Millions of U.S. Americans have been involved in cultic groups, with ~500,000 belonging to high control groups at any one time, and something like 85,000 entering and leaving cultic groups each year.[i]
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​These numbers are likely underestimates. That’s because people are often unaware of the nature of such a group while they are in it. Plus, once they become aware (if they do), group-instilled fears and societal stigma may deter people from naming their cultic involvement as such.[ii]

The point is, getting involved with a high demand group is a common occurrence. Sticking with Americans for comparison, a similar number of people are likely involved with culty groups each year as the number of people who experience a stroke.[iii]

Having gotten engulfed in a high demand group, how — and why — does a person get out?

Opting Out

The most common way people exit cults is by leaving on their own.
These Walkouts, as they are sometimes called, may realize that something is off with the group, without having enough knowledge about high control groups to realize that they were in one. That describes me and the group I left in 2006. In that way, I was typical.

Janja Lalich explains, “Some people leave the group … knowing only instinctively that for their emotional or physical survival they had to get out.”[iv] Check.
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A person often reaches the limit of how many contradictions they can hold about the group while continuing to operate within it. They become “disillusioned, fed up, or burnt out, or they realize the cult is not what it said it was,” explains Margaret Singer.[v]

​In the early years of my old group — long before my time — the teacher encouraged students to believe they would reach enlightenment in twelve years, a typical expectation in spiritual settings in his homeland. Residents gradually increased their sitting time until they were meditating four hours per day.[vi]

Yet, no one attained samadhi. Twelve years came and went, and little changed. Except, so slowly it wasn’t noticed, an escalating level of dependence cultivated by the teacher.

The teacher — who never outright said he was illumined himself, though it was everywhere implied and assumed — eventually modified expectations. In the West, he now said, it would likely take them more like 25 years to reach enlightenment.
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Later, the goal posts were moved again, to 50 years. Finally, the teacher began to convey that it could take lifetimes — and his true students would return for as many lifetimes as it took to reach the goal.

The carrot held out by the ashram would forever dangle just ahead of them, never to be obtained.

When accusations of sexual impropriety by the founder emerged, a group of his early students could no longer repress their doubts or suspend their disbelief. After fifteen devoted years at the ashram, a dozen people left.

They all cited the same reason. The founder had become stifling. “He degenerated from a teacher to a father figure they neither needed nor wanted, and ultimately evolved into a guru whose authority was not to be questioned.”[vii]

Fizzling Out

If a group’s core charismatic figure disappears from the scene, participation may fizzle out.

The leader may choose to leave the group. (Cult leadership can get boring after a decade or two.)[viii] He or she may be convicted of a crime and jailed or deported. Mutinous ex-followers may kick him out of the community. Or, like the founder of my old group, the leader may die.

Some explanation will have to be made for this departure. Whether the leader left voluntarily, was jailed, faced a coup, or perished, the community will need a story to make meaning of this turn of events.

In a group where all allegiance flowed to the leader — and all power ultimately flowed from him — his disappearance is a major destabilizing force. Some groups don’t make it.

My old group was in this stage when I moved cross-country to work for them. For years I chalked up much of the confusion and dysfunction I witnessed (and experienced) there to a haze of grief and disorientation. I now understand there was much more to the story. But that was a piece of it.
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They have made it several more decades. An early pronouncement that there would be no successor teachers — and the presence of the founder’s widow as heir-apparent — prevented a struggle for rights of succession. There would be no factions, no split, and no large-scale drifting apart.

By the time the widow died, remaining true believers had articulated a series of principles the group would follow to ensure it remained true to the founder’s blueprint. A friend jokingly calls this The Purity Wars.

I suspect the group’s increasing rigidity in retreats and teachings alienated more than a few people who had started coming closer to the group’s orbit — and decided, instead, to back away while still on the outer perimeter.

While there is no named successor to take the place of the founder, just a legal entity and its board, this simply means that soft power prevailed. And thus, those who effectively use soft power have positioned themselves at the top of the hierarchical culture, which continues on.

Some groups simply dissolve and disperse after the core charismatic figure is gone, in however short or long a time.

Though my group has continued on, I have heard about individuals who chose to leave once the teacher was no longer there in the flesh. I suspect some, at least, have gone looking for sources of charismatic authority elsewhere, to replace the lost supply. I have heard stories of several who wound up in other groups with enthralling teachers.

Back in my old group, the remaining true believers may well be following a pattern that is not uncommon in Eastern religious groups when a cult leader dies — waiting for him to reincarnate so they can return to their former way of life, with him at the center.[ix]

From this perspective, it doesn’t matter if the group meets “success” by worldly criteria. In the fullness of time, its purpose can still be met. If the few remaining true believers slowly die off, until no one is left, they can still sustain themselves with this story that all will be united again in cosmic time.

Dying Out

In other situations, it is not (only) the founder, but one or more followers in a high control group, who leave the group through death.

Cults whose violence risks, and sometimes takes, lives may be among the better-known examples of high control groups.
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You’ve probably heard about the 1978 murder-suicide of almost a thousand people in Jonestown, British Guyana, at the behest of Jim Jones, founder of the Pentecostal-leaning People’s Temple. Almost the entire commune died from cyanide-poisoned fruit punch, or like Jones himself, gunshot.

I remember well coverage on Waco, Texas, in 1993. In a showdown between the feds and David Koresh at his Branch Davidian compound, he and eighty followers lost their lives. Government actors made poor decisions that contributed to the tragedy, but one cannot help but wonder why Koresh didn’t let his people go. It seems that cult leaders tend to prefer martyrdom to surrender.

Another headline-grabber was the apparent mass suicide, in 1997, by members of the UFO cult Heaven’s Gate in San Diego, California.
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Another group with violent events in this same time period, though one I don’t recall hearing about then, was The Order of the Solar Temple (OTS). It was noteworthy for ritualistic murders and suicides of 69 people in Canada, Switzerland, and France in 1994 and 1995. A fringe New Age group, OTS members believed they were on earth to fulfill a cosmic mission. When the group self-destructed, two leaders talked about their desire for a “departure … even more spectacular” than in Waco.

These and other examples of headline cult news — with in-depth attention to Heaven’s Gate and the Democratic Worker’s Party — are explored in Bounded Choice, which endeavors to understand how true believers become motivated to take such drastic actions.[x]

Departure by death need not always be dramatic. In my old group, now 50-some years after the ashram’s founding, a number of long-time residents have met their natural death. This may be the ultimate exit for the remaining true believers there.
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​And some of the tragic deaths that end cult members’ lives happen on a smaller scale. For example, 38-year-old Ian Thorson died in the Arizona desert after being ejected from Diamond Mountain University, a neo-Buddhist organization then led by Michael Roach. At this point in 2012, Thorson and his wife appeared to suffer from mental health issues and be mutually dangerous to each other.[xi]

​But a high control group does not invite scrutiny from law enforcement or mental health providers, not even when lives are at risk. A cult will always put organizational interests over those of individuals.

So at the behest of university trustees, instead the couple with a known history of domestic violence was — together! — banished from the community, with nowhere to go and no one to help them.

Thorson’s death was attributed to dehydration. But it reads to me like it might more accurately be described as the result of being squeezed out from the group, as soon as he became more liability than resource to the organization.[xii]

Which brings us to those who leave because they are …

Squeezed Out

A high control group always places its own needs first, above those of individual participants. Anyone who is deemed as a threat to the organization — or fails to contribute enough time, money, obeisance, or prestige to the group — may simply be pushed out.

