Post -Cult After Effects

by Seven 13 Replies latest watchtower medical

Seven

I have been reading alot of Margaret lately-thought I'd share this.
Seven

Post-Cult After Effects

Psychological Manipulation, cult groups, sects, and new religious movements

Cultic Studies Study Resources
Recovery
Post-Cult After Effects
Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D.
After exiting a cult, an individual may experience a period of intense and often conflicting emotions. She or he may feel relief to be out of the group, but also may feel grief over the loss of positive elements in the cult, such as friendships, a sense of belonging or the feeling of personal worth generated by the group's stated ideals or mission. The emotional upheaval of the period is often characterized by "post- cult trauma syndrome":
spontaneous crying
sense of loss
depression & suicidal thoughts
fear that not obeying the cult's wishes will result in God's wrath or loss of salvation
alienation from family, friends
sense of isolation, loneliness due to being surrounded by people who have no basis for understanding cult life
fear of evil spirits taking over one's life outside the cult
scrupulosity, excessive rigidity about rules of minor importance
panic disproportionate to one's circumstances
fear of going insane
confusion about right and wrong
sexual conflicts
unwarranted guilt
The period of exiting from a cult is usually a traumatic experience and, like any great change in a person's life, involves passing through stages of accommodation to the change:
Disbelief/denial: "This can't be happening. It couldn't have been that bad."
Anger/hostility: "How could they/I be so wrong?" (hate feelings)
Self-pity/depression: "Why me? I can't do this."
Fear/bargaining: "I don't know if I can live without my group. Maybe I can still associate with it on a limited basis, if I do what they want."
Reassessment: "Maybe I was wrong about the group's being so wonderful."
Accommodation/acceptance: "I can move beyond this experience and choose new directions for my life" or...
Reinvolvement: "I think I will rejoin the group."
Passing through these stages is seldom a smooth progression. It is fairly typical to bounce back and forth between different stages. Not everyone achieves the stage of accommodation / acceptance. Some return to cult life. But for those who do not, the following may be experienced for a period of several months:
flashbacks to cult life
simplistic black-white thinking
sense of unreality
suggestibility, ie. automatic obedience responses to trigger-terms of the cult's loaded language or to innocent suggestions
disassociation (spacing out)
feeling "out of it"
"Stockholm Syndrome": knee-jerk impulses to defend the cult when it is criticized, even if the cult hurt the person
difficulty concentrating
incapacity to make decisions
hostility reactions, either toward anyone who criticizes the cult or toward the cult itself
mental confusion
low self-esteem
dread of running into a current cult-member by mistake
loss of a sense of how to carry out simple tasks
dread of being cursed or condemned by the cult
hang-overs of habitual cult behaviors like chanting
difficulty managing time
trouble holding down a job
Most of these symptoms subside as the victim mainstreams into everyday routines of normal life. In a small number of cases, the symptoms continue.
* This information is a composite list from the following sources: "Coming Out of Cults", by Margaret Thaler Singer, Psychology Today, Jan. 1979, P. 75; "Destructive Cults, Mind Control and Psychological Coercion", Positive Action Portland, Oregon, and "Fact Sheet", Cult Hot-Line and Clinic, New York City.
Seven

About Dr.Singer:

Profile and E-mail Directory Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D.

cult groups, sects, and new religious movements
Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D.
Emeritus adjunct professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Address: 17 El Camino Real
City: Berkeley
State: California
Zip: 94705
Tel. (510) 848-1855; fax (510) 848-8618
CO Contribution:
CSJ Contribution: Attacks on Peripheral versus Central Elements of Self and the Impact of Thought Reforming Techniques
Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 3, No.1.,
Psychotherapy Cults
Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2
Cults, Coercion, and Contumely
Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2
Undue Influence and Written Documents: Psychological Aspects
Cultic Studies Journal, Vol.10, No.1
Churches That Abuse
Ronald M. Enroth. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 1992, 227 pages.
Volume 10, No. 1, 1993
Reviewer
Other Contribution: Mistakes Families Make
Cults, Psychological Manipulation:
1992, Arlington, Virginia Video Available
"Crazy" Therapies
National Institute of Health, January 17, 1997, Bethesda, MD Video Available

When Psychotherapists Do Harm
National Institute of Health, January 17, 1997, Bethesda, MD Video Available

Treatment Issues; Cults: Theory and Treatment Issues Video Available
Conference May 30, 1997, Philadelphia

Mind Manipulation, Cults, and Domestic Violence: Professional & Personal Perspectives
Psychological Manipulation: The Abuse of Women Conference, May 30, 1997, Philadelphia Video Available
Keynote Address- Psychological Manipulation: How it Works and Why Women are Vulnerable; "Crazy" Therapies: What Are They? Do They Work?
Symposium -Treatment and Cults: What Works with Whom; Psychological Manipulation: The Abuse of Women Conference, May 30 and May 31, 1997, Philadelphia

AFF Annual Conference: Children and Cults
May 29 - May 31, 1998, Philadelphia, PA
AFF Annual Conference: Jonestown Memorial
November 13-15, 1998, Chicago, IL
1999 Conference: Cults, Psychological Manipulation & Society, Minneapolis, MN, May 14-19, 1999

