Surviving the family cult
“A cult, by definition, is an organization or group that requires total submission from its members and total commitment. That in and of itself defines the majority of families today. Family cults build highly controlling environments with rigid boundaries and suppress the children and other adults from freely expressing themselves.” ~ Dr. Kaia Alline, Family Cult Recovery
One of the most damaging psychological controls happening to many people today are family cults. When you hear the word cult you probably think of somebody like David Koresh and the Branch Davidians…a bunch of people living on a compound who are prohibited have from having contact with the outside world, and whose rules and regulations are secret. Or
Most people would not think immediately of the family you grew up in as a cult. But for many people, your family or origin is not only operating and being run like a cult, it is in fact the most dangerous type of cult because you were BORN INTO IT. When you are born in to a cult it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to see that you are not a free sovereign being. I believe it will take quite some time before the average person comes to understand the damage inflicted upon them within the confines of the family cult. After all, you have likely been programmed with mantras like “but we are family” “family is everything” “no one will love you like we do” for your entire life, to where you don’t even question those programs until something or someone awakens your awareness.
Think about this: who has more control over your life than your family? Unless you were EMPOWERED and INITIATED as a child and teenager, your family has control over you in many ways way into adulthood.
Ask yourself these questions:
How will my parents react if I marry someone from a different culture, religion, race?
How will my parents react if I choose to sail around the caribbean instead of coming home for christmas because I want some time with my partner?
How will my parents react if I tell them I do not want children and motherhood is not for me?
How will my parents react if I tell them I am moving 7000 miles away because I feel drawn there?
How will my family react if I excommunicate myself from our foamily religion and decide to become Hindu?
How will my parents react if I will not eat any meals with them if they are consuming dead animals because that no longer aligns with my values?
How will my parents react if I tell them I will not invite uncle bob and grandma to my wedding because he has always been creepy around me and grandma supports him and doesn’t believe me so I don’t want either of them there?
How will your mom react if you tell her that you don’t want anything to do with your dad because he was abusive to you and it’s not good for your wellbeing to be anywhere near him?
If you know (or have experienced) that your family would be completely supportive of your decision, honor your choices, respect your boundaries and tell you that no matter what you choose they respect your independence, you are incredibly blessed. That is a healthy family response and your family does not exhibit cult behavior. If on the other hand your parents react with anger, control and manipulation and try to force you to behave the way they want you to, if they tell you that you are an embarrassment, if they tell you they will cut you out of the family or the will or your inheritance if you do not do what they say (threats of financial desertion are classic cult behaviors), you were raised in a family cult. And chances are, you are still under the mental, emotional and maybe even physical control of your family.
It is well established that the four critical roles of a parent are: nurturing, protecting, empowering, and initiating. But if you examine your own childhood, it is likely that you will find that one or more of these critical functions did not happen in your family. In my Mother Wound Healing Program, found here on my Liana Shanti website, I go over these four roles in detail and discuss what happens when these roles do not get fulfilled.
In the area of family cults, it is extremely common that if your family operated like a cult, you were never empowered and never initiated. What does that mean?
It means that you were not encouraged to be independent and sovereign. A controlling and perhaps narcissistic parent told you things like what to wear, how to act, who you could be friends with, what you should study at school, what sports and activities you should do, what future career was acceptable and some even go so far as to tell you that you need to remain living close to the family.
In his article entitled How a Dysfunctional Family Functions Like a Cult (based on a paper presented at ICSA’s Annual Conference in Bordeaux, France in 2017), Jose Fernández Aguado, says:
“Dependence. A dysfunctional family makes its members weaker in many of the same ways that a cult makes its members weaker: In both contexts, members’ autonomy, critical thinking, identity, and dignity are suppressed or distorted to serve the needs of those in control (Langone, 1992).”
Family cult leaders (your mother or father, or in less common cases your grandparents) groomed you your entire life to become DEPENDENT. Financially, mentally, emotionally and often physically. They have controlled what religion you practice, what careers are acceptable, who you marry, what you dress like, and much more. And if you didn’t follow their cult rules you were likely called the “black sheep” or a “rebel”, derogatory insults meant to make you feel shame for not adhering to the cult rules.
Aguado continues his discussion about family cults by stating that cults require enmeshment, and this is evidenced in a family cult with one or more of the children. He states that “when a parent isn’t able to differentiate between her needs and the needs of her child, she is quite plainly violating the boundaries that her offspring needs in order to grow. In addition to being deprived of his own space, the child isn’t allowed to make his own decisions. While one factor underlying such a lack of boundaries is a lack of trust in a child’s ability to make appropriate decisions, another factor often is a lack of trust by the parent in herself. As a consequence, she will project that insecurity onto her child. Enmeshed relationships have the tendency to be coercive or abusive because they are based upon the shared assumption between the two members of the relationship that one of them is not good enough to make his own decisions. A parent, for example, who too closely monitors and checks the homework of a child may implicitly communicate that the parent thinks the child can’t measure up on his own.”
