me.  Because it seems to me that I had a twofold whammy, early years abandonment and then N's traumatising narcissism and the whole community-cult thing in early adulthood that set me up for the third and fourth whammies of my marriage and later, second disastrous involvement with the cult (call it the 'jp' for anonymity's sake).

I discovered that my 'F' response is freeze/fawn (followed by flight, and on very rare occasions, fight).

I discovered that whatever little bit of 'ego' or selfhood  I had managed to grow before I joined the jp was systematically destroyed by N over the years where he bullied and manipulated us to truly believe that any attempt to self nurture or to stand up for ourselves was sin, namely selfishness and rebelliousness.

i can't express adequately how deeply i believed that. i still do, if i'm honest.   to go against it, even in my thoughts, feels wrong even now - like i am rebelling against God's will for me.

God I can't believe what that man did to me. It was pure evil.

Good bit is that apparently I can re-teach myself to nurture and protect myself. Hopefully. Watch this space.

[mourningdove]

I think you deserve a lot of credit for posting about this. arpy1. 

It makes sense given social attitudes that you might feel shameful about having been in a cult, but the fact that you were in one says nothing about you other than that you were vulnerable at the time. And when people are vulnerable in that way, there are always reasons for it. And you indicated as much in your post.

When I was a teenager, I got involved in a very cult-like social situation for about a year - charismatic leader, systematic breaking down of victim, all of that. Looking back, I can now see that it was mostly attachment trauma and low self-esteem from abuse that made me vulnerable to that. Other people have since treated me like I was stupid to get involved with those people. But I wasn't stupid or a bad person. I needed connection. I still feel very ashamed sometimes that I ended up in that situation, even though I know now that it was not my fault. Anyway, I'm not claiming to have had the same experience, but maybe I understand a little?

I believe that you can learn to nurture and protect yourself. It seems to me that you are already on the right track. 

[Dutch Uncle]

Good bit is that apparently I can re-teach myself to nurture and protect myself. Hopefully. Watch this space.

I will. Yay you! 

[arpy1]

thank u mourningdove, for that. i think i realise something else.

i guess as a result of an emotionally neglectful/abusive childhood i was desperate to be loved and to belong somewhere warm and safe where i could feel precious to someone. that's what the jp promised. exactly that.  we were promised the family of God, where everyone is secure and finds healing and grows into their true identities...

what was actually delivered, for whatever reason, was very different in the end.  one thing i have realised happened to me was the eroding of any kind of personal boundaries so that there was, from fairly early on, no real possibility of escaping. 

in jp thinking, to have personal boundaries was sinful, to the point of taboo.  each person was to be totally open. open to love, open to correction, open to the Word of God (well, the Word of God as interpreted by N) -  and to have an independent mind or any opinions was considered sinful and proud minded and rebellious.

submission was key, most especially if you were a woman. if anyone, (anyone, not just the leaders) was mean to you or even simply 'corrected'  or 'entreated' you, you must never defend yourself, or justify yourself (dirty word!) you must 'receive it'. otherwise you were 'rebellious' or 'unteachable' - both of which were deeply wrong. 

to not 'receive' or disagree with what N taught from the front was terrible. you were in danger of being 'deceived', or 'led astray' if you didn't take everything as truth that he said, lock stock and barrel - which was difficult at times becos sometimes he would contradict himself from week to week. usually with the words 'we have always understood this, beloved!'

so i have never learnt that it is not only ok but actually vital to have boundaries. to look after my self, and to protect myself. i can't explain how novel the concept of it is to me and how difficult it is to break the deep, ingrained knowledge that it is wrong.

[stillhere]

Equating the experience of cult life with a CPTSD-inducing family makes all kinds of sense.  After all, criteria for CPTSD include totalitarian control of the sort that cults exert.  So do families controlled by people with personality disorders.  I've come to see my FOO as a kind of cult, with internal rules and high boundaries that obscured the view from outside.

I've not been a member of anything I'd consider cult like, but I can imagine the attraction for someone seeking a family substitute.  And I know (no need to imagine) that lack of experience in a functional family makes discernment difficult.

