Why You Hide Your Cult Past From the People You Love
The silence could be the thing holding you back from real intimacy
There comes a day when you meet someone kind and patient – they make you laugh and make you feel special in ways you didn’t know could be possible since exiting the cult.
This relationship is real, and so you open up, allowing yourself to feel vulnerable and honest for the first time in a long time. There is only one thing you don’t feel comfortable sharing, and you have put your cult experience in a closet and locked it shut.
Reflecting upon your days in the cult, whether it was religious or relational, you decide that your involvement says something about you that you want to bury. Why would telling them matter anyway? You’ve left the group, stepped cautiously back into the world, and fallen in love.
At times, the locked door rattles and reminds you of those days. Perhaps it is a holiday, when a family gathering with your in-laws provokes a silent panic attack, and you close up. To those who don’t know your past, it can appear cold and confusing, leaving your partner feeling shut out. They don’t understand and are entirely oblivious to the exhaustion and ache that comes with holding the door closed.
Why the Door Often Stays Shut
Staying quiet about cult involvement often stems from a lack of doing the processing and healing necessary. It could also be a societal myth that only a certain “type” of person joins a cult. These stereotypes cut deep, muffling those who would otherwise feel free to tell their truth, while simultaneously concealing the actions of the cult and their effects on your life. Some former members have, in fact, lost their jobs because employers had a bias against ex-members.
Your cult involvement is not and will never be evidence of weakness, foolishness, gullibility, or any of the other ugly words and entirely untrue associations people attach to former members. Instead, cult involvement is evidence that you encountered a system of deception and undue influence, which I define as manipulation that clouds your judgment and erodes your autonomy without your informed consent.
Cults recruit and desire intelligent, idealistic, capable people, and they certainly do not advertise themselves as cults.
I wrote in Combating Cult Mind Control that when I first left the Moonies in 1976, I didn’t want anyone to know about my two years in the group. Thus, I understand the impulse to keep these parts of your autobiographical history hidden.
A common refrain for ex-cult members and survivors goes something like this,
If they knew, they would think less of me. They would see me as broken, as someone who couldn’t tell up from down, as a person who they don’t trust to make good decisions.
There exists an implicit cruel irony to this, in that the very groups that took advantage of you taught you that the only reasons people leave are weakness, insanity, temptation, or sin.
That programming – as much as we wish it would – does not immediately dissolve when we exit the high-control situation. In many cases, without specialized counseling, the albatross around your neck can stay heavy and speak in the voice of the cult, whispering that your past makes you unlovable. The shame keeping you quiet was and is, in a real sense, manufactured and maintained by the people who hurt you.
Later in 1976, after seeing other former members stand up and share their cult involvement, and with the audience very supportive, I gained courage. I started speaking publicly a couple of months later.
