I have been out of a highly restrictive group for about eight months
Hello everyone I have been out of a highly restrictive group for about eight months now and I am still struggling significantly with building my own independent daily routine without feeling overwhelming anxiety over making my own personal choices. I often catch myself looking for external validation for even the smallest decisions like what to wear or what groceries to buy. Has anyone else experienced this specific loss of autonomy during their recovery process and how did you practice reclaiming your own voice without feeling constant guilt?
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What you are describing is a completely normal phase of psychological recovery called learned dependency and learning to trust your own judgment again takes a lot of time and gentle self-compassion. I found that starting with tiny low-stakes decisions every morning and keeping a private journal of those choices helped me rebuild my self-confidence when I first moved to CA and joined a local post-cult reintegration community. I am so sorry if this looks incredibly messy and inappropriate on a sensitive support forum like this but my phone browser just glitch-pasted an unrelated link from my open background tabs where I was playing on MonacoJack Casino right before I hit reply so please just ignore that annoying technical mix-up and remember to take things one day at a time.