cults

Cults are high-control groups that use isolation, thought reform, and emotional coercion to bind members to a leader, ideology, or closed system. In trauma-informed therapy, they are understood through the same lens as coercive control, domestic abuse, and authoritarian family systems.

Common features include love bombing, us-versus-them thinking, forbidden questions, shame and shunning, information control, and fear of leaving. Survivors often carry complex trauma, identity disruption, grief, and distrust of their own perception after years of gaslighting. Clinical work focuses on safety, education about undue influence, rebuilding autonomy and critical thinking, processing grief and betrayal, and, where helpful, reconnecting with a self that existed before the group.