By Jayne Lyons
Jessica, be safe, stay safe, find a safe place to recover for a while.
Post-Cult Trauma Syndrome
After leaving a cult, an individual may experience intense and conflicting emotions. She may feel relief to be out, but also may feel grief over the loss of friendships, a sense of belonging, or feelings of worth generated by the group’s stated ideals or mission.
The emotional upheaval is characterized by “post-cult trauma syndrome”. It’s symptoms are
- 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
Like any great change in a person’s life, leaving a cult involves passing through stages:
- 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…
- Re-involvement: “I think I will rejoin the group.”
This is seldom a smooth progression. It is typical to bounce back and forth between stages. Not everyone achieves acceptance.
Some return to cult life.
For those who do not, they may experience for several months:
- flashbacks to cult life
- simplistic black-white thinking
- sense of unreality
- suggestibility, i.e.. 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 subside as the ex-cult member mainstreams into everyday routines of non-cult life. In a few cases, the symptoms continue.
This information is a composite list from:
“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.
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Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
Traditionalist Catholicism…
Jayne
I am a family member of Kris Snyder. The “leaving of evil” has been very difficult. The wiping clean from evil, and the crap that they feed people. I have helped other family members to break free from Rainere and others. What they peddle is garbage. The pure “I can help you stop being a lesbian” is a bag of lies. This was pure seduction and blatant open sexual behavior.
Rainere needs to sit exactly where he is, and never get out.
Boyz-N-The-Martha’s Vineyard (Music Video)
watch on HULU:
“KEEP IT BETWEEN US”
all this is text book stuff.
Why lie?
7. fear of evil spirits taking over one’s life outside the cult
Like I said, these people are insane.
Dude I had evil spirits take over. They possessed me for 13 days and Nights. I did things I never would do they made me. I was charged for crimes I did not do. The assistant DA he mocked me like you. I not insecure. It really happened. It was real scary. I aged like 10 years in two weeks. Now I have criminal charges be. Nobody believe me.
That exactly what Shoemaker plants n their heads.
Must be nice to live in a black and white box with defined corners of existence.
An existence without doubtful thoughts = convinction about one’s beliefs 😇😇😇😇
So amazing to realise you know everything!!
So true. Must be amazing.
It’s a vicious cycle and one that serves to reinforce the narrative promoted by Michael Shoemaker– that people are broken and cannot make it in the world without him.
They mistreat, use and abuse people for years. Should they have the strength to leave, it’s a set up for failure. Many have no money (free labor for years) and no real skills because instead of getting real work experience, they were used for repetitive, menial tasks day after day, year after year.
They find themselves alone, without a home or career to get on their feet– and then Shoemaker’s words hit hard– that they can’t make it without him and the ashram. It’s a sinister set up to entrap and enslave people.
Thank you for providing this information. It’s difficult to leave your “home” and “community” when it’s a healthy experience.
But the overwhelming loss with nowhere to turn. Excommunication even if by choice is still an isolating, lonely road, compounded by the psychological trauma and zero financial resources when one departs.
I can see why people are conflicted and waiver. But if people like Dan, Jess and Ruth can unite and support each other, many other will as well.
Many have left. It’s just a matter of getting them to press charges.
Several have signed NDA’s. You don’t get an nda unless there’s abuse.
NDA’s are an abomination against the truth and the authority of law. Why are they permitted?
Tell that to every real estate agent /company I’ve ever used.
Also a practice in hiring new employees straight out of college, picking their cutting edge brain ( technologically up to date) get what they need and then firing you..or Letting you Resign ( so integrous of them) a year later, without just cause, and reminding them they signed an NDA. When they apply to a different company they’re afraid to say anything …
several???