[arpy1]

yup, exactly 

[arpy1]

i am feeling sad.  today i was trawling through the links on  various articles and stuff in the Resources section. i read one on shame and i just realised that a huge proportion of my adult life has been spent in shame.  my childhood, funnily enough, didn't have anywhere near the same effect as being in the jp did in this regard.  i went in feeling - ok, insecure and gullible and desperate to belong and be loved,

**n.b. triggers possible next**

but i didn't have this deep shame and sense of not being a valid person. i didn't feel fatally flawed, and deeply wrong and ashamed for existing. that was N's doing. all the years of sitting in meetings, (at one point there were four a week plus at least two nights of smaller group meetings where he, thankfully, wasn't.) cringing under his shouting and berating, his demandingness and his scornfulness. later on things grew big enough that he couldn't physically be at all the different area meetings so other men led them, other leaders. those meetings were much easier to bear.

i always remember at school seeing a video of Hitler speaking (!?) at one of his rallies. he would scream and shout and wave his arms and everyone would cheer and wave their flags.     well, N was like that. he would shout one minute, talk really quiet the next till you relaxed then SUDDENLY SHOUT AGAIN!!! and he would get really angry and his face would go all red and his spittle would fly out of the corners of his mouth... and then he would go quiet again...etc etc. and god help you if you looked as if you weren't paying total attention for the whole time (average  oneand a half hours or more per sermon), or looked like you were dozing off. then he'd really let rip. if mum's let their babies cry he'd have a go at them, if anyone needed the loo, tough  (my friend told me of the time her little girl wet herself all over the pew becos she was too scared to take her out to the loo) 

i remember sitting in those meetings in almost a catatonic state. i understand it now as the 'collapse', the last stage of the fight/flight/freeze response. i was like a zebra caught by the lion. inside i just went into this state of stark, immobile horror, my mind would just shut down in the face of his rage. i felt there was no way i could ever get it right enough, be right enough to stop him having to shout at me and i so wanted him to stop shouting.  and this week in week out without respite. you had to go to all the meetings. no excuses unless you were ill, or maybe giving birth or something. and if you were ill you had to get permission from your elder to stay home. (actually you had to get permission from your elder for anything)

that's where i really learnt to be ashamed. ashamed of being a woman, of having wrong feelings, of having needs, of not being perfect, of not being perfectly giving all the time, of not thinking the right thoughts, of not being enthusiastic enough, pure enough, selfless enough, of not meeting the targets we were set to bring people in, of just being wrong in every regard, down to the deepest part of me.  just ashamed of existing.

a bit of me still thinks, 'why did he do that?' but i know the answer now. same reason Hitler did. to control our minds and everything about us, to keep us in the place where he could be the prophet, the big guy, the one who heard from God. so that we, basically, could be his narcissitic supply. understanding it actually doesn't make it any easier to bear. i can't seem to get over it, even now, years later.

sorry for the long rant.  thanks for listening.

[woodsgnome]

from a book by Stephen Levine, the quote refers to Buddhist groups, but it really applies universally...

"...the mind has a tendency to project perfection on others in the same way it projects imperfection on ourselves..."

and

"Here and there you will hear a teacher who selectively quotes the Buddha as saying that '90 percent of practice is sangha, (the company of fellow travelers on the path). And indeed there is considerable value, at times, in 'together action' with others who too are struggling toward the surface. But 90 percent?!? I think not. All our work is done 'alone' in the heart. Perhaps a teacher's desire for position and our common wish for the perfect family, cause us ever so subtly to be attached to that particular statement." 

[arpy1]

yep, definitely. we are all looking for salvation in one way or another. and people like N therefore have a perfect 'in' to the deepest longings and needs of people's souls. 

like ripe plums ready for picking.

it's just a matter then of applying the 'system' of disintegrating their boundaries and instilling just enough fear and shame to keep them nicely under control. then, if you are careful to give them just enough rewards to believe (and it would be sin to think otherwise) you are a wonderful person and they are having a wonderful life,  - well, then they can be fed off indefinitely. 

