Group Mind and How Spiritual Abuse Perverts Community
I waited six months to take the next level of classes at the Improv school. For a short time, I thought my Improv journey might be over.
I enjoyed level one, where we learned how to say “Yes, and…” to our scene partners, accepting one another’s ideas and creating something new together. The next level was a class called Group Mind, and the title alone made me cringe. The class was intent on pushing against a culture of individualism and teaching students about the intangible connection to others required to perform successfully with a team.
The class was not designed for a survivor of a cult who had spent most of the past decade trying to find herself under the layers of shame and trauma from a lifetime of serving a group that told her individualism was evil.
I don’t need to learn how to submit to a group, I thought. I need to continue learning how to hear my own voice.
I was worried the class might cause a relapse in my mental health progress. Or be incredibly activating.
I wasn’t wrong about the activation. During the first class, I felt my body having a trauma response as a dozen emotions swirled like a tornado inside my chest while I projected calm in my interactions with my classmates. It’s a strange experience to know my body was activated while simultaneously knowing I was entirely safe.
No one was trying to kill my identity or tell me to stop existing.
In that class, the coach told us one of the beauties of group mind was if we showed up on a bad day, if we tripped over ourselves or forgot our stories, the group was there to support each other.
You give an enthusiastic yes to the group. The group gives an enthusiastic yes to you.
I couldn’t help acknowledging to myself that this was the same strategy gangs use. Gangs and cults have a lot in common. As long as you’re a part of the group, the group will protect you and care for you.
If you’re out of the group, you’re out in the cold. Alone.
But I’d found safety in the season of alone. Much of my experience of community had been dangerous.
Abusive Community Destroys. Safe Community Expands.
After the first class, I wanted to cry. Partly from relief that I’d survived it without breaking down. Partly from grief that Spiritual Abuse had perverted a very basic understanding of community.
We can’t survive in this world without connection to others.
Yet Spiritual Abuse had made connection to others a threat.
After the second class, some of my classmates invited me to go out for tacos. I declined because I was exhausted. So very exhausted.
Again, I wanted to cry.
Two weeks later, one of our classmates was taking part in an Improv competition. A few of us attended to show our support.
The first group of performers was a group of six women. While I was watching their show, I felt the concept of Group Mind click.
The women’s support of one another was something mystical. Perhaps magical. They collectively picked up whatever anyone put down, enthusiastically championing any spontaneous ideas an individual sprouted on the spot. They built a chaotic jungle gym of comedic storylines, feeding each other as the audience rolled with laughter at each new bizarre twist.
This was Group Mind: each individual brings something to the team. The team says yes to each individual, and the individual’s unique qualities strengthen and support the team and the other individuals who make up that team.
The collective wasn’t asking the individuals to shut off their identity in service to the team. The collective needed each individual to show up as their full selves.
Conversely, in the abusive communities I’d been a part of, I was asked to shut my individualism off. I was asked to leave my brain and my spirit with coat check.
Any gifts I had were commandeered, repurposed, and sold, often without my consent. I served the collective, but the collective did not serve me.
This is the sinister nature of Spiritual Abuse: It takes a good thing and warps it for the gratification of one person or one system. It eviscerates. It suppresses. It destroys.
Safe community expands. Safe community says yes. Safe community says, “What you’re bringing to the table is pretty cool. What else can we do with that?”
The tricky thing is, sometimes from the outside, both of these look the same. The language is similar. The invitation draws on our innate longing for connection.
How do you know which is which?
Which is Which?
The first time I experienced Group Mind in class, it surprised me. During one of the exercises, I had an idea and instinctively suggested it. My classmates picked it up and ran it to the finish line.
Then someone else had an idea, and we took that idea and expanded it, embracing the weirdness until we were all gasping with laughter.
In my cult experience, my world had been transactional. I had to submit to the cult leader because he was entitled to my submission. It was in my best interest to keep the cult leader happy because he had the power to ruin my life.
It took me a long time to realize I did not have a life to ruin because it had already been ransacked. My life had been taken and used to stroke the ego of the cult leader while he forced me to give him gratitude for his protection and provision.
My life was not offered willingly for the good of a group that cared deeply for me as a unique person. Rather, my life was taken and used. Any protest was condemned as rebellion.
One form of community brings life. The other brings death.
A possible way to know which is which is to ask yourself, “Am I growing into greater wholeness? Or am I shrinking further toward forgetting myself?”
Within a safe community, your full self is needed. Your full self is wanted.
Katherine Spearing is the founder of Tears of Eden and a trauma recovery coach. You can follow her on Instagram @katherinespearing