Ashlen Hilliard - The Evolution of Cult Intervention Practices

the point. There's no difference, like nothing, I'm just getting older.

and yes, okay, can you can you? I hadn't heard that term before. Can you say what that means?

about manipulation and influence. Yeah, Like, so then there's gonna be people who seem like real people but meta controls them.

those accounts. I'm not saying metas intending to spread disinformation, although who fucking knows, but yeah, yeah, what was it you were going to say?

And that's a bot? And then another person responds and it was like a Reddit posts a while back of like dead Internet what this will look like, and it's just all bots like saying their bot yeah and pc shit to each other, and it was just really.

to be happening. It seems is that advertisers who are paying a ton of money to be seen on these platforms are going to be seen by like won't that water down their money their revenue income if everyone on the app is fucking bought anyway, I don't know anything, but I know I don't like it.

like more of a cult leader Kit McKean. It's also known as the Boston Movement, did a lot of Koreina College campuses, and the group I came from was a very small like sect within that, and it was then it was referred to as the non Institutional Churches of Christ.

During the nineteen hundreds there was a split from the mainstream Churches of Christ movement, and we're also known as the Anties anti apostrophe s because our group was known to be anti everything in that like the non institutional Churches of Christ really believed that they were practicing first century Christianity in the twenty first century. We have roots back to the second Grade Awakening, around the same time where Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses were coming to the scene.

Thomas Campbell and Barton W. Stone were like the main sort of founders I guess you could call them of the group during that time. Their sort of mission was, you know, they were in this era where they looked around them and they saw all these different sort of charismatic groups popping up and they're like, well, we have the Bible, and we have all these different splits and

variations on it. So like, what if we in essence use the Bible and created a framework for interpreting the Bible so that we can all reach the same conclusion as to what the Bible's saying. The church I came from was non denominational, whereas like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, they're denominational. They have like a central headquarters, they have

central leadership. Our group was more scattered, primarily in the Bible Belt, and they just were local churches and the money would stay, you know, for example, within the church, they're not giving it to a headquarters. There's no like established central leadership. But you could walk into a Church of Christ that was affiliated with this group in Florida, and walk into a Church of Christ affiliate with this group in California, and the beliefs and interpretations would be

the same with people. It was kind of like being raised in a non denominational denomination. So like the groups are the same, but they're locally run. This group has a lot of roots in history within my family. So I'm like third generation on my mom's side, and I was also a legacy student at the group's college. There's a Christian college in Tampa, Florida for those within the group,

and it's called Florida College. I attended there, my mom attended there, my grandmother attended there, and my grandmother even worked for the college for many many years. It was very like well known, and I guess sort of entangled within my family system. And to make things even more complex, it certainly was high control in that we had a hard time looking at other churches who claimed to be Christians and actually seeing them as Christians because they weren't

interpreting the Bible the same way that we were. And that was really sad, even at an early age for me. So one of the reasons why they're called the anties, for example, is their interpretation with scripture is, well, there's no guitar or piano mentioned in the New Testament used during worship service, So if you introduce one, it's not just a matter of church preference or meeting preference. That's

actually like inserting your own view into the Bible. That's going against God's authority, and that then becomes a heaven or Hell question. So your salvation can be at stake if you introduce something into the New Testament that doesn't exist. And because they only have himn songs and spiritual songs with like your voice, we were known as like a cappella only very strictly with these groups.

of the worship service. It was such a serious issue that churches that had a piano or a guitar their salvation actually could be at risk because of that. Wow and so it was a very fundamentalist interpretation of the scripture.

over her. No way, And so oftentimes she would have to bring in her husband into the Bible class to be present, or so it was like couples teaching, or like they would put in a male teacher at that stage to teach a young man. It was very very strict in that regard. So I attended the group's college and got married, got my degree and left shortly after.

