When someone dies who you had a complicated relationship with, you may experience confusing and mixed emotions. There are many different ways that this scenario can play out, but the fact is that everyone dies, even people you didn’t like or had conflict with. And when you have mixed feelings about someone in life, you will continue to have mixed feelings about them in death.
People talk all the time about losing someone they deeply loved and cared for. As for grieving someone you had negative feelings towards, people don’t talk as much about that. The reasons why you may have had a difficult relationship are endless. Maybe they were mean or hurtful; perhaps they were violent or abusive; they could have been toxic or emotionally manipulative; maybe they betrayed you or someone you love.
We get it, it feels weird to sort through feelings about the death of someone you didn’t always like and it can feel even weirder to talk about it. So, today we’re going to talk about some of the circumstances that are unique to grieving someone you didn’t like. Then we’re going to answer some of the questions that come up in those situations and talk about how to cope.
You’re not sure if what you’re feeling is grief.
If we understand grief as a natural reaction to loss, you may be thinking that it isn’t a “loss” that this person isn’t in your world anymore. You might think if you didn’t like or want them in your life, it can’t be grief. This can leave you confused about how to categorize the feelings and isolated in discussing the emotions. Check out our definition of grief here for more.
You feel happy or relieved
Or, you’re at least not sad about it. In circumstances when your physical or emotional safety (or that of someone you love) was at risk because of the person who died, you may be feeling an immense sense of relief that your safety is no longer in jeopardy. At the same time, you may also be feeling some guilt that you’re relieved or happy or not sad. Like we said, it’s complicated. Luckily we have a whole post on feeling relief in grief
Your feelings of relief are in conflict with other people’s feelings of sadness
Sometimes you have a bad or complicated relationship with someone, but other people in your life don’t. After that person dies, you may be left to sort through complicated negative feelings, while others work through more traditional grief feelings. This disconnect can leave you feeling isolated and alone, and also ill-equipped to support your grieving family and friends.
You thought your relationship with them might eventually get better.
This thought might have been conscious or it might have been subconscious. Either way, when someone dies who you didn’t like it isn’t uncommon to suddenly feel the weight of the reality that you know will never get an apology, have a chance to apologize, or have a chance for the relationship to change and improve. Even if those were things you never consciously wanted, knowing they are no longer even an option can be difficult.
Your grief isn’t validated by others.
If people in your life knew you didn’t get along with this person, that you had a strained relationship, or had a falling out, people may minimize the validity of your feelings. That is a little thing known as disenfranchised grief. You may still be having intense grief feelings, despite that bitter divorce, painful custody battle, or even history of abuse. People around you might be saying, what do you have to be upset about?!? You hated him and hadn’t talked to him for years!
Death doesn’t bring closure.
You may have imagined that all those complicated feelings would somehow get resolved once the person died or was completely out of your life. But there is a good chance the complicated emotions are still there, even though the person isn’t. You wouldn’t be the first or the last. The reality is the pain of a difficult relationship doesn’t die just because a person has died.
Remind yourself you have the right to grieve.
When someone is removed physically from our lives there is an impact, no matter how we felt about them. It changes the relationship, and it can impact our understanding of the past and the future. Even if the hole left in your life is a hole you believed you always wanted, that doesn’t change its emotional impact. You can deeply miss someone you had a really complicated relationship with, so give yourself permission. The human heart is funny that way.
Remember that it is okay to feel relief.
If you feel guilty that you’re relieved, happy, or not sad about a death, let’s think through the feelings. What you are relieved or happy about is that you are now safe and no longer fearful. This is different than being glad someone has died. If there were another possible way for you to feel safe, you would likely have wished that to be the outcome. For more on this, check out our post about relief.
For better or worse, relationships continue after someone dies.
If you had a good relationship with someone, that can often continue through good memories and carrying on their legacy. If you had a complicated relationship it often remains, well, complicated! You may have imagined a person’s death would make you feel better or resolve some of the feelings you were having. In some cases that’s true, but in some cases it isn’t. You may find you still need to carry on efforts to explore your own feelings about the person or find ways to forgive (keeping in mind that foregiveness is not about saying someone’s behavior was okay!). You can read more about forgiveness here.
Communicate about the entire relationship, the good and the bad.
