AFF E-Newsletter
Vol. 3, No. 2
September 2004
The Strategic Interaction Approach
The Strategic Interaction
Approach (SIA) differs from the approach
described in my first book Combatting Cult
Mind Control in several important ways, the
most critical of which is the introduction of the
three‑part phobia intervention. In Chapter 10,
you will learn how to use this step‑by‑step
approach to help your loved one understand and
overcome cult‑implanted phobias. Until this is
done, I have learned, interactions with a cult
member are especially difficult and sometimes
even counterproductive.
The SIA also differs from
exit counseling in its emphasis on the process of
change, rather than pure content or information.
The exit-counseling model was premised on the
fact that the exit-counselor would have
information that was difficult to obtain. All
that has changed because, today, cult critics and
former members of various cults are publishing
information about cults and mind control on the
World Wide Web. With the advent of the Internet,
anyone with a computer and a modem can network
with other families, obtain assistance from
experts and former members, and locate
information in a way that was not possible
before.
Because information about
cults has become so accessible, we can spend more
time developing a thorough understanding of the
cult member, the group he belongs to, and the
friends and family who care about him.
Additionally, in the Strategic Interaction
Approach we learn how to identify factors that
make people more vulnerable to mind control, such
as learning disorders, unresolved sexual issues,
or preexisting phobias that cults can take
advantage of. We create a model of the parts of
our loved one’s authentic self that were
cultivated for recruitment into the cult
identity. Understanding these subpersonalities
helps us relate to the cult identity and also
helps us identify, and encourage, aspects of the
cult self that are worthy of keeping.
The focus of the SIA is on
the growth of the entire family and support
network —as well as on the cult member. Family
members and friends work together as a Strategic
Interaction Team. They are asked to participate
in each step of the process, improving their
communication skills and enhancing self-awareness
along the way. Team members are given the tools
to take care of their own emotional needs and
overcome problems such as low self-esteem,
phobias, or addiction. When each family member
takes responsibility for growth and change, it
takes a lot of pressure off the cult member. His
perspective often changes from "I'm the victim,
and everyone is here to help me," to "We're a
family, and everyone is growing and learning."
In this way, families are able to model healthy
behavior that will inspire the cult member to
change.
We will begin modeling that
change by learning to adopt positive beliefs,
productive attitudes, and more effective modes of
communication.
Goal-Oriented Communication
In the business world, the
most effective salespeople expend a great deal of
time and effort to develop rapport and trust with
a client or customer. In the normal course of
our personal lives, though, we rarely take the
time to learn and practice ways to develop
rapport and trust with our loved ones. This
effort can bring much more than money—love,
acceptance, kindness and respect.
The SIA helps family and
friends shift from an emotionally based form of
communication to a goal-oriented style. We will
no longer be informal and casual about what we
say and do. We will not take our relationships
for granted. Our objective is to grow, change,
and develop better communication strategies that
build rapport and trust. When we get the desired
result, we will move forward to the next goal.
Goal One: Build
rapport and trust.
During the SIA, you build a
relationship with your loved one that is
supported by a foundation of trust and rapport.
Goal Two: Gather
information.
Throughout the process,
members of the Team gather information about the
pre-cult and cult self, along with the authentic
self (a term I will discuss shortly).
Goal Three: Give
information and plant seeds of doubt.
Once Team members are
adequately prepared, they can begin planting
seeds of doubt in the cult member by imparting
important information.
Goal Four: Use
mini-interactions to promote reality-testing and
freedom of mind.
As they continue to collect
and deliver information, Team members engage the
cult member in a series of mini-interactions that
ensure the loved one has the motivation and
ability to reality-test and reevaluate their cult
involvement.
Goal-oriented communication
encourages high levels of awareness as well as
constant feedback and assessment from
experience. Members of the Team learn how to:
§
Set realistic goals
§
Identify key issues and concerns
§
Assess beliefs and values
§
Clarify motivation and objectives
§
Listen and speak effectively
§
Observe and utilize nonverbal
behavior
§
Utilize rapport and trust building
strategies
Learning to Understand Others
Team members will learn to
interact with each other in a creative and
resourceful fashion. I usually recommend a two
day preparation/training to get the SIA started.
If one person says something hurtful to another,
I encourage the individual who was hurt to
suggest a more constructive response to the other
person. Each interaction among family,
relatives, friends and the cult member is an
opportunity to hone their skills and to assess
what works and what doesn't work. For instance,
you can gain a better understanding of friends
and family by role-playing, or stepping into
someone else’s shoes. In the following exchange,
I asked a cult member’s mother to pretend that
she was her daughter:
SH (to mother): If you
heard your mother say, “You’re going out dressed
like that?” how would you feel?
Mother: I guess I would
think my mother was criticizing the way I looked.
