Decade of Deconstruction: Why We Cult Hop

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]So, cult hoppers are people that go from like one extreme group to another extreme group. Um sometimes they are cult babies like me who grew up in the Children of God religious cult and then went into the cult of the US Army. I've actually found since publishing Uncultured that it's quite common to grow up in high-demand organizations, especially religious space organizations, and then go into the US military and do quite well.

[00:00:26]Um but one of the things that happens is until we deconstruct, right? Until we spend, I call it the decade of deconstruction, basically a 10-year period figuring out who we are, why we were in a cult, and what impacts that had on our personality and identity, we generally tend to keep cult hopping into different kinds of culty groups. It's kind of like the extremism is in recession, but then it can just pop right back in as we talked about both me and Dr. Steven Hassan in this article done by Rolling Stone about the cult of MAGA. Right? So, and in fact, one of the things I have done with my most recent book, The Culting of America, where I give you the tactics that cults use, part of that is to give you the language to understand what you went through. And then we also made the first of its kind deconstruction workbook for reclaiming your mind. Of course, that's not going to completely stand in for the 10 years of deconstruction, but I think it gives people a place to start, and I actually made that specifically with MAGA in mind. But there will be things you discover about yourself. So, for me specifically, it was like jonesing for a mission. Right? People think from the outside that extremism or being in a high-demand group is awful, but in fact, much like smoking, it feels really good.

[00:01:54]Extremism feels really good. Humans love being surrounded by people that look like them and think like them and are reassuring them that their life has meaning, they're on the right path, and here's this mission. And so I realized that I had been trained from birth to have this mission and have this very strong enmeshed community around me, something which was replicated in the military. And so when I was trying to live a regular civilian life, I kind of felt like I was falling apart. And I really had to name a couple things.

[00:02:27]Number one, I didn't get to form an identity because I had been in a high-demand group during my formative years. There's a thing called delayed adolescence that a lot of us cult babies have to go through. Someone once commented to me, "Why can't I tell if you're in your 20s or your 50s?" And I said, "Yeah, I think that's a good description of cult babies, right? You have to figure out who you are. You have to do wacky things and wear wacky things and you know, I always say, if you never got to slam the door as an adolescent tell your parents you hated them, you've got some adolescencing to do still.

[00:03:06]Um so I had to identify that and then I had to identify that like I was jonesing for a mission. And for a while I actually created for myself an anti-mission statement. I'm not here to save the world. I'm not here to end cults or rape culture in the military.

[00:03:21]I'm here for knitting cult lady, Mr. Knitting Cult Lady, Knitting Cult Baby, and even the Republican dog to have a good life and that is it. Now I feel a lot more comfortable with the work that I do, the fact that it helps people and like having a mission but not letting it become all consuming. And I really, really do think it is once we have the language for what we went through. But the thing is, I think that when we get out of cults, our meter for community and purpose and mission is just jacked up to a thousand.

[00:03:58]But it's hard to tell that because all humans are motivated by mission and purpose and community. So a lot of times people will leave cults and they'll be like, well, that specific group was bad, but I want to find something else just like it. Not understanding that it is that level of community that is unhealthy. It is that level of giving yourself fully over to the mission that is unhealthy.

[00:04:24]One of the things I tell people these days is how do you protect yourself and your children from coercive individuals and groups? Because they're always going to be out there. And that is to teach them to never give themselves 100% to any person, place, thing, or idea outside of themselves. Not even fighting fascism, y'all. You have to hold something back for yourself. It is extremely important.

[00:04:48]I'm Janja Lalich, a scholar of cults, extreme groups, and extremely bad leadership. And you can get my Cult Tactics book and my workbook attached here, or listen to me read it to you anywhere you get your audiobooks.