Abusive families are like cults.

Escaping an abusive family is a lot like escaping a cult. 

That may sound dramatic— but I believe it’s true. 

Abusive families, like cults, often require members to adhere to a code of silence— especially to anyone outside the group. 

Abusive families, like cults, often require members to pretend to anyone outside the group that not only is everything “fine” on the inside— everything is GREAT. 

(Many people who grew up in abusive families can tell you about the pressure they often felt to affirm their family’s goodness to others.)

Abusive families, like cults, are often subject to the direction of a powerful leader. 

In abusive families, as in cults, questioning the leader is often a ticket to punishment and ostracism. 

Abusive families, like cults, function because their members are dependent upon them. 

For a very long time, most of could not “opt out” of our families— just like it’s not practical or realistic for many cult members to opt out of their involvement with their group. 

Like cults, abusive families often exploit members’ economic dependence on the group specifically. 

Like cults, abusive families often go out of their way to become members’ main, or only, social network or support. 

Abusive families, like cults, often have their own “lore”— stories about why the group is the way it is, and why people outside of the group “wouldn’t understand” what’s actually happening in the group. 

The “leaders” of abusive families, much like the leaders of cults, often claim that their “authority” to dominate and control members comes from God— and to question this authority is to question the divinely inspired, divinely endorsed “plan.” 

Like cults, abusive families tend to limit the information available to members. 

Like cults, abusive families often limit the opportunities for members to socialize or interact with people not in the group— and, like cults, abusive families often frame this as being for members’ “own good.” 

Abusive families, like cults, cultivate the belief that loyalty to the group is the top priority in members’ lives— and if members have a problem with that, it demonstrates a problem with their “character.” 

Escaping from an abusive family, like escaping from a cult, is more difficult than it may seem. 

When trying to escape from an abusive family, members may experience feelings of guilt, shame, or fear— much like when devotees escape a cult. 

When distancing themselves from an abusive family, members might find their economic or social resources very suddenly, very drastically limited. 

Much like devotees escaping a cult, people distancing themselves from an abusive family may feel shame for not having escaped, or tried to escape, earlier— but the truth is, escaping ether an abusive family OR a cult is simply not that easy or straightforward. 

After escaping from an abusive family or a cult, survivors often experience extreme anxiety about EVER getting into another relationship— because they’ve had their loyalty used to hurt them. 

Growing up in an abusive family or getting sucked into a cult leaves emotional scars. 

Those scars are not your fault. Even if you were an adult when you joined a cult.

(No one “joins a cult,” by the way. We join groups or churches that we have every reason to think will enhance our lives— and which are often working effortfully to make red flags appear green.) 

When we’ve grown up in an abusive family, and/or been part of a cult, we can’t pretend that’s NOT a part of our history. 

We need to do what we need to do to recover. 

No shame. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your choice. 

But recovery, is.