Cult Survivors Reclaim Their Voices

Using writing as a tool for cult recovery

For several years during the most challenging and painful stage of my cult recovery, I had a recurring dream about the guru who had controlled me for so long. In the dream I would bump into the cult leader somewhere (a shop, a restaurant, at the zoo) and she would confront me about what a huge mistake I'd made by leaving her and how my life was ruined because I'd forsaken her. The location for the dream would vary from night to night, and the words my guru used to harrange me changed as well. But one thing was always the same.

My dream-self would reply to her and try to explain that what she was teaching was wrong and manipulative and that I didn't believe she was God any longer, but despite the fact that my lips were moving, no sound came out of my mouth. So my dream-self would become a bit frustrated and try to speak a little louder, to no avail.

I always woke up from these dreams at this point, crying with frustration sometimes. It didn't take a Ph.D. in dream analysis to tell me what was going on. I knew I'd lost my "voice" to my guru and I supposed that this was my subconscious's way of working through my anger about that.

Writing was a pivotal tool that helped me reclaim my voice. As I've said in previous articles, journaling is an ideal tool for cult survivors to use to aid in their recovery; it's free, it's accessible to anyone and most importantly, I believe, writing teaches us to connect with ourselves, something our cult leaders most definitely did not teach us.

By developing a regular habit of journaling our feelings, whatever they may be, we heal ourselves in two directions at once. As we move inward to connect with what we're feeling we learn once again to trust our bodies and our minds and our hearts, and notice that no matter what else is going on in our lives, when we quiet ourselves to write, even for five minutes, we are connecting with our self. And at the same time, writing helps us to develop the authentic voice that has been stripped from us. No one can judge our writing or tell us we're wrong about our feelings when we're journaling. We can begin to express our thoughts and our beliefs in a safe place where they will not be squashed or dismissed. This begins to nurture our "voice".

As victims of the thought-stopping techniques that cult leaders use, we must relearn the skill of allowing ourselves to think and feel what's really going on for us. This happens slowly and journaling encourages this growth in a completely unthreatening environment. Like a new plant just barely poking it's head out of the soil, we must be very gentle with ourselves during recovery - we are, after all, rebuilding ourselves from the ground up, just like that plant. Journaling is a great way to practice expressing ourselves; one that will not expose us to any harm, whatsoever.

Thankfully, I don't have that shouting-but-saying-nothing dream any longer. I do dream of my guru occasionally still, ten years after I left her web of lies. But now she is usually moving around the scenery of the dream in the background, and if we speak I am able to talk to her in a normal voice. Among all the gifts writing and journaling have given me during my recovery, I am convinced that it was journaling that helped me to change the way my dream-self is able to deal with encountering my old nemesis.