The Big Empty
This is the sixth post in a series on the state a person may find themselves in after leaving a cult. It's in part my own personal experience and in part the result of reading several books on cults and seeing the biographies of ex cult members and their remarks about life after the cult. I recommend that all the posts in this series be read in order from first to last as several build on points made in the earlier posts.
Note: here is a link to my blog archive by topic which has almost all my older posts at the blog sorted into categories for your convenience.
Part of the mindset and transformation that many long term and heavily indoctrinated cult members go through is worth examining. This can help to illustrate how devastating the eventual rejection of cult doctrine and the cult founder and leadership is. It's not a minor setback.
Quite often cults have a few features in common. As I have pointed out in earlier posts the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton describes this quite well as do several books I have referred to.
There are many useful experts and models regarding describing the changes a cult member goes through and I have referenced many earlier such as Robert Jay Lifton and his eight criteria for thought reform, Margaret Singer and her book Cults In Our Midst, Daniel Shaw and his book Traumatic Narcissism, Alexandra Stein and her book Terror, Love and Brainwashing, Steve Hassan and his BITE MODEL, Jon Atack and his numerous books and articles.
All of these in my opinion are bona fide experts on the subject with a good understanding of the topic and a very useful unique contribution to the subject that has helped me personally. I think you are on the right track if you examine the work of these experts.
I want to focus on a particular part of the cult indoctrination process to highlight how it changes one so they end up in the position I described that some ex cult members find themselves in if they eventually reject the cult and the doctrine totally.
A quote from Wikipedia on the book Combating Cult Mind Control by Steve Hassan gives a useful bit to examine:
Three Steps of Mind Control
Hassan claims there are three steps to gaining control of someone's mind: unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. Unfreezing means "breaking a person down," changing is when indoctrination is introduced, and refreezing means building someone's new artificial cult identity.
Unfreezing can be induced physically, by depriving someone of sleep or food, by changing their diet, or by overloading their senses; mentally, such as by being intentionally confusing and contradictory; or emotionally, by making people feel like they are not the best judges of their own needs or that by leaving the group, they are giving up on an opportunity to change their lives. Hassan notes that unfreezing is best done in private, such as on the three-day weekend trip he took to the Unification Church commune, but can be done in more public spaces. However, it is generally important not to allow people alone time to think and reflect. As such, unfreezing is often done in groups.
During the change phase, the cult doles out the new identity. They do this through repetitive motions or lectures and seminars focused on the same topic, such as how bad the world is and how only the enlightened can fix it. Other cult members play an important role in identity indoctrination by creating a sense of community. These communities can then enforce behaviors using praise and shunning. When he was with the Moonies, Hassan describes how they separated recruits into sheep and goats, sectioning the goats off into their own group or asking them to leave lest they dissuade the sheep from joining.
According to Hassan, the most important part of refreezing is the denigration of the past self. Cult members must not want to return to their old lives and old identity. This may include giving up on their old hobbies, friends and family, often in a public setting, and confessing their sins to the group. Members may have distorted memories during this phase. Cults often pair new recruits with more seasoned members, instructing the new ones to imitate the older ones in all things. In this phase, cults may use outside cues like a new name, clothes, or language to cement the new identity. New members are also quickly converted into recruiters, as convincing people to believe something actually cements one's own belief in the same thing.
The entire cycle of indoctrination may be repeated over several years. End quote Wikipedia
The idea of the three steps was credited to Kurt Lewin for some time, but now its origins are disputed.
I want to focus on certain aspects of the changes that cult members undergo to demonstrate clearly the effects they have and how one gets to the final result they arrive at when they eventually reject the cult.
Hassan's quote above included the following: "Unfreezing can be induced physically, by depriving someone of sleep or food, by changing their diet, or by overloading their senses; mentally, such as by being intentionally confusing and contradictory"
I have previously described how Scientology indoctrination is intentionally confusing and contradictory and the techniques can overload the senses.
Hassan went on: "During the change phase, the cult doles out the new identity. They do this through repetitive motions or lectures and seminars focused on the same topic, such as how bad the world is and how only the enlightened can fix it."
Obviously Scientology is jam packed with repetitive motions in the indoctrination in both the courses and auditing. There are literally thousands and thousands of taped lectures that focus on how bad the world is and how only the Scientologist by studying Scientology can fix it. And in looking at how bad the world is in Scientology doctrine one develops an interesting habit quite often.
One becomes practiced at finding flaws and inconsistencies in the world and people and practices around them that are not part of Scientology.
The website TV Tropes has the category "Deconstruction." It has the following description "Deconstruction" literally means "to take something apart".
Cult members take apart the methods and ideas of outside society. In Scientology the government is criticized, religion, other subjects and systems. Hardly anything is left untouched.