SH: That's what you would
think. How would you feel? Would the comment
make you feel good about yourself or your mother?
Mother: No, of course
not!
Learning to Express Your Emotions
Process-oriented goals will
move us from a rigid position to a flexible,
creative state. We will take steps to find
positive, constructive ways to express your
concerns more effectively:
- Acknowledge the presence
of a feeling inside you.
- Recognize what emotion
you are feeling. Is it helplessness or fear?
Anger or hostility? Sadness or depression?
- Respect your emotions as
a legitimate expression of who you are and what
you value as a human being. Dwelling on your
negative emotions creates conflict, tension,
and fear. Anger and frustration can turn into
self-hatred and self-pity. It can contribute
to such physical problems as headaches, muscle
tension, ulcers, colitis, and high blood
pressure, and can grow into anxiety, emotional
tension, or depression. Ultimately, it can
affect your interpersonal relationships.
- Learn how to express
emotions that are triggered by cult involvement
in a way that brings you closer to your goals
of improving communication and building rapport
and trust. In some situations, you will want
to speak directly to the person:
§
Parent to cult member
§
Sibling to parent
§
Friend to cult member
§
Client to therapist
Focus on your goals.
Sometimes, it is more helpful to verbalize your
feelings to someone other than the specific
person. For example, there may be things that
would make you feel better but would cause great
pain or even harm if said directly to the person.
A Strategic Interaction Therapist can help you to
unburden yourself and make positive suggestions
about what to do. Sometimes, it is a matter of
finding the most effective way to say something.
Sometimes, it is a matter of choosing the right
time and place to communicate to get the best
response. Over time, you will develop confidence
and know how to adapt your communication style to
fit the situation.
Using Feedback to Create a Strategy
The SIA creates wave after
wave of feedback and analysis. Over time,
family, relatives, and friends become comfortable
with and consciously adopt this goal-oriented
style of communication. After the initial
preparation and training, I sometimes assign
tasks to specific friends and family members:
§
If a Team member is particularly
religious, I might suggest that the next time
he’s on the phone with the cult member (of a
religious cult), he could ask that they say a
prayer together for God's love and guidance.
§
I might suggest to the father of
the cult member that he talk with his son about
his own childhood and his relationship with his
father.
§
I might recommend that the
grandmother bake cookies and mail them to the
cult member.
After each action, we
evaluate the impact based on the response made to
the interaction. For example, if the telephone
prayer request resulted in a double prayer, we
ask for specifics. Was the prayer able to build
a positive bridge with the cult member?
Depending on the report, I may recommend a
longer, deeper prayer the next time they speak.
I might suggest the religious family member write
a letter saying how much closer he has felt since
the prayer.
What was the response when
the father told his son about his childhood and
the issues he had with his father? Tears? A
hug? A deep closeness with the cult member? If
not, what happened? Was the father standing up,
looking out of a window while he was speaking
about himself, or was he sitting at eye level
beside his son? If the interaction went well, I
might suggest a follow-up where the father asks
his son, "What could be done now to build a more
intimate relationship with you? What words would
need to be spoken? What behavior would need to
be experienced?" The father might need to
convince the son that he is a top priority in his
father's life.
If the homemade cookies were
gobbled up and shared with others in the group,
and resulted in a thank-you telephone call, then
I would suggest doing it every few weeks, or at
least once a month. Why? Because each time the
cult member receives the cookies, it makes him
feel loved. The grandmother can invite members
of the group over for a home cooked meal. We
want to build bridges.
With every interaction, you
should think of ways to amplify the positives and
minimize the negatives. You want to mobilize a
set of positive, growth enhancing experiences for
the cult member to have with family and friends.
The Strategic Interaction Team develops a
repertoire of flexible and creative solutions.
Many small- and medium-sized shared experiences
have a cumulative empowering effect. We will
work in the least intrusive and most effective
way possible to keep family, relatives, friends,
and the cult member motivated to move closer in
small, realistic steps. This work carries us
towards a formal Strategic Intervention, if that
proves necessary.
The Strategic Interaction
Approach takes time and hard work. It also takes
inspiration, motivation, creativity,
improvisation, flexibility, humor, passion, and
commitment. I have file cabinets full of
testimonies from family members and ex‑cult
members who say that participation in the
Strategic Interaction gave them a sense of
control over the guilt, anxiety, fear,
helplessness, and hopelessness that usually tears
a family apart when their loved one is swallowed
up by a destructive cult. The SIA provides a
safe environment where building rapport and trust
is the greatest good. A high level of
self‑esteem is one of the most important
ingredients to a successful Strategic
Interaction.
Frequently Asked Questions about the SIA
1. What is the goal?
The goal of the SIA is to
help the loved one recover his full faculties; to
restore the creative, interdependent adult, who
fully understands what has happened to him, who
has digested and integrated the experience and is
better and stronger from the experience.