through high school. Oh where actually like Caswell Fruit Heights area, it's like twenty minutes north of Salt Lake City, very old school, like old established Mormon pioneer town. And I attended a high school there, which was massive, very very Mormon area that I grew up in. And so from a very young age, my Mormon friends, which I who I loved and I had many of, they were trying to convert me, and I was trying to.

then proceeded to leave. And I that was a conversation that really like stuck with me. What really helped me in my transition out of my group was I had to really, I think critically with interacting with my also highly conservative Mormon friends. Interesting because I really decided to immerse myself. I read and studied so much of their scripture, their history. I became really really immersed in it because I wanted to learn how to connect with them what

it all meant. And I think a little bit also during that time, I was interested in trying to find out how to have almost like evangelical conversations with them. I think I was interested and seemed if I could almost make a dent as a Christian in the Mormon care.

my own faith and great bringing. And it also taught me, from a very i think early age to think really critically about this stuff because I was forced to encounter it every day.

dots in their own way during their own times. Yeah, it's a very effective tool actually for people in groups.

working in restaurants. I was just trying to like figure out what to do and apply for after just getting a degree. Just getting a bachelor's degree out of college was one of my most challenging times and actually finding work because it's not quite a master's and you don't have the experience, and so you're just kind of looking for any entry level thing. And I was really interested in helping other people who had been through some sort of similar transition in their life, whether that was a

loss of community of faith crisis. And I started volunteering at a nonprofit in the Salt Lake City Valley and it was very very small. There was maybe like there was like five employed staff when I was there, and they brought me into talk to women in this nonprofit, I should say, helped people who were exiting diverse Polygonist communities all across the Western US, And they brought me in to like speak to women who had left different

Polygamist groups. And when I say polygamists, I should probably say for the listeners, this is Mormon fundamentalist in this groups. So there's obviously a lot of history there as to how that all happened. But these are people who decided to keep practicing polygamy and felt that that was the truest form of the Mormon faith to continue on into

the present day. And they noticed how I interacted with the women, and you know, it's kind of like you put survivors who've been in a high control group in a room, and it doesn't matter what group they necessarily left, or how extreme or not extreme, they find ways to just get on, to just connect, to make jokes to like, you know that you just kind of get each other.

They noticed that the people who worked at this nonprofit, and so a job positioned open up to be a case manager, and I applied and I got the job. So I was one of like two case managers in the Salt Lake City Valley working with women and children

and young boys who were fleeing these different groups. And that involved working with people leaving the Kingston Clan, the Apostolic United Brethren Communities, the FLDS, and of course there's other smaller groups that are independent and yeah, so I started working there and experienced very quickly what it's like to work with cult survivors and crisis. I was getting women to safe houses. I was pulling tracking devices out

from under their cars. I was with law enforcement. I was getting gang stocked by the Kingston Clan late at night p Lake City. I encountered so many things at such an early age that was very unique. And I absolutely loved the work. I loved the clients. I loved just helping people get resources and get on their feet. And I helped moms get their GEDs for the first time.

I mean I I just loved the work. It was a very very dangerous work though, because men within these communities they knew me, they knew my other case manager, they did not like us, and so we experienced a lot of threats and it kind of got to a

point where it was really nasty. Yeah, And so I just I got involved with the International Cultic Studies Association and I presented at a conference back in like twenty eighteen in Philadelphia on my work, and a job positioned open up with them, and a director was like, you should apply for this thing, and so I did, and I got hired to work for the International Cultic Studies Association, and I worked there for about three and a half years.

