If you make it out....

QuestEon · Number of posts: 552 Registration date: 2008-03-25

I happened to run across an article today that interested me.

The premise is, if you or a family member makes a break from a group that uses Undue Influence, the problems are far from over.

In fact, research shows it may take a year or so of counselling afterwards to help the former member understand and accept what they have gone through and begin to re-integrate.

Ian Haworth wrote:

Even with the right help the typical ex-cultist still faces more than a year of pain and suffering before he recovers from the damage done by the group. Typical symptoms of withdrawal include confusion, depression, disorientation, insomnia, amnesia, guilt, fear, floating in and out of altered states, suicidal tendencies and violent emotional outbursts. Most were outlined by Conway and Siegelman in their paper "Information Disease," Science Digest, January 1982. An ex-member may even bear physical scars that serve as a constant reminder of his experience.

The beginning of the article goes through some common cult definitions, but I thought the remainder of the article, beginning with the sentence "Whilst many victims do escape the clutches of the cult after varying lengths of time with the group..." to be uniquely new and interesting to me.

I just thought it was an interesting article and might be of interest to any FDR "walk-aways" here or families hoping to gain their child back. Best line of the article: "Getting a person out of a cult is one thing, but getting the cult out of the person is another!"

Anyway, for anyone who might be interested: Caring for Cult Victims

_________________
-Q.E.

nelle · Number of posts: 485 Registration date: 2009-02-09

Thank you QuestEon. Great information here - and that website is an excellent resource.

eye2i2 · Subject: Re: If you make it out.... Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:07 pm

QuestEon wrote:

The premise is, if you or a family member makes a break from a group that uses Undue Influence, the problems are far from over.

In fact, research shows it may take a year or so of counselling afterwards to help the former member understand and accept what they have gone through and begin to re-integrate.

And what is the potential for said "Undue Influence" relative [sic] to the culty-potential of "family"/Family? (who defines "undue influence"?)
It still amazes me at times, that so many that espouse that FDRers are blind to a cultiness, display that same blindness in rejecting that Family can be culty ie a "group that uses Undue Influence".
It "may take a year to re-integrate"... back into a culty (Family) relationship?!? Who's to say, when it's between 'adults'? (who's to say when it is adults that it's between?! "Undue Influence"??) The blind accusing the blind...?

QuestEon · Number of posts: 552 Registration date: 2008-03-25

Hey, eye!

Good to see you back (even though it also means the resurrection of this argument of yours, which I've never really understood.)

One important thing:

eye2i2 wrote:

..."may take a year to re-integrate"... back into a culty (Family) relationship?!?

You're putting words in my mouth. It's re-integration into whatever the ex-member wants to re-integrate into. A normal job, ex-friends, whatever. Many people recruited into cults were independent adults to begin with.

_________________
-Q.E.

Laird · Subject: Re: If you make it out.... Wed Jul 15, 2009 10:30 pm

Yeah, and I don't recall anyone saying that no family ever uses Undue Influence.

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[INSERT MEME HERE]

eye2i2 · Subject: Re: If you make it out.... Thu Jul 16, 2009 2:03 pm

QuestEon wrote:

Hey, eye!
Good to see you back

I thank you, kind sir.

Quote:

(even though it also means the resurrection of this argument of yours, which I've never really understood.)

Might that be an indication of blindness? (or a blind spot, as it's said?)
More momentarily...

Quote:

One important thing:

eye2i2 wrote:

..."may take a year to re-integrate"... back into a culty (Family) relationship?!?

You're putting words in my mouth. It's re-integration into whatever the ex-member wants to re-integrate into. A normal job, ex-friends, whatever. Many people recruited into cults were independent adults to begin with.

I did not intend to put words in your mouth --tho arguably, they may have been there (inherently) all along?! I merely sought to consider the value of your words, but coming from the reverse or counter perspective.

One of the central or core tenets of cult-accusation/labeling is, from my understanding, that when a cult is found, all ties to it should be severed, including any and all contact (some go far as doing an "intervention"). Yet how many FDR-is-a-cult-but-Family-can't-be, allow/embrace allowing an offspring to severe ties, including any and all contact?
One important thing that I see is in the blindness implication within using the words "re-integrate" and "ex-member" --because with Family as the Cult, it's all the child has ever known! Thus why I argue that there is no greater potential for undue influence.

