With all the love and logic you possess, you take a deep breath, find your courage, and proclaim to your family member, “Can’t you see this group is a destructive cult?”
To your chagrin, a wall goes up, the eyes go flat, and the person you love recites something that sounds like a recording. You walk away feeling that you have somehow pushed them further in.
In my time helping families reach loved ones inside destructive groups, I have learned that there is a clear difference between asking questions with curiosity versus asking them with a predetermined “trap” in mind. When you ask a question like this, you realistically are making a disguised statement and you hand the other person a position to defend — and a mind under undue influence is exquisitely trained to defend.
When you ask a genuine question, something very different happens. You invite the person to reach for an answer that lives inside them, and in reaching for it, they hear their own voice, not yours.
The Person’s Own Voice
There is a principle from social psychology that anyone trying to help a loved one should carry in their pocket. People believe what they hear themselves say and see themselves do far more deeply than what they are told.
Self-persuasion is vastly more effective and long lasting than direct persuasion because the motivation for change feels like it comes from within, and we often determine our own attitudes, beliefs, and emotions by observing our own behavior.
This is why, in destructive groups, new members are put to work recruiting others almost immediately. As I described in Combating Cult Mind Control, nothing crystallizes a person’s beliefs faster than having them persuade someone else to share those beliefs. The group understands, better than most families do, that self-persuasion is stronger than any lecture.
When you tell a cult member, for example, that their leader is a fraud, you are one more outside voice to be dismissed, and the group has already warned them that you would say exactly this.
But when a well placed question leads them to articulate a doubt in their own words, that doubt becomes theirs. It cannot be unsaid, and it cannot be dismissed as your propaganda because they have come up with it themselves. This is why I tell families that the insight a person reaches on their own is worth a hundred facts you could have handed them.
The Difference Between a Leading Question and a Curious One
Many well intentioned families stumble when advised to “ask questions” instead of citing facts and figures to a cult member. They hear “ask questions” and begin asking questions that are really arguments in disguise.
“Don’t you think it’s a little strange that your leader owns three mansions?” is not really a question, but a lawyerly leading statement disguised as one. Further, it’s also a dead end yes or no question. It does not necessarily invite discussion.
A leading question has a predetermined answer you are steering toward, and the person on the other end knows that they are being steered towards a particular conclusion. A genuinely respectful, curious question has no trap in it because you actually want to know what they think.
The interaction should never feel like a prosecutor questioning a witness on the stand. If you are asking with the intention to “trap” them, the conversation will go nowhere.
This tends to surprise most families, but when I sit with someone in a destructive group, I am genuinely open to seeing the world through their eyes. I am not pretending. This openness creates a state of mind that the other person can feel, and it makes them safe enough to be open in return.
The Kinds of Questions That Reach the Authentic Self
Over the years, I have found that the most effective questions tend to fall into a few different categories. You do not need to memorize them as a script, as every person and every relationship is different, and what opens a genuinely productive discussion with your friend may blow up a conversation with your daughter. Think of these as starting points for your own creativity.
Identity questions invite the person to speak from who they really are, apart from the group.
If the group never existed, and you were happy with your life, what do you think you would be doing?
In my book, Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Thoughts & Beliefs, I describe how members often go blank at first and insist they are happy right now. When that happens, I gently emphasize the hypothetical.
But I’m just curious, if this group never existed, and you had a full, happy life, what might you imagine yourself doing?
Sometimes the answer that comes back is startling and revealing, and reflects that the cult identity is present and guarded.
“Oh, I’d be a drug addict,” or “I’d probably kill myself.”
An answer like that has just shown you a phobia the group installed, an irrational, implanted fear about what happens to those who leave. Other times, you hear the authentic self speak plainly.
“I’d be teaching,” or “I’d be married with a child.”
Incongruity questions draw attention to a gap between what the group promised and what the person is actually experiencing without you ever naming the gap yourself.
For example, a mother once told me her son meditated in trance for hours after being told it would clear his mind. In reality, he got spacey, and headache ridden. Rather than attack the practice, the move is to ask about what he was told would be the result and how he feels now that he tried to implement the instructions and got a negative result? What is his plan now that he is getting headaches and feels spacey?