The old saying “don’t speak ill of the dead” can, unfortunately, make people feel like they have to keep their mouths shut about the problems in a relationship after the person has died. We’re here to say, it’s okay to keep processing and talking about these issues if you need to, you may just want to choose your audience wisely. Depending on your situation, friends or family may not be the best people to support these types of conversations. If that is the case, a grief counselor or support group might be helpful. What isn’t helpful is avoiding, stuffing, or ignoring the complicated emotions and memories.
Realize you may be grieving the relationship you wished you had.
We all have ideas about what a mom or dad or friend or spouse or child is “supposed” to be. Unfortunately, what we want a relationship to be is not always what it is. Who we want a person to be is not always who they are. If you are struggling to understand your own complicated emotions about the death, consider that you may be feeling grief around not having had the [mom/dad/husband/wife/friend/child] you wanted or needed.
It is still possible to finish ‘business’.
When grieving someone you didn’t like, or with whom you had a complicated relationship, there can be a feeling that any “unfinished business” will now have to be left unfinished. It may not get finished in the way you imagined when that person was alive (if you were planning for a direct conversation, obviously that just isn’t going to happen). You can still find ways to say the things you wanted to say. That could be in the form of a journal, letter to the person who died, artistic expression, or with a therapist.
Consider all the ways the relationship has impacted you.
Though many of these may be negative and painful, you may also see ways you grew from the strains in the relationship. It may be in your own commitment to not being like that person or it may be in your growth and avoidance of other negative or toxic relationships. It may even be in your ability to find forgiveness or empathy in an impossible situation. Whatever it is, take some time to appreciate yourself and your own growth. This is not being grateful to the person or for the hurt or problems they caused, but taking the time to give yourself credit for the growth that can come from adversity.
The concepts of the golden child and the evil/scapegoated child can make us think of narcissistic parents assigning these roles in a family. However, these roles can also be assigned to adults in a cultic context, and understanding the implications of these roles can benefit cult recovery. In my clinical work, I meet people who have left a cultic environment, alone or together. They may be siblings who broke up with a narcissistic parent, they may be family who left a group as a unit, or they may be friends who withdrew from a cultic group together. Despite all the goodwill and love a survivor may receive, healing can be difficult as there are many wounds and triggers in the relationships between the former members. They might have different experiences in the same context for many reasons. In the recovery process, it can be helpful to try to understand the different roles and the dynamics among the cult leader, the golden child and the evil/scapegoated child. In this article I look at each one of these roles—the cult leader, the golden child, and the evil/scapegoated child, and how they can interact. I give an example of these roles from recent Swedish history and note some of the benefits understanding these roles can have for helping people recover from their cultic experience.
A Note on My Therapeutic Method
In my own practice, I work with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). There are various forms of CBT, but they share a basis in research and in theory, for example in developmental psychology, learning psychology, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. As research develops, so does CBT. Today it also includes research in, for example, mindfulness and self-compassion. In CBT the therapist is active: Together with the client, we formulate goals, treatment plans, and an agenda for each meeting. CBT is a structured way of working with psychological problems, but there is also flexibility for the wishes and needs of the client. There are a wide variety of techniques like exposure, visualization, role-play, and mindfulness practices. The therapist and the client collaborate to find ways for the client to use therapy in their everyday life in the form of homework. A common misconception is that CBT is superficial, or just about the here and now. For some problems, such as arachnophobia (fear of spiders), you may not need to explore much background. But for other problems, like trauma and chronic trauma, exploring the client’s background is central. Psychoeducation is also a vital part of CBT. This means educating the client about the different ways to understand their problems and how to treat them. For example, a client with panic attacks is educated about how stress manifests in the body and the role catastrophic thoughts play in the development of an attack, as well as how to break the harmful cycle. There are no manuals for using CBT to treat clients coming out of cults, but in the same spirit as with other problems, it’s important for the cult client to understand what has happened to them psychologically, as an individual and as a member of a cultic group. Other benefits of psychoeducation are that it reduces magical thinking and increases the possibility of approaching issues more objectively, as the therapist can refer to research.