They're one of the longer standing nonprofits that haven't been sued into the ground by cults. Yeah, and so I worked there for about three and a half years. Yeah. So I worked for ICSA for about three and a half years. That was a time where I really got plugged in with professionals working all across the industry, lawyers and then a health professionals, survivors or families who have been around in cult recovery for many, many years. And so I'm really grateful for my time spent there. I

was there for three and a half years. I was director of events. I was running the workshops, the conferences, my neurodivergence was put to the test. I was running all the things, and I got my master's degree in the psychology of course of control. I really wanted to understand more about the psychology of radicalization, why people join

these groups, why they leave, why they stay. I met Pat Ryan and Joseph Kelly also during that Manchester trip back in twenty nineteen, and they are sort of veteran cult interventionists. They've been in the field working with families for over thirty five years or something crazy. We stayed in touch and we just got really close, and I knew that I wanted to be doing the work that they were doing. I really missed doing more of the

intervention work. I was more so in like a administrative director events role, and so I was looking for ways to transition to do more of the intervention work with families. But as you guys know, there's not a career path for any of this, not at all. Like, if you want to work with people who've left cults, you kind of have to just figure out how to do that and in which way do you want to go to the therapy route? Do you want to go to the

social work route? And I had such unique experience in Utah that they're like, we think that you could actually really do this work and be really good at it. Yeah, So I work alongside them on different cases. I started people leave cults after getting my master's degree, and also work with survivors who are out of groups for peer support groups online and just want to help trioge them

to resources. Because I have so many connections with people in the field, I don't want them to have to put in a lot of work especially when they're in crisis and just looking for help, and I'm happy to do a consult with them and just be like, here are some places where you can go.

And so I think because it's so easy for helpers and social workers to just pour ourselves into other people in crisis, I really did poorly and didn't do a good job at addressing my own stuff until probably when I was working at ICSA was when I got to a place of like, Okay, my safety is not at risk like it used to be. I have a full time job. Now I can now take some time start

the therapeutic process. What would have been the better route would be to do that first before helping other people, because oftentimes, when survivors aren't healed themselves, we in the process can do harm, even unknowingly when we're working with other survivors, And so that was something that I learned in real time was just But I think part of it too was I kind of needed the time and separation to work with other people who had been through it for me to almost have the perspective of, oh,

these are things that I need to still work on and I need to think about. Yeah, I just I was so young. I was in my early twenties and we're still trying to figure out who we are anyways, you know, and I think, like, I think I kind of needed that time and re established safety to like do more deep dives in therapy into my own experience.

violence relationships can very cult like. And that's two. The group prioritizes its group beliefs and practices over individual autonomy, or there's a restriction of autonomy essentially, and that can be done through course of practices and doctrination. So that's like, in very very simplistic terms, how I shorten the very large definition and you can look at that very long definition on my site on the what is a cult tab? My sort of perspective on cults. It may not be

the most popular perspective. I think the term cult is very, very complex. It's very nuanced. There's not one agreed upon definition in the field as to what a cult is, although we have many good definitions. I care more so about not whether a group is labeled as a cult or not a cult. I care more so about the individual's experience. Did they have a cultic relationship with the person or group in question right, and if so, how

like how were they harmed? And one of the reasons why I sort of approach it that way is because defining a cult is just half of the puzzle for me in seeing how maybe groups line up with that definition, how they use course of control and doctrination and things like that. But I think the other half is just everyone's experience and groups are so diverse. Like I worked with women who were involved in polygamist groups who felt like their experience was relatively good, they just lacked resources

and they needed more resources for their kids. And then I worked with women who were trafficked as young girls to be married and had horrific experiences of abuse. And everyone's experiences is so diverse. And that doesn't mean that these groups aren't harmful. I certainly classify them as you know, harmful. But the term cult can also be used as such a thought stopping technique, as Robert J. Liften coins it, it's like just labeling someone as a Democrat or Republican

or you know. It's like it's one of those terms that can make people defensive, shut down the conversation. And so I like to leave it up to survivors as to how they want to define their experience. If the term cult is empowering for them, that's wonderful. If it is a harmful label for them or just doesn't sit well, we don't have to use it. And I think that's prioritizing their autonomy and the recovery process.

be really critical of them. Like it's okay to say, you know, this model doesn't fit my experience or this framework doesn't fit my experience. I want to help instilled sort of the critical thinking of that. I don't want to tell people what their experiences should be defined as, right, And when we work with families who have loved ones in groups, we tell them to take the word cult

out of their vocabulary entirely. So we oftentimes just use terms like abusive group, high control, group, course, or relationship because sometimes families have unknowingly done harm in the process of telling their loved one we think you're in a cult, right, and we know that. Oftentimes people put in that position, who are in groups will dig their heels in deeper.

