 guidelines for parents of children and cults. Dear parents, does your child's involvement in a cult, a cult-like group, or an abusive one-on-one relationship make you feel you are in a sudden crisis that you don't know how to handle? You are not alone. Few people in this situation know what to do or say. Do you also feel your love for your child is suddenly buried under an avalanche of pain, sadness, anger, fear, a sense of personal failure, guilt, despair, resentment, rejection, disappointment, betrayal, shame, grief, and loss? Though these feelings are understandable, you will have to get them in check so that they do not spill over into your interactions with your child. They will impede your ability to reconcile with your child and consume too much of your energy. Do you feel helpless and hopeless? We assure you there are ways to help and good reasons for hope. Once past the initial shock and past the negative feelings, you will be ready to reconnect with your child. Most parents handle the negative feelings on their own. Those who cannot do it by themselves are urged to contact professional counselors who are familiar with cult-related issues. Families with long-standing troubles apart from the cult issue should seek professional help as well. Although we offer no guarantees, new communication skills can lead to reconciliation. The following guidelines were developed over the past 20 years. They work. However, they are not superficial tactics. To manipulate your child to obey or conform, they will help you re-establish a connection with your child. Step one, handle your negative feelings. Don't let your negative feelings dominate or interfere with your relationship with your child or impair your functioning in your daily life. It is not healthy or fair to you to your relationship with your cult involve child or to the rest of the family for anger and hurt to overshadow all other feelings and thoughts. Don't ignore your negative feelings. Get in touch with them, but don't magnify them either. Express them to someone other than your child. Accept them. You have a right to your feelings. Now set them aside. This frees you to operate out of love instead. Focus on your child's needs instead of your own. You can see how resentment or anger would prevent you from doing this. Even though your child seems a stranger, don't lose sight of the fact that the child you knew is still within. You need to reconnect with the pre-cult person. Cult involvement makes some parents wonder how well they really knew their child, with or without cults. How many of us know our children? We can know a lot about them without knowing them as they are, for who they are. You will now discover aspects of your child you never knew before. First, however, put your own needs and expectations aside. Step two, reconciliation starts with you. Don't expect your child to initiate the process of reconciliation. Cult members feel they have a new family and believe you are either the enemy or expendable. It will be up to you and other family members to start the process. With your negative feelings out of the way, the words you use, your tone of voice and your actions will come through to your child from a locus of love. If your efforts lead to your child's decision to leave the group, this is the best of all possible outcomes and we will rejoice with you. But your goal is not to rescue him or her, but to build a new relationship based on support, understanding, respect and compassion, despite your differences. If your child remains in the group, you will still have built a new and improved relationship. It will, however, take time to lay the groundwork. Here are the tools you will need. Patience. This is a slow process. Faith in yourself. Though you are competing with powerful influences, trust that the bond between you and your child is strong enough to prevail. Trust that your child's reason for joining the cult was not intended to hurt you. Be conciliatory. If you have already said all the wrong things and they antagonized your child, simply say, this is all so new to me that I did not know how else to react. I need time to deal with my feelings and this new situation. Listen with heightened awareness. Notice how your child responded to your explanation. Was he or she indifferent, suspicious or impressed with your honesty? If your child seemed indifferent or suspicious, ask, are you doubting what I said? If the answer is yes, say, I realized I made a mistake. I'm trying to start a new relationship based on trust. If the response is positive, say, I really appreciate your giving me a break. This is a good beginning. Step three, you can be honest. If communicating with your child has become a matter of walking on eggs, your new attempts to be more open may arouse your child's suspicion. If he or she asks what's going on or says you seem different, let them know you are getting help to learn how to handle this new situation because no matter what, you want nothing to come between you. How did your child react to learning that you are getting help? If he or she approves, say, I'm so glad that you appreciate what I'm doing. If it was ignored, ask for a response. I'd like to know how you feel about it. If your child disagrees with your getting help, say, I will do anything to preserve this relationship. Step four, this is not about you parents. Your child's involvement in a cult is an attempt to fulfill his or her social, emotional, spiritual, and ideological needs and was not meant as a deliberate insult to you. Even if your child has feelings of revenge, rebellion, or anger from old, unresolved issues, the fact remains that he or she is trying to survive. Just as drug and alcohol abuse is a way people medicate themselves to make their lives more bearable. They want to avoid pain and turmoil from within or without. Even if your child knowingly chose a new religion, it was not for the purpose of hurting you, but to find a way to meet his or her need for companionship, community, unconditional acceptance, and love. These needs outweigh loyalty to the family's religious community. A community they feel did not meet their needs. Former members of cults claim they needed relief from stress. Others wanted a closer relationship with God and a more spiritual life. Most did not know what they were joining when they were recruited into a cult. Many joined for reasons that have little to do with religion or spirituality. They needed to prove themselves. They had an involvement with someone in the group. They needed acceptance, to belong, or they tried to fill a void left by a broken romance. Many were disillusioned or disappointed with their school or career. Ask your child what he or she was feeling or experiencing at the time of recruitment. Step five, listen with your heart. Ask your child what needs his or her group meets. By now, you should be willing to learn more about your