How do people leave high-control groups, and what helps them recover?

People leave high-control groups in several ways, and the history of how families tried to help is a warning. Some leave quietly on their own, since scholars such as Eileen Barker note that many members voluntarily leave groups. In the 1970s and 1980s some families hired "deprogrammers", who used coercive intervention to dissuade a relative from strongly held convictions such as religious beliefs. The methods often involved kidnapping and false imprisonment, and a 1995 jury verdict that forced the Cult Awareness Network into bankruptcy is often seen as closing the door on involuntary deprogramming in the United States.

The better-known alternative is exit counseling, in which the person is free to leave at any time. Steven Hassan, a former member of the Unification Church, took part in some deprogrammings in the late 1970s but has been critical of them since 1980 and advocates exit counseling. Critics such as Anson Shupe question how voluntary it is when the counselor has been hired by relatives and the member does not know the counselor's purpose.

Recovery is the second half of the story. Leaving a controlling religious community can be experienced as a major traumatic event, because the community may have provided social support, a worldview and a sense of purpose. The label "religious trauma syndrome", coined in 2011 by psychologist Marlene Winell, is used for the resulting symptoms, but it is not a diagnosable condition in the DSM-5 or ICD-10.