These Castaways, as they are sometimes called in the cult literature, may struggle with guilt and shame, taking at face value the rationale given for their ejection — which is likely to blame them for not measuring up. Without sensitive support from someone who understands cultic dynamics, they may be gripped by grief and loneliness. They may even develop suicidal impulses.[xiii]

My old group provides several illustrations of different ways people can be squeezed out.

There was one troubling incident related to my group that I learned about when I researched them online, before moving there. A long-time ashram resident had been arrested, while traveling, for indecent solicitation of a child — a person he believed was a 14-year-old girl.

The group treated this as an aberration completely unrelated to the community’s culture. They responded by banning the offender from the ashram.

​When I learned about this illegal and immoral behavior, I had heard no other concerns tied to the ashram. So, to my later regret, I accepted the organization’s explanation that this was one bad apple, not reflective of the group’s ethics.

This man had strayed badly from the founder’s teachings, they said. I now believe that this student was actually repeating behaviors of the founder. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as the expression goes. The relevant point here is that the group had to kick out the person who had so publicly offended, who might besmirch their reputation.

More recently, since people have begun learning about gutting allegations against the founder — and his own transgressions with females at the ashram, including adolescents — those who ask questions or express concern have been squeezed out.

A woman — I’ll call her Theresa — had been living at the commune for some years. She loyally participated in its lifestyle of spiritual practices, group meals and so on. When Theresa learned about the allegations, she took them very seriously. She personally knew one of the victims and believed what she had conveyed about her experience as a young teen.

Before long, ashram leaders asked Theresa to meet with them. They informed her that she was being “relieved of kitchen duties.” (The implication — she was impure and should not touch their food. You can’t make this stuff up!)
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Theresa suggested to them that they were deliberately shunning her in hopes that she would choose to leave. The leaders did not deny this. Instead, they piled on — accusing Theresa of dishonoring their spiritual practice, their beloved teacher and so on.

​A student of nonviolence, Theresa clung to the truth as she understood it in that situation. She told the leaders that she cared about them, and that how they are responding is not spiritual and only reinforces the concerns that people have.

The kicker: the leaders did not show any sign of caring. Theresa shared that they “just nodded at me like I was full of [crap].” She went on, “I wished them both well and then told them the meeting felt really creepy to me.”
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(Theresa also tried to find out, while in the process of moving out, if she could still meditate in the group’s meditation hall. The response that came back was, “Only [teacher’s] students may meditate [there]” — meaning, not Theresa anymore! She gently asked to have this guidance put in writing. But the leader, looking nervous, declined and scooted away.)

People in not-so-inner circles have also been cut off — without notice.

When they learned of concerns about the founder, members of a nearby meditation group affiliated with the ashram started discussing them together. The simple act of reading materials, trying to understand what is true and considering together what to do, was evidently reported back to the ashram by someone tied to the group who also works for the organization. That person indicated she and her spouse would not remain in the group unless it decided to continue working strictly with teachings of the ashram, its founder and spiritual program.

Only one person in the group (other than the employee) had any contact directly with an ashram representative. In the course of a brief phone conversation — basically friendly chit chat after addressing a practical question — this person mentioned she was aware of some controversy going on at the ashram. The representative flatly denied anything was happening that was affecting ashram folks at all, and he promptly ended the call.

Soon after, the caller discovered she had been omitted from a special mailing that she normally would have received; it appeared she had been dropped from a circle she’d previously been part of, simply for having used the word “controversy.”

Subsequently, the entire local group — with one traveling member now back in the area — concluded their discussion about the allegations. They made the decision to disaffiliate from the ashram, and turn to other spiritual resources.
This was shared with the person in the group who worked for the organization, for her own decision-making. No other contact took place with the ashram.

A week later, many members of the group (now minus the employee and spouse) were left out of a mailing about upcoming retreats. Some stopped receiving print publications or emails they routinely received from the meditation center before, too. It appears a number of changes were made to the meditation center’s contact lists, reducing or eliminating communication for some group members — though on what basis is not entirely clear.

This is nothing new for the organization. People who left in an 80s exodus were more overtly shunned, when they would later come across ashram residents in town. Loyalists would cross to the other side of the street to avoid the the defectors, averting their eyes. So much for family-like bonds.

Shunning is a serious issue in high-control groups. It is “a silent form of bullying and rejection.” Psychology tell us that “the brain registers exclusion as physical pain that cuts deeper and lasts longer than bodily injury.” For innately social creatures like human beings, shunning can cause long-term mental health difficulties.[xiv]

Counseled Out [xv]

​The other way people may leave a controlling group is through an intervention. Just as loved ones may gather around a person to express concerns about drinking, drug use, or hoarding, they can observe how group involvement has negatively affected a person, and ask them to learn and reflect on this.

An intervention is typically arranged by family members who are working with a team of professionals, or at least an exit counselor — someone experienced in educating group members and their families about cultic dynamics and the methods of influence they systematically use.

The aim is to provide factual information about the specific group, how such groups work in general, and to provide a safe, supportive space apart from the controlling group where the member can re-evaluate their involvement.

The presence of someone else who has successfully left the group can be extremely helpful as “proof of life” after cult involvement. Groups often implant fears about what happens to those who leave, so a counter-example can be freeing.
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​There was a time when some interventions were conducted without the person’s consent. That was a response to some groups’ increased vigilance against letting members out of their grip even temporarily, lest they be presented — and choose to take — the opportunity to engage in an educational process and reassessment of their membership.
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If coercion is the very thing you want to combat, you should not use it yourself. Forcibly removing someone from what they consider their home and family can cause trauma, no matter how well intended.

Fortunately newer, cooperative ways of working with members and families have been developed. A mutually-agreed process of learning and consultation has now long been the standard for exit counseling.

While a small percentage of people leave cultic groups this way, it is a valuable option for friends and family concerned about a loved one.

The Official Story

In its telling of its own history, a group can choose to acknowledge former members — or not.

If it does acknowledge them, it can offer its own story about why they left. One former member — who I now understand to have been a sexual abuse victim of the founder — was sometimes written off as having been mentally unbalanced, and having to leave the group on that account.

Trusting meditators, of course, might not think to ask which came first — the group involvement or the mental illness.

It seems quite likely to me now that, like someone in a violent domestic relationship, it was the situation that was crazy-making — not the person who was, on her own, off-balance. Sexual and spiritual abuse by your supposed spiritual teacher, and institutional betrayal by the community you had considered your family, would do a number on anyone.

Some past walkouts from my group were described by long-timers who stayed as simply not committed enough to stick with it. In other words, if there was any fault to be found, it would be attributed to those who left, not to the group.

​I suspect for others of us who came and went — many in my cohort of young adults — that pattern was publicly chalked up to being “on a family path,” in contrast to the monastic lifestyle that became the norm at the ashram.

(Notably, it hadn’t originally been the norm — many of the founder’s first generation students had families and raised children at the commune. The founder probably felt he couldn’t get around at least some among original young adult students — the critical mass that made it possible to establish the ashram — having that inescapable desire. But that first generation certainly steered later ones away from doing likewise there. For more on the control of sexuality, including reproduction, see The Roots of Control.)

Mostly, I don’t remember my group talking about those who had come and gone in the past. Official publications barely acknowledge this fact. Explanations would only be offered if asked. Thus, silence on the subject of past members may be the norm.

