Episode 002 – Alisa Woodruff

0:01 Welcome to Unspun, unravelling the threads of cult recovery. Today our guest is Alisa Woodruff — co-host of this podcast, cult survivor, support group facilitator, and counsellor.

0:17 Hi Alisa, welcome to the show.

0:19 Awesome to be here, Jaya.

0:22 Can you give us, in a nutshell, your overall cult experience — what the group was, how you entered it, and ultimately how you left?

0:34 I was born into a cult called Subud. It began in the 1920s, but really gained popularity in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. It was started in Indonesia by a man called Bapak, and it centred on the belief that you could have a direct experience with God through a practice called the latihan.

1:07 My parents joined in the late ’60s, so I was born into it. We were directed to move to New Zealand, and I grew up with that influence. One of the difficult things for me was that there was quite a strong Muslim slant or culture within Subud. Although it said people from any religion could join, there was definitely an Islamic undercurrent. For instance, we would fast and observe Ramadan, women wore skirts, and I wasn’t allowed to wear jeans until I was about 12.

1:50 I always remember having a huge fear of doing things wrong. You were really shaped into being a certain way, especially as a woman. There was a strong purity culture around it — no sex before marriage, although these things weren’t always explicitly said. You just knew. You officially join when you’re 18, but if you’re born into it, you already know the rules and live by them.

2:45 You’re both a survivor and a therapist. How does your personal history with Subud inform the way you hold space for other survivors in therapy?

2:59 It’s a two-way street. I know what it’s like to come out of a cult and not know how to live. Growing up in it, I never learned how to manage money or emotions properly because everything was framed as God’s will. I didn’t develop my own identity — I developed one that made me the way Subud wanted me to be.

3:33 I see that in other survivors too. Often you lose your identity because you have to blend into the group identity. So for me, a lot of the work is helping people reconnect with their identity, or begin to build one if they never really formed it in the first place.

4:04 Are there things about that moment of realisation — the cultic “click” — that you understand as a survivor that a non-survivor therapist might miss?

4:19 Definitely. For example, people can have a lot of social anxiety coming out of a cult because there are so many situations they’ve never experienced before. Some people have lived very closed-off lives where the outside world was framed as dangerous. Because I have lived experience, I can often understand where that fear is coming from, and I can share some of my own experience, which people tend to find comforting.

5:43 You’ve mentioned that survivors often struggle with identity. How do you help them distinguish between their cult personality and their authentic self?

5:59 One of the biggest things is boundaries — or what I prefer to call limits. People often come out of cults with very few boundaries, which works well for the cult because it makes you easy to manipulate or coerce. If you can’t say no, you’ll do whatever the group needs you to do.

6:31 Once you leave, not being able to say no can put you in very dangerous situations, especially for women. So boundaries are often a really good place to start. What do they look like? What do they feel like? Once you start setting limits, you begin to learn who you are. You start to connect with your instincts around what feels right or wrong for you.

7:17 It’s not an easy journey, especially if you’re used to saying yes all the time or you’re terrified of how other people will react. But over time, it becomes one of the ways you learn who you are.

8:35 I want to talk a bit about Subud specifically. It’s often described as spiritual rather than religious, and it uses the latihan practice. How does recovering from a group like that differ from recovering from a more dogma-heavy cult?

8:57 That’s one of the tricky things about Subud. It claims there is no dogma, but there are Bapak’s talks and recordings, and people tend to follow them like dogma anyway. I’d say the spiritual practice itself isn’t necessarily the issue. For some people it may even feel similar to meditation and seem helpful on the surface.

9:28 What’s harder to recover from is the politics, the group dynamics, the power structures, and the influence people have over each other. So it’s more about the institutional structure than the practice itself.

9:50 For many survivors, the body holds the trauma of a group’s practices. How do you approach somatic, body-based recovery in your work?

10:00 I use that a lot, depending on the person. When someone is anxious or in crisis, they often operate mainly from their head. All the fear, panic and drama live there. One of the therapeutic tasks is helping people become more attuned to their bodies, because our bodies often give us clues before things like panic attacks happen.

10:49 If you’ve been brainwashed or subjected to coercive control, it can be really hard to reconnect with your body, and it takes time. Somatic work can help with that — using the body as part of the therapy process.

11:18 So things like body scanning, grounding and breathwork?

11:23 Absolutely. On the surface, some of these techniques can look similar to spiritual practices, but the intent is very different. They’re grounded in psychology and science rather than spiritual hierarchy. Sometimes it starts even more simply: walking, running, being in nature, listening to music — anything that helps people get out of their heads and reconnect with their body.

12:57 We spend so much time in our heads in cults.