[arpy1]

today i had something encouraging happen.  i was talking to my son about music, what we liked and so on.  i said something to him that afterwards when i thought about it, was, for me, a bit amazing: 

i realised that over the last little while, since i have been off work, (golly, exactly one year ago today!!)  i have begun to discover my own tast in music.
not what my parents liked, not what my ex liked, and definitely...
not the kind of music allowed in the JP (only xian music allowed, and in the early days only music written by church members, in the form of songs and hymns - just 'listening' to music was not allowed, being worldly...)

but actually the kind of music that i  like!

and it was very encouraging that without me noticing, this is a little bit of my own self-hood that is growing inside me.

isn't that nice?? i never had one of those before!

[Dutch Uncle]

Awesome, arpy1 

Amazing experience. I hope and wish you may have many of those moments coming.   
(and I'm sure they will)

I wish you much happiness in exploring your music taste, and happiness and joy in the music you have found.

[arpy1]

thank you! 

i remembered something else.  i was watching recently a lady called Gillie Jenkinson, she is a psychotherapist in UK who specialises in exit counselling for ex-cult members. 

she talks in her work about the cult pseudo-personality. this is basically, as she terms it, the  'intro-jection' over time, of a pseudo-personality that conforms entirely to the cult's mores and beliefs.

'intro-jected' by psychological manipulation and control, its adoption is necessary to cope with the cognitive dissonance set up by the conflict between the person's need  to 'fit in' with his new 'family' and belief system (and avoid rejection or punishment) and the contradictions he will be aware of, albeit even subconsciously, between the professed mores and beliefs and the abusive practices of the cult and its leader/s.

in this way, a person's own 'pre-cult personality' (or,in the case of young 'joiners', or 2nd or 3rd generation cult members, the undeveloped personality) becomes totally subsumed by and buried under a conforming, acceptable personality that 'fits' into the cult but is often experienced by former friends/family members as though their loved one has become a 'totally different person'.

the only personality that is allowed to develop and grow is the cult-induced one; allowed, i mean, both by the culture and by the member himself. over time, any other personality is buried deeper and deeper under the overlay. Jenkinson likens it to being buried under tarmac. the member herself has no idea that this is happening. that is the nature of 'thought reform' - what we used to call 'brainwashing' in the old days.

what happens on exitting the cult is that the person often feels like she has no self at all.  she has to understand and come to terms with the fact that she has not managed to maintain/develop a selfhood of her own. often the sense of identity is non-existent or severely curtailed for having been suppressed for many years. the 'culture shock', as i can personally attest, experienced on leaving the cult, is indescribable.

i think the word is 'depersonalisation' when this becomes a pathology in itself?  it is certainly, from what i have read,  a recognised symptom of captivity-/trauma-/abuse-related psychopathologies/cptsd. 

[Dutch Uncle]

Well, another    for discovering that.

It sounds as a worthwhile point of view for you to inquire a bit more in.
With baby steps, of course. 

[arpy1]

today has been a day of grieving. woke up from a very strange dream into full EF mode, and spent a long time working on the 'steps' to try and work through it.  got to the point of having a jolly good cry, then a few more... and so on through the whole day. the day has been spent remembering things from the JP. things that come to me as a shock about how awful they were in hindsight. things that continue to shock me as i recall this and that incident or situation. i can't imagine now how i ever accepted some of the things that happened to many of us, that were so blatantly wrong, abusive, damaging.  i wept for the fact that my mind, and those of people i have loved, have been so 'destroyed'.  for the lost years, the lost friends, the loss of 'innocence', of faith, of trust. how can i bear this? why do i keep feeling so shocked? it is a horrible feeling, like being hit hard again and again.

i know it is probably necessary, this process of memories rising to the surface of my mind.  but it feels a little out of control somehow, becos i can't anticipate when it happens, can't always identify the trigger, and it is exhausting to keep dreaming these dreams and wake up feeling unrefreshed and upset. i have the odd day where it seems calmer and then it's back to the battle again.

[Oakridge]

While our stories/histories are very different, the process and things emerging seem to be similar. I have learned a lot from your sharing that is helping me be more compassionate to myself in processing all my issues. Thank you for being so open. it couldn't have come at a better time for me after a traumatic weekend processing my own history.