If I had known, prior to moving out there, how many people had come and gone before me, I would’ve asked a lot of questions about that before making my own decision.

So, omissions that are part of a cult’s deception are not just about the teacher(s) or group and its history. The (deliberately) missing information is also about past participants.

Upshot

Most people opt out of cults — walking away when they realize something’s not right, or that the group isn’t delivering on its promises.
Others fizzle out when the leader is gone and a group disintegrates.

Some members are squeezed out, while yet others remain members until they die — be it a natural death at the end of a long life, or a premature one in which the cult had a hand.

Finally, a few have the opportunity of a supportive intervention, and manage to wake up and choose to leave at that time.

If you are in a group, and considering any kind of change that would put you significantly more in the group’s field of influence, I will give you the advice I wish someone had give me before I took such a step:

Find out who has already come and gone, and how, and why.

And don’t just take the group’s word for it. Look for neutral third-party sources, or better yet, locate and ask the ex-members themselves.

The only way to know for sure what led people to leave a group — and what they experienced while they were in it — is to ask them directly.

​Endnotes

[i] Per Michael Langone, former executive director of the International Cultic Studies Association, in Prevalence, accessed 1–2–25.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] According to Stroke Facts from the Centers for Disease Control, accessed 1–2–25, almost 800,000 people per year experience a stroke.
[iv] Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich (1994, 2006, 2023).
[v] Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace by Margaret Thaler Singer (1995, 2003).
[vi] The events I’m recapping here are described in a news feature published by a California newspaper, chronicling events from the mid-80s: “A Split at the Razor’s Edge” by John Hubner, San Jose Mercury News (April 30, 1989; accessible to subscribers of the newspaper).
[vii] Ibid. Ironically, I understand it was ashram officials who had taken the initiative to invite this coverage — perhaps having expected they could shape the story consistent with their own aims.
[viii] The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad (1993).
[ix] Take Back Your Life, Lalich.
[x] Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults by Janja Lalich (2004).
[xi] “Psychosis, Stabbing, Secrecy & Death at a Neo-Buddhist University in Arizona” by Matthew Remski, in Elephant Journal (May 4, 2012). Accessed 1–2–25 at https://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/05/psychosis-stabbing-secrecy-and-death-at-a-neo-buddhist-university-in-arizona/.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Take Back Your Life, Lalich.
[xiv] “How Religious Shunning Ruins Lives” by Fern Schumer Chapman, 3–27–24, Psychology Today (article online here).
[xv] This section draws from two previously cited works — Lalich, Take Back Your Life and Singer, Cults In Our Midst.

​How is a controlling group like a manipulative partner? Oh, let me count the ways…

In my first comparative post, I lifted up parallels related to the abuser’s or founder’s public image, the beautiful beginning of the relationship, how the partner/group mesmerizes and alters the person on the receiving end of their attention, ways conflict shows up and plays out, and what isolation may look like.

In a second set of comparisons, I explored four more ways to read between the power moves, including: who does (and who should) get the blame or credit, the red flag of conditional care, where the craziness in the relationship comes from, and why the victim may not notice they are losing their spark or being conned.

Here, I finish out the analogy between significant others and groups who are controlling, by taking a look at the roots of control in these relationships. Let’s zero in on a final four factors.

“I try to ‘do unto others,’ to have compassion for his challenges and model selflessness. But he doesn’t seem to respond in kind; he takes as much as I’ll give, and then some.”Establishing healthy boundaries is a growing edge for many people who are naturally empathetic or people pleasers. Further, regardless of temperament, females are often socialized to be mindful of others’ needs, and to put themselves last. Cultural factors can come into play too. (I’m looking at you, my Midwest Nice people.)

​When a person with any of these traits gets matched up with a partner who is preoccupied with his own desires, insecurities and problems, the relationship can become all give and no take.

Whether he’s a bona fide narcissist — or simply clueless about other people — she may have to fight both her conditioning and his predilections to set healthy boundaries in the relationship. A manipulator will be happy to take advantage of her deferential, forgiving nature.

A similar pattern can happen in groups. If you’ve ever been the person who kept saying yes to volunteer work until you burned out and blew up (or quietly dropped out), you know what I’m talking about.

A healthy group will not want you to give until it hurts. Leaders will honor No equally to Yes, looking for win-win ways to meet the needs of participants as well as the organization and its mission. You will be valued for yourself, not strictly for what you can do for the organization.
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In contrast, highly programmed settings can blur boundaries, as expectations for schedule, activities, and ongoing participation press in. Consider situations like living with other group members, traveling to intensive retreats, or participating in a religious community with all-through-the-week expectations. Any of these can create a situation where a person has little space to discern their own needs or articulate their boundaries in ways that go against group culture. You are engulfed — physically, socially, and in your time and attention — by the group’s activities and worldview.

​Perhaps the most insidious type of boundary transgression by a group is the kind that can happen inside a person. If you internalize the group’s norms and values through repeat exposure (in sacred texts or written teachings, formal talks, informal conversation, spiritual practices, workshops, courses, etc.), no one has to ask you to prioritize the group’s values; you know what the ideals are. You can start to police yourself, regardless of where you are or who you are with.

The most existentially significant boundary may be your sense of self. A group I was involved with believed in deliberately going against the ego. They regarded dissolving the sense of self as the ultimate goal of the spiritual life.

I can see value in reducing superficial attachments, for someone who wants to become more free. But ego-reduction can be misapplied or taken too far.
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It’s one thing for a mature, well-developed person to choose, in true freedom, a goal of nirvana or merging with the Godhead. It’s quite another to teach that enlightenment is the goal of life for every human being, and to inculcate self-dissolving practices in people who have yet to even establish a healthy sense of identity. The ego, after all, serves an important function.
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The idea that killing one’s ego = spiritual growth is also ripe for abuse. If attachment to one’s own wants and needs is selfish and bad, if suffering is productive, if pain is a gateway to freedom or God, then a group can mistreat someone — or expect them to sacrifice themselves to their cause — and call it love.

Lesson #10: Know and value your own needs. Set and hold boundaries that are healthy for you. Give yourself adequate space to discern these, and be wary of any person or group who idealizes self-sacrifice. You matter and you deserve all good things — no more than anyone else, sure, but no less either.

“He criticizes me for ‘letting myself go’ but still expects sex, on his terms. I feel like I can’t say no.”

The power and control wheel describes some of the many ways that domestic abusers dominate victims: intimidation, threats, economic power moves, emotional abuse, isolation, blaming, claiming male privilege. These often build up over time, and eventually escalate to physical and/or sexual violence.

Laura E. Anderson (When Religion Hurts You) observes that the innate sexuality of a human being touches every aspect of a person. That makes sexuality a primary avenue of self-knowledge and self-expression, as well as a powerful means of connection with others. It follows, then, that “one way to control other people [is] to vilify sexuality and to script rules about how it’s expressed.”
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A partner may do this as a way of exerting dominance. High-control groups do it too. As a survivor of a fundamentalist Christian group, Anderson comments on the purity culture that has been common in evangelical communities for decades. She writes that “purity culture teachings and lifestyles can result in trauma… people coming out of purity culture often have the same symptoms as victims of sexual assault.”

​Other controlling settings may also devalue the body, view sexual pleasure (and pleasure in general) as superficial or shameful, and establish strict norms around sexuality. Whether a group is religious or political, New Age or self-help in its orientation, it may couch these rules in its ideology.

