Cult Exit Counseling: A post-Trump social framework
TLDR: Principles from cult exit counseling can be useful to help our friends and family re-socialize after Trump. Be patient - it will take them years to recover, and some people may never fully recover.
Over 78 million Americans voted for Joe Biden, the highest vote total ever. Around 71 million people voted for Donald Trump, the highest number of votes for any Republican ever. That poses a problem for American politics moving forward.
Undoubtedly, Donald Trump is a fascist destroying American society. Such mediocre results In the year when Democrats expected to win nationally in a landslide, makes it clear the party needs to invest more resources reaching out to voters enthralled by an authoritarian strongman. This partisan environment has torn many families apart—and many individuals are programmed by conservative media to believe conspiracy theories and propagate misinformation.
Certain principles from cult “exit counseling” could illuminate the path forward for American political dialogue. Cult exit counseling replaced the controversial practice of cult deprogramming. Whereas deprogramming involves kidnapping a cult member and subjecting them to long debriefing sessions, “exit counseling" is voluntary, founded on non-judgement, where families are calm and loving to avoid re-enforcing the belief that “outsiders are bad.” Once the cult member agrees to participate, the same long debriefing session. It can often take days.
When a member of a cult voluntarily submits to be debriefed using ethic psychological techniques to encourage them to submit to a debriefing. Debriefing in a cult context is applicable to political personalty cults, and should include three similar methods:
TEACH THOUGHT REFORM TECHNIQUES
Help the affected individual recognize the methods of cult programming in their own experience.
ASK QUESTIONS THAT REQUIRE CRITICAL THINKING
Praise critical, independent thought, and help the person recognize that type of thinking.
INDUCE EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS TO PRE-CULT LIFE
This includes introducing objects from the past and having family members share their memories of the person’s pre-cult existence.
We also can use lessons learned from cult exit counseling to predict what happens next. After a person leaves a cult, they often experience anxiety, depression, paranoia, guilt, rage, and constant fear. They can feel like they’re “floating” between their cult and non-cult views, causing a foggy, in-between consciousness that can make it hard to complete everyday tasks, like thinking clearly, making decisions, and analyzing situations.
While not everybody leaves a cult with lasting psychological damage, many people suffer negative consequences. It can often take years to readjust to society on the outside. Some people never fully return to their pre-cult levels of executive functions.
Lessons learned from cult deprogramming predict the difficulty America will face even if they can excise “Trumpism” from Republican politics. America must deprogram the cult of Donald Trump from 71 million people, and that process will take years, even once Trump is out of the picture.
