There is a thing in cults known as the sink cost fallacy. These people have to continue believing they can “win” no matter how ridiculous it is bc in their minds they have already gone too far down this path. They’ve lost friends and family over this. They can’t back down now. https://twitter.com/emilygorcenski/status/1347360663237226498

*SUNK cost, I swear I changed it twice

NOTE: THE SUNK COST FALLACY IS A FALLACY. It is *never* too late to leave a harmful high control group that is damaging your critical thinking & isolating you from friends & family to whom you now present a threat. You can still get out and begin the hard work of deprogramming.

But most people like this will realise that if they leave they can never have their old life back - and they are correct - so they will burrow even deeper into the cult and become more devoted, more frenzied. That’s when they’re most dangerous.

Because they’re desperate. Cognitive dissonance is eating their brains from the inside out. On some level they know they’re not going to succeed, so they push even harder, more fanatically, to make the impossible happen so all they’ve invested isn’t in vain.

I am not saying any of this in a sympathetic way - it’s just the truth. They and they alone have the power to listen to the voice of reason and break themselves free from a violent, fanatical cult. But most of them won’t, and they’re going to be dangerous.