Families and cults.

Abusive families resemble cults in many respects— and evoke many of the same symptoms and struggles in their victims. 

Complex trauma is trauma that unfolds over time, is entwined with our important relationships, and is functionally inescapable— and those criteria absolutely apply to abusive families as readily as they apply to cults. 

In many abusive families, individual needs are subordinated to a functionally authoritarian head of the household— in much the same way cult acolytes are expected to subordinate their individuality to the will of an authoritarian leader. 

In abusive families, there is often a “code of silence” that is expected to be maintained by family members to protect the families’ secrets and hide the behavior of abusive family members— much like there is a “code of silence” that is expected of cult followers to protect their leaders. 

Abusive family members, especially adults, often exploit younger family members’ vulnerability in order to gain sexual or other access to them— tactics identical to abusive cult leaders who prey on their followers. 

Abusive families can “brainwash” vulnerable family members just as surely as abusive cults can, and through many the same tactics, even— including the deprivation of basic needs in order to gain compliance and adherence. 

Both abusive families and abusive cults exploit “in group” and “out group” psychological tactics to create fear in family members or followers, to minimize the chances that someone will “tell” on the family or cult to outside authorities.

The pain inflicted by abusive families is rarely limited to one domain, but most often includes a combination of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse; and this is also true of abusive cults, which also frequently mix in spiritual and financial abuse on top of those. 

Victims of familial abuse often feel shame for staying in their family’s orbit for as long as they did— much like cult followers frequently belittle themselves afterward for not recognizing what was going on sooner. 

Both abusive families and cults often cite religious principles or authority as justification for controlling family members’ or followers’ lives—which very often head f*cks family members’ or followers’ attempts to detach from them. 

Family members who have been abused very often struggle to imagine that their attempts to leave the system will be successful— they very often believe that, even if they try to leave their families, they’ll never “really” be able to leave, in much the same way cult leaders convince their followers that there is no salvation or peace outside of the group. 

It can be hard for many people to accept that their family was abusive— but it might help to step back and look at their family’s behavior and dynamics from the perspective of, “would this check out if we were talking about a cult, instead of a family?” 

Taking that step back and seeing those similarities can be a real eye opener. 

Victims of abusive families and victims of abusive cults often experience similar CPTSD symptoms upon leaving they respective situations. 

Both abusive families and cults infiltrate survivors’ beliefs about themselves, the world, and the future. 

Both abusive families and cults do everything in their power to gaslight their victims into silence and complacency, even after they’ve left. 

The culture often thinks of both abusive families and cults as relatively rare phenomena, but victims know: there are far more abusive families and cult-like groups out there than many people realize. 

Both victims of abusive families and cults need to know what CPTSD is and what CPTSD recovery entails. 

And neither victims of abusive families nor abusive cults are to blame for their experience.