Fact Checked by Bible Vaccine Center Editorial Team
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Written by Chris Vishoot
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How to Rebuild Your Life After Leaving Shincheonji
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Leaving Shincheonji
Before reading this article, I recommend starting with:
This article focuses on what comes after leaving. When it comes to rebuilding your life, I am going to focus on three main areas: stabilizing, rebuilding, and moving forward.
Everyone’s recovery is going to look a little different, and there is no single timeline that works for everyone. What I share here is based largely on my own experience as a former member, along with what I have learned from helping other former members as they rebuild their lives.
Make things less rocky
Part 1 - Stabilize
Rest and how to rebuild trust with yourself
After leaving a high control group, most people find that the hardest relationship to repair is the one with themselves. You will catch yourself asking the same question over and over, which is how did I let this happen to me?
You were recruited by a method. SCJ’s approach is engineered and sequential, and it has been tested on tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. There is a script, and there is a schedule for what you get told and when, along with what gets withheld until you are further in. When a system is built specifically to persuade you, being persuaded by it says very little about your intelligence.
You wanted the truth, you were willing to sacrifice something bigger than yourself, and you took the Bible seriously enough to study it for hours a week. You also kept your commitments even when they were inconvenient. Those qualities were used against you, and they are still worth keeping. The goal here is not to walk away a more cynical person, but to hold onto all of that while getting better at where you aim it.
So the work ahead of you is evidence. You rebuild trust with yourself the same way you would rebuild it with anybody else. You say you are going to do something, you do it, and nothing bad happens. Do that enough times and the question quiets down
For the first few days after leaving, your body is going to be exhausted. You just came off an adrenaline rush of fear and anxiety, and for a lot of people that gets mixed with an unfamiliar feeling of peace once you realize that you no longer have to live under a lie. That combination wears you out more than people expect.
Rest for people can mean different things. Whether it was binge watching movies and TV shows to get your mind off of things momentarily, or catching up on the much needed sleep that the cult deprived you of, try to take a few days where nothing on your schedule has to be accomplished. If you can take time off from work, take it, and if you can’t, try to limit the number of hours you have to work in order to allow your body to heal, especially after the first few days of leaving a high control group.
The bar here is lower than you think it is. Cook dinner, clean up the kitchen, go for a walk, call someone from before SCJ. Watch something with no redeeming value whatsoever. None of these can be failed, and that is the point. The question is whether the thing happened, not whether you got anything out of it.
If sitting still feels unbearable rather than relaxing, that is not a character flaw. You were trained to believe that unstructured time was wasted time, and that takes a while to unlearn.
As you continue resting, make sure to remind yourself that these steps are also a “win”, and overtime, as you continue taking these small steps, you can continue rebuilding your trust within yourself.
These steps are really meant for someone who just left Shincheonji, and can also be applied to any other high control group.
Start making small goals for yourself each day
When you leave, all of that structure can disappear at once. For some people, the freedom feels amazing. For others, it feels overwhelming. You might wake up and realize there’s no service to attend, no evangelism report to submit, no Bible lesson to prepare for, and no one checking whether you’ve done what was expected of you. At first, that can feel strange.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, start small. You don’t need to make “completely rebuild my life” your goal for today. Your goal might simply be:
Small Goals
- Go for a 20-minute walk
- Call a family member or friend.
- Cook yourself dinner.
- Clean one room.
- Call a family member or friend.
- Go to the gym.
- Finish one task that you have been putting off.
- Spend an hour doing something that you actually enjoy.
The point isn’t productivity. It’s that you decided to do something and then did it. Each small decision reminds you that you can make choices for yourself without someone else controlling them. Over time, you can set larger goals, whether that means exercising again, returning to school, reconnecting with friends, finding a church, or picking up a hobby you gave up while you were in the group. You don’t have to figure it all out now. Start small. You’re learning to make decisions for yourself again, and each one gives you another reason to trust yourself.