2. Who is in control?
You are! In all ethical
counseling, the locus of control remains within
the client. Strategic Interaction models a
non-authoritarian, flexible, and open process.
When you engage a therapist, he is there to help
as the expert on family systems. He is not there
to assume control and make all the decisions.
Likewise, a cult expert may provide information
and advice, but will not give orders. Family and
friends are empowered to understand the issues
clearly. In this way, Strategic Interaction can
be considered self-help. Each person contributes
as best he can, creating a synergy that ensures
the whole is much greater than the sum of the
parts.
3. Who is the client?
In the SIA, each person has
issues that should be addressed. The focus is on
the growth and development of healthy
relationships within the family. The safe and
nurturing environment created by the SIA offers
many opportunities to heal old wounds. As an
integral part of the family system, the cult
member is automatically included in the process.
4. When is the best time to act?
The best time to act is when
the cult member is questioning his involvement,
is disillusioned, or burned out—or simply wants
to leave. Mini-interactions are designed to help
the cult member question his situation,
reality-test, and accept help from family and
friends. The SIA is an ongoing process that
makes each telephone call, letter, and visit more
effective. Every time we interact with the cult
member, questions are asked and answered, and
information is gathered and delivered.
Strategies are formulated, and opportunities to
develop rapport and trust unfold. Positive
experiences accumulate.
If there is a need for a
formal three-day intervention, it is planned when
we know the cult member is ready. The time is
right when we know that we have established trust
and rapport with the cult member. Many times,
mini-interactions may even make an intervention
unnecessary.
5. Will our loved one be treated as an
individual?
The Strategic Interaction is
a customized approach that encourages everyone to
develop positive, constructive patterns of
communication. Family members, relatives and
friends learn techniques to remove blocks and
phobias. The goal is to restore the creative,
flexible, interdependent adult. We want the cult
member to understand what happened to him by
helping him fully digest and integrate the cult
experience. As the Strategic Interaction moves
into the recovery phase, we want everyone to be
stronger from the experience.
6. Does this approach integrate our loved
one's personality?
In Combatting Cult Mind
Control I described only a “dual identity”
model: the cult identity and the pre-cult
identity. The Strategic Interaction Approach
liberates and then integrates the parts of the
pre-cult identity that were co-opted by the cult
identity. In addition, we draw out the
individual's “authentic,” or higher, self and
enlist its help to make new associations with the
cult self. For example, we recognize that
idealism is an integral part of our loved one's
authentic identity. By pointing out
discrepancies between cult doctrine and
hypocritical cult policies, the idealistic
component of the cult identity can be encouraged
to begin the questioning process. Eventually,
the cult member becomes disillusioned with the
group and feels motivated to walk out or ask for
help.
The Strategic Interaction
Approach provides in-depth counseling which
promotes healing. By honoring the authentic
self, the pre-cult self, and the core of the cult
self, we help your loved one to integrate
valuable parts of his identity into a healthy
post-cult self.
7. Does the method include flexible
strategies?
By taking an oppositional,
“I’m right, you’re wrong” approach, deprogrammers
and exit-counselors often create a win-lose
mentality. Strategic Interaction encourages
adaptability and creativity by widening one’s
experiential base, which results in a win-win
environment. For instance, if family members
have never meditated and their loved one is in a
meditation cult, then I encourage them to
experience meditation.
8. Is the method concerned with our loved
one's spiritual life?
With both deprogramming and
exit-counseling, content reigns supreme. This
approach can have hidden dangers. The
ideological or spiritual perspective of the
deprogrammer or exit-counselor could be anything
from atheist, to agnostic, to orthodox Christian
or Jew. I urge you to scrutinize the beliefs and
affiliations of people who offer to rescue your
loved one from a destructive cult. Many of these
people will seek to impose their own ideological
perspective. The ethical approach is to avoid
imposing any ideological or theological viewpoint
on a mind control subject.
The SIA allows for a
spiritual orientation, but does not promote a
rigid ideological viewpoint. My starting point
is always the individual's and family's spiritual
"roots," if any. At the beginning of every
Strategic Interaction, I have family members and
friends fill out Background Information Forms.
Often, I find that the cult member had a strong
spiritual orientation before they were recruited
into a religious cult. I encourage family and
friends to support their loved one's full
recovery—spiritual as well as psychological.
9. How will we learn the content issues?
The family members,
relatives, and friends must understand the
seriousness, scope and depth of the cult
experience. I want them to become familiar
enough with the material to be capable of
articulating information about mind control,
their loved one's group, and other cults. This
may seem like a daunting task, but the
step-by-step, goal-oriented approach we take will
make the work more manageable. After they have
been adequately prepared, family members and
friends can begin to attend cult lectures and
read cult literature. These activities
demonstrate that they are “open-minded,” and help
to encourage rapport and trust.
