Cult Member Wavering? What to Say in The First 60 Seconds
How to avoid triggering the cult identity
One ordinary afternoon, in the middle of an ordinary conversation, it happens.
“I don’t know. Some of it doesn’t quite add up lately.”
Your heart leaps. Finally! In that instant, every instinct in your body wants to seize the opening and scream, Yes! Let me show you. I’ve been saving these articles about how it’s all a scam! I’ve read so much about this! Let me explain what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.
Unfortunately, that instinct is the single most common way families slam shut the very door they just saw open. The right way to hold this moment is almost the exact opposite of what feels natural.
Why This Moment Is Fragile
When someone is drawn deeply into a high-control group, their authentic self, the person you raised, married, or grew up with, is not erased.
The authentic self is suppressed beneath what I call the cult identity, a second identity built around the leader, the ideology, and the group’s rules. Your loved one is, in a real sense, at war with themselves, with two “identities” (or frames of mind) sharing one body with one of them “on duty” at a time.
A doubt surfacing means the authentic self has briefly stepped forward and taken the floor, which is great news. The hard news is that the cult identity is standing right behind it, conditioned to retake control the instant it senses an attack.
The doubt you just heard is genuine, but it is extremely vulnerable and frightening for the cult identity, and the authentic identity can be made to retreat as quickly as it appeared.
For this reason, when I work on cases, I spend much of my time teaching families that rapport and trust are the foundation for everything else. Without them, the person won’t tell you what’s really going on, won’t trust you, and won’t listen.
For instance, I once spoke with a woman whose husband had joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses. After reading my first book, she spent over two years gathering articles to discredit the group and pushing them on him. Each time she criticized, she injured their rapport a little more.
