Latest / Clear Path Christianity / What Nobody Tells You About Leaving a CULT || CPC Podcast Ep. 17
Transcript
- Cole Crone: Okay. Everything in the frame looks decent. I d I do wonder if it's close enough. I don't know, but I'm probably not seeing the whole thing, so okay, I'm gonna turn that around so that I'm eye contact. Speaking to the audience. I'm looking at the camera literally as often as I can. I'm literally trying to just look at it as much as I can. I I there's no more I have to be able to look at my notes. Yeah. So I'm looking at it as much as I as I can. Okay. So I'm gonna start my timer so I can kinda tell where I'm at. Just keep an eye on the backside so we know if we're crapped out or something. Okay, so in the last ep last three episodes, I talked about the process I went through in order to escape the cult I was born and raised in. One of the recurring themes in those episodes is the idea that every new realization does not bring the end of the story, but the beginning of a new chapter in a larger narrative. Okay. All right. Action. ⁓ okay. over. Okay. So in the last three episodes I talked about the the process I went through in order to escape the cult that I was born in. And one of the that's a stupid way of saying that. That's the end that's not the end of the sentence. Okay. So, in the last three episodes, I talked about the process I went through in order to escape the cult that I was born and raised in. One of the recurring themes in those episodes is the idea that every new realization is not the end of the story, but the beginning of a larger narrative. Now, this episode is going to be no different ⁓ because This episode is no different. ⁓ that's I have a weird period in there. Sorry. I was talk to texting this one. So this episode is going to be no different as walking out the door was not the end of the story, but sort of the beginning of a new story, right? Leaving the cult was not the end of the journey, but the beginning of an entirely new journey. People who haven't escaped a cult or ⁓ an abusive situation may or or may not know that, but it but it It doesn't feel as much like escaping prison as you might think. There's there's certainly a lot of truth to that, the the idea that you get this immediate rush of freedom. But the thing that nobody seems to be talking about is the fact that freedom can feel almost overwhelming when you've never had it before. And so in this episode, we're gonna look at some of the things that Nobody tells you about burp. So in this episode we're gonna look at what nobody tells you about leaving a cult. The first thing I want to look at is the idea that that grief and relief can exist simultaneously. ⁓ once I decided to leave my community, I I assumed that relief would be the predominant feeling, the the predominant emotion that would mark my experience. Now, the reality is that it felt like a blend of Relief and grief. So on the relief side, I'm I'm no longer forced to pretend. ⁓ I'm no longer to sub I'm no longer forced to suppress my questions, I'm no longer being asked to defend contradictions. But on the grief side, I I've lost some things that meant a lot to me. Whether it's community or my routines or pieces of my identity or certain relationships. So in in general, I have I have been told that divorce can feel a lot like this, where there's a blend of grief and relief. You sort of have mixed feelings about it. Sometimes leaving a career can feel this way. ⁓ sometimes moving away from home can feel this way. There these are these are certainly these are certainly bittersweet experiences. But but leaving a cult it adds a certain kind of debilitating spiritual element that I was not anticipating. Okay. Point number two that I want to talk about is that loneliness is real. There's there's a certain amount of of loneliness that comes along with leaving a high control community, especially one that you were born and raised in. The the community itself often provides some nice perks, right? You have friendships, social events, support structures, a certain amount of identity comes with being a part of these high control groups. So once that is gone and and you no longer have those things, or at least you don't have the version of those things that you are used to. You you start to kind of realize that wait a second, I don't actually know how to build relationships outside of this system. So this was this was an especially tough thing for me. I didn't know how to like even initiate conversations with people. ⁓ the only people that I interacted with were ⁓ the people who were the friends and family that were chosen for me because I was. Born and raised in this small community that had ⁓ that was closed off for all intents and purposes from the entire outside world, or like my coworkers. Those were really the only people that I ever really interacted with growing up. ⁓ for the vast majority of my life, in fact. So I didn't actually know how to come into a neutral situation and engage people socially. So there was there were definitely some. There are definitely some social ⁓ socially debilitating aspects of this. And and at times I felt very isolated and and very lonely. Okay. The third point, I'm on number three, right? Yes, one, two, three. Okay. The third point that I want to highlight here, these are things that I've found very few people talking about, which I think would have helped me a lot five, ten years ago. And it is that you have a you have ⁓ there is difficulty with decision making. So it as I as I research this, it seems that there's a This is a very common issue, but it didn't seem like a lot of people were talking about it, which was odd to me. So, ⁓ but it very much marks my personal experience. So in cultic groups, many decisions are made for you. ⁓ only