Building your support
Acknowledge what happened to you
At some point, you are also going to have to acknowledge something that can be very uncomfortable: something serious happened to you. For a while after leaving, it can be tempting to minimize everything. You might tell yourself, “Other people had it worse,” “I was only there for a few years,” “I should just move on,” or “I should have figured it out sooner.” Maybe you even feel embarrassed that you believed any of it in the first place. I understand that feeling, but pretending that nothing happened does not make the experience disappear.
For months or years, you may have reorganized your entire life around this group. Your friendships changed. Your schedule changed. Your relationship with your family may have changed. Your understanding of God, the Bible, salvation, and even your own identity may have been shaped by the organization. Then one day, the entire framework collapses. That is a lot for a person to process.
Acknowledging what happened does not mean that Shincheonji gets to define the rest of your life. It simply means being willing to say, “This happened to me, and it affected me.” You might experience anger, grief, embarrassment, relief, or even find yourself missing certain parts of the group while simultaneously knowing that leaving was the right decision. Those emotions can exist at the same time.
One thing that helped me was recognizing that I was not only grieving a religious organization. I was also grieving relationships, time, expectations, and the future that I thought I was building. Some of the people inside Shincheonji may have genuinely cared about you, and you may have genuinely cared about them. The fact that the environment was manipulative does not mean that every relationship or every emotion you experienced inside of it was fake. That can make leaving much harder.
Give yourself permission to acknowledge that loss. Write about what happened. Talk with someone you trust. Speak with other former members. If you have access to a therapist who understands religious trauma, coercive control, or high-control groups, consider speaking with them as well.
You do not need to understand everything immediately. At this stage, the goal is not to have the perfect explanation for what happened. The goal is simply to stop running away from the fact that it happened. Once you can acknowledge what happened without allowing it to define who you are, you can begin deciding what comes next.
What to Do With Your Free Time
- Learn an instrument.
- Start exercising.
- Join a sports league.
- Learn another language.
- Travel somewhere.
- Start painting.
- Reconnect with old friends.
- Start hiking again.
For me, one of those things was hiking. I had wanted to get back into it, so after leaving, I started planning weekend hikes around the Pacific Northwest. For someone else, it might be piano lessons, a soccer league, a martial arts class, or something they had put off for years. Part of rebuilding your life is rediscovering what you enjoy. Once you have a list of things you’d like to try, choose one or two and turn them into SMART goals.
S - Specific: Clearly Define What You Want to Do
Instead of: “I want to exercise more.”
Try: “I want to go to the gym twice per week.”
M - Measurable: Make it something you can actually track.
“I will hike twice this month.”
A - Achievable:
Make sure the goal is realistic for where you are right now.
R - Relevant: Choose something that actually matters to you.
Don’t replace Shincheonji’s schedule with another list of things you think you are supposed to accomplish.
Choose things that you genuinely want in your life.
T - Time-bound: Give yourself a clear deadline.
For example: “By the end of this week, I’ll choose one hiking trail and make plans to go.” You don’t need a perfect schedule. After leaving an environment that may have controlled much of your time, you can begin filling it with things you choose. Start with one or two goals. You don’t need to rebuild your entire life in the first week. You have time.
Why the fear stays
Recovery Is Not Linear
One thing I want you to remember throughout this entire process is that recovery is not linear. You might have a really good month where you barely think about Shincheonji, and then one day something suddenly reminds you of what happened. Maybe it is a song, a Bible verse, a place you used to meet, a message from someone who is still inside, or even a random memory that you were not expecting. Suddenly, you may feel angry, sad, anxious, or overwhelmed again. That does not mean you went backward.
One analogy that I really like is thinking about grief as a ball inside of a box. When you first leave, imagine that the ball is huge. It is so large that almost every movement causes it to hit one of the walls of the box. Every time it hits the wall, you feel the grief again, and in the beginning that might happen constantly.
