Leaving a high-control group, whether it’s religious, spiritual, or otherwise it isn’t just a decision. It’s a dismantling. It can feel like your entire life just collapsed inward and you’re left holding the scattered pieces, trying to figure out which parts are even real.
Maybe you left last month, or maybe it’s been years but you’re still carrying the fallout. Either way, if you’re reading this and thinking, “I don’t know where to start,” you’re not alone, and you’re not failing.
This post is for you.
- The ones picking themselves up after the storm.
- The ones who’ve been cut off from everything they once knew.
- The ones who are tired, scared, and wondering if healing is even possible.
Let’s talk about what comes next.
The Void: What Happens After You Leave
Most people expect relief after leaving a cult or high-control environment and some do feel that initially. But what often follows is a confusing cocktail of grief, fear, shame, and numbness. You’ve just made a massive life change and you’ve stepped out of something that consumed your world.
And now? You’re staring into what can feel like a vast, empty space where your sense of self, safety, and community used to live.
Some common post-leaving experiences include:
- Extreme loneliness — because your community was conditional on compliance
- Panic around decision-making — you were likely taught to defer all choices to the group, God, or a leader
- Loss of language or identity — you might not know how to explain who you are or what you believe
- Financial hardship — especially if your career or education was disrupted or dictated
- Dysregulation or trauma responses — your nervous system was under chronic threat, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time
It makes sense if you’re struggling. Cults and high-control systems don’t set you up to thrive without them. They set you up to need them and to never feel like you can leave.
Survival Is Enough
Before we talk about thriving, let’s talk about surviving.
I don’t recommend jumping into a 10-step healing plan right now. You don’t need to launch into a new belief system or figure out who you are from scratch. You just need to get through today. And sometimes that means:
- Eating what you can afford and have the energy to prepare
- Sleeping when your body allows and going for a walk when your body allows that too.
- Not responding to guilt-ridden messages from ex-members
- Taking breaks from spiritual content or deconstruction pages
- Crying, watching trash TV, or just existing
It might not look like growth yet, for now it might look like collapse. That’s okay. Because trauma recovery doesn’t look like constant progress, it looks like safety, first.
Rebuilding Safety from the Inside Out
High-control groups often teach you that safety comes from obedience, certainty, or hierarchy. But real safety? It begins in the body.
If therapy is accessible and affordable for you, then great! I would encourage you to engage with someone who understands cult recovery. If not, we have a stack of resources over on The Religious Trauma Collective that can be supportive in the meantime.
Here’s what that can look like in very real, very human terms:
- Learning to recognise when your body is in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn and not blaming yourself for it.
- Understanding that panic after “freedom” is normal, because too much choice can feel threatening after coercion.
- Creating pockets of felt safety, like a favourite show, a trusted friend, a weighted blanket, or a quiet moment.
Even just naming that you’re having a trauma response can be powerful. It shifts you from “I’m broken” to “my body is doing what it learned to survive.” And if safety with others feels like a reach right now? Start with safety with yourself. That might mean not shaming yourself for missing the group. Or for still believing parts of what you were taught. Or for wanting to go back.
You’re not failing. You’re processing.
Relationships Will Feel Complicated (And That’s Normal)
Leaving a cult or high-control system doesn’t just mean leaving theology or ideology behind, it often means leaving people. And that hurts.
Some will ghost you entirely. Others might stay in touch just enough to keep tabs, or to try to convince you to come back. You might lose family, friendships, mentors – your entire social fabric.
Here’s the brutal truth: cults make love conditional. They call it “fellowship,” but it’s contingent on your loyalty and conformity. When you stop ticking those boxes, the warmth disappears. This can lead to a deeply embedded belief that you’re unworthy of love unless you are compliant. Which, in turn, can impact how you form new relationships moving forward.
Give yourself space to grieve the people you thought would love you unconditionally.
Seek relationships slowly, gently, and based on shared values not on shared trauma alone.
Start with questions like:
- Do I feel safe with this person? What is it that they are doing that feels safe to me?
- Can I disagree with them without being punished or shamed?
- Do they support my autonomy, or do they subtly want me to “believe like them”?
Healthy connection is possible again but it requires unlearning the rules you were taught about love.
Finances, Housing, and Basic Needs
This part doesn’t get talked about enough. Many people leave cults or high-control groups with:
- No income
- Little to no education or transferable skills
- Gaps in employment
- No savings (especially if required to tithe or donate)
- No housing (if living was arranged by the group)
Rebuilding your material life after that kind of loss is exhausting. You might feel like you’re starting from scratch in your 20s, 30s, or beyond and sometimes with a bunch of kids in tow.
Here are a few soft suggestions that won’t break the bank or your nervous system:
- Access social services or aid services where possible. You are not lazy, broken, or a failure for needing support.
- Start with low-effort income options if burnout is real, think casual shifts, remote work, odd jobs through your existing networks.
- Rest when you can. Trauma depletes the nervous system and you will need extra rest. You don’t need to rebuild your entire life in a month.
- Explore what you’re drawn to, without needing it to be a “calling” or “vocation” (cult frameworks love that word).
There’s no shame in needing a Centrelink payment, moving in with a mate, or piecing things together job by job.
When You’re Ready, Begin Meaning-Making on Your Terms
Cults don’t just tell you what to believe. They tell you how to believe. They give you a framework for meaning, morality, identity, and purpose and they make you afraid of anything outside of it.
So when you leave? You’re not just free. You’re lost.
And while that can be terrifying, it can also be the start of something real.
When you’re ready, not pressured, not performing, not trying to “fix” yourself you get to ask:
- What actually feels true for me now?
- What are my values, outside of fear and obligation?
- Where does meaning show up in my life naturally?
This is the long game. The slow and sacred reconstruction. The part where your voice comes back and you begin to trust it.
And remember: you don’t owe anyone a new set of beliefs to prove that you’ve healed. You can stay in the mess, the mystery, the in-between.
If You’re Navigating This Right Now
Maybe no one told you this yet, but:
- You are not weak for being affected.
- You are not broken for leaving. (You’re actually incredibly brave)
- You are not lost for grieving what hurt you.
- You are not behind. You are healing.
It’s okay if your life doesn’t look shiny or “empowered” right now. You’ve done the hardest part which is getting out. The rest will take time. And you don’t have to do it alone.
If you’re rebuilding after leaving a high-control system and are looking for a safe, affirming space to land, I offer trauma-focused therapy that honours the complexity of this path. Reach out if you’d like to work together. You’re allowed to have support.