Cracking the Cult Code for Therapists: What Every Cult Victim Wants Their Therapist to Know

by Bonnie Zieman

People who have been subjected to exploitation, isolation and thought control in a cult and who work up the courage to leave, do so with many psychological and emotional wounds. Many of them seek out therapy to help recover from the damaging after-effects. Unfortunately, cult victims often report that therapists just do not seem to 'get' all that they endured in the cult, and all the challenges they face once out of the cult. In fact, many cult victims abandon therapy, feeling that their therapist just did not understand the the degree to which they had been controlled, repressed, exploited and abused. Many recount that they felt their experience seemed to be discounted as something they just needed to put behind them. Due to the advent of the Internet and the easy access to information it provides, more and more cult members are discovering just how much they have been deceived, coerced and abused. As they make their exit from high-control groups, extremist religions and cults, a whole new psychotherapy client population is looking for help to recover their emotional well-being, intellectual independence and ability to function in the world outside of the cult. Since most psychologists and psychotherapists do not receive much, if any, instruction about cult dynamics and the destructive effects of such intrusive dynamics on cult members, therapists may be ill-equipped to truly understand and help this unique and growing client population. With this book, Bonnie Zieman, a former cult member, a recently retired psychotherapist, and the author of four other books on recovery from high-control abuse, provides a useful reference tool for therapists who need to inform themselves about cult abuse and its aftermath. This one-of-a-kind book offers a summary outline of typical cult controls and the probable resulting effects on those subjected to them. Therapists can use this book as a primer to bring themselves up to speed on the topic - until such time as they decide if they want to take more formal training in order to help former cult members reclaim their authentic self and rebuild a self-directed life.

Genres: Cults, Religion, Psychology, Nonfiction

138 pages, Paperback

Published June 16, 2017

Reviews

[Lois Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was brought up in the JW Cult, you end up never questioning, always accepting what you are told and taught as 100%, correct. This book showed me how much it had damaged me mentally, it's not until you read it do you realise this. My thinking now is, I'm so, so glad I wasn't brought up in the USA and, left this Cult when I did, during the mid '90s. It is a book written mainly for therapists, but worth a read. Generally, most people and therapists have no idea of the suffering or damage that born in JW's go through and, it's getting worse as time passes.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, really solid and thorough. Easy to read as well, very organized. Although I'm not a therapist or cult survivor, just a cultic studies aficionado, it was an engaging read.