Hello. Recently I celebrated what has been five years out of Scientology. I’ve made a few videos and written articles about recovering from Scientology and everything that entails. This video is meant for anyone out there who has recently left Scientology behind too and who is wondering what’s up and where to go next. It would take a book to really answer that, but I thought a short video might be helpful. All of what I’m going to say here is just my opinion. I’m not going to try to psychoanalyze or evaluate for you here and you can feel free to reject anything I say.
The first thing I want to say is congratulations. Whatever the circumstances of your leaving were: whether you just left quietly, you routed off staff or out of the Sea Org, or you just blew, you did the right thing in getting away from Scientology. I know how hard it can be to step out from under the rules and controls the Church of Scientology places on a person. If you got out of the Sea Organization, you know that it’s especially not easy there. You probably had to jump through a lot of hoops, or you may have just been unceremoniously kicked to the curb and you may even be a bit surprised that they would do that to you. Well, yes, the harsh truth is that they would.
If you have been disconnected from anyone or declared a Suppressive Person, let me just say that I know it’s not easy to lose friends and family. Disconnection is a form of emotional blackmail and David Miscavige weaponized the entire body of ethics tech by applying it in the worst possible way. His RTC Representatives and the staff in the Commodore’s Messenger Org were turned into a kind of Gestapo years ago and the only thing they really do is enforce Miscavige’s will on all of the Sea Org and staff. I know Gestapo is a strong word but in this case, it really does apply. They are rarely given a choice as to how they are going to treat Scientologists. There’s no easy or simple way to deal with the loss of loved ones. I know it’s tough and I know that this is not a lot of consolation, but what I can tell you from my experience and what I’ve seen with many other ex-Scientologists is that the hardest part is at the very beginning. It will get better. For every Scientology friend or family member you lose, there are easily 10 or more friends out here in the real world who will welcome you with open arms. I’m not even kidding. When I was a Scientologist, I had a few hundred Facebook friends who were Scientologists. I now have over 1400 Facebook friends, another 500 who follow my posts and thousands of people following me on Twitter and subscribed to this channel on YouTube. I’m not bragging, because compared to other YouTubers I have a pretty small channel. My point is that there are a lot of people outside of Scientology who you can connect with and who are not going to pretend to be your friend until the Ethics Officer tells them they can’t be anymore. That’s not true friendship. Real friends stick by you no matter what and I don’t regret leaving Scientology and losing the friends I had because I’ve made much better ones online and in the real world who will be around for the rest of my life.
Now there’s a whole slew of things ahead of you and I can’t even begin to tailor a simple video like this to everyone. Instead, what I want to do here is just give you a few stable data you can use as you move forward. Like I said, everything I’m going to say is just advice and you can take it or leave it. I’m glad that you are at least here watching.
First off, the answers you got from Scientology that work for you are totally fine. You don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water or feel pressured to accept or reject anything that you feel works for you or what you like. You’re going to find some former members who are going to tell you it’s all bullshit and not worth the paper it’s written on. On the other hand, you’re going to find some people who still practice Scientology outside the church and who will tell you Hubbard was totally right, but it was David Miscavige who messed everything up. The truth is actually somewhere in the middle. My best advice on this is to just be open to new ideas and listen to other people who have been through what you have. Everyone’s background and experience with Scientology is unique to them but we former members have a lot in common and there are very few people besides ex-Scientologists who are going to really understand what you have gone through and are going to go through. We call this recovering from Scientology and everyone deals with it in their own way. You don’t have to feel obligated to follow anyone’s directions. What’s true for them is what’s true for them but that doesn’t mean it will work for you.
Second, Scientology is a big subject and there is going to be a lot that you will unlearn. You’re going to find that many of the things that Hubbard said about how people are and how life is are just plain wrong. We got a lot of bum data and if you try to use all of it in the real world, you’re going to find people looking at you a little funny and you might just end up with egg on your face a few times. That’s fine; just be ready to learn from your mistakes instead of insisting that you or Hubbard’s rules and ideas are always right. They aren’t. No one is right all the time, even though Scientologists are conditioned to think otherwise. There’s a ton of resources online from former members, professional academics and journalists about the real history of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. It will take some time to go through all of it so don’t rush yourself. Some of the stuff online is total bullshit but most of what you’ll find is true or mostly true. You’re going to be surprised, outraged and sometimes disgusted at some of the things you’ll learn. It would be weird if you weren’t because some of it is pretty horrifying. It doesn’t make you a bad person just because bad things happened in Scientology that you never knew anything about. It doesn’t make you a bad person even if you did know something about it, so long as you own up to it now and deal with it honestly and openly.
