I was reading some blogs and came accross this info:
How To Deprogram Your Own Mind
People stay trapped in cults, or trapped in illusions, because they don't really want to know the truth:
3. Sometimes, they are afraid to know the truth --
They fear that their world will fall apart if they stop believing certain things, or admit the truth of other things. That is one of the beliefs with which they got programmed - the idea that if they don't believe the right things, they will go to Hell, or they will lose their ticket to Heaven, or something else really bad will happen to them. One of the things that cults do is implant phobias about leaving the cult, or learning the truth about the cult.
They are afraid of losing their status or membership in the group - they are afraid that they will be shunned and ostracized if they don't believe the same things as the other people around them. And they are just plain afraid of being alone.
They fear that they will have to leave the cult if they stop believing in it, and they will stop believing in it if they learn a bunch of negative things about it. ("Then what will I do with my life?!") So they plug their ears and close their eyes, and play "Hear no evil, see no evil..."
Some people just don't want to see that they were fooled.
"I refuse to believe that I spent twelve years of my life in a cult. It isn't a cult. It can't be a cult. It's a wonderful movement."
As they say in A.A., "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."
Some people just don't want to give it up.
"If I leave the group, I will be lonely because I won't have any friends. So shut up and quit telling me disturbing things about it."
"I have lots of time invested here. I'm a respected elder. If I quit the organization, I'll be a nobody."
Carl Sagan, in his book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, told the story of how the TV program 60 Minutes in Australia performed a funny candid-camera kind of experiment where they manufactured a phony guru and then foisted him on the public for a few weeks, to see how gullible the public was. The experiment was a great success (if you look at it that way) because nobody, not even the press or other TV news organizations, even bothered to check out the charlatan's false credentials and fake credits. Everybody just swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker. And the most outrageous part was the fact that, after 60 Minutes and even the phony guru himself explained to the public that it had all been a hoax, just a test of gullibility, some people still said to the phony guru, "We don't care what they say about you. We still believe in you." Some people will do just about anything to avoid admitting that they have been fooled - even continue to be fooled. It seems like, once you get those people committed to the hoax, you've really got them.