approved opinions exist. ⁓ only approved choices exist. So after leaving, you suddenly think to yourself, well. That sounds great, but it's often terrifying in practice. Because if you're only allowed to choose between a few things at most, and then all of a sudden the world is your oyster, it's you get you sort of get sensory overload where you're like, Okay, all I understand that I have all of these options now, but I was struggling to make the choices between the three things I had before. Now I have hundreds of options of what to do with in any given moment of my life and so I'm I'm kind of on pause here. So here are some examples that I personally struggled with. So when I came out of a cult, I came out of a cult because I had I had had an encounter with Jesus Christ. And I wanted to to follow him. And so that required my wife and I to make certain decisions. And they were decision that we had never made before. Worldview level decisions. And so here were some of the ones that we struggled with the most. ⁓ What church should we attend? What type of church should we attend? What kind of books are safe to read? ⁓ who can we trust? Either on the internet or right on the radio or in our local community. We had no idea. And then what do we actually believe? Right? It was like we're not really even sure. We're we're we're certain about this whole Christianity thing, but what does that exactly what does that exactly amount to, like in reality? And so it can be very overwhelming. It was certainly was for us. It was very overwhelming to ha suddenly have the ability to make or suddenly have the ability to make any decision, but also ⁓ not really knowing Of the pantheon of decisions that we could possibly make, which ones were going to be right and wrong. Can you stop bumping the table? 'Cause it shakes everything. It's okay. So point number four. Okay, I'm gonna say a little bit more about. So for example, one of the things that I struggled with when we first escaped a cult was this idea I I'd always wanted to go to college. College wasn't an option where I came from, and all of a sudden I no longer have that particular limitation. ⁓ but at the same time I I didn't I didn't really know. I I was like, Well, I've got a wife and I've got kids and I have a full time job. Is this something that people do? Is this a weird choice? Is this a choice that a guy like me can even make? ⁓ what are the financial implications of this? It was just I was stuck in this kind of overwhelming pattern of overthinking because these things weren't even on the table for me for most of my life and now all of a sudden these doors are all opening and I'm not exactly sure which ones are the right ones to walk through, right? When you're pointed towards the only door that there is, or maybe one door of maybe two doors that you could go through and all of a sudden there you're looking at hundreds of different doors that you could walk through. ⁓ there there's this is this is what I mean when I say there's kind of this debilitating anxiety about ⁓ decision making. So the fourth thing that I want to look at is the the idea that ⁓ that trust becomes very complicated. The idea of trust can be very complicated. After you discover that you've been misled, there seems to be two recurring patterns that people tend to fall into. You have, on the one hand, you have extreme suspicion. And on the other hand, you tend to have extreme gullibility. Neither is healthy. So as far as I can tell, I don't I couldn't find anybody who actually did a peer-reviewed study on this particular thing, because it's kind of hard to decide what a a cult even is. But basically anywhere between 33%, so one in three, and 50% of people who escape cults end up in another cult. So the other 50% go go completely to the other side of the pendulum, generally speaking. And they don't ever trust anything to be true. They sort of become these ⁓ you know, survivalist conspiracy theorists who don't really trust any systems, and then they don't have much community, they become very isolated. Worst case scenario, you have a Ruby Ridge sort of situation happening, right? And so, ⁓ I think that for for many former cultists, we struggle with at least a few things that that make us go in one of these two directions. ⁓ we struggle with the idea of authority. We are either quick to submit ourselves to the wrong authorities, or we refuse to submit ourselves to any authorities. Same thing goes for organizations, institutions, the idea of experts. The idea of guidance. These sorts of things are like we're we're either very suspicious or too quick to accept. And an unhealthy too y you know those people, right? Who just sort of accept everything that they're told. Is you know, like that everything is what it says on the tin when a lot of times it's not, you know. So they end up being taken advantage of yet again. And this is because trust has been damaged. The the very idea of trust has been damaged for many people who have come out of cults or high control systems. Then this is really for religious systems in general, but really any high control group or affiliation that you might have would you would also feel some of these same sorts of things. Okay, good. So, point number five is the idea that everything sort of feels uncertain. So, for for years, my worldview explained everything. There was always an explanation for everything. Now, at least they had answers for everything, right? Now, in my case, many of those answers. were bad answers. But but there was a total package. Right? There there was a very it was it was relatively free of internal inconsistency. And people were relatively confident that it was true. And so it was sort of easy to accept. Just like, here are the kind of things that you need to accept. Here are the