The Cult Leader
The cult leader as a traumatizing narcissist
In his 2014 article on the relational system of the traumatizing narcissist, Daniel Shaw describes two differing types of pathological narcissists who had, up to that point, been recognized by psychoanalytic writers. This person may be a parent, a sibling, a teacher, a cult leader, and so on. Of the two types, one is the deflated narcissist, who is thin skinned and shame-prone with fragile self-esteem, easily wounded or insulted. The other is the overinflated, grandiose, thick-skinned narcissist, who is manipulative, aggressive, exploiting, and controlling. These narcissists can be charismatic, seductive, and intensely attentive. Shaw describes the psychoanalytic view that the two types are complementary. Behind the deflated narcissist’s self-doubt and over-idealization is hidden grandiosity—he enjoys grandiosity by proxy, or longs to do so; and behind the overinflated narcissist’s entitled grandiosity is deep insecurity and the urgent need to ward off destabilization, and often psychosis, by manipulating and controlling others who will idealize him (Shaw, 2014). To these classic categories, Shaw adds the concept of the traumatizing narcissist that goes beyond defining a character or neurological pathology. He explains that the pathology is about subjugation of others: followers, spouses, siblings, children: By subjugating the other, the narcissist inflates and verifies his delusional grandiosity and omnipotence. To elevate oneself by subjugating another is the essence of what I mean by traumatizing narcissism. The chief means of subjugation is objectification—using the other as one’s object to possess, suppressing the subjectivity of the other, exploiting the other (Shaw, 2014).
The core here is that the narcissists care primarily about their own needs and feelings. If someone else is expressing their needs, the narcissist will make the other person look selfish and hurtful. Shaw explains that the narcissistic parent is being both envious of and resentful toward the child’s right to be dependent and demanding. The parent will make the child feel shame for their own needs and wishes and will learn to see themself as the parent does, as greedy, selfish, or weak (Shaw, 2014).
The cult leader as a person with disorganized attachment In her 2021 book, Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems, Alexandra Stein describes the cult leader in a similar way but uses attachment theory to understand cult leaders and how they form groups. Attachment is an evolutionary mechanism developed for survival. Being attached to a caregiver is a means of protection and just as vital as seeking after food. The caregiver becomes a safe haven where the child finds protection and can be emotionally comforted. If the parent is good enough, the child will be securely attached and thereby develop a sense of being loved and valuable and will be trusting of others. If the parent is not good enough, the child will develop an insecure attachment and struggle to feel valuable and trusting of others. The worst scenario is if the caregiver is the one who is making the child feel scared or threatened. You can’t safely escape both from and to the same person. It becomes an impossible situation where the child will be confused and may dissociate. If this becomes a pattern in the relationship, that child will develop a disorganized attachment. Stein connects attachment theory with trauma research, explaining that disorganized attachment is a chronic trauma which will prevent the brain from adequately regulating emotions, responding to threats, and integrating thoughts and emotions. Since the dissociation is not global, a person with disorganized attachment can be highly functioning in other areas of their lives. According to Stein, this theory explains both the cult leader, who has experienced disorganized attachment in their own life, and the cult leader’s impact on followers. Regardless of what attachment pattern you grow up with, when you are recruited into a cultic group as an adult your attachment to the group will become disorganized (Stein, 2021). Stein shows how the cult leader starts a cult by recruiting one person (person zero) by alternating love and threats, manipulating the member, and isolating them from their safe havens until the member’s attachment is disorganized. The leader’s totalitarian ideology is not the end but a means to prevent the followers from reflecting adequately on their situation, because if they did, they might consider leaving the group. Stein further explains that there are two types of disorganized attachment: the dominant, aggressive type (the leader), and the passive, obedient type (the follower). What drives cult leaders is to make sure followers are attached to the leader (in a disorganized way), in order that the leader may avoid abandonment. The cult leaders do this in the best way they know, from their own experiences.
The cult leader assigning roles as a mean of control
These two models of understanding a cult leader have in common the chronic trauma experienced by the cult leader. Their own developmental trauma has resulted in well hidden low self-esteem and fear of being abandoned. Their behaviors look very much the same with lack of empathy, guilt, or regret; having a shallow charm; being egocentric, manipulative, lying, and grandiose. With this background, it’s easier to understand why they put so much effort into controlling their followers. There are many ways to assert control in a manipulative way. Assigning different roles is only one aspect of the control system.