Shared assumption between the two members of the [cult] that one of them is not good enough to make his own decisions.
I have come across so many people who are adults in their 20’s, 30’s and even 40’s and beyond who still do not believe they are good enough to make their own decisions. When I first embarked on this path of publicly teaching, guiding and mentoring people on the healing path, I could not grasp why so many people were afraid to make decisions. In fact, it became a point of exasperation for me because I was continuously being asked to make decisions for them - to which I have always refused. I continually send people back to themselves to make decisions, the same way I empowered my oldest child and am currently empowering my youngest who is now a teenager. I tell my students and my own kids ALL THE TIME “you have to make your OWN decisions. It does you no good if I were to make decisions for you. You need to learn discernment and most important of all you need to learn to trust yourself.” My daughter would always say to me “but you know so much mom and I’ve never seen you make a bad decision so why wouldn’t I ask you?” And I would tell her, because if I tell you what to do you will become dependent on my answers instead of independent and self-reliant which is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT.
I emphasize that to my students repeatedly. I continue my teaching them that it would be better for them to make their own decision and find out it was a mistake, then make a better choice because it’s something they were told to do by someone outside of themselves.
A core facet of my teaching is SELF AS AUTHORITY. That is what sovereignty is. Sovereignty is not relying on someone outside of you to make your choices.
But it became very clear to me WHY so many people want someone else to make their decisions: They were raised in family cults where their parents made (and often still do) all of their decisions, and they literally live in fear of making decisions for themselves. And often when they first begin making their own decisions, they get anxiety and end up making reactive emotional decisions because they were never properly empowered or initiated by their parents. Cult leaders never empower.
Here’s an illustration to help bring understanding to this complex topic: Recently, one of my students made an unfortunate decision regarding a child custody issue. She believed she was doing what was best for her child, but she went about it in the wrong way. She was not in an easy position, her ex husband is an abusive (to her and her child) sociopath who has made death threats to people close to her. So of course she was and is concerned for the safety and wellbeing of her child. Nonetheless, I always share with my students that in my experience the legal process MUST be followed to the letter of the law when you are dealing with child custody. I have NEVER seen a custody case go well for any parent that goes rogue and ignores court parameters or judges orders or the legal process in general. It is just not something that is ever in the best interest of the child. But she reacted from an emotional place (understandable given the sick nature of this man and the people who support him).
Tragically her family cult ganged up on her and aligned with her ex, attacking her publicly and within their community, including her sister and mother who at one point had reported the ex husband for child abuse to CPS. But now that their daughter/sister was “outing” the family (specifically, speaking freely about her own father who abused another sibling who years earlier cut out the family entirely and refuses to have any contact with any of them), they suddenly “aligned” with the abuser.
This is a clear example of cult behavior - ganging up against their daughter even if it means aligning with a man who they know is abusive. Attacking the “black sheep” becomes a more important goal in the family cult - even more important than protecting their own daughter and granddaughter. Attacking anyone they perceive as a threat: her friends, her life path, her choices, the teachings she is learning from, anything rather than accept responsibility for the abusive way these cult leader/parents raised their family.
It is much easier for the family cult leader to blame my student, or her friends, or the teachings she is following, rather than have to face the cold hard reality that TWO, not one, but TWO of their children have ALIENATED themselves completely from the parents. That is more than a clear signal that the family is abusive.
There are many more ways in which a family cult operates, and reasons why they are so destructive to your wellbeing. If you are starting to feel that you might need to look at this issue even further, I highly encourage you to do some more reading on the topic:
The Parallels Between Cults and Dysfunctional Families
The Ugly Truth Keeping You Trapped Inside the Narcissistic Family Cult “A narcissistic family cult is a unit of highly dysfunctional people that comprise abusers, victims and enablers. Within this unstable and defective unit, there are rules which you are expected to follow. Failure to follow these rules results in severe punishment. This punishment is to inflict emotional wreckage on a victim to get them to give up on their sense of self through intense coercive control. Through this control, a victim submits and accepts the family’s false image and is then trauma bonded to the Cult.”
The 12 Rules of a Dysfunctional Narcissistic Family
17 Signs of a Narcissistic Parent & How to Deal With Them
Also, please check out my Mother Wound Program, Father Wound Program and Narcissism Healing Program. All of which can help you rescue your inner children and become the independent sovereign being you were born to be. Liana