FAQs

The terms counselling and psychotherapy are applied differently by a range of different authors, counselling approaches and countries. 

Counselling can be defined as a confidential relationship between the client and the counsellor which is a relatively short-term intervention (up to a year but often much shorter e.g. 10 weeks). It may include psychoeducational and information giving aspects.

Psychotherapy contains the basic aspects of counselling but is usually longer-term (over a year). It often addresses developmental and character issues, in depth, within an ongoing therapeutic healing relationship. 

For more information see: UKCP website and BACP website including Its good to talk.

The Walking Free Model: Counselling for Coercive, Cultic and Spiritual Abuse is more aligned to counselling, especially in the early stages of working through the Walking Free Recovery Workbook (Phases 1 and 2 of the model). At later stages your therapist may offer psychotherapy to address emotional healing and developmental, post-traumatic issues, grief and loss (Phase 3). 

The goal of the Gestalt approach is awareness of self and self in relationship to others. Self-awareness gives us the opportunity to make the changes in life we want to make and increases our choices.

Gestalt is a creative, respectful and non-judgemental approach which includes ‘talking therapy’ but may also involve role play, ‘two chair work’, movement, metaphor, body awareness or exploration of dreams – all intended to raise awareness. 

In sessions, Gillie will listen carefully and she is interactive. She does not maintain long silences or offer a 'blank screen', as taught by some therapeutic approaches.

When working with former members and survivors of coercive, cultic and spiritual abuse, Gillie brings her personal experience along with years of experience working with survivors, her professional training, research and a deep understanding of coercive control, cults, and thought-reform into each conversation. The aim of Walking Free Counselling is for clients to understand their experience on both an emotional and cognitive level – an essential element in recovery as identified in her research.

A potential client who contacts us by email will receive a response setting out what we offer. They may wish to work with Gillie or one of our affiliates and to discuss the different approaches for psychotherapy, counselling or Walking Free Counselling (formerly Post-Cult Counselling).

The first session will usually take between 60 and 90 minutes and will provide an opportunity for both the therapist and the potential client to assess whether they feel they can work well together (a mutual assessment session). This will be charged at the therapist’s hourly rate, which varies between affiliates. 

A counselling agreement is then discussed and mutually agreed upon at the start of Walking Free Counselling, setting out expectations and boundaries.

Finally, the client will be asked to fill out a brief monitoring questionnaire/form which highlights the issues they wish to address. The client will be asked to fill out a similar form at the end of counselling, and sometimes 6 months later, to determine the effectiveness of the counselling.

Gillie has been counselling clients by Zoom and telephone for many years and has trained others to provide telephone counselling and support. 

Gillie usually delivers Walking Free Counselling on Zoom and sends a reminder email to regular clients with a permanent Zoom link. With new clients she sends a Zoom link just before the session. 

If meeting on the telephone, clients usually call Gillie. 

Zoom and telephone sessions are charged by the hour.

There are various definitions of a cult, and deciding whether you've been in a cult is for you to say, but here is a helpful one by Michael Langone from his book Recovery from Cults (1993, page 5):

“A cult is a group or movement that, to a significant degree, 

(a)exhibits great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing,

(b)uses a thought-reform program to persuade, control, and socialize members (i.e. to integrate them into the group’s unique pattern of relationships, beliefs, values, and practices), systematically induces states of psychological dependency in members,

(d)exploits members to advance the leadership’s goals, and 

(e)causes psychological harm to members, their families and the community.”

There is more about this in Gillie’s book Walking Free From the Trauma of Coercive, Cultic and Spiritual Abuse: A Workbook for Recovery and Growth, pages 71-75.

The cultic studies literature refers to those who join or who are recruited into a cult as adults as "first generation" (FGAs) and those spending all or part of their childhood in a cult as "second generation" (SGAs). Those whose family have been members for several generations are referred to as transgenerational or multi-generation adults (MGAs).

All those leaving an abusive cult are likely to have developed a cultic identity or pseudo-identity (the person they had to be in order to be a member). FGA cult leavers may need to recover who they were before, because they have experience prior to the coercive, cultic setting. SGA and MGA cult leavers are likely to need to discover who they are and their authentic autonomous identity, perhaps for the first time.

Hope Valley Counselling use the term spiritual abuse quite broadly and we have worked with individuals who have said that they had been spiritually abused in a number of faith/belief systems as well as in therapy groups and abusive relationships.

Spiritual abuse can be present in mainstream religion, in fringe groups, cults and new religious movements (NRMs). It occurs when a powerful or charismatic individual takes advantage of their followers. They are usually in a position of authority and may be trained and approved by society to represent God; or be self-selected and have the hubris to believe they represent ‘god’ or a higher spiritual being; or believe they are an incarnation of a ‘god’ or a higher spiritual being. When the only route to ‘God’ or spiritual enlightenment is through the spiritual figure, the power imbalance can lead to followers being coerced to hand over their life, thinking, decision making and money, to various degrees, to the spiritual figure and to become dependent. Spiritual abuse can lead to sexual abuse (including minister and clergy sexual abuse) and psychological and emotional abuse.

Spiritual abuse can have a damaging effect on an individual’s spiritual identity or soul and can destroy hope. The individual’s aspiration to be good can be perverted, affecting the very essence of their being. Spiritual abuse can negatively affect an individual’s sense of self and personal identity. Spiritual abuse can occur in cults. It can also occur in what is assumed by society to be a safe and moral space, for example a Church, temple or Mosque, and may therefore be overlooked, minimised or go unacknowledged.