In the high-control group I was involved in as a young adult, people were encouraged abstractly, through spiritual teachings, to dis-identify with the body. (“You are not the body. You are not the mind.”)
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At the same time, various practices can contribute to dissociation — including spiritual practices like concentration forms of meditation, listening to the teacher’s hypnotic voice in talks, and using a mantram in daily moments of stress. Rather than attuning to the body and its knowing, such practices train one to turn attention away from one’s own body and the feelings the body conveys.

I don’t remember hearing messages specifically related to sex until I was fairly involved in my group. (That’s pacing for you.) As I recall, I had been meditating for several years, had gone to regional retreats, and finally signed up for a young adult retreat at the headquarters. A sort of kundalini 101 session taught that this life energy, often felt as sexual desire, can be transformed back into spiritual energy and used to power the journey to Self-realization.

At this point I got the message that the householder path — which typically includes marriage and family — is a recognized path; one need not be a monk to establish a spiritual life. Only several years later, after I had moved cross-country to work for the organization, did it become clear that the monastic path was regarded as superior by the inner circle of this community.

In a workshop about discerning one’s personal calling, we young adults were encouraged to be especially careful in determining whether or not parenting was part of our individual calling. No one explicitly said: don’t divert years of your life and untold energy to parenting. They just encouraged deliberation about this consuming part of life. At the time I thought, that’s right, having children should be an individual choice, not a general societal expectation.

My perspective on this has become more nuanced over time. I suspect that my cohort of young people was being subtly discouraged from having children. The first generation of the teacher’s students HAD coupled up and raised children at the communal site. Some of the long-timers seemed, in retrospect, to regard this as a detour from their highest calling or desire, to reach samadhi through focused spiritual disciplines.

Plus, by the time I came around — just after the founder died — the organization was at or past its peak phase of outreach and expansion. There was a growing sense of urgency about drawing a younger generation to the community to live and work, to sustain the organization as the teacher had established it — and to sustain the aging first generation. As a practical matter, children would divert precious young adult energy away from doing the work of what was now an organization with a ticking clock.

More recently, I have come to understand that raising children in that intentional community was problematic for the children who had grown up there (to put it mildly). Group leaders may have realized this too.

Whether or when to reproduce is only one part of the sex question for high-control groups. Most also have rules around if and with whom members have sex. In The Guru Papers, Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad observe that “the two prevalent ways [sexual] control is exerted [by gurus or similar leaders] are through promulgating either celibacy or promiscuity.” Both have the same result: making it less likely for deep bonds to form between individuals within the group (couples), so that the guru can keep members’ primary emotional bond focused on him.
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With some people and at opportune moments, leaders in my group did privately promote celibacy as the best path, the one that will lead most swiftly to spiritual advancement — including to some young adults of my generation.

I didn’t hear that message directly myself. But I had already indicated my expectation NOT to live in the intentional community. So they likely had me pegged as one of the YAs who would sooner or later go the family route, as indeed I did.

A leader who espouses celibacy or marital fidelity normally models it himself — or pretends to. Alas, as Kramer and Alstad note, “sex scandals go with the occupation of guru because of its emotional isolation and eventual boredom.” Among the instances they were familiar with were “religious leaders using their exalted position to seduce, pressure, or coerce disciples sexually, some even at puberty.”

To add insult to injury, Kramer and Alstad continue, “the real motives behind [the guru’s] sexual excursions are often masked by such words as ‘teaching’ or ‘honoring’ their disciples.” He might say that the objects of his attention are special.

Such behavior is problematic on many levels. What is often most difficult for disciples to accept, according to Kramer and Alstad, is the deception and what it means: “The lie [about his celibacy or marital fidelity] indicates the guru’s entire persona is a lie, that his image as selfless and being beyond ego is a core deception… not only did he not achieve [the goal of selflessness or ego transcendence], he does not even know if it is achievable.”
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​With the duplicity and betrayal of sexual scandal, the image of the teacher — and the trustworthiness of his teachings — all come tumbling down. The entire enterprise of the group is shown to be hollow. Hence, it should not be surprising if people deeply invested in the group’s worldview and continuity deny that such accusations could possibly be true.

Lesson #11: Sexuality is sacred, powerful — and yours. The only person who can discern what is best for your sexual life is you. No relationship that lacks mutuality and consent can be good for you — and a relationship between a leader and follower is inherently unequal. A middle path, centering genuine intimacy and honoring pleasure, is less fraught than one that seeks either purity / abstinence or detached hedonism.

“He’s always instructing me how to do things — even when I know better than he does! Sometimes I feel more like a child than a partner. What’s odd is, I actually have a harder time making my own decisions than I used to.”

An abuser’s behavior may go beyond mere mansplaining to treating his partner like a child, a less-capable person who needs to be shepherded, schooled, perhaps even disciplined by him.

The stress of living in an abusive relationship, and the whittling away of the victim’s self-esteem, may result in her finding it harder to think for herself and navigate life choices.
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In my group, I didn’t think much initially of the teacher-learner dynamics at retreats and such. It was what we participants had signed up for. But the pattern did not lessen over the years. At all. They were clearly the role models; we were forever the students.

The young adults who moved out to work for the organization were each assigned a mentor to check in with them periodically. This sounds thoughtful on the surface, and may indeed have been well-intended. But many of us were accomplished professionals in our 30s. Ostensibly they had wanted us to come to share our skills and knowledge.

The mentor-mentee relationship subtly reinforced the spiritual hierarchy of the group. It also provided a private, one-to-one container for the airing of questions and concerns that might arise as we adjusted to our new place inside the organization. Indeed, I suspect pooling of questions, concerns, and observations was fairly limited among the newbies. It was perhaps most likely between roommates — because where else would you have the privacy to share doubts and discrepancies?

This paternalistic attitude did not come out of nowhere. It is the pattern of a high control group, starting with the founder(s)/leader(s).

In a comparative study of two rather different cultish groups, Janja Lalich found that the parental role of the leader(s), and the followers’ strong attachment to that figure, resulted in developmental regression for a significant portion of the followers. (Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults)
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This was not particularly a reflection on those participants; it was “induced, at least in part, by the group processes and interactions,” Lalich notes. It seems to be baked into cult dynamics that as a person grows more embedded in the group’s rules and routines and guidance, they begin to lose a sense of self apart from the family-like group. They become dependent; in extreme groups like those in Lalich’s study, members might even become child-like.
​

This type of control can also show up in who is allowed to share the teachings. In my group, this was a privileged role. It was only long-time students — the most loyal, orthodox, and socially adept — who led retreats or workshops.

After the founder died, true believers had become determined to Maintain the Purity of the Teachings — something I heard about during the time I worked there. It was officially proclaimed that no one else would ever be considered a teacher on par with the founder.

Still, more facilitators would be needed, beyond the there-for-decades disciples, if the program schedule was to be sustained. I suspect that householders newly invited to train as facilitators were long-term meditators who had passed the group’s loyalty smell test.

I have the impression that they were given exacting guidance about how to deliver the content. Perhaps this zealous approach helps explain why several iterations of facilitator training did not produce a sustaining cadre of program leaders; people may have been put off by the increasing rigidity of the program.
The organization has since turned its focus to online retreats and programs. Such a format would allow true believers to vigilantly Maintain the Purity of the Teachings themselves, from headquarters, while reaching people anywhere.

