Lauren Smallcomb

“As clinical psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach says in her book 'Radical Acceptance', “those who feel plagued by not feeling good enough are often drawn to idealistic world views that offer the possibility of purifying and transcending a flawed nature.”
― Alexandra Amor, Cult A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
― Anais Nin

“Many of the techniques that cult leaders use to entrap and abuse their followers. I desperately needed approval, assurance that I mattered, and for someone, anyone to tell me that they loved me. I was a perfect, although not unique, storm of insecurity and lack of self-awareness, with a deep and sincere desire to make the world a better place.”
― Alexandra Amor, Cult A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery

“Double-binds contradict logic. My body knows and clearly tells me while my brain remains wrapped in knots trying to figure things out. Of course, when I was learning to accept double-binds as the rule of law in the group I knew none of this but my body did. It never stopped telling me that what I was learning didn’t make sense. However, the sinister, dangerous beauty of authoritarian rule is that at the same time that she was manipulating me, she was teaching me to ignore any signals from my body or mind that would contradict her position of power. The analogy I use is that gurus teach us to build a dependence on compass points outside ourselves. We become completely dependent on these external references because we are simultaneously being taught that our internal compass is faulty.”
― Alexandra Amor, Cult A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery