Leaving an MLM, leaving a cult, means leaving a life you’ve got accustomed to. It means closing the door knowing that you may not have contact with those people. Sometimes it doesn’t have to be goodbye forever, some of your friends who are in could stay, some may be away for a while but come back.
When you leave a High Control group there will be emotions.
You’re going to go through all the emotions that are similar to the five stages of grief.
After the shock of discovering what you’ve gotten into and what you’ve become part of you’ll go through there stages roughly in the following order:
1. Denial & Sadness
You can’t believe what you’ve just discovered, you will see things that people share about cults and other high demand groups and think ‘no my MLM isn’t like that!’. You’re trying to see if there‘s anything that will put your mind at ease, anything that will confirm to you that you made it all up after all, that you’re seeing things that aren’t there. You know this isn’t true and you will also be seeing the things that confirm that what you’ve just discovered is true about your cult as well.
Then your thoughts turn to all your friends that are still in, you feel sad for them, you want to reach out because they can’t see how toxic the cult is, your heart hurts for them.
2. Anger & Frustration
Then comes anger, frustration, at yourself for having fallen for it, at the MLM for being scammers, maybe at your upline or others in the MLM that did you wrong or bullies you might have come across. Why? Who’s behind all this? You’ll try to find anyone or something to blame.
You can start to dive into a mild depression at this stage.
3. Bargaining
You may feel like reaching out to those still in and try and get them out, you might feel the need to do something, activism may rise in you.
You may feel the need to tell the group leadership exactly what you think of them. Perhaps you join a protest group or a defectors group, anti-your-cult or antiMLM or you find a charity that supports people in groups like yours.
4. Depression
Now it hits you; depression really kicks in. Your efforts to raise awareness and bargain with people on the inside or even with people on the outside, politicians, celebrities, lawyers, police, but all your efforts are going nowhere fast.
Your thoughts are along the lines of Why bother, what’s the point, no one’s listening, we’re never going to get MLMs shut down, it’s an impossible situation.
Reality check here: you won’t topple an establishment in a day, just like Rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes time!
5. Acceptance
It’s going to be ok. It is what it is. I’ve been had. I can’t change what has happened, all I can do is look to the future. Where do I go from here?
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