13:03 Exactly. And I’ve noticed that many people end up with chronic or long-term illnesses, often linked to unprocessed trauma. The body carries it. If emotions are buried or never processed properly, they can show up physically over time.

15:11 I want to talk about the process of unspinning. What was the first thread you had to pull on to start unravelling your own involvement with Subud?

15:29 It was intense. My first husband and I had two children, and when we divorced he wanted custody. His argument was that I was part of a cult. So I left, thinking that would solve the problem. In that sense, I didn’t leave completely of my own free will. I left for my children.

16:04 But then I basically swept the whole experience under the carpet. For the next 20 years I lived in a kind of unconscious mess — alcohol, drugs, extreme sports, different partners, lots of chaos and drama.

16:43 Recovery isn’t a straight line. What do you say to survivors who feel like they’ve unravelled their trauma, only to get spun out again by a trigger or a new relationship?

16:57 What I know from my own trauma and from working with others is that things are revealed when we’re ready to deal with them. You might work through one aspect of your experience and feel clearer, and then a year later something else happens and a whole new layer appears.

17:28 That can be frustrating, but I think as you go further on the journey, it gets less frightening. It’s a bit like a spiral: from above it looks like you’ve come back to the same place, but if you look from the side, you’ve actually moved upward. Each time you revisit something, it becomes a little easier to hold.

18:52 What did you have to learn for the first time after recognising your cult experiences?

19:02 For me, it hasn’t been linear because I buried it all for so long. I also went into recovery from drugs and alcohol, so that became part of the larger healing process. I never really talked about being raised in a cult — even with counsellors. It was so buried and hidden, and I was too ashamed.

20:17 Even after leaving, I was still seeking. I still wanted community. Even six years ago I was looking at different communities to join. I always had this desire to know how to live my life properly, and I think that comes from not having built a strong sense of self or self-determination as a child.

20:54 One of the biggest things I’ve had to learn is how to make decisions for myself. For many years I relied on the group, my family, or someone close to me to make big life decisions. Eventually I realised I needed more space from my family so I could start making my own choices — whether they turned out right or wrong.

21:36 For me, making decisions carried this fear of God — that if I chose wrong, there would be terrible consequences. That fear was huge. So one of my biggest learnings has been making decisions that are right for me, and tolerating the uncertainty that comes with that.

22:12 How did leaving affect your family relationships?

22:20 Surprisingly, that part has been more okay than it is for some people. There have definitely been robust discussions since I got involved with Uncult, Decult and Unspun, and since I’ve become more vocal about cult recovery. But in general my family are supportive, and they’re not very involved anymore. That said, I’m still nervous about sharing publicly because family dynamics can be complicated.

23:26 What helps you live your life now? What keeps you focused and present?

23:37 For a long time it was adventure sports — climbing, mountain biking, mountaineering, anything that pushed my body to the edge. I loved it because it forced me into the present moment. I also loved feeling physically strong as a woman, which was something I didn’t feel as a child.

24:26 These days I’m a bit more relaxed, but I still climb and do some mountaineering. I also paint. Art has been fantastic for me. It gives me solitude, colour, expression. I’ve recently done a postgraduate diploma in creative arts therapy, so working in that way has become very meaningful too.

25:00 You use art therapy in the Uncult recovery group and with clients. Can you say a bit more about what art therapy is and how it helps?

25:13 I use it in a fairly casual way. In the recovery group, I’ll open up some materials and people make art while we talk. What’s surprised me is what comes out. Often, when we share at the end, the art is deeply connected to the conversation we’ve been having, even if people didn’t realise it while they were making it.

25:53 One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of people draw eyes. That feels really significant — many have been watched their whole lives in cult settings. For me personally, I made a lot of work with veils, spiderweb-like forms, and wrapped objects. Looking back, that was all about feeling bound.

26:56 That links with the idea of “bounded choice” — that in a cult you appear to have choices, but they’re restricted by the rules and structures of the group. Art helped me express that without having to explain it all first.

27:40 What I love about art therapy is that it can bypass conscious thinking. Things slip out onto the page. It gives access to emotions and experiences quite quickly and quite deeply. That can be powerful, and sometimes confronting, but also really useful.

29:41 You often invite people to “create ugly.” Why?

29:52 Because as soon as people hear the word “art,” they often say, “I can’t do art.” They think it has to look pretty. But this isn’t about making something for the wall — it’s about expression. If I tell people to make it ugly, it takes away that pressure and gives them permission to just let something out.

30:24 That connects with something we talk about a lot: making space for ugly feelings too.

