Escaping Utopia

by Lalich, Janja; McLaren, Karla;

  6.

  Jessica is referring to Ricky Rodriguez, the son of Family member Karen Zerby, who became the second “wife” of leader, David Berg. Nicknamed “Davidito,” Ricky was considered Berg’s son and was destined to lead the group to the End-Time. He was also used as the ideal model of adult-child sex education within the group. A book was published and distributed throughout the cult containing countless photographs of his adult nanny having sexual encounters with him throughout his childhood. Ricky left the cult in 2001 at age twenty-six, with much anger and resentment toward his mother, who became leader of the group after Berg’s death. In January 2005, while searching for his mother, Ricky stabbed to death a former associate of his mother’s and then shot himself in the head. Ricky left behind a video explaining his motives and desire to avenge the many children who were sexually and physically abused in The Family. This event was a major news story for some time, and inspired many children of the cult to speak out publicly for the first time. See www.xfamily.org/index.php/Ricky-Rodriguez and www.xfamily.org/index.php/Story-of-Davidito.

  7.

  Louis Jolyon West and Paul R. Martin, “Pseudo-Identity and the Treatment of Personality Changes in Victims of Captivity and Cults,” in Dissociation: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives, Eds., Steven Jay Lynne and Judith W. Rhue (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), 269–88.

  8.

  See Appendix C for a list of some of these websites. This free guide can be downloaded at http://startingout.icsa.name/.

  9.

  This free guide can be downloaded at http://startingout.icsa.name/.

  7

  SURVIVING AND THRIVING

  Trauma, Resilience, and Integration

  When you decide to leave, make it definitive. Set up a good plan before you leave, a good game plan. Don’t just run away and go out on the street. Set up a good plan; have a good network out there. Find one. If you have one person, find that one person and then make your support group bigger. That ties into making it definitive. Make a strong decision that you’re going to get out. Get your mind clear and then stick with it.

  Samantha

  I can’t emphasize enough to just be patient with yourself. It’s going to take a long time. But don’t be embarrassed!!!! This was done to you. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You might need to learn discretion about sharing of yourself, and discernment, but you don’t have anything to be embarrassed about. Whatever was done to you, whatever the spectrum of abuse or manipulation, it was done to you. It was nothing you deserved. You don’t have to be embarrassed about anything.

  Iris

  People should know that when they leave, they’re going to struggle. Otherwise, they’re going to go back. I would advise people to take it day by day, because that’s what it is. Because you’re so enthusiastic about trying to get people out that you say, “You should get out. It’s great out here. There’s freedom!” And what you omit is that it’s also really hard. You have nightmares, you doubt your decision, you miss the people you grew up with. And you don’t tell people this because you want them to get out. But it is hard. And you’re going to deal with a lot of issues. But you have to deal with that, and just take it—take it—it’s kind of like bankruptcy, you know. The creditors are calling you, you’re drowning, you finally get out of that, and it’s great! But then you start your life over and it’s hard. You have to revamp your whole way of thinking, which you do when you’re out. You have to revamp your whole way of thinking and start over.

  Rachel

  Don’t be ashamed of your past. It is not your fault that you were raised in a group that has different views from the rest of society, and you may well find that the questioning process you go through when thinking about leaving has many benefits for you. In fact, it gives you some advantages over people who have never questioned the culture they were raised in (which includes most of the people you will meet). You are doing a very brave thing in questioning what is right and wrong and how to live your life—be proud of yourself.

  Joseph

  Trauma and Resilience

  Child-development experts know that children require stable, nurturing relationships and supportive environments to grow up healthy, happy, empathic, and resilient. Our narrators grew up with almost none of these things; yet, despite all odds, they survived often-grim childhoods, escaped from bondage, rebuilt their lives, and learned how to thrive. How did our narrators perform these seeming miracles? One answer is resilience.

  Resilience is a person’s capacity to confront, manage, and heal from stressful and traumatic events. In his hopeful book about human resilience, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton introduced the concept of the “protean self,” or the evolving self. Lifton writes:

  Rather than collapse under these threats and pulls, the self turns out to be surprisingly resilient. It makes use of bits and pieces here and there and somehow keeps going. What may seem to be mere tactical flexibility, or just bungling along, turns out to be much more than that. We find ourselves evolving a self of many possibilities, one that has risks and pitfalls but at the same time holds out considerable promise for the human future.1

  Our narrators’ resilience in the face of their childhood traumas and their post-cult struggles speaks to Lifton’s promise. Lifton equates resilience with wisdom, noting that despite childhood trauma, many of us are “able to transmute that trauma into various expressions of insight, compassion, and innovation.”2 We humans appear to have “the capacity to absorb suffering and learn from it,”3 as evidenced by the recovering and recovered lives of the sixty-five cult survivors Janja interviewed for this book.

