Once you realize your group is a cult, there can be a difficult deconstruction of the group’s programming and reconstruction of your self. If you can successfully do that, many former members can experience a difficult moment where this perspective shift can bring a new realization: not only was the group a cult, but the signs and evidence that it is and was a cult are suddenly obvious. This can then bring something like an existential crisis — if the signs were obvious, why didn’t I leave sooner? And why aren’t others seeing this?
It’s in moments like this that it’s worth allowing yourself some grace, and learning more about the aspects of human psychology that made this realization so difficult in the first place.
Nobody joins a cult. They join a good thing. And then they realize they were fucked. – Mark Vicente, The Vow
The Secret: Trust Networks and Love Bombs
First, it’s unlikely the warning signs would have been obvious from the start. Indoctrination is a slow process, and in Training In Power, like most cults, indoctrination is never the first step. The first step is human connection, displays of love and affection, and building trust. There are no Training In Power “recruiters” that spell out the entire belief system of the group and its founder. Nearly all of that information is hidden and only revealed years later. Instead, members are encouraged to connect with their friends, neighbors, and co-workers, offer a free meditation and “healing”, and gently introduce the information that the member can teach their friend a course that will help them take more control of their own life.
The questions posed to the potential recruit are simply: do you trust me? And would you like help? And, meanwhile, the person asking the potential recruit is warm and inviting, and likely someone they already know. And the recruit would not detect any deception because the member has no intent to deceive: they are fully-indoctrinated and believe in what they are offering. That member seems to have something you don’t have, so why not take a chance?
As you stay a member of Training In Power, the psychology of leaving gets increasingly difficult. There are thousands of cults like Training In Power, many offering variations of the same belief system, all while claiming to be the only group that offers that belief system. Most if not all are led by a single, charismatic leader who is largely unquestioned in their judgment, and who punishes and/or abuses those who express doubt. The evidence for being a cult goes on and on: the totality of the belief system, the increasing demands of time and focus. (Members of Training In Power, like in many cults, are literally and explicitly told that they must focus on the work of the group at all times, in every moment, including while asleep, a type of mental overwhelm designed to prevent a pause where critical thought might seep in.) Critics of the group, its methods, and its doctrine are portrayed as evil or corrupted, and members are encouraged to break contact with said critics. And then the doctrine itself defies reason or even its own internal logic.
If you study cults after your experience of being in one (which is often recommended by advocates in mental health), and you start ticking the boxes of every way in which Training In Power and Faye Fitzgerald exhibit coercive control, it can feel sickening. Why did it take so long to see the evidence for what it was?
The Sunk Cost Fallacy
Here it’s good to recognize another aspect of human psychology: the challenge of sunk cost. As time goes on, you’ve spent increasing time and money in this group. You’ve developed friends and perhaps even lovers within the group. And you’ve been told that, due to an amazing cosmic coincidence, you’ve found the One True Group that can offer you Truth. How amazing is that! Out of thousands or tens of thousands of groups with differing spiritual doctrines, you found the correct one, making you very, very special. Not only that, but in Training In Power, you learn that this wasn’t just happenstance. No, through your innate divine power, and your connections to your past lives and/or the leader, you made this happen. You manifested it.
Not only are you special, not only are you lucky, but you are powerful. You are important. You have a special purpose that few have had, ever, not only in the history of the Earth but the history of the universe. In the history of all dimensions.
You do not have to be a narcissist to lap up this kind of praise like an ice cream buffet, nor to allow yourself to feel special, divine, uniquely powerful, and innately better than most people not only on Earth, but better than most people who have ever existed.
Leaving Training In Power, like every other cult in its category, means giving all of that up. The humility required to do so only increases with time, so do all the psychological forces that your brain exerts consciously and unconsciously when faced with any feeling of sunk cost. No one will say you are one of the most important beings in the universe anymore. You will be just a person, a person in a world with randomness and unfairness. You will lose your friends and lovers. You will lose your community. At best, you will be pitied by people who knew you. At worst, you will be hated.
This is why it is hard to leave. This is why it was hard to even think about leaving, or seeing all of the evidence for a group’s harms all around you. This is why you didn’t read letters from victims. This is why you immersed yourself in the group’s work and tried not to think about it. This is why you justified the leader’s behavior in your own head, or even to others.
Cults and domestic abusers and anyone acting out coercive control rely on human nature. You want to believe the best in people, and the environment of cults exploit this expectation. They rely on your trust and your desire to feel accepted and recognized, and, later, they rely on your self-doubt.
It wasn’t your fault. And it isn’t the fault of anyone who stays. All you can do is move forward and do your best and hope that, one day, others will do the same.