By asking, you are not telling him to stop, or even that the practice is not helping him. Instead, the purpose of questions like these is to allow for the cult member to come to their own conclusions about the promised result and the actual effect of the practices.
Hypothetical questions may be the most powerful of all, because they slip past their guard entirely.
I am very curious, what would you do if God came to you tonight (and you knew 100% it was God) and told you it is time to leave the group?
What would you do if the leader admitted they weren’t really the prophet?
A member usually insists that these things would never happen, but pressed gently, many eventually admit they would leave if specific things happened.
Another version I have used for decades is,
What would need to happen for you to feel empowered to leave and move on with your life?
Their own answer becomes a set of criteria, and sometimes those criteria have already been met inside the group, hidden from them.
The most important skill in this whole endeavor is learning to hear which self is talking. The cult identity tends to speak in tape loop and sounds like a flat, rehearsed recitation of group slogans, delivered with unusual intensity, the eyes a little glassy, the posture rigid. The authentic self sounds different: warmer, more spontaneous, willing to share their feelings, sometimes even funny.
When the cult identity answers, do not confront it. Confronting the cult identity only strengthens it, because you have handed it exactly the fight it was built to win. If you visualize asking a question and can already hear the wall coming up, that is your signal to change gears.
What This Looks Like
Imagine a sister on a phone call with her younger brother, who has spent the past year inside a “high performance” coaching organization that has him working eighteen hour days and handing over most of his paycheck for the next tier of training. She has already tried the direct approach and watched it fail.
Sister: “I keep thinking about that road trip we took after you finished school, when the car broke down outside Amarillo and we ended up spending the night talking on the hood. You seemed so easy going that night.”
Brother: “That was before I understood how much I was wasting my potential.”
(At this point, the sister feels the urge to say, “You weren’t wasting anything, you were happy and employed.” That is a statement, and it would summon the defenses. She holds it and stays curious.)
Sister: “That makes sense… you always did want to give things your all. I’m curious how the program feels day to day. What’s your sense of it lately? Has it been a comfortable transition?”
Brother: “Comfort is the enemy of growth.”
(That flat, borrowed phrasing is the programmed “tape loop”. It’s also a thought-terminating cliche, a rehearsed quick statement meant to immediately halt critical thinking. These are commonly taught and rehearsed in cults and high control groups. Rather than challenge the slogan, she deflects back toward something concrete and personal.)
Sister: “Hmm. When you first joined, what were you hoping it would give you?”
Brother: “Focus. A way to finally stop feeling like I am behind everyone else.”
Sister: “I can understand that. Sometimes I feel behind, too. And now, a year in, do you feel less behind?”
Brother: “…Some days. I just have to keep working the program.”
(This is the authentic self, noticing a contradiction on its own. She slows down and lets the silence sit before offering a gentle hypothetical, with no trap in it.)
Sister: “What would a good week actually look like for you?”
Brother: “Honestly, I don’t really know.”
That “I don’t know,” said honestly instead of defensively, is worth much more than any figure she could have quoted about the money or the hours. The move now is not to seize the opening and press her case, but to hold it warmly, thank him for giving his thoughts, and come back to it another day. It is much better to end here than push further, risking the reemergence of the cult identity.
None of this is a magic formula, and it usually involves multiple conversations. This is a process. Let them feel you are really listening to them. Valuing them. Be the “safe person” for them to turn to when they have a crisis – and believe me, these events that will happen and can open doors.
Your job is knock on their door. It is to remind them, one honest question at a time, that they can walk through it on their own. And remember, allowing them to save face will speed up their exiting process.
A smooth way to allow for this is to share your own life story and times when you believed in something or trusted someone and learned that it wasn’t what you wanted to believe it was. This way, you serve as a role model, modeling that change is human and normal and that moving on can be stressful, yet wonderful and life enhancing.
Further Reading
Breaking Through Thought-Terminating Cliches
Practical scripts for responding when a loved one recites a slogan meant to end all discussion.
Why facts don’t free people from authoritarian belief, and how to connect with the person still inside.
When is it estrangement protective, and when might it signal undue or cult-like manipulation?
Cult Member Wavering? What to Say in The First 60 Seconds
In this window, your goal is not to win, prove a point, or pile on evidence. Your main goal is to let your person’s authentic self know that doubting is a safe thing to do so the authentic self stays out a little longer.