  Researchers Steven Southwick and Dennis Charney call resilience “complex, multidimensional and dynamic in nature.”4 They studied resilience in relation to PTSD in adults, adolescents, and children. Through in-depth interviews with many highly resilient individuals (former Vietnam prisoners of war, Special Forces instructors, and civilians who endured, and even thrived, after surviving great stress and trauma), Southwick and Charney conclude that “resilience is far more than a simple psychological trait or biological phenomenon.”5 Their book, Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges, provides suggestions for becoming stronger and more resilient, and ideas for tackling personal issues with proven coping techniques.

  Recent studies have also increased our understanding of resilience, posttraumatic growth, and the positive psychological responses that are surprisingly common among trauma survivors. More than 300 scientific studies have focused on this phenomenon, and this combined research has found that “70 percent of trauma survivors report some positive psychological growth.”6

  The concepts of resilience and post-traumatic growth are important to understand, especially for helping professionals who may encounter cult survivors. Shelly Rosen, a relational psychotherapist who has worked with cult survivors for over thirty years, notes that labeling former cult members as pathological merely increases their guilt, shame, and isolation.7 This stigma both isolates cult members from the outside world and gives outsiders a very limited and often incorrect view of cult members and cult survivors. Rosen notes that “if trauma from cult involvement is about loss, dissociation, boundary ruptures, and betrayal, then healing impacts growth in connection, integration, self-recovery, self-respect, and trust. Healing is also about learning how to live in a world of ambiguity and multiple relationships, including group involvement. It involves understanding layers of cultural identity and the sense of otherness that comes with a stigmatized experience.”8

  Another factor to consider in regard to cult survivors is that their experience of trauma may be quite extensive, and may lead to PTSD. Risk factors for PTSD include being exposed to sexual assault, interpersonal violence, or physical abuse; witnessing domestic or community violence; being exposed to a traumatic event that elicits extreme fear of injury or death; being victim of neglect by a caregiver; and being exposed to traumatic events that occur repeatedly over time.9 Additionally, �
�individuals exposed to multiple traumatic events are also at greater risk for PTSD than those exposed to a single stressor.”10 Rosen also notes that a different form of PTSD called Complex-PTSD (or C-PTSD) may arise after prolonged and repeated trauma. She recommends that therapists with clients who have survived toxic groups or relationships read as much as possible on C-PTSD: “The dilemmas in living for those with C-PTSD can be complicated and painful, and they should be met with informed care.”11

  More research is needed to help us understand why some survivors are resistant to trauma, in that they never develop related mental health problems, while other survivors may develop short-term symptoms but recover naturally.12 Helping professionals who work with former cult members (especially those who were born and/or raised in a cult) can help by exploring their clients’ lives and family issues within the cult, connecting the survivors to social services and educational opportunities, and developing an in-depth knowledge of PTSD, C-PTSD, and effective treatment options. Research data indicates that “the most commonly endorsed interventions [are] cognitive-behavioral therapy, family therapy, and nondirective play therapy.”13 While pharmacologic issues and recommendations are beyond the scope of this book, medication for certain clients, and particularly those with PTSD, should be considered.14 As our narrator Joseph said, “About eight years after I left the Brethren, I had a major depressive episode. I sought help from my doctor, who prescribed Prozac and referred me for cognitive behavioral therapy, which helped to process a lot of the issues I had.”

  Cult survivors face many complex issues and hurdles; yet, even without proper support, many find their way to health, integration, and wellness. Of course, this process can be rocky, discouraging, and frustrating—even for individuals whose resilience is high.

  Impediments to Healing

  Many of our narrators lamented over the fact that it was practically impossible to find a good therapist with knowledge about cults and their aftereffects. Most of the therapists they encountered didn’t recognize the symptoms of PTSD or C-PTSD, and therefore couldn’t meet their needs. Rachel, for example, shared her dismay and anger at how she was treated in a group therapy setting after she left Twelve Tribes:

  I remember I lived in a homeless shelter for a little while in downtown Los Angeles when I was thirteen, and they would have us all go to group therapy. And in group, everybody else was allowed to talk about what they had gone through, but the therapist in charge told me specifically, “Don’t ever tell anybody what you’ve been through in that group. What you went through was too painful for these people to handle. It’s so far out of the norm that they can’t handle it. They’re trying to cope with whatever pain they have, and you have way too much pain and have gone through much more than they’re able to comprehend.” So he said, “I just am going to ask you to please keep your mouth shut.”

  So that’s what I would do. I would go to group and I would be quiet and everybody else would talk. That made me really angry and I felt really hurt. I felt like, what is so wrong with me? You know, people were in group talking about how their parents had stabbed them, and this one boy had a scar from the top of his chest all the way down to his belly button where his dad had taken a knife and cut him open. So he had turned around and killed his father, and he could talk about that! But I couldn’t talk about where I came from. I don’t know. I just felt like I was this freak of nature, like there was nobody else in the world like me. Like I was this anomaly or something.

  Jessica also described some negative experiences; she sought support to explore her painful childhood in The Family, yet she received the opposite of therapeutic help:

  No, no, they just pretty much looked at me like I was a bug. It took a really long time to explain and, really, honestly, I saw a couple of counselors and then I stopped because I just felt frustrated. And I thought then that it would be a huge thing to know counselors who know about cults, so we could refer our brothers and sisters who are leaving to them. That would be huge.

