Leaving a high-control group — whether a cult, new religious movement, or coercive spiritual community — is rarely simple. These groups shape identity, relationships, and worldview in deep and lasting ways. The exit process can involve profound grief, disorientation, and a loss of community that once provided meaning and belonging. For some, the harm goes further — including spiritual abuse, coercive control, and exploitation by those in positions of authority.

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John brings both personal experience and three decades of scholarly research to this work. His PhD, Attraction, Affiliation and Disenchantment in a New Religious Movement (UNSW, 2008), explored how people are drawn into groups, build deep affiliation over time, and eventually navigate disenchantment and exit. This research included extensive fieldwork within Siddha Yoga and its offshoots — some of the most significant guru-led movements of the late twentieth century — as well as published analysis of coercive leadership dynamics, spiritual rationalisation of abuse, and the complex grief that follows departure.

His published work on the Guru-disciple relationship examines how structures of devotion and obedience can create the conditions for abuse, and how former members make sense of — and move through — those experiences. This isn't distant academic knowledge; it's grounded in lived familiarity with the interior world of these groups.

The truth about why people join high-control groups is far more nuanced than brainwashing. Understanding attraction and belonging is the first step toward genuine recovery.

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In counselling, John works with people at every stage — those still inside and questioning, those mid-exit, and those who left years or decades ago and are still carrying the weight of the experience. He understands the layers: the grief for a community and spiritual life that once felt meaningful, the anger at harm done, the confusion about what to believe, and the slow work of rebuilding a sense of self and a life.

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This work is non-judgmental. People come to high-control groups for complex and very human reasons — a search for community, meaning, spiritual experience, or a sense of home. John holds that complexity with care.