Your name is not familiar, but I'd be happy to chat if you want to pm or email me.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Just want to offer support and encouragement. Life has gotten 100% better for me, just in leaving, but there are residual effects like you describe. I have it too and I like what others have said about finding people who care and will just let you talk it all out. Not easy to find, but they're out there. My husband didn't have any personal experience but he had a friend whose pa
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Congratulations! I see not much has changed there. I left in 2000 after 12 or 13 years myself, I'm embarrassed to say. But I also have been happily married for two years with a baby on the way. And 21 years sober. So, although I did learn some good lessons and miss many people who I presume are still there, the bad information outweighs the good. The most reprehensible thing, I find
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Recently I have been reading about Brief Therapy and Solution-Centered Therapy. I liked a book called Single Session Solutions by Moshe Talmon. I am wary of therapy, in general, but I appreciate the idea that if we need some kind of therapy, that short-term solutions exist. I don't need to subscribe to a whole philosophy of life. And stay there for life. Finally, the other book th
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I think I felt a lot of shame for a long time (it's been 5 years) that I could be duped by the cult. Yes, I have a higher degree and a fairly high IQ. I was a skeptic at first and then tried doing it all and became one of the zombies (as they are called in Winter Park FL where the group exists). I wanted to save my marriage and was willing to do anything. I left and of course have had
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Sounds like you are getting good help and just want to briefly add my experience. I was on a regimen of anti-depressants/anti-anxiety and didn't feel they helped but stayed on. Maybe I could have been worse.... One doc kept increasing and increasing. Anyway, by mere luck, I finally went to a psychiatrist who started to decrease my meds and finally weaned me off. What a saint she was.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

As far as grief and loss, one can grieve the loss of time, I feel. The loss of an idealistic view about people... (maybe that's what got me into trouble in the first place so maybe I just grew up thanks to the cult...) I lost a spouse to the cult. The books about grief and loss that helped me come from all different outlooks: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Harold Kushner
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Quote Your suggestion that a less dogmatic group is questionable as cult members have a tendancy to believe that everyone needs to be involved in some kind of religious group. It is as if cult members encourage and believe in institutionalizing As I didn't have that much time to write a detailed response, I knew this comment would probably generate controversy. I don't know if we c
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Great article...
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

I also relate to your situation and, luckily, was able to move to another state, but knowing that some of my old friends probably believed the slander. To recover, I found several things that helped: filing legal complaints, having professionals tell me again and again that what the cult did was crazy and harmful, and finally the good feelings I get from knowing that I KNEW it was wacky which is
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

The final order has been handed down. Maureen Traynor was disciplined by the state of Florida for her unethical practices. The fact that the state recognized that what she did was punishable is definitely helpful to my personal recovery process.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

You have misconstrued Jesus' commandments for your own ends which is exactly why I have so much distrust of the born agains. Jesus did NOT qualify his teaching to say only forgive Christians. He said whosoever. Learn it. Know it. Live it. Likewise, the dubya has misconstrued our democracy and turned it into a totalitarian regime for his own ends. (which does make it like a fascist
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

They have a beautiful temple here in Wilmette IL but I have only met one in my life. He was a peaceful person and always talked about "my faith." But I met him in a therapy cult... For whatever that's worth. My limited understanding is that they believe in the principles that are common to every religion: peace, tolerance, forgiveness, prayer, etc. All of that is very app
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I certainly am not trying to convert anyone. My point may be similar to yours in a weird, backa** kind of way. I would like to believe that Jesus would have vehemently accused the Church officials who burnt Jews or witches like he denounced the corrupt priests and Pharisees of his day. And, while watching Fox news, I feel like I'm supposed to clap while listening to the glories of th
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

When someone tells me to love my enemies and when my enemies smite me, not to smite them back but to offer my other cheek, that's my definition of a pacifist. And it's bloody hard to do, I might add. Or when people persecute me when I haven't done anything wrong, to ask God to forgive them? What Jesus raises his sword against are the idolaters. It doesn't take much ima
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Another reason the stars are attracted to the cults may be because the cults are like a drug (which I read in Michael Langone's book). Fame (or so it seems since I don't really know :) ) creates a rush like a drug, but ultimately ends in the crash. This is what the cults do -- create an initial feeling of euphoria because of the initial bonding, belongingness and forced intimacy a
Forum: Celebrities associated with "cult-like" groups

WWJD The Man was a Pacifist! Bush, the war mongers, and those who supported them will suffer justice for the lives of all those innocent women and children.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

As Bush and his friends raced toward war, all I could think about was the Christian slogan WWJD. Jesus Christ was a pacifist and he condemned men like BUSH. "How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" Eerily prophetic.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

...I thought the same thing about Tolle's book. On the vocabulary point, I did eventually find Scientology's glossary which is pretty scary, but also humorous because the leader of the cult I was in said the EXACT SAME STUFF. "We are superior people." "If you leave you will die." "We are the only place in the world that does this kind of work." I
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Right. And the more these groups grow unchecked, legitimate psychologists and doctors are subject to more standardization and micromanagement.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Interestingly, I have just read two related articles: Friend, I know you've seen these statistics before but please read them once again and remember history is valuable only if we learn from it. Then think hard about what is happening today in this country and abroad. Since the end of the Second World War the United States' Government has bombed and/or invaded 21 countries:
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I dont' doubt that the Landmark training makes you feel incredible... but so does heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, alcohol, etc. Thrilling and life-altering initially. Then habit-forming. Ultimately devastating.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

I always get kind of irritated whenever Satanism is brought up because I have suffered so much at the hands of a woman who told us that those of us who lived in her 12-step/therapy "community" were better than other people, more spiritual, etc. She also said that she knew why society is so messed up and she knew how to fix it. She thought she was a messiah of sorts. There is so muc
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I often wonder how so many people can be "blind" to Bush's motives and then I remember my 12 year devotion to one woman and her 12 step/therapy "community". I wasn't entirely blind, but when I decided to play her game, (because it was the only way I could save my marriage) I went along 100% which included telling my family I couldnt see them any longer and after
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Perhaps it's the definition of cult that is getting in the way. According to the OED, cult used to mean: 1. Worship; reverential homage rendered to a divine being or beings. Obs. (exc. as in sense 2). 2.a. A particular form or system of religious worship; esp. in reference to its external rites and ceremonies. b. Now freq. used attrib. by writers on cultic ritual and the archæ
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I am reading Michael Langone's Recovery from Cults Margaret Singer's Cults in our Midst and Crazy Therapies and Steven Hassan's Combating Cult Mind Control. I am finding these extremely helpful in recognizing and identifying some of the things I've been struggling with namely grief issues about missing people in the group, unsettled issues about what was right and wron
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

Margaret Sanger in her book Crazy Therapies says that there should be an FDA-type organization to regulate all these weirdos. She also says that universities usually unofficially monitor therapists and counselors, etc, but once they are out on their own, there is no agency to check and regulate these people.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

All this sounds very much like Choices Counseling Center, the "community" that I was in which happened to be a therapy cult based on the 12-steps. So, all the same characteristics are there, including everyone starting to talk alike, minus the witchcraft, add the 12 steps. In many ways, I wish there was less differentiation when we talk about these cults. It seems that if there
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Thank you very much. You are right. I am drafting letters to ACA and the American Pscyhotherapy Assoc. now. Thanks again.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups

actually, she does. A lot of people who got sober in AA in the 80s became therapists and then got the credentials. She fits into that category. But she has been reprimanded by all those agencies because of ethical complaints. But apparently that doesn't stop the practitioners from practicing ... I suppose there have to be more complaints.
Forum: Recovery from Destructive Cults and Groups