What Is Cult Recovery?
Leaving a cult or high-control religious group is one of the most disorienting, painful experiences you can go through.
It’s not just “walking away”. It’s like losing your entire map for life, including your identity, community, and sense of safety. Cult recovery is about navigating that huge, confusing space after exit, where everything you once believed in feels shattered, and you’re left asking, “Who am I now? What’s real? Can I trust myself?”
The trauma you carry from your cult experience runs deep. It’s about more than just leaving a group, it’s about untangling years of manipulation, isolation, control, and abuse that rewired your brain and body’s sense of safety and trust.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by grief, anger, guilt, confusion, or a deep sense of loneliness after leaving. Your feelings are real, valid, and shared by many who’ve been where you are.
Cult recovery is possible, but it looks different for everyone.
What Cult Recovery Looks Like
Cult recovery is nonlinear, and can be deeply challenging. Here’s what it commonly involves:
Rebuilding your identity: You might feel like you don’t know who you are outside the group’s rules or teachings. Rediscovering your values, preferences, and beliefs takes time and it’s okay if you feel lost during that process.
Processing grief and loss: You’re grieving more than just people; you’re grieving a whole worldview, a community, and sometimes your own family’s support. This grief can be invisible and isolating.
Healing trauma wounds: Cults often use coercion, manipulation, and control tactics that leave emotional and psychological scars. Healing involves working through betrayal trauma, shame, fear, and hypervigilance.
Challenging cult programming: Those automatic thoughts and beliefs you absorbed – “I’m not enough,” “I must obey to be loved,” “Leaving means I’m evil”, can stick around long after you leave. Part of recovery is learning to recognise and reframe these messages.
Reconnecting with your body and emotions: Cult environments often teach you to suppress your feelings or distrust your own instincts. Cult recovery means getting back in touch with your emotional and bodily experiences.
Rebuilding relationships: Whether it’s mending family connections strained by your exit, building new support networks, or navigating chosen family, relationships after cult life are complicated and need care.
Who Is Cult Recovery For?
You don’t need to prove to me (or anyone) that what you experienced “counts” as a cult. If it felt controlling, manipulative, or unsafe, if it took away your freedom to think, feel, or choose for yourself then that’s enough. Your experience is what matters here, not labels or debates.
Cult recovery is for people who:
Have left or are in the process of leaving a high-control or cult-like religious group.
Are struggling with the fallout of spiritual abuse, manipulation, or coercive control.
Feel lost, confused, or scared about life without the group’s belief system.
Experience shame, guilt, or fear tied to leaving or questioning the cult.
Are working through family or community rejection related to their exit.
Want to reclaim their identity, autonomy, and safety.
Are navigating complicated emotions around loyalty, betrayal, or grief.
Identify as queer or LGBTQIA+ and have experienced additional layers of rejection or trauma within the cult environment.
The Details
Consistency is key. I see clients at the same day and time each week or every fortnight, depending on what works best for you. Having a regular spot helps build a steady rhythm, which is crucial when you’re healing from trauma, or rebuilding your sense of self and relationships. Your nervous system thrives on this kind of routine, and it creates a safe container for the work we do together.
Fees: My sessions are $165 + GST per 50 minute session. 90 minute sessions may be possible after prior discussion and at an increased rate