Former Cult Members Reveal The Exact Moment They Realized They Were In A Cult

In modern usage, the word "cult" has a strong negative connotation. It generally refers to groups outside the mainstream characterized by a charismatic leader, intense devotion, isolation, and manipulative or abusive practices like "brainwashing."

That perception was amplified by the mainstream media and incidents like the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate.

People who left cults often describe their joining as a gradual process they didn't recognize as indoctrination until it was too late.

Reddit user Ok-Interview-3702 asked:

"Ex-cult members, what's your 'Oh sh*t, I'm in a cult' moment?"

Free Thought

"When everyone kept saying ‘You’re free to think for yourself’… right after telling me exactly what to think...."

~ Separate-Simple-5101

"This reminds me of a friend from Uganda. It was Christianity mixed with witchcraft."

"She was told she had complete freedom as long as she followed the holy teachings."

"They said nothing about music until she wanted to listen to anything except hymns."

"They said nothing about reading until she wanted to read anything that wasn't related to the religion."

"They said nothing about education until she wanted to go to college."

"They said nothing about relationships until they tried to force her to marry an elder."

"That's when she left and moved to the UK."

~ D-1-S-C-0

Child Endangerment

"I joined a church (on my own, without my family) at 14 years old. Shortly after that, my family moved. I conspired to run away before the move, with help from some adult members of my church."

"The plan didn't work out and I stayed with my family."

"Years later, I was telling the story to a friend. In my mind, I just thought it was a funny story about how stupid I was as a young teenager. But telling the story out loud made me realize just how much danger I had been in, and how lucky I was to escape."

~ Seemose

Child Labor

"It was when I was a child. I arrived at the compound, which was our new home. One of the leaders informed me that my job was going to be shucking corn all day."

"The reality set in when I was sitting on the ground with some other children and a dump truck backed up and unloaded thousands of ears of corn next to us."

~ JimK2

Denial

"I went to a high school that was directly connected to the church we went to. We had a required class called 'Cults'."

"Half the class was learning about cults. The second semester was 'this is why people say we are a cult, and this is why we aren't'. I was like, oh sh*t, that is something a cult would say."

~ drunk-munchkin

Anti-Intellectualism

"After the third friend who’d gotten into higher-level volunteering at a church in Waco, Texas, told me the church had suggested they drop out of college to work at the church for free."

~ Ragnaroq314

No, No, No

"It took years to realize, (I was 12 - 13-ish and my eldest married sister got me and my 5-year-old sister into her church) but having to ask the pastor for permission to go to a college football game with my father!"

"No TV. No dancing. No pants. Skirts or dresses below the knee. No sleeves above the elbow. NO cutting of the hair. Only Christian music. Mandatory 'street service' once a week. No makeup. No jewelry. No silver or gold watches…"

"And church twice on Sunday, AM and PM and Tues, Wed, and fridays. 10% tithes and minimum, of 5% offerings. Offerings at least once a week, but every service was preferred."

"There’s loads more, but those are the highlights off the top of my head."

~ Readsumthing

Brainwashed

"I was sent to a troubled teen program in my mid-teens. I honestly had thought it saved my life. I volunteered for it for years after I graduated. My family was also fully invested in it. We were all pretty brainwashed."

"It wasn't until I started reconnecting with other survivors that I realized that what we went through wasn't okay. I started having nightmares of being sent back three or four times a week. I remember stumbling across a documentary on cults."

"It had a checklist of what makes a group a cult, and it pretty much checked every box. Accepting it was a cult really helped in my whole deprogramming process. It's been 25 years since I graduated from the program and 15 years since I deprogrammed."

"Some of the cult like behavior consisted of things like shaving all the boys heads and giving us matching uniforms to strip away our identity.. The group you were assigned to was called your family. We called the person running our family father/mother or papa/mama. We had our own lingo that was hammered into us."

"All of our communication with our parents was heavily monitored. We got one phone call a month after being there for a few months, but we had someone sitting next to us the whole time ready to hang up if we said something bad about the program."

