Why are therapists with specialist cult-recovery expertise needed for cult survivors?
Dr Caroline (Caz) Ansley, joins Dr Natalie Fabert, PhD, in a conversation about her teaching and clinical work.
Dr. Natalie Fabert is a licensed psychologist, university lecturer, and board member of the Lalich Centre on Coercion and Control. She teaches at Arizona State University, where she created the popular undergraduate course "The Social Psychology of Cults." She is also an active clinician who specialises in abuse and trauma recovery. Caz and Natalie met at the International Cultic Studies Association Conference in Montreal, Canada, in 2025. It was Caz’s pleasure to interview her recently on Cult Chat and hear more about her special interest in educating on cult psychology and supporting survivors of cultic harm to recover.
Caz: Many clinicians feel uncertain about how to recognise the effects of group coercive control in former or current cult members. What would you tell a general practitioner like me about how they might recognise group coercive control in their patients?
Natalie: It’s a really hard one because people do not always present as somebody that fits what I think are some of the cultural stereotypes of someone in a cult. I mean, a lot of my patients on my caseload are people who are very high-functioning professionals who seem on the outside to be completely fine but are dealing with a lot of trauma and have a lot of distress from experiences that they’ve had in the past. You would never know that these are the kind of experiences that they’ve endured, that it’s possible that someone so high-functioning would have been through some of what they’ve been through.
I think it makes me just think of the more general question of how do we recognize abuse? How do we recognise when someone has been sexually abused, psychologically, emotionally abused when someone’s being manipulated, when someone’s experiencing financial abuse, especially because, a lot of people who are experiencing that currently or in the past, they might not know that that’s the case at all.
And especially when you’re going through it, in most of these systems…. you’re made to believe that the abuse and exploitation that you’re experiencing is for the good of the world, to save the world, somehow it’s going to lead to your enlightenment. And so people are not going to be able to answer any, in a lot of cases, really direct questions. They’re not going to be able to identify it in themselves.
So, I think you’re really asking, how do we know when people are neglected, when people are not allowed to get enough food, not allowed to get enough rest, are being sexually abused, you know, whatever it is, that’s kind of the more important question. And that’s, I think, a bigger question that we as medical providers and psychologists and counsellors - that’s what we’re kind of always grappling with - how to assess someone’s well-being, you know, especially when people don’t always have the words to describe what they’re feeling and they’re kind of coming to you as the provider, you know, to know what’s going on and why are they having these experiences?
It’s absolutely really helpful when the person self identifies, but we don’t always get that.
Caz: So you’ve developed a program with the Lalich Centre on Cults and Coercion to help mental health workers better understand cult survivors. What are the core ideas or competencies that you believe every clinician should learn about this?
Natalie: …We do see it as a specific population, a specific clinical population. And I think that’s one thing that medical and mental health providers need to understand… this is a unique population. I think once we educate medical and mental health providers to see it, then they go, okay, so that means since this is its own specific, unique clinical population; that means there needs to be specialised training to work with this patient population. Even just that part needs to be advocated for.
Then when you have a particular patient population… then you need to have multicultural competency to work with that population…
There’s modules on the knowledge, like what is a cult and the questions that, unfortunately, cult survivors often get asked, like why would you join? Why didn’t you just leave? Why did you do the things that you did? Those are questions that to be competent to work with people who identify as being part of this population, you need to understand that, right? People are looking to you, you know?
So we do a lot of education on that part of it, like helping people to understand, helping providers to understand what is the nature of the cult, what are the characteristics of a cult, what’s the social psychology, you know, what does the literature say about how coercive control happens in a group setting or in an individual setting. So in understanding what happens, what are some of the things that we see, what are some of the experiences like? And then also we see this type of experience as often one that would be characterised as complex trauma.
…And if somebody experiences complex trauma, then they are more likely to have symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress. And so, then for that piece of it, the more clinical piece of it, we look to the literature on how to treat somebody with complex PTSD and really kind of follow that part of the literature. But of course, it depends on the individual.
Caz: What gives you hope in this field right now?
Natalie: I think we’re definitely in a pendulum swinging back to: no, it’s okay to speak out against this type of abuse, and we’re allowed to call these experiences what they are, we’re allowed to say “cult”, like this was a cult. Of course, you want to always be mindful of where your patient is.
You want to follow, when it comes to clinical work, the direction of your patient. But I think in terms of just the public discourse and awareness about it, I think we are definitely back in a space right now of people being able to talk about coercively controlling group experiences for what they are, and to call them out…. But I do see that there is more access to resources and awareness about this issue, thanks to podcasts like yours and the work that a lot of folks have done who are in recovery also themselves to spread more awareness.
Have you loved this interview and now want to hear more from Natalie? She will be coming to New Zealand and she will be a speaker at the Decult 2026 conference, so if you are lucky, you may get to.
You can watch the whole interview with Dr Fabert on Cult Chat on the link below:
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