Tag: Children in Cults

Psychological Impact on Children raised in Cults

On By LaetitiaIn Bullying, Cult Behaviour, Family Concerns, Infliction of Abuse, Mental Health Disorders, Narcissistic Abuse, Religious Cults, Sexual Abuse, SuicideLeave a comment

by Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy.

Indoctrination from an Early Age

The indoctrination of children in cults differs from that of adults in that children are extremely vulnerable to adult influence – the people they look up to, especially their parents. Children’s brains are still developing, and they are like sponges, absorbing the world around them, the world of adults who create the environment they exist in. A child will absorb the world view of those around them and accept this as their reality because this is all they have known.

The Cult Leader’s Demands Always Comes First

In cults, the cult leader or doctrine always takes priority over anything else. The child who grows up in a cult will never be the centre of attention in their parent’s world because they will most likely be totally self-absorbed with the cult leader and the cult demands. These demands are usually great and unattainable because the leader is likely to be highly perfectionistic, insatiable, and persecutory of those who do not meet their ideals. Moreover, a cult leader will employ fear tactics with their disciples and keep them in a state of perpetual adoration towards them and shame towards themselves. In this state of fear, shame and total preoccupation with another, there is no room for the age-appropriate demands of a child who actually needs their parent’s care and attention.

“Have No Needs”

A child who grows up in a cult learns to have no needs because they quickly learn that they do not matter. To survive in the cult and gain some crumbs of attention from their parents, they will have no choice but conform to the leader’s demands, try to fit in as much as possible and override their natural developmental needs. This means the child will miss out on normal stages of development, if not also on education and normal peer interactions because of the insular and isolated nature of most cults.

Isolation and Abuse

Sending a child to school means interacting with the outside world, which most cults find threatening. Depending on how isolated a cult becomes, they will supply their own schooling, have children interact only with other cult children and make sure there is no outside influence that could lead the child to question their upbringing.

Keeping a child isolated from society also makes them vulnerable to abuse – sexual, physical, spiritual, emotional, and psychological. Isolated groups create their own rules and decide what is right or wrong. In the cult I grew up in for instance, children and teenagers were conveniently seen and treated as adults.  This meant that we were required to work long hours, worship and meditate with the adults. This also meant that schooling was minimal and there was no age-appropriate censorship to adult-only stuff. The cult leader – a self-proclaimed enlightened master – was seen as an expert in raising children, despite him not having any children himself or knowing anything about child development. If the cult leader condones inappropriate, harmful, or even criminal behaviour, then his disciples collude because all that matters is what the leader thinks. His truth matters above all truths, and they are always above societal rules and norms, including the law. Under these circumstances, children are extremely vulnerable to predators.

The Objectification of Children

In cults, children are either seen as an inconvenience or used as means for growing the cult. In both situations, children are seen as objects and not encouraged to develop their own identity. In cults, nothing is in the best interest of a child. Everything is in the best interest of the leader and the organisation. Despite this well-known fact, cult leaders will make it seem that everything they do is for your good and the good of your children, even if there is plenty of evidence to the opposite (see ‘Gaslighting’ below). They will make you quash your doubts, question your sanity, and give up everything you have, including your children, in the service of “the greater good”. This “greater good” has very few winners, which are usually the leader and his inner circle.

Gaslighting

A central feature of cults is gaslighting – a term coined from the movie ‘Gaslight’ where it a young woman is manipulated by her husband into believing that she is descending into insanity. Cults do this on a large scale, which is designed to keep its disciples or followers in a state of perpetual doubt about their opinions and follow the opinions and ideas of the cult leader. It is an exercise in maintaining power over others and abdicating any responsibility for one’s actions. For instance, in the cult I grew up in the self-proclaimed enlightened master would attribute all personal suffering to his disciples and never take any responsibility. This extended to the sexual, financial, and psychological exploitation of ‘his people’ including children. When questioned, he would say that you had not surrendered to him enough and that this was your reason for suffering.

Leaving

When the child grows up and is lucky enough to leave the cult, they will have to contend with a long process of rebuilding or recovering their own identity. Everything that they are has been attributed to the cult or exists because of the cult. Sometimes, when a former child choses to leave, their family will want nothing to do with them. Or they may need to cut contact with their family to survive psychologically.

The Recovery Process

Cult recovery is a long and challenging process which requires the right support. Finding a group of like-minded individuals who share similar backgrounds is advisable, as well as finding a therapist who is experienced and knowledgeable about this type of work. Explaining to people what you have gone through is never easy. Former cult members and those who grew up in cults can feel a lot of shame about their past and have difficulty articulating what they have been through. Most people lack an appreciation of what it is like to live in a high control group and its effects.

Regaining One’s Mind and Setting Boundaries

Those who were born or grew up in cults will often need to learn or re-learn how to live in society. Although cults range in terms of how isolated and restricted their members are, the indoctrination of children is so deep that it will take a very long time to regain their own mind, learn to think for themself and have their own opinions. This extends to knowing one’s own preferences, wishes and needs. Because having own thoughts and opinions was frowned upon or even dangerous, it takes time to regain a sense of safety in doing normal things, having personal preferences, and even feeling entitled to personal space. Growing up in an environment where nothing belongs to you, all the thinking is done for you and personal space is not a thing, has big implications in later life when it comes to setting personal boundaries.

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and Clinical Superviser. She is experienced in working with the psychological impact of high-control groups and cults on individuals, families and organisations. She has also spoken about her personal experience of growing up in a cult in recent public interviews.

