More About Cults and Religious Trauma

Online Resources

• A Year of Non-Magical Thinking: (affiliate link) Online membership run by a religious trauma survivor and clinical psychologist. Even after being out for 10 years, this membership helped me identify some ways my cult experience was still affecting me.

Nonfiction

• The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church by David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen: I read this days before I finally took the leap and left the cult.

• Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich and Madeline Tobias: I read this in the early days of my recovery.

Memoirs

• Escape by Carolyn Jessop: The first FLDS woman to flee and retain custody of her children.

• The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser: The main witness in Warren Jeff’s trial, Musser was forced to marry FLDS leader Rulon Jeffs when she was 19 and he was 85 years old.

Fiction

• Starbird Murphy and the World Outside by Karen Finneyfrock: YA novel about a teen who grows up on a commune and starts to question what she’s been taught.

• Down from the Mountain by Elizabeth Fixmer: YA novel about a teen who lives on a compound in Colorado and starts to question her beliefs as she meets more people from the outside world.

• The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams: YA novel about a 13 yo who lives on an FLDS-esque compound and is ordered to marry her 60 year old uncle.