Over time, though, the ball gets smaller. The box is still there, and the experience still happened, but the ball does not hit the walls nearly as often. Eventually, you might go days, weeks, or even months without it happening. Then, unexpectedly, the ball hits the wall again. Maybe you hear from someone you knew inside the group, an anniversary comes around, or you see something online that reminds you of your experience, and suddenly those emotions come back.
When that happens, remind yourself that having a difficult day does not erase the progress you made during the previous three months, six months, or year. The ball hitting the wall again does not mean that it became huge again. It simply means that something touched a painful part of your experience.
Allow yourself to feel it. Talk to someone if you need to. Write about what triggered it. Take some time to rest, and then continue living your life. Over time, those moments may become less frequent, and when they do happen, you can become better at recognizing what is happening and knowing what you need.
Recovery does not mean that you will never feel sad, angry, or anxious about what happened again. It means that those feelings no longer have to control your life.
Build a Support System
You do not have to process everything by yourself. One of the most helpful things you can do early on is identify a few trusted people you can reach out to when you feel overwhelmed. These might be family members, close friends, former members, a therapist, a pastor you trust, or anyone else who understands what you are going through.
I would recommend creating a small list of “emergency contacts” before you actually need them. That way, if you start panicking, doubting yourself, or feeling the urge to return to the group, you already know who you can call or message. Do not wait until you are overwhelmed to figure out who that person should be.
If you are working with a professional therapist, talk openly with them about what you are experiencing. If possible, finding someone who understands trauma, coercive control, religious trauma, or high-control groups can be especially helpful. Everyone reacts differently after leaving, and a therapist can help you work through your own experience instead of trying to follow someone else’s recovery process.
Former members can also be incredibly helpful because sometimes what you need most is to talk with someone who immediately understands the experience. There is something powerful about hearing another person say, “I understand. I went through it too.”
And if you do not feel like you have anyone around you who understands what you went through, you can always reach out to us at Bible Vaccine Center. We also provide a community of former members who have gone through many of the same experiences and can help remind you that you are not going through this alone.
Rebuilding Your Life
Part 2 - Rebuilding
Relearning Your Triggers
Another important part of recovery is learning what your triggers are and what helps you calm down when they happen.
For me, there were times when I would suddenly feel overwhelmed, anxious, or emotionally flooded. Sometimes I knew exactly what caused it, and other times it seemed to come out of nowhere. Over time, I started paying more attention to what happened right before those moments so I could better understand what was triggering me.
When I felt overwhelmed, one of the things I practiced was box breathing. I would breathe in slowly for four seconds, hold for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds, and then hold again for four seconds. I would repeat that cycle until I felt my body starting to calm down.
I would also physically ground myself. That could mean putting both feet firmly on the floor, paying attention to the chair underneath me, noticing the temperature in the room, or identifying things that I could see, hear, and touch around me. The purpose was to remind myself that I was here, in the present moment, and that I was safe.
Over time, I also started learning what kinds of things were likely to trigger those reactions. It might be a message from someone still inside the group, a certain Bible verse, a place I associated with Shincheonji, or even a memory that came up unexpectedly.
Once you start recognizing those patterns, the trigger can become less confusing. Instead of thinking, “Why am I suddenly feeling like this?” you can begin saying, “I know what this is, and I know what I can do next.”
That does not mean the feeling disappears immediately, but having a plan can make those moments feel much more manageable.
At the same time, everyone is different. What triggers one person may not affect another person in the same way, and what helps me calm down may not be what works best for you. That is one of the reasons why working with a professional therapist can be incredibly helpful during recovery. A therapist can help you identify your own triggers, understand why certain situations affect you the way they do, and develop coping strategies that are actually suited to you.
You do not have to figure all of this out by yourself.
Setting Boundaries
Relearning Boundaries
Another important part of rebuilding your life is learning how to set healthy boundaries again. In a high-control group, you may have become used to other people having constant access to your time. You may have felt pressure to answer messages immediately, attend every meeting, accept every responsibility, or sacrifice sleep because something was supposedly more important.