30:36 Exactly. In many cults people are taught to be calm, humble, spiritual, godly — and there isn’t much room for anger or other difficult emotions. In my experience, anger was a huge issue. I was so angry for many years and had no understanding of where it came from or how to manage it. I felt like a terrible person because I couldn’t regulate it.

31:58 Looking back, I can see that I had no guidance around emotions. Negative emotions weren’t processed — they were suppressed. But those emotions are powerful, and if they aren’t expressed or worked through, they get buried and then explode. Of course I was angry. I had spent my whole childhood being formed into something I didn’t want to be.

33:14 What do you wish the general public understood about life after a cult?

33:29 I want people to understand how hard it is to leave and how long the journey is afterwards. Recovery happens psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, physically and practically. There’s so much to learn, and there’s almost no support.

34:22 I also want people to know that some of the most intelligent people I’ve met have been involved in cults. Cults don’t advertise themselves as cults. They show up as free meditation, free yoga, community, purpose, certainty. It’s a slow grooming process. Anybody can fall into a cult or cult-like situation.

36:21 Let’s talk about peer support and the work you do with Uncult Ōtautahi. Why is peer support such a vital ingredient that one-on-one therapy sometimes can’t provide?

36:54 One of the most devastating parts of leaving a cult is the loss of community. If you were raised in it, you may lose your family, friends, everyone. It’s incredibly isolating. On top of that, most people don’t want to tell others they’ve just left a cult. It feels humiliating and shameful.

37:35 Having a group of people you can talk to, have a cup of tea with, and share experiences with is hugely powerful. Peer support is so important in cult recovery because we do this together. We understand each other’s experiences in ways others often can’t.

38:30 It also creates a space where you can say something bizarre from your past and everyone just gets it. You can laugh together, feel understood, and move on without shame. That kind of validation is incredibly healing.

39:02 Are there common threads you see among survivors in the Uncult group, regardless of which group they came from?

39:19 I think one common thread is that we’re all trying to learn how to live life on life’s terms outside the cult. A lot of us struggle with ordinary reality after leaving. Another common thread is validation. Being able to finally speak about what happened and have other people recognise it as real is powerful.

40:23 The abuse and control of a cult often follow you when you leave because they continue in your inner voice — in the messages you say to yourself. A group helps challenge that. It reminds you that you’re not crazy, and that what happened to you was real.

41:19 For someone listening who is still tangled in cult influence, where is the safest place for them to start unspinning?

41:42 Start with people you trust who are outside the group — people who love you and won’t judge you. In New Zealand there are only limited resources, but there are some. There’s Uncult here in Christchurch, the Olive Leaf Network, the Religious Trauma Collective, and a few counsellors around the country.

42:40 If possible, seek counselling. Cult trauma is specific, but trauma is still trauma, and any good trauma-informed counselling is better than none. You don’t always need a cult specialist. A good GP can also make a huge difference, especially if you’re dealing with anxiety, sleep problems, or other health concerns.

44:35 There are also domestic violence services, refuge spaces, community organisations, and online supports. Help can be thin on the ground, but it does exist.

45:20 What does victory in recovery look like? Is it the absence of triggers, or something else?

45:44 I don’t think victory is the absence of impact. This experience still affects me every day — in how I think, how I make decisions, how I relate to myself. Maybe that’s especially true when you’re born into it. But I’m in a place now where I feel much more comfortable with myself than I ever have before. Looking after myself is part of the ongoing journey.

47:13 People also ask me what I believe now, and my answer is simple: I believe in being a good person. That’s enough for me.

48:32 Before we finish, what’s something you wish you could have told your younger self in recovery?

48:43 Be gentle. Be gentle with yourself. I came out of the cult hating myself and feeling driven to be perfect. I was fuelled by anger and rage. If I could do it again, I’d want to learn how to be kinder to myself and how to relax.

49:46 I really do think people coming out of cults struggle to relax. There’s often this compulsion to be endlessly productive, useful, worthy. Learning to rest, to be present, and to soften — those things matter.

50:40 I’d also say that when people leave, they need to think not only about where the safe people are, but also about who is toxic in their lives. Sometimes that includes family. Leaving a cult isn’t just a physical exit — it’s also about stepping away from relationships that continue the same patterns of judgment, control or harm.

51:24 Sometimes that exit has to be slow. For safety reasons, or because people are physically out but still mentally in. It can take time.

52:09 Well, we’ve reached the end of our time here. Thank you, Alisa, for sharing your story.

52:16 You’re so welcome.

52:17 It’s been amazing to hear more about your experience and to explore the intricacies of cult recovery. I’m really enjoying this journey with you, and I hope our listeners are too.

52:39 Yeah, so do I. I’m super excited.

52:41 Thank you.