Cult-exit Therapy

Therapy can help with the extremely confusing and isolating experience of leaving a cult or other high-control group. The therapists at Los Feliz Psychotherapy in Los Angeles have firsthand experience of being involved in or raised within a manipulative group and what it’s like when when one decides to leave. We have been through the loss of identity and empty feelings that can come up after making such a decision, as well as the profound loss of community.

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When you are in a cult you can often feel:

• I have given too much time and money to this group. I’m in too deep. I can’t get out.

• The tools my guru/priest/elder has given me make me feel calm and grounded (at times) but then there is another disturbing feeling that I continue to push down

• I can’t say what I really think for fear that the group will turn on me

• When people leave the group, leaders prescribe cutting them off completely from the community. They are described as “lost” or enemies of the group.

• Other religions or religious leaders are looked down upon and disparaged regularly 

• You are publicly shamed or humiliated for speaking up

• Curiosity or questioning of any of the tenants is punished 

• You are asked to follow either complete sexual celibacy or are only allowed to date or have sex with people that the leader chooses

• The leader of the group is charismatic and charming and seems to really care

• The group does not examine their actions, admit to making mistakes or try to work on their mistakes

• Often the leadership is all male 

• New cult frontiers include: therapists who make you buy their book or go to their retreats, new age cults that use psychedelics or meditation to induce altered states of consciousness, wellness cults, and even troubled-teen rehabs