In my cult experience I had intense emotional arousal and long meditation or guided imagery (dissociative states) used as part of a „thought reform program“.
„One of the things that ex-cult members have to deal with is, they’re no longer ‘world saviors‘, they left the organization that really had pretenses and phony descriptions of what they where doing for the world.“
Margaret Thaler Singer
After leaving I needed a couple of years before being able and having the strength to deal with the symptoms that I had initially tried to compensate with drugs and other addictions in the process of recovery, because these had been the coping strategies I had known.
I needed to learn and expand to a whole new range of tools and measures, as well as professional help, re-evaluating my identity in the midst of the loss of everything.
I found myself in a new position where I regained authority over my own life and started to trust myself, that I was capable of navigating through the storm, not losing hope and even encouraging others on the way.
