Hear me out: Everyone leaves because of emotion. The emotional costs of staying have to be higher than the emotional costs of leaving before our brains acknowledge the logical stuff. That's why we all had "shelves". We couldn't immediately leave any time we came across something that felt wrong.
Our brains are always doing this cost-benefit analysis, and most of the time as members we just couldn't afford to acknowledge the problems, no matter how immoral or illogical.
So many people are still trapped because of this! The emotional damage that could be done if they leave can be very high.
Maybe you are a child who has to fit in to please your parents.
Maybe you will lose your spouse and children if you stop believing.
Maybe you are just someone who really needs to feel like you have a social group to belong to. All of us humans need that feeling!
Maybe it's all of these emotional costs and more!
Whatever it is, the cult had trapped many of us emotionally to the point that even the most ridiculous, fantastical, immoral, and illogical things ended up on our shelves.
They create a system that traps others still today because the emotional costs of leaving are just way too high.
So that leads me to the next logical step in this: what is it that finally puts so many of us over the edge eventually? What is it that finally makes the emotional costs of staying outweigh the very high emotional costs of leaving?
What do you guys think? What feelings did you have that eventually led you to be able to face the cognitive dissonance and leave?
Personally, I've realized that becoming financially independent from my parents really helped me leave the church. Once I had that freedom, it was like the "costs of leaving" side of the equation instantly shrunk because I didn't have to be afraid of losing my parents' support. I was finally able to acknowledge the "costs of staying" side and decide that those costs were too high to stay.
They still cut me off... One day after I told them I thought it was a cult I woke up to find that the cell phone they were paying for just didn't work anymore. Heh. Whatever.
It's been like 7 years now, and we're finally rebuilding those bridges in healthy, loving ways that don't involve the conditional-love teachings of a cult.
So glad I left!
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