After leaving, you have to relearn that it is okay to say no.
You do not have to answer every message immediately. You do not have to accept every invitation. You do not have to explain yourself every time you decide not to do something. You are allowed to protect your sleep, your weekends, your relationships, and your time. Sometimes saying, “I can’t do that this week,” is enough.
At the same time, be careful not to swing too far in the opposite direction. After experiencing manipulation, it can be easy to become suspicious of everyone or assume that anyone asking something from you is trying to control you. Remind yourself that not everyone is out to get you. Someone asking you for a favor is not necessarily manipulating you. A friend disagreeing with you does not automatically mean they are trying to control you. A healthy community can have expectations and disagreements without becoming a high-control environment.
Part of recovery is learning the difference between someone making a normal request and someone repeatedly ignoring your boundaries. Healthy people can hear the word “no.” They may be disappointed, but they do not need to threaten you, shame you, frighten you, or make you feel that your relationship depends on your obedience.
You can also give yourself time before making decisions. If someone asks you to commit to something, you do not have to give them an answer immediately. You can simply say, “Let me think about it and get back to you.” That small habit can be especially helpful after leaving an environment where you may have felt pressured to make decisions quickly.
Learning boundaries does not mean building walls around yourself. The goal is not to stop trusting people. The goal is to learn that you can have close relationships with other people while still having ownership over your own time, decisions, and life.
Handling Confrontation
Handling Contact From Current Members
At some point, someone who is still inside the group may reach out to you. It might be a close friend, your former teacher, a leader, or someone you studied with. Sometimes the message may be very casual. Other times, they may want to talk about why you left, convince you to come back, or tell you that they are worried about you.
The important thing is to have a plan before that happens. You do not want to make that decision while you are emotional, anxious, or caught off guard. Think ahead about what kind of contact you are comfortable with. Maybe you do not want any contact at all for a while. Maybe you are okay with receiving messages but do not want to discuss doctrine. Maybe there are one or two people you still care about and are willing to talk with, but only under certain boundaries.
There is no single correct answer. What matters is that the decision belongs to you.
If someone messages you, you also do not have to respond immediately. You can put your phone down, take some time, talk to someone you trust, and decide later whether you want to respond at all. If the conversation begins making you anxious or you notice yourself falling back into old patterns of fear, guilt, or feeling like you have to defend yourself, it is okay to stop the conversation.
You also do not owe anyone a debate. You do not have to prove why you left every time someone asks. You do not have to answer every accusation or defend every decision you made. Sometimes the healthiest response is simply, “I am not ready to talk about this right now.” And sometimes the healthiest response is no response at all.
If there are people inside the group that you genuinely care about, it is also okay to still care about them. Leaving the organization does not mean that you suddenly stop having feelings for people who were important to you. But caring about someone does not require you to give them unlimited access to you.
If you think a particular person is likely to reach out, consider talking with your therapist, a trusted friend, family member, or another former member beforehand. Decide what your boundaries are and what you will do if the conversation becomes overwhelming. Having that plan ahead of time can make the situation much easier to handle when the message finally arrives.
Rebuilding your social network
Another important part of recovery is rebuilding your social life.
While you were in Shincheonji or another high-control group, some of your older relationships may have slowly faded into the background. You may have had less time for family, stopped seeing certain friends, or become surrounded mostly by people connected to the group.
After leaving, it can feel strange trying to reconnect.
Some relationships may pick up almost exactly where they left off. Others may feel awkward at first. You changed while you were inside the group, and the people around you continued living their own lives during that time. Give those relationships time to grow again.
When you reconnect with people, you can absolutely talk about what happened to you. Sometimes you will need to. But you also do not have to make every conversation about Shincheonji.
Go out for dinner. Watch a movie. Go hiking. Play a sport. Grab coffee. Talk about work, relationships, hobbies, stupid things you saw online, or whatever you used to talk about before.
