Hi Anita, thank-you for your reply. He was angry and passive aggressive because he resented me for spending money on things when we could have been using it for experiences and other things for our future. He did not want to talk to me about it because he liked the fact that I got a small bit of happiness from buying things during a difficult time in my life, although he obviously was not completely happy with the situation, hence the anger and passive aggressive behaviour. He explained this to me last night, and he has never told me that before. I just thought he hated me during that time.

I agree that perhaps it was being with me that brought out the worst in him. I was very flawed and unhappy due to events in my life, and I tried to make him happy but I obviously did not understand what was really bothering him as we did not communicate well.

I am not sure whether it will be a win-win. There were many aspects of our relationship that were very happy, and I feel that our biggest problem was not communicating with each other. I would have been happy to talk about anything, but he was the kind of person to bottle things up and get angry when I tried to touch on difficult subjects.

Dear Hannah:

You wrote that your mother felt that you were choosing a very difficult life for yourself by leaving the cult-

you wouldn’t have been motivated to leave the cult if the life in the cult wasn’t a very difficult life for you.

Your father’s heartless behavior toward you before, after and since he found, read and shared your journal content with others, indicates to me that indeed your life was very difficult for being your father’s daughter, for one. Having a mother and a cult that supports a cruel to you father is… indeed a very difficult life.

I understand your intense attachment to your mother, your need for her approval. It is only natural to feel this way for one’s mother. She didn’t tell you that she loved you, in those last moments of her life.

Did she tell you or otherwise express to you that she loved you before you left the cult and then stopped saying it or otherwise expressing it after you left?

anita

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Hi Anita. Yes, the cult was a very difficult life for me. I did not feel I belonged. I felt very confined.

My father has certainly made me feel that I am not good enough. I do not crave his approval as I feel that his viewpoint on life can be flawed. But at times his behaviour has made me feel like he is disgusted by me and I can’t help but let this make me feel bad about myself.

I think a couple of times she did tell me she loved me. And she did things that showed that she loved me. I think she struggled with being emotional. Her mother was very overbearing so I think she tried her best not to be. I wouldn’t say she was the happiest person and that bothered me quite a lot. I wish I could be at peace with my relationship with her.

Creating the list was a good place to start.

The next step might be to separate the trees from the forest. Viewing the list as a whole would be overwhelming for anyone while dealing with one issue at a time is very doable.

I found it helpful to identify how each bullet point might be influencing the story you are telling yourself and how that story might be influencing your experiences. Next look for any cognitive distortions – all or nothing thinking, black and white thinking, generalizing… (google cognitive distortions). The practice here is to learn to notice and become mindful of ‘unskillful’ thinking, not to judge yourself for that thinking – that would unskillful ?.

The goal here is to learn how to become the master of your story vice allowing the stories to master you.  This process will bring you to the end of the beginning… uncovering the real issues that are keeping you stuck and not feeling “good enough”. Identifying the issues that you can work on and create real change.

I would bet that the question of “good enough”, what ever that is, will disappear as you become more skillful. You will also discover that you can create “peace of mind” even in a tempest.

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Hi Peter, thank-you for replying. I will definitely look into cognitive distortions. I relate to what you said about ‘all or nothing’ and black and white thinking. I do feel that I have created a very sad story in my mind that I keep reading over and over and now feel will hang over me for the rest of my life. I certainly think having some processes that I can put into practice would be helpful for me. At this point in time, I am aware that not everything in my life is terrible; I am coping, I am ok, but I often feel very overwhelmed, especially when I am on my own. And I have unhealthy coping strategies as I mentioned above.

Dear Hannah:

I am glad you posted. If you would like to elaborate on the following, please do and I will respond:

1. How does your family judge you and how do you judge yourself (“My family haven’t completely rejected me, but I know they judge me. I judge myself”)?

2. What was in that journal your father read and shared with other people (what a shame, a betrayal of you)?

3. What is haunting you about your last moment with your mother?

anita

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Hi Anita, thank-you for replying. I’ll elaborate below:

1. Based on my experience of growing up in the cult, I know that people who leave are seen as foolish. I know that my family see me as ‘too emotional’; acting on impulse without thinking things through. I know this because they told an ex-boyfriend of mine and he then told me. When I started to leave the cult, my mother wrote me a letter expressing how upset she was and how she didn’t understand why I was leaving. She felt that I was choosing a very difficult life for myself. In the past, I have been excluded from events because I no longer attend the religious group. Some people I knew from the cult removed me from social media sites. I judge myself because my moral compass was built around the teachings of the cult. For the most part, I see that some of these morals are not beliefs I uphold anymore, but I still feel ashamed when I am around my family, and I would not admit certain parts of my life to them because of this.

2. In the journal I wrote about how I was feeling and some of the people I was dating. The cult I was part of does not agree with sex before marriage and I had written about having sex with the guy I mentioned before who I am obsessing over. It felt very humiliating for my father to read this and share this information with my family and his acquaintances. He used what he had read in the journal as justification for kicking me out of the house; although he was already bagging up my possessions when he found the journal. This is another thing that hurt me deeply. He bagged up all of my things whilst I was at work and left them on the doorstep for me to collect. He has never apologised or acknowledged how hurtful this was. He has never attempted to contact me.

3. Losing my mother was one of my biggest fears. She had cancer for six years and the fear of losing her was constant during that time. She was scared and hurting and I wanted to make things better but I couldn’t. When she didn’t say that she loved me back it made me feel that maybe she was disappointed in me and that maybe she didn’t love me. I felt that maybe I could have saved her in some way; I had nightmares for months afterwards involving me trying to save her before time ran out.