It may seem strange for me to combine my experiences with mental illness and my experiences with cults in one essay. What’s the connection, you may say? Well, I’ll tell you how I see these two subjects and how they may be related, in my view. I am not talking from a professional or medical viewpoint, just a personal observation.
I’ve lived closely with two people who had mental problems. The first one was my mother. Yeah, my mother. When I was very young, her father died, and from what I gathered from my family members, she went off the deep end, as they say, and was never the same, normal person she was previously. As you can imagine, that had a major effect on me, having a mother who was a bit unstable and never knowing when she would “act crazy.” Yes, I knew she loved me, but how was I to understand her strange behavior at unpredictable times. I don’t feel like getting in specific situations, but believe me, some incidents were very shocking, unpleasant, and horrendous. Those years living in that situation affected my childhood and contributed to what I would consider my very dark, depressed time in my life. I was deeply depressed for years.
In preparation for this essay, I did a brief study of depression and I was amazed to find out some facts regarding the condition. I discovered that of all people who experience depressed times in their lives, about 50% of those people only have one episode of serious depression and never have a recurrence. The other 50% have a lifelong experience of depression, perhaps an on-and-off encounter with depressed periods or a continuous depressed state. I was glad to discover this, as I am in that 50% that just have a “once in a lifetime” encounter with that “darkness.” My depression lasted from my childhood through my teenage years, until I left home at age 18. I broke free from the darkness, never to return to it.
I do realize that that curse is always around, around the corner, perhaps, in the shadows, always ready to come and take me over, but I have through many long years of hard work managed to keep it at bay. I have developed new perspectives and experienced spiritual renewal on an ever evolving upward spiral, thank God.
Now, I did have another close, intimate experience with a person with what I would consider serious mental problems. Someone I lived closely with for years. He was an extreme narcissist, a constantly pot smoking, controlling, manipulative, “gaslighting” type of person. All the characteristics I see in a popular politician today. My friends also noticed the strange actions and behaviors of this person, which helped verify for me that I was seeing things accurately.
So, just like with my mother and my family, I eventually left this person and experienced a wonderful sense of breaking free of a psychological darkness and prison of sorts. I was never to become entangled in such drama again, at least in a personal way with any friends or intimates. I chose my friends and intimates very carefully after that.
Now, in regard to my experiences with cults. I see similarities with cults, people deeply involved with cults, and the people in my life who seemed to be a bit unstable in their mental thinking and behaviors. I’m certainly not saying everyone involved in groups that may be considered cults is mentally ill or anything like that, but I have found that people deeply involved in cult-like groups and leaders of these groups often are, well, not “normal.”
I was in a group of religious friends that followed certain “spiritual” leaders in an almost cult-like manner, which made me somewhat uncomfortable, but it was not really serious enough to be overly concerned. Later I did become involved in a rather popular “human potential movement” that was all the rage in the 1970’s. My close friend that I mentioned earlier (the druggie, narcissist) was getting heavily involved in the group and of course was manipulating me into getting deeply involved, also. I was involved for a while, but eventually I realized I had to leave the organization.
I was involved in the courses, the trainings, etc., but the time came for me to leave. I was becoming aware that things were not “right,” I had that uncomfortable feeling that I needed to exit the movement. One day I was on the phone with someone from the organization trying to get me involved in a course or something and I informed him that I was done with the organization.
Well, that did it. He lashed out at me and told me off, put me down, and told me that it was going to cost me my life if I left. He told me that I was “out of integrity” by leaving the “truth” of the movement. He said I would be in a car and would have a fatal accident, or I would board a plane and it would crash. The universe will get you, he was telling me. Wow, I thought they were cultish, but this was unbelievable. If I leave, I will die, I’m being told.
That was enough for me. Enough for being around mentally weird, mentally off or ill people and groups. Enough! I had to get out of these situations and become aware of such people and groups so that I lived a good, psychologically healthy life from here on out. I realized that I cannot be around these situations at all. I need to protect myself, set my boundaries, be strong and stand up to such abuse.
So those were my experiences with people and organizations that are not “normal,” a bit “off,” or even very much outside healthy and normal. My life improved immensely since then. No more mental sickness or depression episodes. I survived, I moved on and thrived!
Wally