Third, don’t be in any hurry to jump in to another group or belief system. Like getting out of a bad relationship, you’ll go through various stages of grief and loss and misemotion as you learn more about Scientology and re-evaluate your experiences. Some people look to some other religion or group to fill that hole and that’s almost always a bad idea. Just realize that you have plenty of time to figure out what you want to do next. One of the problems with Scientology and one of the ways it controls its members is by creating an artificial anxiety about the present and especially the future. You don’t have to worry about saving the planet anymore. There is plenty of bad news to focus your attention on and there always will be. Nothing you do is ever going to change that. So what you have to learn to do is control how you react to it. It will take time to do that. In the meanwhile, concentrate on finding your own way rather than jumping in to another high control group where someone is telling you what to do.
Next, there’s no reason to be hard on yourself about any of it. Yeah, you might have done some bad things but so did all the rest of us. It’s not that you aren’t responsible for your actions, but it’s okay to acknowledge that you were also part of a very crafty system that covertly controlled a lot of your thinking. You’ll find your way. Stay calm and try to live more in the moment than regretting yesterday. Hubbard did get it right when he said “Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow.”
There are support groups and people you can connect with online and in real life. It is usually helpful to do so but social media can sometimes be a viper’s nest so you’ll have to use some discretion. You’re going to meet all kinds of people online with all kinds of backgrounds, viewpoints and opinions. The only thing you’ll have in common with some of them is that you were both Scientologists and sometimes that’s not enough to form a strong connection or relationship. Feel free to connect with who you want on your own terms. There’s no reason you have to compromise how you feel or what you know just to be agreeable. Some ex-Scientologists you’ll meet can be real assholes and others can be great. Sometimes the really great ones can be assholes too. Recovering from Scientology is not a popularity contest. You’re going to find all kinds of ideas about it, including some people who tell you there’s no such thing as “recovering from Scientology” and that people like me are just making it all up because we hate Scientology so much. Make your own decisions based on what you know and to hell with what anyone else thinks. In the end, the only viewpoint that really matters on this is your own.
I’ve done my part to try to help people who were indoctrinated in Scientology by creating this YouTube channel and making a ton of videos that cover a lot of different aspects of it. I’ve also written a book on the subject called Scientology: A to Xenu which you can get on amazon. But don’t just listen to me. You’ll find other video resources on YouTube too, such the Surviving Scientology channel with Karen DelaCarriere and Jeffrey Augustine, Tory Magoo44, Steven Mango and the Growing Up in Scientology channel with Aaron Smith-Levin. We’ve done interviews, we’ve done talks about what we’ve learned since we got out, we talk about some of the nonsense that Scientology gets up to in the world and a lot more. You might not agree with everything you watch and that’s fine. You also might find a lot you do agree with and if you’re like most people I’ve talked to, you’re going to find that your views on Scientology are going to change over time as you learn more and more about it.
And most importantly of all, find out what is going on in the world around you. There’s a great big wide world and a lot more to know about than Scientology. You were part of something that probably consumed most of your time and attention and maybe even took a bunch of your money. It’s hard, really hard, to bounce back from that but you can do it. Sometimes one of the best ways is to just take a good long break from the whole thing to get yourself situated and kind of re-oriented to life. I mean, let’s face it, Scientology creates a kind of bubble world for you where you are told to ignore “wogs” and just knucke down and do Scientology because somehow that will magically solve all the world’s problems. Real life doesn’t work that way. Scientology says that the world is going down while they’re going up. They say that they are taking over this society and creating a new one that is saner and better and more rational. Well, sorry, but none of that was true. Most of the big wide world doesn’t care about Scientology at all. Many people have heard about it and you might think that they didn’t hear the good parts so they have uninformed or wrong ideas about it. Well, not really. The truth is that unless you got up to the level of a Class VIII auditor and OT VIII on the processing side, the world knows more about Scientology than you do. Again, there’s no reason to take my word for it though. You’ll see as you go.
Well, I hope this was helpful and I truly do wish you good luck. You can contact me through my blog or by emailing me anytime at AskChrisShelton@gmail.com. I may not answer you right away because I get a lot of emails and calls and messages, but I will always answer you eventually.
Take care and thank you for watching.