Lesson #12: With any potential partner or group, look for signs that they can share authority and respect with you, and will not patronize you, however subtly. Does the association help you hone and trust your own judgment, or are you expected to turn to them in perpetuity? Is there any provision for new teachers, writers, editors? What qualifies someone to be in such a role? How tightly controlled is the process for sharing the wisdom of the group?

“He’s so jealous. I’ve come to realize that he is deeply insecure. He talks like he’s doing everything for me… but in reality, it’s always about him!”

She might find her partner’s possessiveness flattering at first. But when he doesn’t want her to have any male friends — and even seems to begrudge her ties with family members — that’s another story.

He also comes across as confident initially. In time, though, she realizes it’s a façade; underneath his bravado is a fragile ego. That’s why he needs constant affirmation from her, and bristles at even the gentlest feedback.
​
With a group, this trait is likely to show up as a demand for extreme loyalty. In a charismatic group, it will be the leader who particularly requires your allegiance. In other groups, it may be the group generally, with its program and belief system.

In my group, the expectation of loyalty did not appear initially. The founder was just a sage writer… gradually I got to know him as a kind-hearted fellow who gave interesting talks on spiritual topics, often with a touch of self-deprecating humor (I saw them via recordings)… and, as I knew from the beginning, the creator of a particular set of spiritual practices, the group’s program — from which I was experiencing benefit. Nothing suspicious here.

As I got more involved, I heard some use an honorific from the teacher’s culture, acknowledging him as a spiritual teacher. That seemed fine by me; if I was hearing about a professor, or a member of the clergy, or a physician, I would not object to people referring to them as Professor or Rev. or Dr. So-and-so. Others, even residents at the communal site, eschewed the title and simply called him by his first name, or his initials.

It was evident from the stories told by the teacher’s first generation students, and the way they talked about him, that they held him in particularly high regard. Would I have responded similarly, had I met a person as wise and giving as they described him to be? Perhaps, I thought.

Gradually the idea of regarding the founder not simply as “a writer” or “a meditation teacher” but “my teacher” was introduced to the circle of young adults. Still, it was presented as an option — with guidance as to how to grow closer to the teacher, for those who chose to do so.

Between this subtle message, the continuous imbibing of the teacher’s words in books and recorded talks, and the modeling by workshop leaders and other long-timers, in time I absorbed the idea that this was MY meditation teacher. I began to think of him that way. After all, I was practicing his method of meditation. If people can have piano teachers, why not meditation teachers?
​
It wasn’t until I participated in a special, high-commitment program with a group of other young adults that the emphasis on a relationship to the teacher escalated. I vaguely recall a ceremony in which we emerged from the meditation hall after evening meditation, candles in hand. As directed, we walked silently, flames flickering against the dark, out into the memorial garden.

The focal point of the garden was a rock monument from which water flowed at the top. Its face was inscribed with a devotional quote from scripture. In this context, the devotional sentiment clearly went beyond the divine persona from the scripture; it was aimed at the group’s teacher. This brief night journey was a pilgrimage laden with meaning.

I had actually forgotten about this episode until another alum of the program brought it up recently. This friend reminded me we were also invited to show our allegiance to the teacher during this program. I don’t remember that specifically at all.

But then, the socialization can be just as effective when done more subtly. Gurus and their acolytes can simply “reinforce devotion with attention and approval, and punish its lack by withdrawing them.” (Karmer & Alstad, The Guru Papers)

At any rate, the commitment of long-term students to the teacher was clear. My cohort was cultivated in the years following his death, a time of potential turmoil for the community. When I worked there, the way leadership coped reminded me of those WWJD bracelets that were popular among certain Christian evangelicals in the 90s — except this group ran everything through the filter of What Would Our-Teacher Do?

I could feel how a teacher-centered, devotional sort of approach was the norm among the inner circle. As I told a friend around the time of my departure, “if you’re not like that [as I wasn’t], people won’t trust you as much.”

Turns out, all of this is textbook high control group stuff. Here’s how sociologist Janja Lalich sums it up: “The ultimate aim is to get the devotee to identify with the ‘socializing agent’ — the cult leader, the patriarch or matriarch of the cult, or the controlling and abusive partner, as the case may be. The desired outcome is a new self … whose actions will be dictated by the ‘imagined will’ of the authoritative figure.” (from Take Back Your Life)
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The socialization into group and teacher loyalty went very deep. Because even after I left, barely a year after I had moved out there — and with many negative feelings — it never occurred to me to speak ill of the group. Even to my fellow meditators back home, I was vague about what I had experienced. Partly that was because it took me time to find the words to describe what I had gone through. But partly, I was hesitant to burst their bubble. It’s not like any of them were going to move out there.

​I also knew that to the core group, anything but loyalty was a no-no. I was supposed to be grateful! And indeed, at that time, I was still grateful for the positive things I had gotten from my spiritual practice and my involvement with the group.

During my year there, I had learned that many people had come and gone from the group’s orbit over the decades. The long-timers didn’t talk about those other people. Someone more on the edges told me about serious students who had been there for a couple decades, and gave so much to the work — they were literally airbrushed out of pictures after they left.

So it looked like progress to me when, after giving notice, I and another departing member of my cohort were given a warm send-off luncheon. People offered good wishes for our continuing journeys.

What they actually said about us after we left is an open question. I recall judgmental things I heard insiders say about retreatants, or people who had backed away. Nonetheless, having been steeped in apparently caring relationships with these people, I remained in touch, sending family holiday newsletters along with periodic donations over the years.

I had been willing to look past the dysfunction I experienced when I worked there, and try to focus on the good aspects of my experience. Because I had chalked up the problems I observed there to the deep grief of the teacher’s long-time students after his death. Maybe there was something about the selection process of who came there and stayed, too.

I don’t see it that way anymore. Now, I view the true believers as the most deceived and betrayed of the founder’s followers. And I understand that they wouldn’t be how they are, if he wasn’t how he was.

As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The teacher created the cult-ure of that community. He did it so well that his disciples are still dependent on him a quarter century after he departed this earth.
​
It turns out that, like an abusive partner, the leader of a high-control group is in the center because he put himself there. Whether or not the founder of my group believed he was serving others in some pure way, I will not speculate here; the guru-ashram model is a thing in his culture, so it is possible he meant well.
Either way, I believe with Kramer and Alstad (The Guru Papers) that the model is inherently authoritarian, and therefore ripe for corruption and abuse. The leader can easily shift, imperceptibly, from shepherd into wolf.

Lesson #13: A partner or group who wants you to forego other deep bonds, give up other avenues of growth — and abandon your own inner wisdom — does not deserve your fealty. Whether the pressure is urgent and apparent or subtle and sophisticated, do not surrender to another’s authority. It is the taproot of control.

If there is any solace for me in this situation, it is that the group may no longer be trying to draw new people out to live in the community.

But I mourn for all of those idealistic seekers who have quietly, unknowingly, by degrees, for some period of time — often years — lost some of their freedom through close involvement in this group.

For one involved with an abusive partner or a cultish group, the roots of control include blurred boundaries, hijacked sexuality, paternalistic attitudes, and the self-centering of the partner or group leader(s) as your ultimate master. Is this your situation? To assess, look past the ideology and zero in on the structure of the relationship.

(Missed the first two posts in this series? Here they are: Part 1 Part 2)

I learned the hard way these lessons about power and control in collectives. I hope my sharing here may help others avoid such experiences — or see them more clearly, and recover more fully, if you or your loved ones have been through something like this.

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Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.

“He was always right. Problems were always my fault.”