The Golden Child and the Evil/Scapegoated Child
Research on narcissistic parents indicates that there are generally two types: the disinterested and the controlling. The disinterested parent loses interest in the child if the child does not provide the parent with continuous confirmation and flattery. On the other hand, if the child is successful, they will become a trophy. The controlling parent is obsessed with the child, monitors them, and finds it very difficult to respect their boundaries and autonomy. Both these types have low tolerance for failure. The child the parent prefers is regarded as a “golden child,” is seen as having all the virtues of the parent and is expected to give the parent prestige (Perrotta, 2020). Other researchers describe how narcissistic families with several children will designate one of them a golden child who is to be perfect in everything. The child “becomes a property and an extension of his parent who projects on him all the grandeur and perfection, as his images” (Costin, 2020). The opposite role is the scapegoat. That child is denigrated and humiliated, “permanently triangulated, i.e. compared, placed in the shadow of the golden child to accentuate his self-doubt and discourage him from any attempt to threaten this pathological model” (Costin, 2020). If the golden child rebels against the expectations of the parent, their status can change to scapegoat. In the most dysfunctional families “the parent can incite the golden child to mistreat the scapegoat child” (Perrotta, 2020). In a cultic context these roles can be assigned to children and/or adults. The “golden child” becomes a role model for the other followers, and the “evil child” or scapegoat is a person you can blame for everything that goes wrong. The leader can focus on this scapegoat to avoid recognizing their own shortcomings. These roles can quickly change and can shift between family or cult members at the whim of leadership. In CBT we often talk about behaviors in terms of what function they fulfill for the person and how they affect other people and relationships. This approach can be used to explore the functions of different roles in a cult and help the client make these links and connections. When I do this with my clients, I give examples of the different functions and outcomes when the leader is assigning the roles of the golden child and the evil child in a cultic group.
The golden child
Assigning someone the role of the golden child has several benefits for the leader. This person presents proof to the other members that it’s possible to come close to the goal of being a successful member and that the leadership and the ideology are working. On the other hand, there are also considerable risks with having an adult golden child. The golden child can get too popular and, in the end, replace the leader. The cult leader may try to minimize the risk of replacement and abandonment by damaging the potential attachment between the golden child and other members. This is a common technique of cult leaders, separating parents from children or spouse from spouse so the relationship with another person does not jeopardize the relationship with the cult leader. I experienced this firsthand in my own cult experience, which was in the Unification Church. A local leader in New York tried to make us more loyal to him than to the leader Moon himself. When this was revealed, the local leader was kicked out. We were told he had been attacked by Satan and therefore we should not have any contact with him. We were sent to a camp in upstate New York to learn to see him as the devil and reinforce our attachment to Moon. Once the golden child became a risk to the leader, he was turned into an evil child.
Another way of minimizing the risk a golden child presents to the leader is to give the golden child a role which other followers not only are impressed by, but also fear. For example, the golden child may be held up as an example of good behavior and assigned the role of teaching others how to be good members. The golden child is often also turned into an informer, reporting to the leader on other members’ behaviors. In the manipulative language of the Moonies, the leader Sun Myung Moon and his wife were called “the True Parents,” and the followers then automatically became their “children”. The informer system was presented as helping “brothers and sisters” to follow the right path, and if they did not, telling “mom or dad” about it by giving the information upwards to the closest leader. Since the goals always are unrealistic, the golden child will always ultimately fail, or at least not reach the leader’s goals. This may lead the leader to put pressure on the golden child to do whatever it takes to achieve results. By now the golden child is often desperate and may use the same behaviors as the leader to punish harshly those who fail or do not obey. In many cases the punishment is a direct instruction. The golden child becomes a punisher, an offender. A golden child knows that if they decline to be an informer or a punisher, the leader will be furious and severely punish what is seen as betrayal. Falling from grace is worse than never having grace. The stakes are higher. The golden child is in a trap. There is no way out. They will be severely punished, possibly become the evil child, or be ostracized or kicked out of the group with nowhere to go since they have probably by now burned all their bridges to the world outside.
The evil child
It is also beneficial for the leader to make followers obedient by setting an example of what happens when they do not obey. This can be done by creating a scapegoat or an “evil child”. The leadership chooses someone to blame for what are really their own mistakes or shortcomings or as a distraction from uncomfortable situations. The leader can take this one more step, by choosing as a scapegoat someone who is loyal and hardworking and does not see the attack coming. This instills fear in everyone–anyone can at any moment with no obvious reason be degraded or even kicked out. In an evil twist, the golden child can be pressured to punish whoever the leader doesn’t like, and the rest will most likely follow, heaping criticism on the designated scapegoat.
