I suppose I should really wait until I finish reading this book before I recommend it. The thing is that as I'm reading it I continue to be amazed at the helpful insights and suggestions in it.

Take Your Life Back: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias was mentioned in one of Dorthe's posts. For those on this board who are ex members of scientology or other cult I am sure you will find this book to be very helpful.

Margaret Thaler Singer's book, Cults in Our Midst tends to give an overall view of cults in society. Steven Hassan's books, Combatting Cult Mind Control and Releasing the Bonds concentrate more on the problem of reaching someone who is in a cult and intervening so that they can leave the cult.

Take Back Your Life specifically deals with recovering from the effects of having been in a cult. This book is easy to read and is beautifully written. I have found something that has helped me on every page.

To those of you here who are exes, treat yourself. Get a copy of this book and read it. Oops. There I go with the hard-sell. (Knee jerk registrar training kicked in. I'll have to do something about that.) Let me put it this way. I highly recommend this book to you. Should you choose to get it and read it I think you will find it most helpful.

Found this on Amazon.

http://tinyurl.com/2eeztd

Both are great books Wieber and can be found at www.csj.org

Another very good one is "RECOVERY FROM CULTS" by Dr. Michael D. Langone. As are both of Hassan's books which you note in your sig/s.

Reading is good!

Tom
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www.thebridgemovie.net

Here's a quote from Take Back Your Life that I found encouraging.

"You will begin to regard your cult involvement as a chapter in your life, not as your whole life. Even if you were born or raised in a cult, the experience is still only a part of your life, albeit a large part at this point. Once you are out, however, a whole new chapter begins."

Well, the person who led a meditation class I was in the other day told me that ideally I should live to be 120 years old, lol.

I have many books still to read regarding overcoming the cult experience. I tend to read bits and pieces only (similarly I post only in bits and pieces) as generally this whole recovery process for me is a very slow one. One thing I have found though (to my surprise and thanks to the many great bookstores about) is that books about history itself also help me just as much in recovery. I am currently reading sections out of such books like "The SS: A Warning from History", the "Aushwitz Report" by Primo Levi, "Hitler, The Fuhrer and the People" and some of Mussolini's speech material. Learning how others have been manipulated actually translates into resolving the manipulation I experienced in the cult.

i think you are right Weiber,

They should read that book