|
Recovery means different
things to different people.
Some ex-cult
members simply want to "get on with life" while others have a real
desire to understand, negate, and fully integrate their experience. The
rate and extent of recovery depends on several factors, such as:
 |
How
emotionally developed and psychologically healthy the person was before
being recruited |
|
How severe the
dissociative state(s) was in the cult and/or to what extent the self was
fractured (vs attacked) |
|
Types of
experienced within the cult, such as sexual, nutritional, physical,
emotional, psychic, and ritual abuse |
|
Type and
quality of exit, whether:
 |
forced
deprogramming intervention (injurious) |
|
non-forced
exit counseling intervention (healthy) |
|
walkout
(healthy) |
|
kicked out
(damaging) |
|
|
Help received
after exiting, such as:
|
individual
and group counseling |
|
medical
attention |
|
housing
and welfare services |
|
legal
services, particularly child custody |
|
career and
job placement services |
|
|
Support of
other ex-cultists, especially those from the same group |
|
Support and
acceptance by family and friends |
|
Time to heal
and work through issues before taking on any major commitments, such as
school and/or career |
|
Mental
discipline to reclaim (or develop) the critical thinking process and to
stick with reclaiming the process even
when it gets difficult |
|
Courage to
face the pain of loss and to stick with the process of grieving even when it
gets painful |
|
