Here I am going to consider some matters related to post-cult recovery.

1. How long does it take to recover completely?
According to Steven Hassan, his method is the most effective. However, one of his former clients still has problems 15 years after leaving a cult. Another one still consider himself a recovering ex-cultist 27 years after leaving a cult. I have no idea if Hassan himself who left 33 years ago considers himself fully recovered or not. Well, it looks like he considers post-cult recovery an eternal process that will never end. If so, I do not understand why his method is the most effective, if people who got Hassan's counseling and people who do not get any counseling at all spend the same time in their recovery. As for me, I really do not like the idea that it will take me, at least, 30 years to completely recover.

I prefer to feel myself as a healthy person, and not as an eternally recovering ex-cultist. I do not want to focus too much on the post-cult problems. I think focusing on the post-cult problems may be one of the main reasons why the post-cult recovery takes too long time. Psychosomatic and psychological problems can be easily caused by suggestion or self-suggestion. The more a person focuses on his or her problems, the more serious these problems may become. On the other hand, the more a person feels that he or she is healthy, the more healthy he/she will become.

2. How many post-cult after effects a person should experience?
This question may sound strange. However, I noticed that Hassan's books make an impression that most ex-members of cults have all the problems that he listed. He makes an impression that if an ex-member does not have some problem, this is an exception and not something usual. For example, he writes that he did not have decision-making problems because he had a leading position in Moonism. I had never had any leading position, but I did not have this problem either.

Now, analyzing my thoughts when I was reading his books, I realize that reading about every symptom, I tried to find it in my experience. I thought that even if I did not notice some symptom, I still had it, but did not know about that. These thoughts very easily can lead to self-suggestion. Now, I understand why I did not have any problems with my cult personality, including floatings, before I read Combatting Cult Mind Control, but began to have these problems soon after I read this book. Even though I have never had problems with decision-making and loss of psychological power, I still was wondering for a while trying to find these symptoms.

3. Is it necessary to get post-cult counseling?
In this matter, there is a disagreement between Steven Hassan and Dr. Margaret Singer. Margaret Singer did not say that every ex-member of cult needs a therapy. She considered post-cult recovery as an educational process, not as a therapeutic process. In addition, she wrote that ex-members of cults can get help through self-education if they are unable to contact cult experts, mental health professionals, or ex-members of cults who can share information with them.

There are people who cannot get post-cult counseling. Some of them live far from the counselors, some have financial needs, some have other problems. According to Hassan, these people have no hope to recover (though I am not sure that his clients recover considering that 27 years is not sufficient for recovery). According to Margaret Singer, these people can recover through the self-education.

There is one more problem. One of Hassan's clients who left a cult 15 years ago, still has a number of problems including the making-decision difficulty. I left 6 years ago and have never seen any counselor after leaving. I do not think that my experience in the group where I was involved, was better. However, I do not have any problems with making decisions or thinking independently. I do not need to remind myself that I can think by myself and that I can make my own decisions. I do that spontaneously. It looks like I have much less problems than that Hassan's former client. Then, I really have to question whether his counseling is better than no counseling at all.