Recovery - Step Two: Out the Trauma

With tentative steps, I journey to the next portion of my recovery: Storytelling to out the trauma.

I would prefer a cabin in the woods with a solar-powered laptop, bowls of lentil soup and ginger tea to keep me warm and safe. Maybe I would only need a month there, maybe a year. What I have is a small apartment in Seattle, a routine including work, running and rock climbing, and the beautiful yellow leaves of Ravenna Park moments from my doorstep. Maybe with that lentil soup and ginger tea snippets of time in the evening will be enough.

Of course, maybe they won't be enough. The beautiful thing is that this is my recovery. The pain is inside right now. It's teeth gnaw, it's claws shred. It wants out, I want to let it out. As I walk through my memories, this may no longer be the case. When that happens, I will stop my telling until I am ready. This is my story. This is my journey. I can (and will) determine the path it takes.

And so, it is with this affidavit that I give you an excerpt from Dr. Janja Lanich's book, Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (Berkeley: Bay Tree Publishing, 2006). I plan to use the following 15 characteristics as my working outline.

"Concerted efforts at influence and control lie at the core of cultic groups, programs, and relationships. Many members, former members, and supporters of cults are not fully aware of the extent to which members may have been manipulated, exploited, even abused. The following list of social-structural, social-psychological, and interpersonal behavioral patterns commonly found in cultic environments may be helpful in assessing a particular group or relationship.

Compare these patterns to the situation you were in (or in which you, a family member, or a friend is currently involved). This list may help you determine if there is cause for concern. Bear in mind that this list is not meant to be a 'cult scale' or a definitive checklist to determine if a specific group is a cult. This is not so much a diagnostic instrument as it is an analytic tool.

1. The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.

2. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

3. Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader.

4. The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry - or leaders prescribe what typers of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline chilren, and so forth).

5. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar - or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).

6. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.

7. The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).

8. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deams necessary. This may result in members participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before join the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).

9. The leader induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.

10. Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.

11. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

12. The group is preoccupied with making money.

13. Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.

14. The most loyal members (the 'true believers') feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group."