"also my mom has a phd in social work and she is very good at it(she loves to study) but when i tell people that they seem to think that I am crazy...how can she be so devoted to this crazy cult if she has been educated especailly in the field of socail work...."
Its complicated.
First, people may experience their own children as extensions of themselves. They may behave beautifully toward adult friends, yet quite differently with thier own children. It may be that in some cases, parents may not experience themselves as adult in relation to their own children...they may see thier own children as if younger siblings, and take out on them unfinished business in relation to their own sibling relationships.
(I suspect I reminded my mother of a younger sister whom she constantly fought with. Sometimes Mom was parental and nurturing toward me, but other times, probably if I did something that triggered some unconscious cue in Mom, she reverted to feeling like a pissed off child and saw me as if I was this youngre sister whom she fought with all the time. So, suddenly this person I thought was supposed to be my mother was acting like a mean, nasty sister who happened to be in an adult body. I was left blindsided, wondering what I did wrong. I didnt do anything wrong. Mom was dumping unfinished business from her life, onto me.)
My cousin told me his parents were mean and crazy to him and his brothers and sisters. He told his school friends what he went through at home. But when they visited his place for dinner, my aunt and uncle were charming---you see, visitors, even other kids had to be seduced and soothed and flattered.
So my cousin's school mates were bewildered and thought he was lying to them--they were kids and could not understand how adults could be nice in public and mean in private.
Finally, it may not always matter if someone has a psychotherapy credential. If that person does not expose thier inner lives fully and honestly to training analysis or to their clinical supervisor, they can smuggle all sorts of unresolved issues with them right through the training process and never have it uncovered.
A therapist in this predicament can sometimes be helpful and healing to patients--that is, non family members, yet be quite a different and more hurtful person in relation to family members.
I have no way of knowing if this was the case with your mother, but am just
mentioning that it can happen.
Susan Erikson Bloland, daughter of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, has a very enlightening book titled 'In the Shadow of Fame.' She reports that both her parents were quite different in private than in public--and hurt thier kids, yet her father was a huge help to patients and wrote marvellously insightful and useful books. But according to Susan, both the Erikson parents saw fit to prematurely terminate their training analyses---their therapists were starting to get them to face the areas where they felt personally most vulnerable--which is the point where an apprentice therapist most needs to remain in training analysis.
But the Eriksons managed to jump off the hot seat rather than face full insight into their areas of personal pain...and mysteriously, Erik Erikson was allowed to graduate from his training and given permission to practice independently as an analyst--a bit like being licensed to drive if you've found a way to dodge or fudge the visual acuity test.
Other issues for therapists who end up entangled in cultic sitautions are discussed here.
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forum.culteducation.com]
Yet by contrast, some persons have been liberated from cult entanglement by honestly going through the clinical training process. Daniel Shaw was in a cult
centered on an authoritarian guru. He reports that he was forced to examine the group he had been in when he realized that experience of abuse and secrecy reported by his patients matched up with what he had experienced in his cult.
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www.danielshawlcsw.com]