I appreciate your honesty and vulnerability in talking about how difficult it was to leave TF. Many, many folk do have breakdowns, end up hospitalized, live away from others, and remain bitter and angry. Others can live complete lives of denial and try to pretend that nothing occurred.

What happens in all high-control, destructive, religious groups is that the member confuses their commitment to the group with their commitment to God. Thus, in their mind, to leave the group is literally to leave God. It is inconceivable that there can be any spiritual life outside the group; that God won’t expend His wrath upon them for leaving His “chosen” people.

I would suggest that the fear and/or condemnation (“…guilty feeling or feeling of despising ourselves…”) is a consequence of being set up for failure by your experience in the group/cult. Destructive groups speak a great deal about grace but it is LAW that rules; law that translates into how many “works” the member is performing (i.e. litnessing, ffing, verses memorized, provisioning, etc.). The true, unconditional grace of God as it is Biblically understood is never fully realized in the member’s life. Rather, they live in veritable bondage to the group and its hierarchy.

Healing would certainly be faster if the cult survivor could hold onto their Christian faith and understand that God is NOT judging them based on performance. Sadly, destructive religious groups “inoculate” the cult survivor against true Christianity; confusing their counterfeit cult experience with the reality of the true God.

Cults are by nature trauma producing environments. The member who lives in this “ramped-up,” stress-filled environment over an extended period of time comes to accept this as normal. This trauma slowly erodes their ability to trust and “disconnects” them from others, and God. One of the hardest tasks of the cult survivor is to rebuild their ability to trust. The Bible becomes a menacing book because it is filled with verses that only condemn. Churches are all places of luke-warm apostates and unbelievers. Any so-called spiritual leaders are all abusers. This makes it extremely difficult for the ex-member to rebuild his or her faith.

We have found that people have to be accepted where they are, with whatever they choose to believe or not believe. It is more important at the early stages of a person’s recovery that they experience the true grace and love of God than hear the Bible quoted to them.