kind of things that you probably shouldn't look into. And then everything is going to be fine. Now, maybe you come from you were maybe you were sold a worldview that had really good answers for everything. Mine didn't. It was it was a it was a it was good for what it was and useless for basically anything else. So either way, your your former worldview doesn't have the answers anymore. And so you have this. This period of time where everything sort of feels like it's in flux. This often leads to a number of deep and difficult questions. For example, what is true? Like, what is true? What is truth really? But but what is true? ⁓ which religion is correct? Are any religions correct? Or are they just all some facet or another of the same falsehood? Who should I believe? Who are the real experts? Who are the people who actually have the truth propositions? what if I'm wrong or being misled again? How would I know? I've been wrong and misled in the past. How do I know that I'm not also being wrong and misled again? Uncertainty is is certainly ⁓ uncomfortable for most of us. For for former cultists, it's often cripplingly uncomfortable. It's something that we have a very difficult time dealing with for months, sometimes even years. I'm gonna double check that I'm on point number six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Num no number six is was another particularly difficult one for me. And that was that you kind of feel inescapably behind. And what I mean by that is that that many former cultists feel like everyone knows things that they should know, but don't. Because they've been stuck in this heavily restricted sort of community. So, some examples, generally speaking, this is these are some similarities that are sort of across all people who have escaped high control. religious systems or closed other types of closed communities. They often have educational delays because education isn't always something that's provided in these small kind of closed communities. They may, as a result, lack basic job skills. This is something that many of us struggle with. I'm not talking about specifically people where I come from. I'm talking about kind of universally. And then Third thing, a lot of times we struggle with long term relationships, whether those are romantic relationships or long term friendships or right, whatever the case may be. And again, because there's just kind of a lot of psychological, sociological baggage that comes with having been raised in a group like this. Now, I have experienced some version or another of all of these. Now, when my wife and I left the cult that we grew up in, we became Christians. So we experienced a s a certain kind of specific type of delay. And here are just some specific examples of that that we struggled with that nobody told us we were going to struggle with. And I wish they had. ⁓ Learning historic Christianity. Where we came from, the only understanding of Christianity that we had was about a hundred and fifty years old. Everything prior to that w if it wasn't in the Bible, was wrong by default. You there was I mean there was really nothing else that was taught. ⁓ learning basic theology. We didn't know really hardly anything about ⁓ Christianity. We we had to learn these things. And a lot of these things we learned as our process of deconversion from our cult. With those these were the sorts of things that were like light bulbs going off that kind of showed us the way. Learning new things about Christianity is what exposed us to the fact that we weren't actually Christians. And then like learning how to read the Bible. These were things that we had to kind of learn on our own. Because we were coming from a place that didn't teach any of these things. And in a lot of ways, we were pretty delayed from where we should have been. So these each one of these areas were areas where we were certainly far behind our our peers, right? And this was a a significant challenge for me, but for ⁓ for my wife as well, to a much more debilitating extent, I would say. And so these were these were challenges that we weren't necessarily anticipating when we left the group that we were raised in. Good? It it's really distracting when you're like acting like you're in pain and you're I'm just trying to distract. I'm sitting on the end of this couch hurts. ⁓ okay. All right. So I'm on point number six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah, point number seven. All right, point number seven is that freedom can feel strange. And I know that sounds that maybe sounds a little bit like who doesn't want freedom, right? Isn't freedom I'm an I'm an American. Isn't freedom like the greatest thing ever as we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation's independence? Isn't freedom like top of mind for everybody? Well, for for years of my life, my lived experience was harsh rules, hyper strict. Boundaries, vague answers to my questions. There wasn't a lot of freedom there. ⁓ my my entire system was something that was imposed upon me and enforced at great personal cost. Challenging the system came at great personal cost. And so once I left my closed community. I had to try to learn real wisdom instead of just blind rule following. Like anybody can just follow a set of rules, right? It's like it's as simple as playing a board game, right? You you you play by the rules and the game plays out as it's meant to. Designing a board game is something entirely different. Right? Anyone can play a board game. Few people can actually build one and create one. And so now I'm going from over here where I'm just basically playing the board game, to now I'm having to decide for myself which worldview of the worldviews on offer do I want to join myself to, commit myself to? Which do I believe to be true