Whatever values and beliefs one had prior to joining a cult get devalued and discarded as part of this process. As your old life and identity is rejected and cast off belief in the old self and old ideas and ways of doing things are degraded and broken down and reframed as no good.
Often cult members have criticized the systems and values of the outside world to a point of habitual deconstruction and it becomes first nature and a hard habit to break.
Regarding anything that is not "of the cult", being cynical and disdainful is so deeply ingrained that a condescendingly arrogant attitude is often not even noticed by a cult member in themselves, despite being constantly present.
So, when a person has rejected Scientology and the doctrine and technology of Scientology completely this leaves them in a difficult position.
If they were recruited as a teenager or adult they may have old ideas and values to consider, but these might be so thoroughly invalidated and devalued, torn down and deconstructed so thoroughly they have no cohesion in the mind of the ex cult member at this point.
For those raised in Scientology there may be no other foundation to even consider. This brings a whole group of additional challenges for an ex cult member.
You can end up in a sort of no man's land philosophically, not believing in Scientology anymore or much of anything else either and not open to embracing anything else either.
You can be put off your old values and beliefs and not enthusiastic about returning to them and not open to other things that you know of, as you developed the habit of tearing them down and rejecting them as a defensive and reflexive action.
The comfort and certainty and sense of superiority that Scientology gave you is now gone, so you are just, well, empty.
Whereas in the past you might have had some confidence and what Robert Jay Lifton called a "reasonable balance between worth and humility", you now through being torn down in the cult, often through excessive confession (which Lifton's eight criteria for thought reform described) have lost your sense of worth.
You may feel worthless. You see no value in your past life. You can realize the cult was a fraud and not the salvation that you relied on it for. You can see your time in the cult as a waste and depending on several factors you may see the cult and your participation in it as evil. This can vary tremendously and is not meant to evaluate what happened or what you did or should feel. It is a very different thing from person to person.
Robert Jay Lifton has remarked that Vietnam veterans often had to separate their own actions and the actions done by others to make sense of their experiences. Some soldiers were victims and they did not commit any crimes. Others have done things they had to face that they were not proud of.
Similarly, some ex cult members have been both victim and offender or abuser in different turns. Some were not abusers at all but victimized by others.
An ex cult member can feel deep profound shame and loss for both.
Ultimately I wanted to paint a clear picture of the dreadful state of mortification and near total collapse a person may attain when they realize their whole belief system, in this case Scientology, is a pack of harmful lies, their actions were not justified or beneficial, their claims were false, their promises were empty, the good ends they thought were justifying their means were not even true and the dreams they devoted their lives to were neither their own or real.
The moment of losing all faith in the techniques and philosophy and doctrine and ideology of Scientology in full, is absolutely crushing emotionally, mentally, and psychologically. This can't be overstated.
One can feel as Daniel Shaw described an inescapable shame and feeling of wrongness, a feeling of profound vulnerability and worthlessness, a feeling of being useless and not good enough for anything.
And this can be the trigger for the counter feeling of being undeserving of the love and compassion and safety and acceptance you so desperately need in this moment. The feeling of being disgusted that you are vulnerable and therefore completely undeserving of any love or acceptance or help can trigger a fierce sense of independence and refusal to be vulnerable or allow yourself to get any help or support.
And this can bring on the intense and unrelenting impulse to be self destructive and to condemn oneself ruthlessly and ceaselessly, after all, if being weak and vulnerable was your failure, you don't want to keep doing that!
And finally we have the combination of factors that add up to "the big empty", one is trapped in the seemingly inescapable double bind that Daniel Shaw described in his book and articles, the state of needing the acceptance and love and support of others but needing also to be independent to be free from the vulnerability and deep shame this can trigger. The shame can be so deep one resolves to never be vulnerable to anyone. This is a trap that has no apparent resolution.
A state of constant alertness and distrust to remain safe, safe from vulnerability to others and the betrayal of oneself that can come by trusting someone who violates you and your trust, can exist.
But it is hard to survive as such an isolated cynic. The desperate desire to be loved, to be part of something more, whether a family or community or friendship is not easy to completely deny oneself, especially if it is eating away at you.
And with a potential lack of beliefs and foundation to work with this is made more difficult. You don't even necessarily have principles to guide you.
You may have developed the bad habit of finding flaws and things to tear apart in, well, everything and everyone, all ideas and philosophies and groups.
This is the big empty - it's the dreaded state one might end up in if they reject a cult, in my case Scientology, completely.
It is not universal and identical by any means, but I have tried to find the words and a bit of cult literature to explain or support my description.
If you were never in a cult I hope this gives you a good description of one possible outcome. If you were in a cult just consider this my description for me and in no way a description of your own situation, unless you find it accurate and if you do then it's only accurate to the degree it is and no more. You don't have to be the same as me.
The Big Empty
