Photo: Robert Palumbo
American cult expert Dr Janja Lalich knows from experience how paralysed a person can feel within a high-control group.
In the late 70s and early 80s, she was a high-up member of a political cult called the Democratic Workers Party.
"I would get up every morning and get in my car and I would wish that I'd be killed in a car accident because it was the only way that I could see to get out," she tells Colin Peacock.
Cults aren't always easy to pick, Dr Lalich says. Her advice to anyone interested in joining a new group is to slow down and do your research before signing up.
Dr Lalich will be appearing as part of the DeCult Conference taking place 19-20 October at the Turanga Central Library in Christchurch.
Cults don't have to be faith-based or religious, Dr Lalich says. The one she spoke about in last year's Netflix doco series Esaping Twin Flames runs on a kind of romantic control.
Shaleila and Jeff Ayan - the Michigan couple reigning over the Twin Flames Universe - have 50,000 followers who are mostly women in their late 20s and 30s, Dr Lalich tells Colin Peacock.
The Ayans preside over an "intensely coercive environment" where members pay thousands of dollars for online courses that promise to guide them towards their 'twin flame' or lifetime soulmate.
Because there are far more women than men in the Twin Flames Universe, its leaders are now encouraging some of their followers to undertake gender transition, Dr Lalich says.
"They will match people up - you know, two women together, but one of them is expected to transition. And this is someone who never in her life ever thought about becoming the opposite gender."
Dr Lalich woke up to the fact that the Democratic Workers Party was not "a healthy organisation" when she was told that she couldn't attend her mother's funeral.
"Something snapped in me. Of course, there had been other things all along, sort of building up in the back of my head that I was witnessing and observing and taking part in."
"When this moment happened for me and something clicked, I felt like I had to get out, but I couldn't figure out how to get out. I was essentially paralysed in a way, logistically, because I had no money, I had a broken-down car, I had nowhere to go. I knew they'd come after me. So the practicality of leaving was huge, or the impracticality. So I spent another, I'd say four and a half years there, basically like an automaton.
"I would get up every morning and get in my car, and I would wish that I'd be killed in a car accident because it was the only way that I could see to get out."
Eventually, Dr Lalich made it out of the Democratic Workers Party with a group of fellow members who'd joined at the same time and were also "completely beaten down".
"We collapsed the organisation, and we all got out, and then we all helped each other back together."
In groups that are also cults there is almost always a hierarchy but it may not be evident, Dr Lalih says, and a - usually charismatic - authoritarian leader.
Within a cult, the power imbalance between individual members and their leader is something that leader will take advantage of, Dr Lalich says.
"[The leader] will have people under him or her to set up a structure and there will be rules and regulations. Some will be more overt than others, so in a hippie-dippy commune it might not be quite as obvious, but there are almost always social controls and social influences creating constraint and constriction for the members."
In a healthy group, there is transparency and members should be able to criticise and hold to account the leadership, Dr Lalich says.
In a not-healthy group, by contrast, there'll be financial demands and time demands and people may be prevented from seeing old friends and family, forced to bring in more members and expected to work for free.
To anyone attracted to joining a new group, Dr Lalich's message is to slow down and take time for research before signing up.
"Don't jump into the first life-changing thing that you come across or that your friend brings you to. Take your time, do your research.
"Go to Google, put in the name of the group or the name of that person, whatever, and then type 'criticism' and see what comes up. And invariably, lots of things will come up from people who participated and left and they will explain why.
"It's important to ask questions. And if you're asking questions and your questions are not being answered and they're being kind of turned back on you or you're being told 'Well, you don't know quite enough yet to ask that question. Just come back one more time and then ask the question'... well, by then you don't remember the question, right?"
Dr Janja Lalich is a professor of sociology and the founder and CEO of the Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion in California. She is the author of six books, appeared in multiple documentaries and serves as an expert witness in civil and criminal legal cases.