People who misuse power stay in the driver’s seat by taking credit for the good stuff in the relationship, while avoiding accountability for the bad stuff.

“Baby, you need me. You’d be nothing without all I’ve done for you.”

The bad boyfriend might send this message. But so might the controlling group.

If they are subtle about it, well-socialized group members will simply model the message: “Ordinary people like you and me would never get far by ourselves. I give gratitude daily to _ [founder(s) / teacher] _ for showing us the way.”

As for failures? That’s on you, not Mr. (or Ms.) Perfect.
​

An abuser might blame his partner for driving him to cruel behavior — “If you would’ve taken care of those things like I told you to, none of this would have happened. You can’t do anything right, can you?”

He might downplay his bad behavior, even deny he had any part in it. “It wasn’t that bad. You were due for dental work anyway.” “You fell down the stairs, don’t you remember? You’re such a klutz.”

An authoritarian leader or group may similarly deflect responsibility. “God is punishing you for your lack of faith.” “That was your own karma rebounding on you.”

In response to credible allegations of abuse from members of the community, true believers might respond with blind faith and improbable excuses: “We know Beloved Leader did not do those awful things; from our own direct experience we can tell you he’s not capable of such behavior. Whoever is spreading these lies must be jealous or seriously disturbed.”

Lesson #6: Be clear-eyed and honest about who is doing what.
​· Have you developed a new skill — practical, spiritual, or otherwise? Good for you! Whether or not anyone else contributed, you couldn’t have done it without… YOU.
· Has a person or group in your life treated you poorly? That’s on them. If they are mature — if they are worthy of being in your life — they will be able to own up to mistakes, and show concretely in their behavior that they can learn and grow. Don’t believe it unless you see it.

“He’s kind of controlling sometimes, but overall it’s a good relationship — not an abusive one. Not like ______ [some extreme example] ______.”

A relationship doesn’t have to involve physical violence or other undeniable red flags to be unhealthy.

Does he turn to you mostly when he needs something from you? Subtly signal that he may leave you if you don’t conform to his expectations? Belittle you, or dismiss your feelings? That is not a mutually supportive relationship. You deserve better.

If a group wants your unpaid (or underpaid) labor, your financial donations, and your endorsement of their program — but strictly on their terms — its relationship with you may be shallower and more transactional than you thought.

If they show you love only when you adhere to their formulation of Pure Teaching, and distance themselves from you when you think independently, consider that this group may in fact be using you.

Other group members may have genuine affection for you. But in a high-control group, the organization’s priorities — maintenance of the group’s status quo, the lionization of its leader(s)/teacher(s), keeping control of the public narrative — these are always going to trump your needs.

A group doesn’t have to be Heaven’s Gate or NXIVM-level extreme to be harmful. If ANY of the elements of power and control show up in the dynamics — loss of autonomy, isolation, minimizing-denying-blaming, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse, threats-accusations-intimidation, economic control, rigid rules about sexuality and gender — watch out.

Also realize that just because you haven’t experienced intense power dynamics, doesn’t mean others haven’t — or that you won’t eventually, if you stay.

Lesson #7: If the love is conditional, or there is any amount of coercion, the relationship is harmful — you’re being used. Don’t stay with a person or group who undermines your ability to trust yourself and think for yourself.

“I feel like I’m going crazy. Is this all my fault?”

​A person in an abusive relationship likely finds their world getting narrower and narrower, as the abuser comes to control more aspects of their life — where they live, who they associate with, what ideas they hear, how much freedom they have. In the process, she may go from feeling strong to feeling fragile.

​He is constantly defining the situation in ways that benefit him, often at her expense. He may deceive her, gaslight her — deliberately denying realities she observes, to make her question her grasp on reality — and chip away at her self-esteem with messages that she is not enough, she is flawed, she needs him.

He blames her for whatever ills befall her, even those he inflicts. Society often blames her too, asking accusingly: why didn’t she leave? To the extent that she has internalized all this, she may blame herself.

But as domestic violence advocates know, the craziness is not her fault. She did not start out crazy. She is in a crazy-making situation.

Controlling groups operate in much the same way. What starts out as a good thing begins to constrict the participant’s world — and worldview — more and more.

The leader points the way to Perfection; the participant who has not yet arrived at this impossible goal is continuously directed to look in the mirror and try harder.
​
(As for the man — or woman — behind the curtain? Pay no attention to what he’s doing back there. Focus on his carefully curated image, and idolize him for that.)

In such a scenario, it should be no surprise if members of the group become less and less psychologically well.

I recall one group I was involved in, who explained that the emotional volatility of some long-timers was a result of “speeded-up karma.” In other words, they had worked so hard on their stuff, and gone so deep through their spiritual practices, that now they were working with the most difficult strata of personality issues.

They might seem unstable, but this actually reflected great spiritual progress. Up is down! Night is day! Neurosis is a sign of spiritual achievement!

Lesson #8: If you feel like you’re losing touch with reality, take a hard look at the people and environment around you, and consider how they might be contributing. If you feel worse over time, after a particular association begins, it likely has more to do with that association than with you.

If you find out a former member of the group wound up in a mental institution — a tale I’ve heard — think twice about where the crazy came from. And if someone tells you “everyone at the ashram/church/commune is crazy!” take it to heart and GET OUT.

“I lost my spark. I’m not sure when it happened, but looking back, I see how much I’ve changed.”

Being in a crazy-making situation can lead anyone from having a bold personality to a bland one.

The change may be more obvious to friends and loved ones than to the person in the controlling relationship. But in time, she may look back and realize how different she is than she was at the beginning of the relationship.

Trouble is, he may wait until she is trapped to show his true colors. “He was a perfect gentlemen until we got married.” “Once I had the baby, leaving became much more complicated.” “Without a job or my own place to live, I’m stuck.”

What about groups? Social psychologist Robert Cialdini views cultic groups as a type of long-term influence situation. Especially when principles of social influence continue over time, as in a controlled setting or ongoing program, the resulting changes in a person can be dramatic— yet may not be recognized as such by the participant.
​

Janja Lalich observes, “In most cases, the desired behavioral change is accomplished in small incremental steps because conversion to the new worldview is a gradual process.” (Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships)
​
In my group, I felt like I was making choices to increase my spiritual practice and explore a variety of spiritual ideas. It was indeed a gradual process — stretching over years — which at the time I would not have named as coercive.

​But now I see myself in a telling scene from the film Romancing the Stone. Danny DeVito’s character has just snatched the precious gemstone from Kathleen Turner’s character, who went treasure hunting for it with Michael Douglas’ character.

DeVito: I’m stealin’ this stone. I’m not tryin’ to romance it out from under her.

Turner, indignant: Wait a minute. Going for the stone was my idea.

DeVito: That’s what all the good con artists want you to think. He made you think you needed it, you sap.

It’s true that ideas I did not hold when I first came in contact with the group became not only familiar, but almost… alluring. And did I need them — the teachings, the group, the teacher — to help me get where I (now, maybe) wanted to go?

Once someone has committed to a high-control group, L.J. West and M. Singer observe, the group’s “way of thinking, feeling, and acting becomes second nature, while important aspects of their pre-cult personalities are suppressed or, in a sense, decay through disuse.” (quoted in Lalich / Take Back Your Life)

As for a newfound blandness in one’s personality, this may be a reflection of the induced dependence of the victim on the abusive partner or group.
​
What’s more, the manipulated person may in time become dissociated — what psychiatrist Robert Lifton calls psychic numbing. Trauma and overwhelm can cause dissociation as a protective mechanism. Meditation, chanting, lectures, fatigue, or verbal abuse can likewise sever typical connections among feelings, thoughts, and memory.

