A summary of chapters 11 and 12 from the book, Cults In Our Midst, written by Margaret Thaler Singer. Source includes:

Why it's hard to leave:

• Deception in the recruitment process and throughout membership

• Debilitation, because of the hours, the degree if commitment, the psychological pressures, and the inner constriction and strife.

• Dependency, as a result of being cut off from the outside world in many ways

• Dread, because of beliefs instilled by the cult that a person who leaves will find no real life on the outside

• Desensitization, so that things that once have troubled them no longer do (for example, learning that money collected from fund-raising is supporting the leader's lavish lifestyle rather than the cause for which it was given, or seeing children badly abused or even killed.)

Cult Indoctrinee Syndrome:

• Sudden, drastic alteration of the individual's value hierarchy, including abandonment of previous academic and career goals. These changes are sudden and catastrophic, rather than the gradual ones that result form maturation or education.
• Reduction of cognitive flexibility and adaptability. The cult member substitutes stereotyped cult responses for her or his own.
• Narrowing and blunting of affect. Love feelings are repressed. The cult member appears emotionally flatter and less vital than before.
• Regression of behavior to childlike levels. The follower becomes dependent on the cult leader and accepts the leader's decisions uncritically.
• Physical changes. These changes often include weight loss and deterioration in physical appearance and expression.
• Possible pathological symptoms. Such symptoms can include altered states of consciousness.

Thought-reform Processes

Groups relying mainly on the use of dissociative techniques - meditation, trance states, guided imagery, past-lives regression, and hyperventilation - have tended to exhibit these aftereffects:

• Relaxation-induced anxiety and tics
• Panic attacks
• Cognitive inefficiencies
• Dissociative states
• Recurring bizarre content (such as orange fog)
• Worry over the reality of "past lives"

Groups using primarily intense aversive emotional arousal techniques - guilt and fear induction, strict discipline and punishments, excessive criticism and blame - have tended to experience these aftereffects:

• Guilt
• Shame
• Self-blaming attitudes
• Fears and paranoia
• Excessive doubts
• Panic attacks
  

However, although cults tend to focus on one category or the other, they often use a multitude of techniques and do not restrict them selves to one or the other of these major groupings. Thus it is important not to regard this heuristic division too rigidly, since the techniques readily overlap and can produce a range of responses.

Some aftereffects may be experienced by former members regardless of the kind of cult they were in. These general aftereffects are:

• Depression and a sense of alienation
• Loneliness
• Low self-esteem and low self-confidence
• Phobic like constriction of social contacts
• Fear of joining groups or making a commitment
• Distrust of professional services
• Distrust of self in making good choices
• Problems in reactivating a value system to live by

Former cult members must:

• Address practical issues related to daily living
• Face Psychological and emotional stirrings that can cause intense agonies for a while
• Deal with cognitive inefficiencies
• Develop a new social network and repair old personal relationships, if possible
• Examine the philosophical and attitudinal adopted during cult days

It is through dealing with all these areas that the former cult member gains insight into his or her experience and, over time, sheds the cult pseudopersonality.