They'll try to prove them otherwise, or the group has told them already, They've prepared them for that argument of Look, people are going to tell you that you're in a cult, and this is why we're not one.

example because I think it's a leading example. I think where I have seen that go in a very bad way is, for example, when QAnon was at its height and there was that sort of part of QAnon where they believe Joe Biden was a lizard person the White House is a set that became more than just a conspiracy or a belief. It became well, I don't know what's actually real in life anymore, and they needed more

immediate psycheaatric crisis care. And so that was sort of the turning point for some folks, sadly who were that's when the belief became a point of crisis. I also think beyond just functioning mental health is will the group allow you to prioritize yourself at any point during the

belief process. So if something isn't feeling right, if something isn't sitting right, can you say I don't agree with that point or I actually disagree with that perspective and still find community within that group or system without being punished, without being shunned, without you know, facing yeah, like any sort of negativity, or like there should be a fluidity or flexibility I feel like in beliefs, because beliefs can change the change from person to person, from group to group,

from place to place. And so if you change your belief or say, you know, I think this one sits well with me, but this one doesn't, okay, then you're out. That's a very unhealthy I feel like form of belief structure, and I think that is the structure that often leads to cults or high control groups is when people say, you have to adhere to this, even if it's to your.

how leftists are in a cult. You know, just like depending on where somebody is on the political spectrum, Neoliberalism is a cult, Republicans are like everybody thinks everybody else is a cult. Yes, politically right now.

not interact with them. But for other people who are more I think there's just a lot of people who are sort of in the gray and maybe don't know how to look at the system and how to vote. And I think there's more people out there than not and looking for ways to connect and still be in community and look for ways to help our neighbors. I think is really important. And I worry about social media just really putting people in such extreme echo chambers.

than it was back then. But I've also worked with families who, like I had a family who had a loved one in like a very culty left group and I actually like it had a very like established leader and like structure and demands and all this stuff. They were very secretive and actually joined the group to get eyes on the loved one who was in and see what I could find out. And I learned I was able to learn a lot about the structure and and so it exists on both sides.

But it's been a minute. So for those who haven't heard that, cult intervention today is very different from our traditional idea of cult deprogramming from like the seventies. Can you explain what sort of the differences.

off around the time of Jonestown. Sadly, I think that families who saw what happened in Jonestown, which was extremely tragic, if they had a kid who they thought was maybe involved in a cult like group, they were worried that the same thing would happen to them of what happened at Jonestown, And there wasn't a ton of information back in like the seventies as to like how to help someone who they believed was in a harmful group or relationship, and so programming was what was done, and it was

highly unethical, It was very sad It contributed to a lot of trauma. It was a course of practice that started in the mid nineteen seventies and ended in the early nineteen nineties. So it involved like highly confrontational methods to share or force information upon a cult involved person in order to elicit an emotional response. The father of de programming his name was Ted Patrick, and he would hire different teams to go out and oftentimes kidnap people

who were in these groups. They would be thrown into vans. They actually feared for their lives. Some of them thought that they were going to die because they didn't know what was going on. And they would take them to different hotel rooms or cabins or places and would forcibly share inform about why the group is bad. And the theory behind this was that if they extracted them from their cultic environment that they would just snap. They would like come out of this like hypnotic state of being

in a cult. And obviously that doesn't work for a lot of reasons. But horrific stuff happened during that time. I mean, there was a young woman I did a story on this on Instagram named Stephanie who was her parents hired a programmer because she was in a lesbian relationship. So it also affected queer folks. And Stephanie's story was horrific in that the men who programmed her, she said that she was raped by them. So it's horrible the stuff that happened during that time. There was a lot

of lawsuits. It really informed people like Pat and Joe, So Pat Ryan and Joseph Kelly had left groups around the time that there programming was happening. They left groups all on their own. And it's not perfect research, but research shows us that most people who join groups leave them on their own for different reasons. Megan, you left a group, Lola, you left a group. I left a group. It was all for different reasons.