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

Leaving a Cult and Living with Purpose

On By LaetitiaIn Cult Behaviour, Family Concerns, Infliction of Abuse, Narcissistic Abuse, Religious CultsLeave a comment

About the Series

Flor Edwards was born into the apocalyptic cult Children of God. Throughout her childhood, she lived in 24 different locations preaching the cult leader’s narrative, which was: all of its members, like Flor, were “chosen” martyrs charged with saving the world from the Antichrist before a supposed apocalypse in 1993. When this date came and went and the world didn’t end, Flor went from anticipating death to facing the possibility of life.

In this eye-opening series, you’ll learn what it was like for Flor to grow up in the confines of a cult and how its narrow constructs initially shaped her beliefs about life, love, and relationships. You’ll discover what it was like to leave the only world she’d ever known after the cult disbanded, and how she navigated the tricky road of reconstructing her belief system as a teenager. Above all, you’ll understand how she faced the mental health impacts that resulted from each stage of her journey.

Unlike most media coverage of stories like Flor’s, this series doesn’t sensationalize. It educates. Flor’s journey is extraordinary, but it’s relatable. We all have obstacles to overcome and the ability to learn from them in order to create the life that we want, just like Flor has. Flor has rewritten her narrative since leaving the Children of God. This series provides real insight into this authentic narrative – not the one sensationalized by most media outlets.

View the video here

Long-Term Effects of Being Raised Within a Cult

On By LaetitiaIn Bullying, Cult Behaviour, Mental Health Disorders, Religious Cults, Sexual AbuseLeave a comment

There is much variability in the thousands of groups associated with the term cult, although in general the role of the leader becomes central in the cult family. The leader takes on the role of father and/or mother, deciding how children will be raised. Parents function somewhat as middle managers in the rearing of their children.

I.C.S.A.Home

New England Institute of Religious Research.

How Cults Rewire the Brain

Cults & Mind Control

What is a Cult?

A cult is a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing, and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control designed to advance the goals of the group’s leader, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.

Cult Identification List -this will give you a ‘check list’ of what to look out for when joining a group.

These groups tend to dictate, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel, claim a special exalted status for themselves and/or their leader(s), and intensify their opposition to and alienation from society at large.

Because the capacity to exploit human beings is universal, any group could become a cult. However, most mainstream, established groups have accountability mechanisms that restrain the development of cultic subgroups.

How Many Cults Exist and How Many Members Do They Have?

Cult-education organizations have received inquiries about more than 3,000 groups. Although the majority of groups are small, some have tens of thousands of members. Experts estimate that five to ten million people have been involved with cultic groups at one time or another.

What is Mind Control?

Mind control (also known as “brainwashing,” “coercive persuasion,” and “thought reform“) refers to a process in which a group or individual systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s). Such methods include the following:

extensive control of information in order to limit alternatives from which members may make “choices”

deception

group pressure

intense indoctrination into a belief system that denigrates independent critical thinking and considers the world outside the group to be threatening, evil, or gravely in error an insistence that members’ distress-much of which may consist of anxiety and guilt subtly induced by the group-can be relieved only by conforming to the group

physical and/or psychological debilitation through inadequate diet or fatigue the induction of dissociative (trance-like) states via the misuse of meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, and other exercises in which attention is narrowed, suggestibility heightened, and independent critical thinking weakened

alternation of harshness/threats and leniency/love in order to effect compliance with the leadership’s wishes isolation from social supports pressured public confessions

Who Joins Cults and Why?

Contrary to a popular misconception that cult members are “crazy,” research and clinical evidence strongly suggests that most cult members are relatively normal. They include the young, the middle-aged, elderly, the wealthy, the poor, the educated, and the uneducated from every ethnic and religious background. There is no easily identifiable type of person who joins cults.

How Do People Who Join Cults Change?

After converts commit themselves to a group, the cult’s way of thinking, feeling, and acting becomes second nature, while important aspects of their pre-cult personalities are suppressed or, in a sense, decay through disuse. New converts at first frequently appear to be shell-shocked; they may appear “spaced out,” rigid and stereotyped in their responses, limited in their use of language, impaired in their ability to think critically, and oddly distant in their relationships with others. Intense cultic manipulations can trigger altered states of consciousness in some people.

Why Do People Leave Cults?

People leave for a variety of reasons. After becoming aware of hypocrisy and/or corruption within the cult, converts who have maintained an element of independence and some connection with their old values may simply walk out. Others may leave because they are weary of a routine of proselytizing and fund-raising. Sometimes even the most dedicated members may feel so inadequate in the face of the cult’s demands that they walk away because they feel like abject failures. Others may renounce the cult after reconnecting to old values, goals, interests, or relationships, resulting from visits with parents, talks with ex-members, or exit counseling.

Is Leaving a Cult Easy?

People who consider leaving a cult are usually pressured to stay. Some ex-members say they spent months, even years, trying to garner the strength to walk out. Some felt so intimidated they departed secretly.

Although many cult members eventually walk out on their own, many, if not most, who leave cults on their own are psychologically harmed, often in ways they do not understand. Some cult members never leave, and some of these are severely harmed. There is no way to predict who will leave, who won’t leave, or who will be harmed. ?

Adapted from: Cults Questions and Answers, by Micahel D. Langone, Ph.D.Copyright AFF, 1988

Leah Remini’s interview about the inner workings of Scientology

The following documentary was released in November 2018 by Leah Remini who was reasearching Scientology and Jehovahs Witnesses and the effect it has upon their former members

There is also a Facebook Link to this video