This is where the new hobbies and goals you started building earlier can become especially helpful. You now have new experiences to share with people. Instead of every conversation beginning with, “When I was in Shincheonji…,” you might find yourself talking about a hiking trip you took, something you learned at the gym, a new recipe you tried, or something you are looking forward to doing next weekend.
You are creating new memories that have nothing to do with the group.
At the same time, you may also need to relearn what a healthy friendship feels like. Healthy relationships generally do not require you to constantly prove your loyalty. You should be able to disagree, spend time apart, have different interests, and say no without believing that the entire relationship is at risk.
Healthy friendships can also be wonderfully ordinary.
Not every conversation needs to have some deeper purpose. Not every friendship needs to help you accomplish a mission. Sometimes you can simply enjoy another person’s company.
That may take some getting used to after leaving an environment where relationships could become tied to recruitment, accountability, attendance, or spiritual expectations.
You may also find yourself making entirely new friends during this period. Give those relationships time. You do not have to immediately tell everyone your entire story, and you do not have to decide right away whether someone is completely trustworthy. Healthy trust can develop slowly through repeated experiences.
The goal is not to return to exactly the same social life you had before joining the group. It is to build relationships where you can be yourself, maintain your boundaries, disagree when necessary, and still feel cared for.
Over time, your social world can become much bigger than the group you left.
Sustainable Goals
Build a Sustainable Routine
One of the first things I recommend is getting used to having a normal routine again. For many people who leave Shincheonji or another high-control group, their schedule was constantly packed. Between Bible studies, meetings, evangelism, services, reporting, work, school, and everything else, there was very little time left for rest or for things you actually wanted to do.
Start with sleep. Make getting a full night’s rest one of your first goals. For most adults, that means roughly 7–9 hours per night. Getting enough sleep can help with concentration, decision-making, emotional regulation, and physical recovery. Try going to bed and waking up around the same time each day, but do not turn sleep into another assignment that you have to complete perfectly. The goal is simply to start giving your body permission to rest again.
From there, begin thinking about what you actually want your week to look like. Ask yourself what you always wanted to do but never had enough time for because of Shincheonji. Maybe you wanted to start exercising, learn an instrument, go hiking, take a cooking class, travel, or reconnect with old friends. Write those things down, but do not try to do all of them at once.
For me, one of those things was hiking. I wanted to get back into it, so I started planning hiking trips around the Pacific Northwest on the weekends. At the same time, I could keep other parts of my week simple. Maybe I would go to the gym a few times during the week, then use one of my rest days to learn how to cook a new recipe. That kind of repeatable rhythm helped my life feel less chaotic.
This is where SMART goals can be helpful. A SMART goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Instead of saying, “I want to exercise more,” you might say, “I want to go to the gym twice this week.” Instead of saying, “I want to hike more,” you might say, “By the end of this week, I will choose one trail and make plans to go.” The goal is to make your plans simple enough that you can actually follow through with them.
At the same time, be careful not to replace Shincheonji’s schedule with another exhausting schedule of your own making. You do not need to fill every hour of every day. You do not need five new hobbies, a perfect workout routine, a packed social calendar, and a long list of goals all at once.
A sustainable routine should have room for work, sleep, relationships, hobbies, exercise, and rest. It should help your life feel more stable, not more pressured.
Start with one or two things you genuinely enjoy and let the rest grow naturally over time. The point is not to become more productive. The point is to build a life that feels like your own.
As you continue rebuilding your life, it can also be helpful to start understanding what happened to you psychologically. For me, this was something I worked through with a therapist, and it became an important part of my recovery.
When you first leave, you may be focused mostly on questions like, “Was Shincheonji actually wrong?”, “Did I make the right decision?”, or “What if I misunderstood something?” Those questions are understandable, especially when you have spent so much time being taught that leaving the group could have serious consequences.
Over time, though, another set of questions may become just as important. You might start asking yourself, “How did I become so convinced?”, “Why was I afraid to question certain things?”, “Why did leaving feel so frightening?”, or “Why do I still feel guilty even though I know why I left?” This is where learning about how high-control groups operate can be extremely helpful.