back to the cult, which is very high. The programming took an average of eight and a half days, which is crazy to think about that someone is like in a room being a program for eight and a half days. Ten out of sixty two programming ended up in very substantial lawsuits, and there was more. There was way more than just ten. But this is just within the survey that was done. And even like people like Rick Ross who runs a cult education institute, he keeps a lot

of really good group archives. He participated into programmings and was sued back in the day. So there was a lot of people who were still on the scene who participated or were involved in some way into programmings. Pat and Joe were like, there has to be a better way. This is ridiculous, this is so much harm being contributed here. What they did was they wanted to create like a

ethical criteria sort of also like a competency criteria. So they started to distinguish professionals who wanted to work more ethically as exit counselors back in like the nineteen eighties, so parents knew if they hired an exit counselor, they're not going to kidnap their kid like a programmer would. And so they started using the term exit counseling to

view the approaches more voluntary and educational and ethical. But there was also an additional problem in that anyone could claim to be an exit counselor, like anyone can claim to do that and also exit counseling into programming. It was still during that time where like programming was the norm, so the terms were used interchangeably, and so the labels

failed to indicate someone's actions, educations and ethics. So in a move to professionalize the label in the field and establish competency criteria, Carol Giambalvo, Joseph Kelly, Patrick Ryan, and Madeline Tobias developed ethical standards in the nineteen nineties for what they call thought reform consultants, and you can actually look up the ethical criteria for Thought Reform Consolltants, and they wrote ethical standards and talked about insights into the

principles and practical applications of thought reform through open dialogue, educational resources, and personal testimonies that adheres to legal and ethical standards, ensuring a respectful and informative experience. So their ethical standards were patterned off of ethical codes for like the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, National Association of Social Workers, Standards for a Private Practice of Clinical

social Workers, American Psychiatric Association. And they also took a very radical stance, and that was the purpose of exit counseling or thought reform consultation was actually not to get someone out of a cult. That may be the desired outcome for families, but the purpose was to give the group member the inform nation that enables them to make a fully informed choice.

reform consults because they know what that means. So I'm like, let's just be cult intervention specialists ided here to this code of ethics. So that's what we do. And our approach when we work with families is to do no harm so the individual, and what we mean by that is we only recommend moving forward to interventions if there's truly opportunities. And if it makes sense when we say we do no harm is we work very slowly. We see if we can affect change within the current family system.

The family members already have established rapport, even if it's not great with the person who's in the cultic group or relationship, they already have a connection, and if they don't, we work first to rebuild the connection or to find ways to rebuild the relationship. Sometimes families inadvertently contribute more harm just because they don't know how to talk to someone who's in a cult, and that's why we get

called into help. And so we see how much work we can do, either via coaching or what messages we can send through the family to their loved one to see what will be effective. It's a much more low risk approach than doing an intervention. And when I say intervention, people think we talk about drug and alcohol interventions. Addiction is not the same. That's being indoctrinated into a high control group, and so it's actually a very different thing.

