Signs & Symptoms of Cult Recovery
After 16 years in a cult, 15 years in an Anticult, and 9 years out of both, I know what it means to recover from a cult.
Messages to Exes
For my fellow Exes
Is the Ex Scientologist Message Board Good for an Ex-Scientologist?
With so many people stuck in the most negative views on ESMB, is this a place where an Ex-Scientologist can productively evolve & grow after their experiences in Scientology?
My Message to India Oxenberg Producer & Star of “SEDUCED”
When I first got out of Scientology 21 years ago, I’d have made the same doco India did. That would have been a huge mistake.
How Hubbard Lied: ReDefining “Individuation” Like It’s A Bad Thing
What if being a Scientologist was never a really a disease in the first place that you needed to “recover from”? What if it was just one part of your own much longer spiritual journey that taught you many important lessons, and from which you emerged stronger and wiser than ever?
How would you know?
The Difference Between Ex-Scientology and Anti-Scientology
“Ex” is not “Anti”. Anti is a stance against. Ex is simply a former member, having many different stances about their former religious pursuit.
Religious Persecution of Minority Religions by Dick Anthony
The metaphor of ‘brainwashing’ is best understood as a social weapon for religious persecution which provides a “libertarian” rationale for the suppression of unpopular social movements and belief systems.
Learning & Growing Out of Anti-Cultism as an Ex
When I first heard Scientology stories of abuse, I became very angry. I let that anger permeate my thinking & even my self-identity. Many Exes experience this.
Chief Seattle’s Speech
Yonder Sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My … Read more
Top Gun: Maverick – Scarred For Life
I’m a perpetual victim of Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick. Its success has devastated me. Trying to put the pieces back together, my recovery may take the rest of my life.
The Buddha’s Tooth
The mother told her son, ‘If you forget again, you will see your own mother commit suicide right in front of you.”
The Foundation of Human Genocide
Human mainstream cultures protect themselves against minorities they feel threatened by.
How the Anti Cult Movement Harms Ex-Members
Adopting the beliefs of the anti-cult movement dramatically changes the views and attitudes of those who experience a loss of faith. Those changes have a profound effect on how Exes make sense of their own past. So we must ask: How helpful is the ideology of the anti cult movement in making sense of your life?
Anti-Scientology is a Socially Constructed Nightmare
When any Ex-Scientologist uses disciplined and reasoned analysis, he finds that the hysteria being generated by anti-scientology is just that – hysteria. Leah Remini, and some of the most abusive and fanatical people to ever … Read more
Vulnerable: The Degraded Stereotyping of Cult Members
Tony Ortega recently repeated (twice) that an Ex-Scientologist who got themselves involved in Scientology did so during a “vulnerable” part of their lives. It’s a frequent and superficial claim made about a multitude of individuals … Read more
Tribal Ninnies: A Taxonomy
A Tribal Ninnie is a person who has adopted a particular tribal narrative, and is presently letting it do all their thinking for them. AntiScientology is filled with Tribal Ninnies, such as the sub-species of Rinder-Ninnie & Remini-Ninnie.
Cults of Anti-Cultism by Anton Shupe et al, 1980
This is a paper written in 1980 on the AntiCult Movement, as it existed when the authors estimated when it was 10 years old. Can you see any differences in the AntiCult Movement today? _______________________________________ … Read more
Adjusting to Mainstream Society After Scientology is Not “Recovery”
The cult recovery paradigm of Ex-Scientology sets up a whole bunch of things you think you need to “recover” from because you were in Scientology. This is a dysfunctional view. Paradigms are insidious things. They … Read more
Pushing “All or Nothing” Thinking on Exes By Never-ins
Angry Gay Pope tells an Ex-Scientologist what to think about their time in Scientology. This time with a major cognitive distortion.
Getting Out of a Cult is Not Something You Recover From, It’s Something You’re Strengthened By
Worldviews are fragile things. Don’t look at them too closely – they may collapse on you. Ex-Cult members know this better than you do.
Embrace Your Inner Scientologist
To dismiss that part of your life, to wall it off under labels of “delusional Scientologist” or “weak” or “crazy loon” is to remain in a dissociative state – to continue living a fractured life with some of the best parts of you buried underneath a wall of self-hatred and shame.
Post Ex-Scientology
A Post-Ex has integrated the arguments, and “truths”, he made as a Scientologist with the arguments, and “truths”, he made as an Ex/Anti-Scientologist. He has seen the disconnects and the contradictions there, and repaired them. He no longer walks around with an opposite self inside him, with which he is at war.
Scientology & Hindsight Bias: An Ex-Scientologist’s Deadliest Disease
The human mind has certain biases which routinely, and falsely, color the perceptions of people called cognitive biases. One of the most important for a former cult member to know about is called the “hindsight bias”, or the “I knew it all along” effect.
You Still Have Control
An interesting article written about victims of abuse from Slate.com on February 8th 2014 by Samantha Gelmer, the woman who was sexually abused as a 13 year old by the film director Roman Polanski. Her … Read more
A Study List for Life After Scientology
Your assumptions can be quite insidious. You must study the actual subjects that Hubbard “spun” for you – from sources completely independent from L Ron Hubbard – so as to challenge your own assumptions, separate out Hubbard’s installed ones, and inspect them for their weaknesses.
Binded and Blinded By the Tribal Mind
Once I’d spotted that my thinking was tribal, I was no longer consumed by my tribe’s survival. I resented that the tribe had taken over my thinking. I could finally see the eclipsed and thoughtless cruelty of my former tribe.
Scientology and The Source Family Cult
Looking into The Source Family cult is a good “parallel study” for some who have been involved in Scientology. You can gain a little better context for your Scientology experience.
Healing From Scientology Abuse is Not a Social Media Activity
If you were not abused in Scientology, and you say so in the various social media platforms on the Internet, then you can be accused of being heartless to those who were. A common way … Read more
Catastrophizing Scientology
Don’t catastrophize Scientology or your experiences in it. Always work to keep your experiences in Scientology in perspective.
If Anti-Scientologists Love Science So Much, Why Don’t They Use It?
One of the most hysterical and unscientific beliefs of the Anti-Cult movement is that “brainwashing” and “Mind Control” is at work whenever anyone becomes a member of a “cult”. These ideas are assumed and unquestioned … Read more
Part Three: Never Go Full Anti
Scientologist and Anti-Scientologist alike can not think. They are both too militantly tribal to be able to think rationally. Here’s how.