If you have not already, I recommend reading Combating Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan. Learning about concepts such as coercive control and phobia indoctrination can help put some of your experiences into context. Phobia indoctrination happens when a group creates fear around leaving, questioning the organization, researching criticism, or trusting people outside of the group.
For example, you may have been taught that leaving meant betraying God, losing your salvation, becoming spiritually blind, being deceived by Satan, or eventually returning because the outside world had nothing meaningful to offer you. Even after you intellectually stop believing those teachings, the fear connected to them can sometimes remain.
That is why you can know logically that you had good reasons for leaving and still suddenly feel afraid. One thing that helped me was learning to separate the feeling of fear from the conclusion I had been trained to attach to it. “I am feeling afraid” is not the same thing as “this fear means the group was right.”
If you are working with a therapist, this can also be a good time to start discussing those fears and exploring how your experience affected your identity, relationships, decision-making, and ability to trust yourself. Everyone’s experience is different, so having a professional help you understand your own reactions can be incredibly useful.
Recovery is not just about proving that the group was wrong. It is also about understanding what happened to you, rebuilding confidence in your own judgment, and gradually learning how to live your life without fear controlling your decisions.
Part 3 - Moving Forward
Start Pursuing Bigger Goals
As you continue rebuilding your life, the small goals you started with can gradually become larger ones. Maybe your first goal was simply getting enough sleep, going for a walk, or making dinner for yourself. Over time, those small wins can give you the confidence to start thinking about bigger parts of your future.
Maybe you want to return to school, advance your career, become healthier, travel, develop a new skill, or build stronger relationships. The specific goal does not matter as much as the fact that it is something you chose for yourself.
Try not to rush this process or feel like you need to make up for lost time. You do not need to accomplish everything at once. Pick one or two goals that genuinely matter to you, break them into smaller steps, and start moving toward them gradually.
The point is not to create another demanding schedule. The point is to begin looking forward again. Instead of your life being centered around what you left behind, you can start building toward what you want next.
Recognize How Far You Have Come
Every once in a while, take some time to look back at where you started.
Maybe one of your first goals was simply getting a full night of sleep again. Maybe it was going for a walk, cooking dinner, or getting through a day without feeling overwhelmed. At the time, those things may have felt small, but they were part of rebuilding your life.
Now, you may be exercising regularly, reconnecting with friends and family, developing your career, learning new skills, traveling, or planning for your future. The specific changes will look different for everyone, but the important part is recognizing that progress often happens slowly enough that you do not notice it while it is happening.
You may still have difficult days. You may still have triggers or moments where you think about the group more than you would like. That does not erase everything you have built.
Sometimes it helps to compare yourself not to where you think you “should” be, but to where you were when you first left.
Look at the decisions you can make now. Look at the relationships you have rebuilt. Look at the routines you created and the things you have learned about yourself.
Recovery is not about becoming a completely different person overnight. It is often a series of small changes that, over time, add up to a life that feels like your own again.
Discover Who You Are Now
As you move forward, you do not necessarily have to become the exact person you were before joining the group. Your experiences changed you, and that does not mean every change has to be negative.
Instead of asking, “How do I get back to who I was before?”, try asking, “Who do I want to become now?”
Think about what matters to you now. What relationships do you value? What kind of work do you want to do? What kind of friend, spouse, sibling, parent, or community member do you want to be? What hobbies do you enjoy? What kind of life feels meaningful and healthy to you?
You may discover that some of the things you cared about before the group still matter to you. Other things may not. You may develop completely new interests, goals, or values that you did not have before.
That is okay.
Part of moving forward is giving yourself permission to change without feeling like you have to recreate your old life exactly as it was.
You are not required to return to the person you were before Shincheonji. You can take what you learned, leave behind what harmed you, and continue building the kind of life you actually want now.
Do Not Let Being an Ex-Member Become Your New Identity
As you move forward, remember that being a former member does not have to become your new identity.