I have done interventions with Pat and Joe, and with interventions, what makes it different is the person who's involved in the group wants to actually talk to us we don't force ourselves to talk with them. They have to want to participate and get to know us and talk to us in order for that to happen. Now setting the stage for a good opening, that's a totally different sort

of set of preparation. But I've done interventions with Pat and Joe before where we talked to someone who was away from let's just say, an abusive relationship for a

period of time. We had a history of going back to the relationship, and so we had a good window where they wanted to meet us and talk with us, and we were able to share pretty openly about our own experiences within groups because it was so different from their actual circumstance and being in an abusive one on one relationship that they were really curious about our experiences, and so using our own stories is again that third party processing, like we talked about earlier, as a tool

to teach them certain concepts that were applicable to their situation. It was actually quite effective, and a lot of the intervention process is the rapport building. Like we when we come in to do an intervention, we're not doing it against the person who's involved. We're actually coming in and telling the cult involved love one. Hey, we've been in groups. Two, We've had lots of good experiences in groups too. How

can we help your family understand you better? So that's the approach that we take, and it yields a way less defensive. It then gets the whole family involved because they then see us as allies and we can explore quite openly their concerns, the loved one's concerns, and a much less defensive atmosphere. And what we do do is

we prep families for this process. We tell them, you know, this is kind of how the intervention looks and works, and here are some questions you can ask us that we think would be really good for your loved one to like hear. So some of it is kind of scripted out, but it's also like very intentional in like the questions that we're like we're trying to Basically, when it comes to interventions, you need the loved one to put the pieces together themselves. You can't spoon feed someone

in a cult that kind of information. And so how do we select effective messages to sort of talk about in an open format? Pat Ryan talks a lot about he had on the show he left his cult. Shortly after, back in like the eighties, his dad called him and he said, your sister's involved in this crazy Christian group. It was back then, I think it was the Way International, and he's I guess the dad called in a de

programmer because that was just common what they did. And I don't think she was abducted though in this instance or anything horrible like that. But the person came in the sort of programmer and he asked Pat to be involved in his sister's to programming. That is still a part of a Hindu group at this point, and it was through watching his sister's sort of deprogramming that helped him decide to leave his own group because it wasn't at all directed towards him have to be on the defensive, right,

It was, you know, directed towards another person. And he's sitting there listening to what the person's talking about. He's like, oh shit, like I think I'm in my own.

it takes a lot of education. And also the families have to be willing to change what they're currently doing, which can be hard because what they're doing has not been working, or else they wouldn't have contacted us. And so families have to be open to us bringing in a therapist to work with them, to receiving feedback and criticism, to being challenged by us on certain things. I think that's the hardest buy in I think for families is they think they have an idea as to how cults work.

They just want their loved one out, But there may have been some very valid reasons as to why they're loved one enjoying that group in the first place. So we have to kind of like it's just a very it's a much more investive process and requires change, and like also the families accepting more personal responsibility, if that makes sense, And so it's not an easy fix.

families who come to us. I never take a case by myself. Pat and Joe also don't either unless it's a situation where there's like very specific hourly work, like could you provide research or information on this right, But when it comes to giving any type of advice or strategy, I work alongside a specialized team. It doesn't have to always involve Pat and Joe. Sometimes I just pull in Joe on a case. And we also like to bring in a therapist, even if it's just for a few

hours during the assessment, to work with families. Joe and I are more of the strategic consultants who come in and we're doing cult recovery and education, and we're doing the strategy as to how to move forward. Someone like a mental health professional can come in and check in on the family, how are they doing with all this information, and also work a little bit with like family systems therapy, if you know what I mean, like working within the

family dynamics. So I see that as an opportunity for accountability and collaboration. So I never take cases by myself. And it also reflects our code of ethics that we adhere to. And you know, we have to go through continuous efforts also to improve our practices, teaching services and research. Me getting my masters in the psychology of course of control. I have research that's pending publication. My experience working directly with survivors going on seven years now, I think is

really important. And so yeah, it's tricky in that like we're basically consultants at the end of the day, but we don't work.

language because that is also not how actual reality. Necessarily we cannot control outcomes of other people.