child. Pretend you are talking with someone else's child and notice the difference it makes in the tone of your voice. Ask. I'd really like to know what this group means to you, then listen with your heart. That means no judgments, no arguments, no criticism, no sarcasm, no comparisons. Ask kind questions. What do you feel this group can give you that you did not get from your own religion? If you get answers, regardless of whether you agree with them, just say, I'm beginning to see what this means to you. If your child is suspicious of your new attitude, reassure him or her that you are trying to understand. Step six, validate your child's need without accepting his or her actions or decisions. The new relationship gets off to a good start by giving your child the benefit of the doubt as to motivation. However, validating their need to better their lives is not the same as accepting the way they are doing it or approving of the people with whom they are doing it. And you can say so. I respect your need for a spiritual or religious life, but I'm concerned about the way you are doing it. Or, I respect your right to make your own choices, but I'm not convinced that you made it independently. If it is a harmful one-on-one relationship, I know you only want to love and be loved, but sometimes that kind of need can be overwhelming. Focus on what your child's involvement means to him or her and not what it means to you. In the case of cults, it is important to remember that nobody knowingly joins a cult. Your child was led to believe he or she was joining a worthwhile and noble cause. Your child wanted to improve his or her life, the lives of others or even all of humankind. If he or she was in a momentary crisis, depressed or disillusioned, suffering the emptiness left by a broken romance, was experiencing inordinate stress from school or job or simply looking for a more meaningful life, a new direction or adventure and excitement, the cult offered hope for a second chance, a new life, a new start. Step seven, make your conversations opportunities to connect. Your child may want to convince you of all the positive aspects of the group. Just listen without judging and you may discover a side to him or her you did not know before. If this turns out to be true, say so. I had no idea this meant so much to you or I didn't know you were interested in filling the blank. Your child will appreciate your willingness to listen, aware that it is probably causing you both pain and concern. If he or she is in a cult, don't use the word cult. It will not help your communication or your relationship. He or she will react just the way you would if someone called your faith a cult. Step eight, go easy on yourself. If you slip back, have an emotional outburst or say the wrong things, let your child know this is difficult and new and you are trying hard to cope with it. If he or she gets angry, say, I could use a little patience and understanding too. Step nine, cut through the cult persons and reach out to your child. Members consider their new religious group to be their new family. The group has advantage of time and proximity. You are competing with an idealized parent in the group leader who controls every aspect of the members daily activities, their thinking and their feelings. Members' names may be changed to give them a new identity, cutting them off from the past. Total immersion in the new lifestyle dims their memory of their former lives, but the child you knew and loved dwells within and remembers what you meant to them, relate to that person. Don't treat your child as a cult member. Speak to the pre-cult person. Try reminiscing every once in a while. If your child suspects that you are trying to hook him or her through memories, just say that this is the only person you know. Don't get defensive or apologize for being sentimental. Step 10, don't get hooked. Speaking of defensiveness and apologies, if your child attacks you over past, real or imagined hurts, don't overreact. We all make mistakes as parents and you, like the rest of us, probably did the best you could with good intentions. Don't let your child hook you through guilt. Just let him or her know that the past can't be undone and now you are looking forward to a new relationship. Tell your child that forgiving past hurts on both sides will help heal the relationship. If your child persists in his or her anger or rejects your explanations at this point, let him or her know you are not discouraged and you intend to keep trying. Step 11, getting through. If your only communication is over the phone, listen more keenly than you have ever done before. Listen for silences when there should have been answers. For voice clues, for hesitations or evasiveness, to unusual cheerfulness, and to statements that don't ring true. There is conflict within your child. The person you knew, the old self, and the cult personality, do not coexist peaceably. There is also a conflict of wanting to know the truth and not wanting to know the truth. What all this means is that your child has an internal struggle going on. So when you sense that the time is right, say with compassion, I sense or feel something is troubling you. This is different than saying you think something is wrong. He or she will try to argue with what you think, but it would be useless to argue with a parent's intuition. If he or she asks what you mean, just stick with your feelings that something is wrong. Don't say anything else about it. You are simply letting your child know you are aware that something may be troubling him or her. It may plant a seed of doubt. Step 12, the next stage. Let your intuition guide you to find the right time to suggest that your child join you in a session with the people who are helping you. The purpose of the meeting would be to help both sides handle issues that neither of you accepts or understands. If your child feels you are doing fine with outside help, remind him or her that you have gotten this far only because you have been getting help. If he or she refuses, drop the meeting idea for now. Rebuilding your relationship is a process, and its progress depends upon your child's unique reactions and responses to you. There is no formula for all families or a timetable that fits all. Modify all the statements we suggest to fit your own way of speaking. Take into consideration your perceptions of how your child would react to these statements, and do not say anything that does not suit your own ideas and feelings. Above all, you must be authentic. Lectures, please, attempts to change your child's mind. Sarcasm and insinuations that your child is doing something wrong all tend to alienate them. Compassion shines through. Please stay in touch with Jews for Judaism so that we can help you assess your progress. If you would like a transcript of these guidelines, please click on the link below. Thank you and be well.