You may decide that you want to help other people leave, support families, tell your story publicly, or become involved in advocacy. If that is something you genuinely want to do, that can be meaningful.
But you may also decide that you want nothing more to do with the group. You may want to close that chapter, focus on your family, career, hobbies, relationships, and simply live your life.
Either choice is okay.
You do not owe anyone activism. You do not have to keep talking about what happened just because you went through it. And if you do choose to help others, make sure that helping people does not slowly become another responsibility that consumes all of your time and energy.
Your experience can be part of your story without becoming the only thing people know about you, and without becoming the only thing you know about yourself.
You are more than the group you left.
Moving forward means giving yourself permission to build a life that is bigger than what happened to you.
Eventually, the goal is not to wake up every morning thinking about the fact that you escaped a cult. The goal is to wake up thinking about your family, your work, your hobbies, your plans for the weekend, and whatever you want to do next.
What happened to you can remain part of your story without continuing to control your life. You do not have to erase the experience, pretend it never happened, or forget the people who were part of it. But over time, it can take up less space.
Your life can become bigger than Shincheonji.
You can build new routines, new relationships, new goals, and new memories that have nothing to do with the group. Eventually, there may come a point where days or even weeks go by without thinking about it very much at all.
And when you do think about it, it can simply be something that happened to you rather than something that continues to define you.
The group becomes part of your history. It does not get to decide your future.
Frequently Asked Questions about Rebuilding
How long does it take to recover after leaving Shincheonji?
There is no set timeline. You might feel relief right away and still have difficult days months later. Leaving can affect your routines, friendships, faith, and sense of trust in yourself. Give yourself time to work through those changes without measuring your progress against someone else’s.
Why do I feel lost now that I have more freedom?
Shincheonji may have filled much of your week with lessons, services, evangelism, and reporting. When that structure disappears, even ordinary decisions can feel unfamiliar. You do not need to plan your whole future right now. Try choosing one small thing you want to do today, whether that is resting, making dinner, or calling a friend.
What if I miss people who are still in Shincheonji?
Missing them does not mean leaving was a mistake. You may have cared deeply about people in the group, and some of them may have cared about you. It is okay to grieve those relationships while deciding what kind of contact, if any, is healthy for you now.
Should I respond if someone from Shincheonji contacts me?
You can decide whether to respond and when. You do not owe anyone an immediate reply or an explanation for leaving. If contact tends to bring back fear or pressure, consider talking with someone you trust before answering. You can also tell the person that you are not ready to discuss Shincheonji, or choose not to respond.
How do I start trusting myself again?
Start with small choices that belong to you. Choose a meal, make a plan with a friend, or set aside time for something you enjoy. Following through can help you see that you are capable of making decisions for yourself. You do not have to feel completely confident before you begin.
Do I need to tell friends and family everything that happened?
No. You can share your story at a pace that feels comfortable. It may help to tell a trusted person what kind of support you need, even if you are not ready to explain every detail. You might say, “I left a group that took up a lot of my life, and I’m still processing it. Could we spend some time together?”
What if I am still afraid that Shincheonji was right?
Fear can remain even after you have reasons for leaving. You may have spent a long time hearing that questioning or leaving would have serious consequences. When the fear comes up, give yourself time to examine the specific thought behind it. Talking it through with a trusted person or a therapist familiar with high-control groups may help.
What should I focus on first after leaving?
Begin with what you need most right now. That might be sleep, a conversation with someone you trust, a plan for handling messages from current members, or one enjoyable activity this week. You do not need to complete every suggestion in this article. Rebuilding your life can begin with one choice you make for yourself.
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Spiritual Abuse
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Get Help Evaluating a Specific Group or Church
Bible Vaccine Center specializes in East Asian high-control groups operating in the United States, including Shincheonji, WMSCOG, Eastern Lightning, Jesus Morning Star, and Iglesia ni Cristo. If you are trying to evaluate a specific group and want an expert perspective, reach out.
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