Why would it be unacceptable for a deFOOer, who has determined (through "intervention"?) that their parent(s) hold undue influence upon them, to severe ties & contact? Is it not because those holding said influence have a (cult) doctrine (belief) saying you can't/shouldn't/we'll do all in our power (influence?) to discourage/prevent your doing that?
What if part of the influence is an appeal to ~~other family~~ cult believers/members?! Or an appeal to the majority, aka the popular culture?

Why isn't a "parent" who's continuing to seek to contact an offspring seeable as a holder of undue influence and seeable as a culty leader seeking to draft ("reintegrate") a former ("ex")member back into the fold?
My only answer to it, is that there is a cult of Family and such blind belief in it permeates most cultures --ie, the cult won/is winning [see National Socialist ("Nazi") Germany? see U.S. Theism/Patriotism?].

Granted, this cult(y) business is very, if not totally, subjective. Just as the word/mantra "love" is. Yet the sacred belief in the inseparability of Family, based upon a mere happenstance of biology, uses it's magic to validate it's policy/premises/beliefs. Whether love is conditional or unconditional is purely a matter of personal belief; arguably, either a mutually agreed to experience -or- a control/cult(y) dogma.

The central question is: who decides? (which to my mind links directly back to considering undue influence, and whether there is any greater potential for it, in perpetuity, than with offspring/child to parent)

As another often proposes: If it ain't mutually voluntary, then what is it?

The biological happenstance of birth can be one one of the greatest sources of happiness to be experienced. Conversely, if it can not be voluntarily severed and the influences held as personally discerned, what is it but involuntary (emotionally, manipulatively culty)?

FWIW, objective third party involvement, but re-presenting neither/neutral, is arguably the only approach when there's conflict. Yet presently, how many truly neutral third parties are there when it comes to Family being potentially culty?! When is culture not culty? [while I, again, am not a proponent of FDR, I know of no evidence that that group proposes cutting off ALL outside/"third party" influences (e.g. therapists); rather, only those who some individuals have personally deemed to have undue influence in their lives, per the position of parenting]

I hope that helps. Apologies up front if I've gone long (yet again).

QuestEon · Number of posts: 552 Registration date: 2008-03-25

eye2i2 wrote:

I did not intend to put words in your mouth --tho arguably, they may have been there (inherently) all along?! I merely sought to consider the value of your words, but coming from the reverse or counter perspective.

No, they weren't. I started the article with "you or a family member," which, like the article, covered everyone. The article I referenced and my post in general didn't dwell on children and families specifically. In fact, the article also identifies cults that are more likely to target people in their 30s, one would assume, already independent adults.

eye2i2 wrote:

One of the central or core tenets of cult-accusation/labeling is, from my understanding, that when a cult is found, all ties to it should be severed, including any and all contact (some go far as doing an "intervention"). Yet how many FDR-is-a-cult-but-Family-can't-be, allow/embrace allowing an offspring to severe ties, including any and all contact?

...

I hope that helps.

No, not really. I don't think the efforts to reframe or redefine families as cults is ever going to lead anywhere, so I reject them completely. It's like saying "water is a dangerous liquid," and then when someone laughs, responding, "oh, yeah? what if you drown in it?!"

Families are fundamental to human development. They are not destructive cults. Most families, historically and around the world, are good. Some aren't. A few are so bad, they shouldn't be allowed to continue.

But no matter what, families are inextricably intertwined with the evolution of our species.

The importance and study of family relationships dwarfs the study of destructive cults and many other aspects of human behavior, which is clearly obvious in academic literature. And that is how it should be.

Although I have a lot of respect for things you say in other areas, I haven't seen anyone, other than you and Molyneux, run on and on about this family-as-cults business. In my view, it simply doesn't seem to add anything to that aforementioned literature or add any aspect to family study that hasn't already been well noted and defined, and much better, elsewhere.

_________________
-Q.E.