"The bulk of the brainwashing took place in monthly seminars. They used starvation and sleep deprivation tactics during our seminars. A lot of the processes we did in those seminars were lifted from other cults like Lifespring."

"Once you had gone through the seminars, you would then staff the newer kid's seminars as part of the process. Towards the end before graduation they even had us talk to potential parents about our experience and how it saved our lives."

~ Twidget84

Control

"When I realized every decision from who I dated to what I ate needed “approval” from someone higher up. That’s when it clicked how deep I was in."

~ Sharp-Teaching435

Textbook Case

"I was in a freshman college history course, and we were covering the basic cults. I’m like so over it—blah, blah, who doesn’t know—then big oomph moment when they list the church my family attends. I stop and think about it and I’m like, they do have their own handbook…"

~ Few-Tomato-3924

Similarities

"I happened across a podcast about a similar cult. In this podcast, they broke down the characteristics of cults, and it clicked."

"They use the BITE (behavior, information, thought, emotion) model. Interesting stuff, really."

~ GrapeTheArmadillo

Guilt Trip

"I realized I was in deep when I caught myself apologizing for things I hadn’t even done."

~ Maleficent-You-5170

Jesus Freak

"Some close relatives were (and still are) very deep into evangelical Christianity. They got hooked into what was known back then as the Jesus Freak movement."

"It was extremely odd. Hours-long church services multiple times a week with people dancing and crying and collapsing and speaking in gibberish; people (free labor) lived in the church building sleeping on cots in the attic and basement."

"Church leaders would come into town wearing fancy suits and speak about the need to donate everything you had to the church 'to bring more people into the fold' even though most of the people who attended were very poor and from the inner city; there was a big two-week trip on church buses every year to the church headquarters in a different state (lots of weirdness there); there was a school only for the church kids; there was a musical group that toured all over the country; etc..."

"They absolutely refuse to talk about why they left. When I read a book about Jonestown and Peoples Temple, the parallels were insane. They weren’t part of that, but it was the same playbook."

~ Mister_Randy_Watson

Conversion

"When my family tried to betroth/marry me, their daughter, off to the pastor's son at age 14 because both he and I were gay, in the hopes of 'fixing us'."

~ Icy-Sprinkles-3033

Shunned

"My grandfather hadn’t seen me in 10 years. We had moved overseas and 'left' the Jehovah’s Witness church. You’d expect a grandfather to run and hug his granddaughter as tightly as possible after 10 years."

"He just stood there. He was visibly in distress. Kept looking around to see if someone was looking at us not even interacting, just standing 3 meters from each other."

"'Oooh,' I thought. 'We didn’t leave, we were shunned and he’s scared of someone seeing him talk to us degenerates'."

"He said not a word to us. Just stood there. It was my birthday. But no birthday wishes from grandpa. Wouldn’t have been allowed to have a birthday anyways as a Jehovah's Witness."

~ salbwassfith

Stalking

"Grew up in a Baptist church. When it came time for college, there was a list of pre-approved Bible colleges that the pastor and church were OK with. However, I chose to go to a public college (California State University system) to pursue computer science."

"Pastor lectured me about how the school would brainwash me into believing evolution and teach me to turn my back on the church. This raised red flags because they were essentially trying to control my educational decisions."

"Eventually, I moved away to the college that I selected and into the dorms. A couple of weeks into the semester, the pastor’s son and son’s wife were touring and walking around my campus, asking random students if they knew where to find me. This is in a city they had never heard about until I had mentioned I was going to this college."

"Freshman year for winter break, I decided to go back to the church for the Christmas Day sermon, and the pastor made sure to mention my college by name in his lecture on how the world is trying to 'corrupt our youth'."

"Pastor started writing letters to the campus to request that they expel me because they’re corrupting my soul. Eventually, he gave up after a year."

"School and I sent a cease and desist letter. Never heard from that church again."

~ Delta1262

Have you ever encountered a cult? What made you think it was a cult?