  Because when I first started seeking counseling, the first few counselors I went to, seriously, I mean, one guy, I thought he was actually a little pervie. He kept wanting to ask me about the sex when I was a little kid. And I was like, “Oh, my God, I don’t want to talk about that anymore,” you know, but that’s all he wanted to talk about. The first thing he said was, “So you mean you had sex when you were a little girl?” And I was like, okay, dude, whatever. I wasn’t ready to be cool with that yet. And that’s all he wanted to talk about. And the next, a lady, she was like, “Oh my god, I feel so sorry for you,” and “You poor thing, you must be so screwed up.” And I was like, “Yeah, I am.” And so I started drinking a lot, and I experimented with a lot of drugs, you know, just trying them. I wasn’t a drug addict or anything, but I did try everything over the next few years, here and there.

  Samantha also faced hurdles after she left the FLDS and tried to assimilate into the outside world:

  I had to compartmentalize things, all kinds of information. I had to compartmentalize it because it was just so overwhelming. I had so many people around me all of the time. We were really not allowed to cry as children so when I left, I was just emotionally frozen. It was very difficult for me to feel compassion for other people, to relate to their feelings, to relate to them at all, really. But especially to relate to feelings, to think that something I could say would hurt them—and I was so just frozen and had armor on (laughs). When I came out of there, I remember someone said something about my life and gave me just a genuine look of compassion. It was one of my friend’s mothers whom I stayed with when I left the community, and it was the most bizarre look. You know, when you see someone give you that look, it just melts you because you know someone really cares and understands. It was the first time I had ever seen a look like that. I don’t know … I was just frozen when I came out of there.

  A young woman who was raised in The Living Word, a fundamentalist group, also mentioned the need for knowledgeable therapists:

  I would have loved to have therapists that specialized in cults and a specialist in trauma. Those would have been very helpful, and the whole career issue would have been helpful, but I don’t know that I could have dealt with all of it at once. But it seems like it would be good to have that option. There’s so much that needs to be rebuilt. It would have been nice to have somebody point out what those things are and how to go about it. It’s just so overwhelming to have it all at once.

  A woman who was raised in the New Early Christian Church encountered the same difficulties:

  Well, if somebody could have identified me as a cult survivor or somebody who had left a cult, or that I fit into a category there, maybe somebody would have known about the typical issues I would have to deal with, like developmental issues. I didn’t know the stages of child development, normal child development. When I finally found them out, I looked at them and said, “Well, I haven’t done any of these. I haven’t even bonded with my parents. The only thing I know is how to do a good job.” You know: take a gardening rake and rake up the garden and pick up the pile. I know how to clean the tools; I know how to do a good job, but that’s all.

  I don’t know anything about peer friendships. I don’t know anything about how to individuate, bond, and then become a separate person. I didn’t know anything about that. Never dated, never made decisions on my own. Now I had to live with the consequences of my own choices. If somebody could notice that about a person who had just entered the world as an adult—well, I don’t know what kind of counseling group I would have had to seek in order to find that. There’s so much more available now than there was then. Even so, I don’t know whether it crosses paths of people who try to make it once they’ve left their group.

  A woman raised in Scientology (whom we refer to later in this chapter as Laura M.) spoke about not being able to recognize or understand the symptoms she had after she escaped:

  I think it would have been better if I had had maybe at that particul
ar point some kind of deprogramming. Something to help me understand that what I was feeling and what I was going through was kind of normal. That was hard. It was hard to understand, or to deal with what I was feeling and these trances and things that I would sort of go into that were completely inappropriate in the middle of school. But I didn’t really understand what was happening, and neither did anybody else. And there wasn’t any counseling. There wasn’t anything at that time. So I think that would have been helpful. But I don’t know that the school could have provided that. I would be in class and I’d be listening to the teacher one minute and then I would feel sort of gone and then come back, and I’d realize that I hadn’t been hearing what had been happening in the classroom for a while. And those were times when other kids in the classroom noticed, and they would say, like, “Oh, my God, that’s the creepy girl, and look what is she doing.” Those lasted for a while. I’d say right until I got into high school was the first time I had a counselor, an adult, tell me that I had been in a cult and that I was probably going to need some help to get through some of those things.

  A young woman who was raised in the Hare Krishnas shared her ideas about what would have helped her:

  What would have helped? Oh, anything (laughs). Oh, God, I wish I would have somehow connected with a guidance counselor, or a counselor at the school, or some teacher because I didn’t feel like I really connected with any of my teachers. Somebody who could have been available—a therapist of some sort or parents. They could have been supportive. Even some literature, I think. I know if there was something I could have read, something on ways to help myself, you know, ways to try to reintroduce myself. Written therapy or group therapy, people there who can help support you, who can at least say, “Try this” or “Try that.” Even now, if there were some online place where you could go. Or if there are sites like that where you can go and say, “I’m having this problem” or whatnot. Any sort of support in those ways would be great.