Escape or stay-&-survive

[guest]

We would like to introduce this topic to invite ones to help provide guideance and advice to help ones escape / leave or stay and survive the CFs.
The advice / tips / experiences / questions could be for or by teenagers, young adults or anyone of any age.

[BreakFree]

I hope this becomes a living post and generates a good discussion. Thank you guest for your initiative.
I will start from the point of leaving SCF.
I want to encourage you not to doubt your self or your experience. I questioned myself:
Did it really happen as I remember it?
Is it as bad as I am making out?

In my experience, when I made up my mind about leaving CF I started receiving a lot of random contact from people I knew all over the country people were trying very hard to convince me I was making up stories and I should come back to the fold. After about 3 months of constant gas lighting I was so confused I started believing that the CF version of events was true. I stopped believing my own story.
I read a book of sermons by Charles Spurgeon which addressed mental illness. This was something of interest to me as we were always taught mental illness doesn't exist and 'Christian's can't have mental illness'. I discovered Charles Spurgeon suffered from severe depression because of an incident that happened very early on in his preaching career, so I was drawn to the peoples preacher as one who suffered.
After reading this I took a gamble and reached out to a friend whom I knew was suffering depression in SCF. I was pleasantly surprised to find they had also just left SCF and wanted to catch up. This was pivotal meeting as we shared our stories. Our experiences were almost identical. This set my resolve that I was in fact telling the truth, not crazy, and the CF network was defiantly not Christian or something I wanted to be apart of.

I spent the next 12 months or so looking at cults and what they were. I found a number of books which talked about the cult experience and more specifically the experience of people born into cults.
I will post more about unpicking the lies of CF at a later time but I am living proof that a bolt of lighting will not come out of the sky and smit you when you start doing things we were not allowed to. I have talked about going to see the band Queen live in Sydney elsewhere but I am still here to tell the tale.

[BreakFree]

The other thing I would like to talk about is building your capacity to live freely.
The breadth of things which we were banned from doing in CF was huge. Everything from the music we listened to, the people we hung out with, where we could spend leisure time, the medical help we could get, our appearance, attending every meeting: I could go on.
The first 6 months after leaving were quite distressing. I had this new freedom but was to afraid to embrace it. The best way I can describe it was like while I was in CF it was like I was in a locked cage, after I left the cage door was wide open but I remained in the cage. The first time I missed going to church on a Sunday I was so incapacitated from fear I could not enjoy the day. I was so worried the earth was going to open up and swallow me.

So how do you move away from this kind of fear? How do you begin to unpick from the lie we were fed that God will punish us for doing things that the elders disapprove of.

There is a psychological process called exposure therapy. Basically you expose yourself to something in small doses slowly increasing your exposure to the stimuli so that you become less anxious.

Building on my missing church on a Sunday. The next week I decided that I would go for a walk on Sunday. The following week I went to a hotel for lunch and had a wine. I kept just pushing the boundary each week and every time I got the same response. A bolt of lightning did not come down and smite me, the earth didn't open up, life just carried on. I began to walk in and out of different churches without fear of being damned to hell. I knew I had overcome my anxiety about Sundays when I attended a Muslim Mosque for a vigil over the massacres in New Zealand. Our local Mosque opened their doors and I felt it was important for me to go as a sign of support to this grieving community. As you can see getting to this stage took time. I would not have been able to go to another church or Christian group let alone a Muslim Mosque right after I left CF but I went and attended a service because I felt that it was important. God did not punish me and I did not feel threatened in any way. These people were just people praying to their God in a way their culture had taught them, it was actually quite a beautiful service.

I will just reiterate. Take small steps exposing yourself to something until you feel confident nothing bad will happen. If you try to go to big to quick it can leave you in distressed state but you will know for yourself what your limits are.

Cheers to freedom

[Helen Pomery]

The best way I can describe it was like while I was in CF it was like I was in a locked cage, after I left, the cage door was wide open but I remained in the cage.

BreakFree

This is a very helpful description for those of us who were held in bondage for so long.

• Even after leaving the CF group very few walk away free and unscathed.
• Depending on the treatment you received from headship, some are wounded and scarred deeper than others.
• Within cult recovery circles, many therapists look at the years of involvement, to give you some idea of the length of time it takes to heal.
• The techniques of coercion, manipulation and deception are so sophisticated and powerful, many need help and support to go one step at a time towards recovery.
• Reconnecting with other ex-members can be very helpful as BreakFree experienced. However, some people have been triggered very badly by associations that still preach at them.
• Some who leave still claim the doctrine was good and true but the men were the problem. If you don’t take the time to seek, read, learn, pray and heal you will carry forward false teaching and other odd behaviours.

These are just a few thoughts to help the discussion along.
Remember, what happened to us all is abuse, complex trauma and wickedness. It’s labelled ‘complex’ for a very good reason.

[guest]

So many teenagers and young adults are leaving BCF.

Some are cut off by all family and friends / others are able to keep those connections.

It’s a hard road to navigate.

We are all rejoicing when even one person escapes. Freedom comes at a high price but believe me…it is worth it.

[guest]

Are they still running the teenagers camps at Mapleton?