Two Ways To Question A Cult Member
Only one invites them to hear their own voice, not yours
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.
