Lauren Smallcomb

“I believed that I would be serving the devil if I allowed myself to listen to the thoughts and feelings inside me that were telling me something was amiss. The fact that I never did achieve peace with Lamori and her cruel treatment of others is a testament to the fact that my body knew that something was not right. The butterflies in my stomach never stopped. They wouldn’t back down no matter what I told them with my logical head. I thought they were harbingers of doom indicating my evil nature, but they were simply trying to get my attention.”
― Alexandra Amor, Cult A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery

“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

“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