​Lesson #9: Distinguish between genuine serenity vs. a personality blunted by a systematic program of reshaping. If you can’t be yourself in a relationship, pass on it. A healthy partner or community will not need to snuff out your spark; rather, they will cherish what is unique and bright in you. Only unsound settings will demand that you dim your light.

In my next post, I’ll finish sketching out ways that controlling groups can be like abusive partners — including re: boundaries, sex, and loyalty.

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Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.

“Things started out so great. But I don’t feel safe with him anymore,” the caller told me. “I don’t know what to do.”

I took many calls like this — and some more frantic — while working at a domestic violence shelter and rape crisis line in the late 90s. Lessons from my training and time in that advocacy center have been coming back to me as I have learned about high control groups (sometimes called cults).

​Not only because the literature on such groups makes clear that abusive relationships can be, in essence, one-to-one cultic relationships, with all the same dynamics. But also because the more I reflect on my own experience in a group I now regard as a high control group, the more I notice ways that many of the same elements of control that are present in individual controlling relationships showed up — and continue to show up — in my old group.

Here are five of the lessons I learned as a volunteer and staffer in the women’s shelter, that translate to controlling group settings.

​Note: I typically refer to domestic abusers with male pronouns, and victims/survivors with female pronouns. This is the most common scenario. However, abusers can be any gender or sexual orientation, as can victims/survivors. The same holds true of the leaders and members of controlling groups. The important thing to pay attention to is the dynamic of power and control.

“He’s so well regarded, I just never guessed this could happen…”

The abusive partner may be a pillar of the community, just as the founder of a cultic group may have impressive credentials. Perhaps the abuser runs a business, practices law, or has buildings named for him due to his philanthropy. The group’s founder could be an accomplished scholar and gifted writer/translator who walked with a living saint.

Or they may have a more ordinary background; what the person lacks in accomplishments they may make up for in charm, the stories of their past experiences (real or fictitious), and their ability to read people and intuit how to connect and build trust with different people.

It’s likely that many people — particularly the ones they choose to be around, and who choose to be around them — find the person credible, likeable, even admirable. (Anyone who is put off by them, or sees through them, isn’t likely to stick around.) The abuser/leader/group may also deftly manage their public image, singly or with the help of skilled operatives.

So, it likely won’t be obvious from the outset that this person or group might be harmful. That’s no accident.

Lesson #1: Yes, even THAT person could be a controlling person — an abusive partner, or the founder/leader of an authoritarian group.

“Our relationship started out so great.”

In the early stages, a predatory person or group will often pour on the love. He may bring flowers and gifts and shower her with affection. He is considerate, caring, and complimentary. He pays attention to what she needs and responds accordingly.

Likewise, group members show interest in the prospective new member, offering things many people crave more of in their lives — attentive listening, warm connection, curiosity and interest about you, open-hearted sharing about me, especially where we have commonalities.

Early experiences with the group bring real value to participants. These may include social connections as they bond with other newcomers and develop a sense of belonging; introduction to tools and perspectives that participants can use to develop themselves or improve their life experience; perhaps delicious retreat food, needed rest, beautiful scenery, or simply a break from the pressures of ordinary life.

If the group’s founder(s) are still present in body in the group, becoming the focus of their attention and charismatic charge may make one feel particularly special and cared for. This attention may be brief, but as a rare commodity that only makes it more precious. Tender regard by their deputies or other leaders in the group may have a positive effect too.

Such experiences can foster a genuine sense of well-being and connection, encouraging prospects to continue and deepen their affiliation with the group.

Whether the relationship is with a romantic partner, charismatic leader or high-minded group, it’s only natural that such early experiences of meeting essential human needs set one up to expect more good things in the relationship.

Lesson #2: While not every beautiful beginning will lead to a controlling relationship, most controlling situations start out feeling very promising. There may be little warning of what will develop in time.

“This love was irresistible. It changed me.”

Romantic love has a powerful effect on the human person. Falling in love has been likened to an illness, with physiological effects that alter daily experience, and that must simply be allowed to run its course.

The reward centers of the brain go on overdrive, obsessive thoughts can take over, and the cycle of anticipation, connection, and separation enthralls the new lover. Suddenly this relationship and all the feelings it brings is the most vibrant thing in one’s life.

These dynamics pertain in a relationship with a (someday-discovered-to-be) abuser, just as they do with healthy people. The abuser may even add an extra dose of charisma and intensity into the mix, making the relationship more addictive than usual with new love.

Group experiences can affect and shape a person deeply, too, as one is buffeted by forces beyond their conscious awareness or control. Consider the following:
Individuals may have opportunities to feel especially valued by the group / leader(s) as they continue their association. For example, if I am invited to special celebrations that are not open to everyone, I feel honored. If I apply to a program which has prerequisites and a vetting process, I will feel special when I am accepted into the program. If I am welcomed to stay on the residential grounds of the group’s inner circle, or to make personal pilgrimages to the sacred place, I will feel closer to the inner circle myself. Such steps may increase identification with the group and generate positive feelings of being cherished and included.

Members of some kinds of groups — including therapy/encounter groups, religious or spiritual groups, and Large Group Awareness Trainings — may disclose deeply personal experiences to one another in the course of the group’s practices. Such emotional intimacy can form powerful bonds and encourage the person to remain open and vulnerable.
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Certain group practices help to settle the nervous system and can even put you in sync with each other physiologically. This signals to your body that you are in a safe space, where you can relax and trust. As described in Resmaa Menakem’s book My Grandmother’s Hands, such practices include: singing or humming together; rhythmic activities done together, such as walking in sync, clapping in rhythm, or rocking or swaying to music; cooking and/or sharing meals together.

​Though Menakem distinguishes between settling the nervous system and soothing the body through activities like prayer or meditation, the latter kinds of practices can certainly bring welcome calm, too. Meditating regularly — and meditating with others — may lead to deeper, more powerful experiences.

Margaret Singer (Cults in Our Midst) relays that “Trancelike states can occur during hypnosis, during complete absorption in reading or hearing stories, and during marked concentration” as well as through “meditation, guided imagery, drug use, fatigue, or sensory deprivation.” (I suspect certain kinds of dance — like whirling dervishes — and speaking in tongues fall into this category too.) In such altered states, everyday awareness of our surroundings and our relationship to the environment dissolves.

Indeed, participants may consider that one of the aims of their practice of meditation or other above-mentioned activities. “For many persons,” Singer observes, “entering a trance state is pleasurable. It provides a respite from thought about the woes of everyday life.” Meditators may spend weeks, months, or years taming the monkey mind, to achieve such a state of repose.

​Yet such altered states of consciousness have other effects, too; one is heightened suggestibility. Combined with facilitators’ “pacing and leading, exploiting positive transference .., and making indirect suggestions,” group members who frequently enter into trance states become more malleable to the worldview and aims of the group.

​Many high control groups also incorporate sermons or wisdom talks into the group’s regular practices. Meditation may be “followed by the viewing of repetitive soporific [videos], usually of the guru or swami lecturing.” Singer believed that “a number of speeches given by certain cult leaders, and some group chants, fit the criteria for producing transient levels of trance.” One study found that “speeches by cult leaders and fundamentalist evangelists had more hypnotic qualities than those of … mainstream church leaders.”

I am intrigued by Singer’s further observation that group or solitary readings of certain kinds of poems — including Romantic poetry influenced by “mesmerism, the opium-induced hallucinations of British writer Thomas DeQuincy, and Germanic authors’ stress on imagination” — can similarly generate “what are best called trance-augmented aesthetic experiences.” (Hmm, would the likes of Rumi, Kabir, Ramakrishna or Thomas à Kempis qualify? I’m guessing so.) The same qualities identified in this type of poetry “can be identified in analyzing the speech of many cult leaders, particularly when they are addressing groups of members or sympathizers.”

My fellow meditators-of-a-certain-kind, let this sink in: teachers with slow, soothing speech — and texts that drip like poetry from the tongue, slowly uttered in any voice (even your own inner voice) — are likely to induce hypnotic states.
The mechanics and chemistry of influence may be more subtle and gradual in a cultish group than in a new romance. Yet the shaping of identity, physiological experiences, states of consciousness, and heightened susceptibility to ideas and beliefs that others introduce — these are arguably more profound in a high control group.

Lesson #3: This is a two-parter:
· Early in your relationship — or better yet, before you start seeking — clarify for yourself what your goals are. How would you know if you found what you were looking for? Then as you gain experience with a potential partner or group, revisit your list occasionally. If your ideas about what you want change, consider carefully how and why they changed.
· Hold on to your individuality and your agency. These practices may help: when it comes to increasing your commitment level, go slowly; take breaks from the relationship (individual or group) so you have space to think for yourself; journal or otherwise “listen” to yourself; share what you are experiencing with uninvolved friends or other trusted individuals, and listen to their observations about your trajectory.

​“There have been difficult periods, but the thing is, I really love him.”

Any relationship has ups and downs. If you are with someone long enough, you will start to see their shadow side. By this time you have already bonded with them chemically — with things like oxytocin and dopamine that make you feel good.

When couples have disagreements, they try to work through them. Conflict styles and skills vary widely. Any couple goes through a process of learning how to work through difficulties with each other.

Controlling actions often begin very subtly, making it harder to recognize and name them as a different class of conflict from the usual personality clashes. At the first unmistakable sign of abuse — such as physical violence — many a girlfriend or boyfriend may consider breaking up with their significant other.

This is often when the abuser turns up the charm and pulls out all the stops. He may beg you to take him back, convincingly promising it will never happen again. He may buy extravagant gifts, take drastic actions to prove he has turned over a new leaf, get down on his knees and profess his undying love.

And the thing is, the love between these two people may feel genuine, from one or both directions. If you love someone, if you believe they feel the same way toward you, and if they promise you they will change — well, many people will try to forgive and move forward.

The group parallel is a bit more complex here. A newer member may not agree with everything they hear from the group. In a democratic group that doesn’t matter; people don’t all have to think alike. But even in a group that turns out to be more doctrinaire, a participant may find enough of the teachings / practices beneficial and true in their own experience to want to continue with the group; so they brush aside any private disagreements or misgivings.
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As relationships form with other people in the group, the relationships carry weight too. Individual relationships may be important to a participant — relationships which began in the group and make sense because of the group context. Whether you have connected with other newbies, long-time members, or the group’s charismatic leader(s), a similar cocktail of happiness chemicals can come into play as with a romantic partner.

​Plus, the collective relationship is its own thing. Belonging is a powerful force for humans; we are social creatures by nature. We all need community. We all need identity. To quote the theme song from the 80s sitcom Cheers, we all need places where “everybody knows your name.”

Yes, there are other fish in the sea, and other groups in the world. But when you are already emotionally attached to a particular partner or group, and have experienced how they can meet your needs for things like connection and meaning — those wonderful early experiences you had with them — it’s hard to walk away. Most people are going to keep trying, initially.

Lesson #4: Learn to distinguish who you care about — and even who may genuinely care about you — from who is actually good for you. One does not guarantee the other.

Love yourself enough to walk away if/when you realize a partner or group is controlling. (Controlling behavior rarely decreases over time.) Keep what you learned and get out while you can.

“He became the center of my world. Others fell away…”

Isolation is one of the classic signs that an intimate relationship is emotionally abusive, and at risk of becoming physically abusive, if it hasn’t already. I remember this wedge on the Power and Control Wheel graphic from training at Middle Way House.

Other people that the victim trusts could empower and support them to leave the relationship. But the abuser wants to stay in control. So he keeps her focus on him and their relationship. He might tell her that her friends don’t know what’s best for her, undermine her relationship with her mom or sister, arrange to move far away, even delete her social media accounts. Financial dependence may layer on top of emotional dependence in keeping her fixed in the relationship, serving his needs.

A couple months ago, as I was reading up on high control groups and noticing more and more of these parallels with abusive partnerships, I recalled the power and control wheel and wondered if there was an equivalent for groups. It’s much newer, but I did find one, in survivor-turned-trauma-informed-psychotherapist Laura E. Anderson’s 2023 book When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion. Below is her Religious Power & Control Wheel.

When I moved cross-country to work for the meditation center I’d gotten involved with — something a whole cohort of us then-young adults were cultivated to do — I put thousands of miles between myself and my long-time friends, my parents, my healthy church community, my choir, and other social supports. All I had in the new place were the people I knew from retreats. Even without moving into the ashram I had become much more isolated.
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I decided not to spend all my spare time with fellow meditators, going to group meditation, spiritual talks, volunteering in the garden or doing the other things that many others did do. I felt that spending my entire work week there was enough of a leap in time and energy devoted to that community and its mission.

Fortunately for me, another member of my choir moved from my city in Indiana to the same area of California the same month as me. We quickly joined a local choir together, and hung out weekly after rehearsal. I also checked out the nearest church in my (non-extreme) denomination and began to build relationships there. I have no doubt I fared better than I would have otherwise because I had a web of relationships beyond the meditation group. I went home to see my parents at Christmas, as well. That made me different from the people who lived on the group’s communal living site; they rarely seemed to have contact with their families of origin or other friends.​

There was a financial side to this too. I found I could barely make ends meet, even living in a small apartment with a roommate. My car was paid off, but in the future, when I had a car payment to add back to my budget, this scenario simply would not work. Not to mention, I wanted to be able to live generously — making donations to charitable causes (modest, but still, something) — to buy healthful food rather than the cheapest, less nutritious food, and to save responsibly for retirement.

I had done all those things before. But I could see none of that was going to work long term on the peanuts I was making at the meditation center. At the time, I saw this as a reflection of how out of touch the meditation community was with life for regular householders. Now, worse occurs to me: that the poverty pay was a kind of financial coercion to live at the ashram, where living expenses were considerably lower — and there was extensive “milieu control.”

In any case, I got a call from back east about a job opportunity, and began exploring that possibility. In the process, I realized that, for a variety of reasons, I needed to get myself out of this situation. All the official group email accounts of employees were monitored, I’d learned. So in job search communications, I was careful to only use my personal email address. It was only one of the forms of information control at work in the group — there were others I didn’t even recognize at the time — but it was unnerving.

Lesson #5: Stay connected with other positive people in your life. A social support network is important no matter what marvelous partner or group becomes part of your life. Anyone who wants to cut you off from that does not really want what is best for you. Be wary of financial dependence too.

I’ll share other lessons from the domestic violence field in the future. Next up: why, in a controlling relationship or group, it’s always your fault — never his or theirs.

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