CCChat-Magazine_Cults-Coercion

People are starting to pick that up, which is
wonderful but I think it could be much more
systematic and widespread as public health
education, but we need to explain that that's
exactly the same as in a group - are you in a
church is that starting to isolate you from your
friends and family? is it controlling your
personal relationships? Is that all you do? Is it
telling you what job to have? Is it controlling
your finances?
We can teach this and not just in terms of
personal relationships, but in terms of group
relationships, and so going back to your
question, we know that people who have prior
knowledge about these controlling mechanisms
are more resilient and resistant to the control.
I'm very happy to report he was able to get out
and get most of his family out subsequently.
These are very predictable systems once you
start understanding how they work, and the
same as a controlling spouse. On one level it's
quite predictable - we know what they do - they
isolate, they control. That's what they do. I'm
not saying it's easy because it's absolutely
terrifying leaving a coercively controlling
relationship or group but it gives you an
understanding. And the same for recovery
because often, when people come out, they've
internalised a lot of the messages they've
gotten in the cult or the relationship that they're
bad or they're weak or that it's their fault and so
for recovery it's very helpful to also understand
those dynamics.
"These are very predictable systems
once you start understanding how they work."
For instance, it will be hard to get me
entrapped now because I am very aware of
what the warning signs are.
M: So, if people understand how the trauma
bond works, it's almost like having insurance ,
so that they don't get sucked in to these cults
but what about if you are already trauma
bonded when you read up about it afterwards,
can that also help or not?
A: It helps. I have a good example because I
recently worked with somebody who was in a
current situation of entrapment - an adult who
had grown up in this group but fortunately had
not been cut off from the internet and had been
able to look up some things and discovered the
literature on cults and started thinking, “Is this
what it is? Is this what my family has been in,
that I got born into?” Through that
understanding he was able to then reach out,
secretly, of course, and get help on the outside.
It's also very helpful to talk to other people
who've been in a similar relationship, similar
situation, because then you really see the
similarity of the behaviours of the perpetrator
and you realise that it's not you. The charity I
work with, The Family Survival Trust, runs a
support group for ex-cult members, and people
from a wide variety of different groups find their
experience remarkably similar, because they're
predictable, it's predictable what's happened to
people who've experienced that.
M: That’s certainly what I’ve noticed, my own
experience is of self-help groups where,
looking back, I was being groomed and it felt
very similar to the love bombing in a controlling
relationship but also how they try to get
personal information from you- about your
childhood, about your relationships and
insecurities - how to get all your most intimate
details out of you and then use them against
you.
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