“This would never happen to me. I’d never be dumb enough to fall for this. I’d have figured out they were trying to trick me ages ago.” These are just some of the things that people might think when they’re hearing about someone being exploited by a cult. However, many folks don’t take into account just how manipulative and insidious cult leaders can be, eroding a person’s confidence and making them entirely reliant on others over long periods of time. Some people might be more vulnerable, but nobody’s completely immune to cultist psychological warfare.
And if you happen to be born in a cult or raised in one as a kid… getting out can be hell. But there are always signs that something’s off, that there’s brainwashing afoot. Reddit users who were raised in cults opened up about the first time that they realized that something was very wrong with the community.
Get ready for a deep dive into the dark side of humanity and scroll down for some very honest stories about growing up surrounded by cultists.
Bored Panda got in touch with Suzanne Degges-White to talk about how cult leaders target their victims and manipulate their followers, as well as how to get someone you care about out of a cult. She also detailed the character traits that cult leaders tend to have. Suzanne is a Licensed Counselor, Professor, and Chair at the Department of Counseling and Higher Education at Northern Illinois University.
"The worst thing about cult indoctrination is that people actually LOVE the feeling they get in being a part of something bigger than themselves. Folks who have the wisdom to recognize that they are being led into a cult are not the ones who are going to be totally indoctrinated and stuck inside it," she explained to us.
"They recognize that the leader is likely a charlatan and they have enough of a support system beyond the cult that they don't get totally sucked into it in the first place. The people who actually NEED to get out of it are going to have to have a support system or something better outside the cult if they are going to leave." Read on for our full interview with Suzanne.
#41
The lawsuit-after-lawsuit and Australian Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse and seeing one of the 'leaders' lying on camera. Made me squirm in my seat watching.
Not to mention the 'no blood transfusions' policy + shunning former members.
(ExJW here~)
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96points
#42
When I was told doing independent research on the doctrine would lead to being shunned by my friends and family. i.e. fall in line bitch. Jehovah's Witness.
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90points
#43
Recently.
I'm 41 years old and kind of had the blindfold pulled that a lot of the "evangelical" organizations I've worked with in my life have been cults.
In my teens we went to a church that told you who you could hang out with, what you could watch on TV, what movies you could see, and picked who within the church you could be friends with. 99% of the leaders told you how to run your family but had kids who were either teenage pregnancies or a baby daddy, illiterate homeschoolers, high school drop-outs or drug addicts. There were stretches where we went to church two times a day - even during the week. They encouraged people to get their kids out of school for revival meetings, home schoolers postponed their classes - it was consuming. They started arranged marriages, with several families petitioning my parents for me to marry their daughters - they almost went for it but stopped because it seemed "weird".
As I moved off to college they recommended a mega-church they got a lot of their messages and such from. This church did more of the same. They encouraged high school seniors to put off college a year and PAY THE CHURCH $3,000 for an opportunity to work there for year for an internship program that guaranteed ministry work experience. This program micro-managed your life to the hour, included intense hazing for new members that routinely sent students to the hospital and stacked them all into student housing so that you could focus more on the program.
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88points
#44
I was raised with the belief that if I followed all the rules and was a good person, I'd feel a confirmation of everything. 7 year old me was well aware that I had yet to feel it, and that was one of the many things that led to becoming depressed at the age of 12. I kept having questions that I had no answer for other than "God works in mysterious ways." Eventually, I found a YouTube channel where the person told about how they left the religion and I realized my whole life was a lie and that I no longer had to try and believe in something that never worked for me.
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85points
#45
My mum was a Jehovah's Witness. She raised me alone, without my father. I was just a kid (around 6-9 yo) and I was not comfortable with everything and everyone. I felt something was wrong, the way they talked, the way they smiled. When she got cancer, at the very beginning she refused some treatments, she even went to a "brother" doctor who claimed he could treat cancer with herbs. When she became very ill, they begin to "let her go" and focus on me. At that time she was at home, with my aunt and my nana with her. When my aunt and my grandma gone crazy about them and forbidden to came at home for me, they just disappeared. The sad side of the story was that she lived in the community for years, so she didn't have other friends than them. Who just dissolved, leaving her alone. She died in 1992.
To answer the question, I think the first time I realized something was wrong was when THEY realized that I realized (sorry for the game of words), the whole community start acting strange, too many attentions, too many smiles, very creepy.
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85points
