Healing Your Inner Cult

By Dr. Margaret Paul
September 14, 2015

What do you picture when you think of the word ‘cult?’ For me, what comes to mind is being involved in a community where you have to follow certain rules and do things a certain way, and where you might be severely punished or even killed (as happened with the Jim Jones cult in Jonestown, or satanic cults ). You are often not allowed to leave a cult, and if you do manage to leave, there might be dire consequences.

Even religions can be cults. Any time a religion claims to be the ‘only way’ to heaven and the religious leaders scare you with all the bad things that will happen to you if you leave the religion, they are operating as cults.

While not all of us have been part of an external cult, virtually all of us are part of an inner cult.

Our Inner Cult

You might be surprised to hear that our wounded self operates, in many ways, just like a cult.

• Our wounded self is deeply programmed with hundreds of false beliefs and rules that we have to follow in order to feel ‘safe.’
• Our wounded self often severely punishes us with harsh self-judgments when we don’t do things ‘right.’
• When we try to heal, our wounded self often becomes even harsher and more controlling in order to maintain the status quo – which it falsely believes is necessary to stay safe.
• When we have caused ourselves so much misery that we can’t take it anymore, our wounded self might even kill us through suicide. The intense anxiety and deep depression that can lead to suicide can come from a number of sources:
  • Eating junk food can so disrupt the gut flora – the microbiome – that it creates intense toxicity that affects the brain, causing both anxiety and depression. The part of us who denies responsibility for our physical health is our wounded self, who is often addicted to junk food as a way of avoiding responsibility for our feelings.
  • Our wounded self might turn to self-medication and drugs to avoid our feelings. It’s well documented that antidepressants can sometimes contribute to or cause suicide.

• The self-abandonment of our wounded self – judging ourselves, ignoring our feelings, turning to addictions to numb out our feelings, and rejecting ourselves by making others responsible for our feelings – can lead to intense anxiety and depression.

Healing Our Inner Cult

If you managed to leave an actual cult, you would need to go through a healing process to deprogram from all the false beliefs that you absorbed while in the cult.

The same thing is true regarding healing your inner cult.

Inner Bonding is a powerful process for healing your inner cult:

• In Step One, you breathe into your body and compassionately embrace your feelings rather than avoiding them with various addictions.
• In Step Two, you consciously decide to learn about what your feelings are telling you. All our feeling have important information for us – letting us know whether we are loving ourselves or abandoning ourselves.
• In Step Three, you go inside to learn about your false beliefs and the resulting self-abandoning actions that cause much of your pain.
• In Step Four, you open to learning with your higher self to learn about what loving actions to take and what is the truth regarding your false beliefs.
• In Step Five, you take the loving action. Taking loving action based on the truth is what begins to heal your inner cult. Rather than relying on others or on your own wounded self, you learn to become your own guru, operating from spiritual love and truth rather than from the fear and false beliefs of your inner cult.
• In Step Six, you go back inside and see how you are feeling. You will feel a sense of relief and a lessening of anxiety, depression, guilt, shame and emptiness when you have taken loving action on your own behalf.

Just as you can heal from an actual cult, you CAN heal from your inner cult. You can learn to be free of the rules and false beliefs that may be currently governing your life.

You CAN learn to live a life of freedom, love, peace and joy!

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her new 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.” To begin learning how to love and connect with yourself so that you can connect with your partner and others, take advantage of our Free Help, and take our 12-Week home study eCourses, “The Intimate Relationship Toolbox” and“Dr. Margaret’s Permanent Weight Loss Course” – the first two weeks are free!