Before any discussions about
the belief system, indoctrination, or the leader,
we deal with the cult member’s phobias about
leaving the group. Otherwise, your loved one
will be under a great deal of unnecessary
emotional stress.
10. How does the SIA handle recovery issues?
Deprogramming is over as
soon as the person is out of the group. People
are often left without trained people to
follow-up. Consequently, family and friends are
typically not prepared to know how to act as a
support system. After an exit-counseling, former
members may try to provide some support. One
might opt for a one- or two-week stay at
Wellspring, a rehabilitation facility in Ohio, or
a several month stay at Meadow Haven in
Massachusetts. This depends on the financial
resources and the ex-member's willingness to
voluntarily attend.
Cults use fear and guilt to
program their members to believe that their lives
are worthless outside of the group. It is hard
to imagine the pain these buried psychic land
mines cause when the person manages to leave.
Cult experiences and indoctrination have to be
worked through during an essential soul-searching
recovery period, which usually takes months and
sometimes years.
If the person participated
in distasteful behavior—if they recruited people,
were raped, became a prostitute, or stole
money—it is helpful that they get ongoing
counseling. Otherwise, they will spend the rest
of their lives traumatized by what happened to
them, or feeling guilty for what they did while a
member of the group.
During the recovery period,
your loved one needs to learn how to use recovery
techniques in order to visualize and work with
his cult identity to reclaim personal history,
power, and integrity. He must acknowledge that
he was doing the best he could at the time with
the information that was available to him.
The SIA provides a long-term
recovery process for both the cult member and
members of the family. Everyone is traumatized by
the cult involvement, even those who are not
directly involved. Feelings get hurt. Belief
systems are assaulted or shifted. People lose
sleep. They get depressed. Anger, frustration,
and resentment are repressed. Each person who
has been involved in the traumatic experience of
having a loved one in a destructive cult needs
support on psychological and emotional levels.
The heightened sense of
urgency that arises when a loved one joins a
destructive cult provides the catalyst for truly
remarkable growth, change, and development.
Family members, relatives, siblings and friends
are willing to work hard on their own issues for
the sake of their loved one. They are willing to
make commitments that seem impossible under less
trying circumstances. Their rewards are the many
positive changes that take place as a result of
working together to bring back a family member or
friend lost to a cult.
Even in those circumstances
where an individual does not immediately decide
to leave the cult, there is basis for hope. Many
key issues will have been communicated,
especially those dealing with phobias,
information control, and the broader issues of
cult mind control. The gentleness of the repeated
mini-interactions will help the relationship to
become more honest, caring and
compassionate—setting the foundation for future
interactions.
11. How effective is the Strategic
Interaction Approach?
The Strategic Interaction
Approach has an excellent record of helping
people leave destructive groups. Each case is
different and presents new challenges. Every set
of family resources is unique. The Strategic
Interaction Approach draws its strength from
love, commitment, and flexibility. It provides
encouragement, momentum, and practical knowledge.
Even when your loved one
participates for only three days and decides to
return to the group (which rarely happens), the
seeds have already been planted. In such cases,
the cult member usually walks out at a later
date. When a cult member wants to leave the
group, he should know that his family and friends
will open their arms with love and support.
12. What is the therapist’s role?
A Strategic Interaction
Therapist, by definition, is a cult expert and
mental health professional. Over the years, I
have shared my approach with several individuals,
taking them with me on cases and training them in
SIA. I hope to encourage more people to learn my
approach and plan to offer more training seminars
and subsequent supervision. Former cult members
with counseling training make ideal candidates
for SIA training. During the SIA, the role of a
therapist is to facilitate communication between
the cult member and the Team by encouraging
growth within each person. Although it is
possible to empower a cult member to leave
without the help of a formally trained counselor,
I recommend that you contact a professional
counselor to discuss your situation and plan an
approach. If a therapist with experience
counseling cult members is not available, you
should make sure that your counselor has read
this book before you begin preparing for an
Interaction with your loved one.
In the following chapters,
we will prepare, rehearse, and then conduct
mini-interactions with the cult member. While
Team members hone their knowledge and skills,
they are shaping creative and flexible
strategies. Plan A, Plan B, Plan C—we keep our
options open!
When the time is right, we
learn how to ask the cult member to spend some
time away from the group—time to conduct research
and ask questions; time to reconnect with family
and friends. The levels of rapport and trust
will be so high that your loved one will agree to
participate in the Strategic Interaction.
Acknowledgment
This paper is excerpted from
Chapter Two of Releasing the Bonds: Empowering
People to Think for Themselves by Steven
Hassan, FOM Press, 2000. It is reprinted with
permission of Steven Hassan:
http://www.freedomofmind.com/
This material used in a
presentation at AFF’s annual conference, June
14-15, 2002, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Orlando
(FL) Airport.
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