Bio: Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and emeritus adjunct professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. degree in clinical psychology from the University of Denver, and she has been a practicing clinician, researcher, and teacher for nearly fifty years.
Singer's major area of work--how people influence one another-- grew directly out of her undergraduate and graduate work in speech and psychology, and the study of cults has been a special area of her research. Over the years Singer has counseled and interviewed more than three thousand current and former cult members: In 1978 she was awarded the Leo J. Ryan Memorial Award, named in honor of the U.S. Representative murdered in Jonestown, Guyana.
Over the past two decades Singer has been an active consultant and expert witness in many legal cases and has appeared frequently on television discussing influence and persuasion.
She is co-author of Cults in Our Midst and "Crazy" Therapies: What Are They? Do They Work?
The author of more than one hundred articles published in professional journals, she has received numerous national honors for her various research work, including awards from the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Psychiatrists, the National Mental Health Association, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and the American Family Therapy Association. She also held a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health and was the first woman and first clinical psychologist elected president of the American Psychosomatic Society.
Singer lives in Berkeley with her husband, Jay, a physicist whose special contributions have been in the development of magnetic resonance imaging. Her son is a public relations and political consultant, and her daughter is a resident in orthopedic surgery. Singer is the happy grandmother of twin boys.
ShaunaC

Seven, thanks so much for posting that. It was strange to read through it & see myself so clearly.
BTW, I believe you see a therapist for other reasons, but do you discuss your experience of being in the JW cult? If so, was this person knowledgable of JW before discussing it with you?
Thanks again,
Shauna
Seven

Hi Shauna, I feel free to discuss my cult experience and he is knowledgable in this area. This had much to do with why I chose him.
When I first read through the list I saw myself too. I struggled with thinking that there might be some way I could still associate on a limited basis. Naaaaaa. It had to be either all or nothing. I've accepted this and saw it for myself.
Best wishes to you,
Seven
Seven

I'm bringing this to the top for newbies to read.
Seven

Some additional Margaret. Check amazon.com for available books.
Dr. Margaret T. Singer's 6 Conditions
for Thought Reform
These conditions create the atmosphere needed to put a thought reform system into place:
Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is being changed a step at a time.
Potential new members are led, step by step, through a behavioral-change program without being aware of the final agenda or full content of the group.
Control the person's social and/or physical environment; especially control the person's time.
Through various methods, newer members are kept busy and led to think about the group and its content during as much of their waking time as possible.
Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.
This is accomplished by getting members away from the normal social support group for a period of time and into an environment where the majority of people are already group members. The members serve as models of the attitudes and behaviors of the group and speak an in-group language.
Strip members of their main occupation (quit jobs, drop out of school) or source of income or have them turn over their income (or the majority of) to the group.
Once stripped of your usual support network, your confidence in your own perception erodes. As your sense of powerlessness increases, your good judgment and understanding of the world are diminished. (Your ordinary view of reality is destabilized.)
As group attacks your previous worldview, it causes you distress and inner confusion; yet you are not allowed to speak about this confusion or object to it -- leadership suppresses questions and counters resistance.
This process is accelerated if you are kept tired.
Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person's former social identity.
Manipulation of experiences can be accomplished through various methods of trance induction, including leaders using such techniques as paced speaking patterns, guided imagery, chanting, long prayer sessions or lectures, and lengthy meditation sessions. Your old beliefs and patterns of behavior are defined as irrelevant or evil. Leadership wants these old patterns eliminated, so the member must suppress them. Members get positive feedback for conforming to the group's beliefs and behaviors and negative feedback for old beliefs and behavior.
Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group's ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors.
Good behavior, demonstrating an understanding and acceptance of the group's beliefs, and compliance are rewarded while questioning, expressing doubts or criticizing are met with disapproval, redress and possible rejection. If one expresses a question, he or she is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to be questioning. The only feedback members get is from the group, they become totally dependent upon the rewards given by those who control the environment.
Members must learn varying amounts of new information about the beliefs of the group and the behaviors expected by the group. The more complicated and filled with contradictions the new system in and the more difficult it is to learn, the more effective the conversion process will be. Esteem and affection from peers is very important to new recruits. Approval comes from having the new member's behaviors and thought patterns conform to the models (members). Members' relationship with peers is threatened whenever they fail to learn or display new behaviors. Over time, the easy solution to the insecurity generated by the difficulties of learning the new system is to inhibit any display of doubts -- new recruits simply acquiesce, affirm and act as if they do understand and accept the new ideology.
Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order.
The group has a top-down, pyramid structure. The leaders must have verbal ways of never losing. Members are not allowed to question, criticize or complain -- if they do, the leaders allege that the member is defective -- not the organization or the beliefs. The individual is always wrong -- the system, its leaders and its belief are always right. Conversion or remolding of the individual member happens in a closed system. As members learn to modify their behavior in order to be accepted in this closed system, they change -- begin to speak the language -- which serves to further isolate them from their prior beliefs and behaviors.
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dark clouds

i see a reflection of my past here
some of the symptoms still endure
thank you for posting
CHUCK
Seven

Chuck, I see alittle of myself there too. I think maybe I always will.
But at least now we can see in writing what we're feeling is real and so is our hope for the future. Seven
outnfree

WOW! I'm so glad I checked this out after greeting bonnie!
Very useful information, Seven.
Thank you, because I'm sure many of us will [need to!] reference it frequently.
outnfree
Seven

Outnfree, I find myself often checking back on this information myself. I wrote Dr. Singer a letter. I'll share the reply with the board if and when I get one. Seven

Post -Cult After Effects

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