and have ⁓ the greatest positive impact on the world around me? These sorts of like worldview level considerations. And so in in my experience, freedom was actually something that at first was very crippling. I I thought that it would feel fun, fresh, exciting, a new adventure, that kind of a thing. And and there were times when it did. It it it wasn't all I mean, obviously, 'cause I'm here. I I have a relatively normal life now compared to the first thirty two years of my life. But but a lot of the time the amount of freedom that I suddenly have was pretty disorienting for for both myself and for many of the members of my family. And so while you think one thing that conflicts with what your actual lived experience is, you had hoped for one thing when you were on the the the still in the community. You would hope that being outside of the community would have certain results. And then when you actually get there, it it wasn't exactly what you thought. And so I there was some reconciling that had to be done there. And point number eight, and this is probably the most important point, which is why I've saved it for last, it is that that healing takes a lot longer than you would expect it to. Sometimes, sometimes much, much, much longer than you expected it to. It seems to me that people often think that once they leave a bad situation, everything will be okay. I kind of believed that for a lot of my life growing up. I just kind of thought, man, if I hadn't been born here, I would be able to do all of these things with my life. And even up until two or three years before we left the community that we were born and raised in, we had some of those conversations, like, man, wouldn't it be great to this or wouldn't it be great to that? And you know, the the grass was pretty green on the other side of the fence. And then you got over there, and it was like, ⁓ dang, actually, I I do still struggle with a lot of the same things that I struggled with. And there are complications that I hadn't anticipated. And things aren't as cut and dry, black and white, easy, hard, right, as I thought they would be when I was on the other side of the fence. And so in reality, it it seems to me to be the case that. Healing is something that needs to be measured in months and years and maybe even decades, rather than looking for these immediate points of relief, these immediate points of positive change. Of course, there is a lot of relief, and there is a lot of positive change. But I had I had hoped that it would be more. I would, I would hope that I would I hoped on the other side of things. That things would change rapidly. And some things did, but a lot of things didn't. If it if it takes you a while, like it did for me, to get deprogrammed, you might want to think that that means something in you is broken. That something about you is broken. And you're like, okay, now what do do? Right. I've been out of this thing for a while now and I still have all this baggage. How do I offload some of this? Like I thought that a lot I thought these things were gonna change when I got onto this side of things, and yet there's all this stuff going on. It again, it that doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, right? It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you. I kind of thought that. My wife thought that a lot. We we both did. It was like, man, I feel like there's certain people who are just miles and miles and miles ahead of me. Why am I still struggling with this particular issue from my past? And it it just it just means that the recovery process is a process. It's just what it is. It's it's it's not an instantaneous thing. It's not something that you walk out the door and get to immediately experience. Again, it it's it's not the end of the story, it's the beginning of a larger narrative. So for me, these are a few things that I wish someone had been more direct and blunt about to me when when I was leaving a cult. ⁓ walking away doesn't instantly solve everything. Freedom is real, healing is real, but rebuilding takes time. You're not just gonna immediately become a completely different person. Because you've changed your community from this community to this community. You are going to experience a lot of positive change. I experienced more positive change in a lot of areas of my life than I ever thought I could. But that wasn't in every area of my life. If if you have experienced some of the things that I've talked about in this episode, just know that you're not alone. I feel like I'm constantly saying this on this podcast, because there were a lot of times when I felt. Alone. And I don't want other people to to feel that way. If if you've experienced confusion, grief, loneliness, uncertainty as a result of leaving a cult or any other type of abusive or traumatic situation, it's not because there's something wrong with you or that you're failing in some way. I want I want if you take one thing away from this podcast episode, I hope that's the thing. Just know I've been there. It's really tough. And I hope that people like me talking about this process will keep you from having false expectations. If you are someone who is trapped in an abusive marriage or in an abusive household, maybe your parents are abusive. Maybe you are in a low income community and you think, man, if I could just get out of this, everything would be great. That's just not the way that the world works, unfortunately. That's been my experience, anyways. It it's it's a process that many of us have experienced, but it's a process. And so if you can if you can hear just one thing that I've said in the last however many minutes I've been going, it's this. Don't think that change is going to be instantaneous, because healing is a process. Recovery is A process. That's