it contributes to like saviorism. I feel like the sort of viroism complex where you can be the person who solves this complex problem. And the way I want to look at it is we're just sort of one cog in the machine for people and their experiences. People are having their own little experiences in cults. They love it, they hate it, they're exhausted, they're doing great. You know, it's all over the place, and so they're on their

own track. And messages that we can send through the family, you know, certainly can help, you know, with their own progression through the group. But promising that you can get someone out of a cult, or that if you're hired on a case that you just you can't. It's unethical to make those promises. And I'm very clear with families from the beginning are where we stand on this ethical

stuff and what we can and can't do. And also we work a part of a team, like we are in this as a team with the family, we like, we're all invested on this. Yeah. I see a big part of my work as just helping families not feel alone in the process.

advice as to how to move forward. I can give people general advice like don't criticize the group, take the word cult out of your language, and things like that, but we move very slowly and that's part of our do no harm approach. People who move very quickly towards just gathering the whole family and doing an intervention I think is one of the most high risk approaches you can take, because if that fails, that can do a lot more harm and that can make the family system

enemies through that individual. So if you move towards an in person confrontation as like the first step or the second step. That is something that worries me as well. Right, it's just so high risk.

and that's okay. Therapy is not the only right way, and there's a lot of talk about finding also a cult informed therapist. The reality is they can be very expensive because this is highly specialized. Many of them don't take insurance, and that's not a criticism of them. I certainly understand the problems with insurance right now and all of that, but I always encourage people that being in groups,

being in a cultic environment, experiencing indoctrination. There's actually a DSM category for people who've been in cults, and it's identified other under under other disassociative disorders due to the identity disturbance that cults can leave, and it's like prolonged identity disturbance.

complex trauma. So if you can't afford like a cult specific therapist, or if there's not in your state, there are a lot of therapists who do really good work with complex trauma, and you know, we can help either educate them or provide them with some resources if they want to learn more about cults. But complex trauma is something that I always encourage. If you're looking for therapy you can't afford or you can't find cult specific therapists, look for someone good in complex trauma.

we're doing right now. We're doing education. We're talking about how it applies to the cultic experience, how influence works, you know. How I feel like through the process of psycho education, we can start to give ourselves a lot more compassion through what we've been through because we did what we had to do in order to survive whatever dynamic we were in, and sometimes it wasn't even by choice for those who were born or raised right. And I think it gives survivors more of a strength based

approach to sort of view their experience through. And we can look at our experiences and learn from psycho education, like the value of learning about this stuff and feeling safer as we continue into the future, feeling more equipped through having this knowledge, and like finding community with others who also have been through it too and who get it. So I think psycho education, therapeutic support, and community can really really make a difference for survivors navigating life after

a cult. And that's the work that I try to do through people leave cults, is provide different resources across all of those spectrums.

we fit into this? And right, And I think there's a lot of de mystification that can happen through education and I love then, and I think like it just gives our brain different frameworks to view our experience through and that helps with healing, Like the brain wants to heal.

this is a thing, this is a common dynamic. I had that happen in a relationship I was in that was emotionally abusive, and I wasn't familiar with emotional abuse. I thought abuse had to only be physical. And my therapist at the time gave me a book on called The Berbly Abusive Relationship, and reading it changed everything for me because I was like, oh no, wonder, I felt crazy all the time, Oh no, wonder. I kept hoping that if I could just say it in the right way,

he would understand. And because in the relationship, I didn't have any of that language, and I just was confused all the time and felt off kilter, like something was just off in my reality all the time, and I didn't know why. So once I had that language, it was like a light bulb going on and helped me and integrate that experience into my story and you know, it's not this like a morphous, weird, confusing thing that happened that feels like it's my.

come to their own conclusions. It all comes back to this idea that you just really cannot control other people, right right, you like, And the only way to remove someone from a high control group is to is to totally relinquish control and not have any say in it whatsoever, basically, right, which is so maddening because you're like, but this is for your own good, but it's like, but no, they people have to reach their own conclusions.

does seem to be the most effective. Every professional, every ethical professional in the field basically says this, and there are countless examples of it at the same time, Depending on who the person is in their lives and in the person's life, sometimes being like what the fuck are you doing? Can work.