How roles change behaviour and self-image
Being assigned a role may also change one’s self-image. In social psychology we learn that we define ourselves by our behaviors. If you can change someone else’s behavior, you can also change their self-image. Someone assigned the role of golden child or a role model, being praised and rewarded, may come to view themselves as superior to other members, as special and chosen (by the leader), the one with good results. Harsh behavior towards others and reporting on their misdeeds are defined as being a good and loyal member which strengthens one’s self-image. You learn to think and act like the leader, regarding your own feelings, needs, and boundaries as expressions of selfishness/ego/demons that you need to try to get rid of. A person assigned the role of evil child or scapegoat may come to believe they are a bad person. I have met people who have been punished psychologically, physically, and socially (criticized or ostracized) by the whim of the leader, and they become desperate to get accepted again. They behave as if they did something terrible to earn humiliation and punishment, which in turn strengthens their self-image as an evil person. To understand this dynamic, it is helpful to apply Robert Cialdini’s principles of influence (Cialdini, 2021). One of these is the principle of reciprocation. First you give a person something, like a favor, or an unsolicited gift—as when a charity sends a free tote bag or calendar. Later you ask for something in return. The charity wants a donation. It will be difficult to turn that request down, since we usually are raised with the understanding that we need to repay what another person has provided. If not, we will feel guilt. This becomes manipulative when something is presented as a favor or a gift, but in fact it is a way to make you feel obligated to say yes to the request as a way of repaying the original gift.
Another principle of influence is that we first induce someone to make a small commitment; then we make a request for a larger commitment. Because humans desire to seem consequent to ourselves and to others, the victim may be more willing to agree to the larger request to be consistent with their prior commitment. The trick is to make the victim change their behaviors in many small steps because small steps are easier to accept. Once you take the first step, a sense of commitment is created which drives us to accept the next request. And the next one. Every step strengthens our commitment, and along with the new behaviors we change our self-image. An example of this is, when I met the Moonies, my first step was to go to an open house, and later sign up for a seven-day camp. When I also signed up for the 21-day camp, my handsome new teacher saw me writing a letter to a friend, looked at me very seriously, and said: “Now that you committed to take this seriously, taking time and energy to write letters is not serious.” In a cultic framework, first you are given attention, love, and a sense of community and acceptance. Later, as you transition from recruit to follower, the leader will ask more and more of you. As you achieve higher standing, you may be used as an example for others—that is, you become a golden child, and may be given the job of punishing followers. You will rationalize your cruel actions as beneficial because they support the leader and reinforce their ideology. Your loyalty to the leader is strengthened, and your bond with others is weakened. All this will impact your self-image. You are ‘helping’ others to do the ‘right’ thing, go to heaven, and avoid hell or being a self-centered person.
Understanding These Roles Can Facilitate Empathy, Forgiveness, and Restored Relationships
In the process of leaving a cultic group and trying to recover, those designated as the good and the evil child may face various difficulties. The roles affect their relationships with other former members, and their relationships with people outside of the group. For example, a person who was always the scapegoat can have the impression that the golden child did not suffer, and may also regard the golden child as evil, thinking that they themselves would never treat someone else in such a cruel way. On the other hand, the person who was the golden child and was forced to punish others can drown in guilt without seeing that they were also a victim. My experience as a therapist is that discussing these roles and understanding their dynamics can be helpful in recovery from a cultic group experience. When former members can see that they were all pawns in a cruel game, they may develop understanding and empathy with each other’s difficulties. The situation is not black and white. Understanding these different roles, those of the cult leader, golden child, and scapegoat, can be a basis for working with shame, guilt, and fear; can facilitate forgiveness; and, in the end, may even facilitate restoration of relationships. Of course, in extreme cases, a relationship may be neither appropriate nor possible. Clients need to build or reclaim their identity and learn to respect their own feelings and boundaries. Forgiveness might not be possible, but at least their story can be more comprehensible.
About the Author: Helena Löfgren is a licensed psychotherapist (CBT) and has a Bachelor of Psychology. She is also a former member of the Unification Church in New York. lofgrensanalys.se
Taking The Helm 