Lessons on Leaving
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Toxic Workplaces and the Cult Survivor
19 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cult survivors make great little worker bees (and I say this with a lot of love, respect, and a huge dose of sarcasm), at least in the minds of bosses...
Were you brainwashed?
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During a recent podcast interview, my friend and fellow survivor Lisa Kohn shared that while she was on tour to promote her memoir To the Moon and Bac...
Toxic positivity and the thought-terminating cliché
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Some of the tactics that the Unification Church use to train members rolls up into the thought terminating cliché: that if someone is experiencing do...
The Trauma of First Love in a Cult
21 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Members of the second generation ex-Unification Church community are beginning to speak out about their experiences, going so far as to coin the phras...
Memory Loss, Dissociation and Euphoric Recall in Cults
14 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes I struggle to recall things from my childhood in the cult. There are long blanks in my memory, or when I do excavate memories, I have to sit...
What is love bombing?
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The term “love bombing” seems to have come into the cultural consciousness in a big way in the past several years, perhaps because of the prevalen...
What’s so bad about growing up in a cult?
31 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A few years ago someone commented on one of my social media posts, asking me to explain why I felt that growing up in a cult was such a bad thing. So ...
Healing Through Art - Part Two: The Research
24 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In focusing on art as a healing tool, I want to hone in specifically on religious trauma because that area of focus is where my personal experience is...
Healing Through Art - Part One: My Story
17 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
I believe we are all born creative, or at the very least, with the capacity to be creative. If we’re lucky, we grow up in an environment where the a...
The Illusion of Choice
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Overlaying bounded choice framework onto the biological need to survive within the human group, we can see that there is only the illusion of choice f...
We Are All Vulnerable
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Although media coverage of topics like cults and QAnon are important, in that they help us understand the very real threat of radicalization, I someti...
Why Didn't You Just Leave?
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The question “Why didn’t you just leave” is one I’ve heard more times than I care to count and, sadly, I think that’s something many cult su...
Let Us Embark
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After many years, I decided to try blogging again about the things that have been rattling around in my brain - and then it was brought to my attentio...