People Who Were Raised In Cults Often Experienced 6 Things They Didn't Realize Were Abnormal
Abel Halasz | Shutterstock Hey everyone. I grew up in a cult. Okay, not quite.
I grew up with my best friend, someone I considered a sibling, in a cult. It was not a normal Christian cult. It was a “culty cult,” the type of cult that people point at and go, “Hm, yep. That’s weird.”
The basic premise of the cult was simple: Jesus reincarnated as a guy from South Korea. The guy from South Korea and his wife were the “true mother and father” of all humanity, and they were there to reunite the Koreas, end communism, and raise an army for right-wing purposes.
Oh, and they also did arranged marriages en masse, picked by priests. The religion split after the leader died. My childhood best friend’s parents went with the more violent sect, which has taken to blessing AR-15s. Yep.
Having grown up in cults and actually gone so far as to end up in several culty groups back in my 20s, I know a cult when I see one. Not all cults are religious. Some are political, others business-like.
I’ve been noticing more and more people getting sucked into cults in recent years. Before you go “whole hog” on anything, watch out for these low-key warning signs.
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I don’t think most people know what a cult is. Cults are not just religions. They are any groups or movements that involve the following traits:
- High levels of control towards members or followers, to the point of losing their individuality. If y’all look the same, talk the same, have the same views, and only associate with one another, you might be in a cult. That’s why experts are now calling cults “High Control Organizations.”
- Isolation from friends and loved ones. Does the group you’re in eat up all your time, so you can’t hang with friends?
- Promotes a distrust of anyone not approved. If they keep hammering home how anything that isn’t cult-approved is bad, I got news for ya.
Basically, cults operate by control. They exploit the people they control, often for the benefit of a select few. You’re dogpiled if you don’t follow the leaders or argue.
This is the biggest “tell” of a cult, and oh my dark Lord, it is so rife on the internet. The best example I’ve seen with this is the man-o-sphere, where any man who defends women’s actions is met with scathing remarks from other men.
Standing up for your own beliefs or even just expressing doubt is a normal part of a group dynamic. You should be able to feel safe to do so. Groups that dogpile you for not following the overall message are generally not healthy groups.
The reason why dogpiling is done is to dissuade people from going against the leader. It’s a part of the BITE Model that encourages total obedience and discourages honest questioning about the organization and its motives.
I mean, think about it: would you really want to speak up about concerns if you knew it’d get you verbally thrashed? Ostracized? Beaten? Unemployed? Cults stamp out individuality. Getting others to harm you when you speak up is their primary method.
Note: There are exceptions to the rule. The only time it’s healthy to have people vehemently go against you is if you’re spouting hateful rhetoric that demonizes other people who mean no harm. (That’s called the Tolerance Paradox, FYI.)
There are specific people who call all the shots or steer the dialogue. Do a handful of influencers seem to make or break the common assumptions in the group you’re in? Does a single person tell everyone what they should believe, think, or say? Yep. That person is a cult leader.
These warning signs suggest you’re in a cult:
1. Obedience, submission, and conformity are rewarded, while individuality is punished.
Cults do this weird thing where they hook people in by being super sweet and nice to you. When you first join, you’re the best person ever to them. They love you. They care for you. That’s why they want you to do what they say, can’t you see?
If you go along with the flow and say you believe in whatever it is, they reward you with more affection and inclusion. If you don’t? Well, bad things happen.
Cult members are often encouraged to tell on people who don’t follow the rules to a “T.” So, you can never quite relax. You can never trust anyone. People quickly learn it’s all part of the kabuki dance, and eventually, everyone tends to choose to step on others to get ahead.
2. You keep seeing a primary goal being dangled in front of your face.
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Every cult has a specific “goal” or “prize” in mind that tends to be very alluring:
- For business cults like MLMs, it’s a prize of having an easy income that you can do while at home with family. They pitch you the dream of never going hungry again, as long as you “work the system” they gave you. They make it seem like a perfect money fountain, but you gotta work for it.
- For religious cults, it’s a spiritual cure-all. Religious cults will offer a new religion that solves all your problems: fitness, loneliness, a lack of community, or even love. They tend to wrap up everything as a major cure to everything you’re struggling with.
- For social cults, it’s often a means to an end or a sympathetic ear. The man-o-sphere started in Pickup Artist circles where they offered a fast fix for men in need of dating advice. White nationalist groups and Trumpers started with influencers saying things like, “It’s not your fault you’re blamed for everything. You’re not privileged! They’re just using the [insert minority group] card to get ahead of you and that’s not fair.”
- For online propaganda cults, the goal is doing the right thing. This is the whole shtick that Q had. Q-Anon was claiming to be a group of whiz kids who saw connections related to a child trafficking ring, and that Trump was going to lead them to victory. Most Q’s started out because they thought they were doing right by others.
The goal is always there, but ever elusive. It never really materializes. It’s always just within reach. It’s just always right around the corner, yet never quite there.
3. You’re told how to date, how to marry, and who to marry.
This is not always a thing with cults, but I’ve noticed it with every cult I’ve experienced firsthand or secondhand. A wise person once told me, “If they control your orientation, they control you.”
I believe it. It’s saved my life a couple of times. Connecting physically should not be a shameful act, nor should having a crush. If all parties consent, what’s the problem?
4. They regularly paint anyone outside the cult as a bad person or a danger to the cult.
There is no such thing as a cult that doesn’t try to pull followers away from outsiders. Cults will often call outsiders names like “worldly,” as a way of suggesting that they will corrupt you. This is true with Mormonism as well as more extreme sects like FLDS.
If you’re dealing with an economic cult (like an MLM), you’ll hear them urge you to cut off anyone who “doesn’t support your dreams.” This is normally good advice, but not when it’s a business designed to drain your bank accounts and work you to the bone.
5. You notice that you’ve been deceived or that certain things aren’t revealed to you.
If you ask a rational question during your group’s meeting, what kind of reaction do you get? Do people answer it clearly with science-backed papers? Or, do they wave it off with one of the following:
- “You’ll understand later.”
- “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
- “That’s anti-[group].”
- “You shouldn’t question it. [leader] cares about you and that’s all you need to know.”
- “Don’t you have faith?”
If you push more, you might hear someone say, “I’m not mad with you…just disappointed,” plus a bunch of guilt tripping.
6. Any hurt caused by the group is quietly excused or covered up.
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Oh, did those ideologies hurt your best friend? Well, I’m sure [group] had a reason for it. Or maybe it didn’t happen. Oh, the leader beat you up? It didn’t happen. The leader is perfect.
Sound familiar? If you find yourself harmed by the group, you’ll notice that nothing ever comes of it. They will hem and haw, then brush it under the rug. You will have faith in justice at first, but that justice never comes.
You get pressured to ignore it. You get pressured not to call it out. Because you know that if you do, you’ll get shunned or removed or even beaten for it. You want to say something but you can’t.
So, you quiet down. You start to question yourself. Maybe you deserved it. Maybe you were just too much. And you get back in line. Because by the time you’re hurt, you pushed everyone away who could have helped you and you have nowhere to go.
Right now, we have a lot of cults harming the United States
The most obvious one is the cult of Trump, but it’s far from the only one. We can also talk about Q-Anon, certain “religions,” online TikTok cults, as well as the man-o-sphere.
The only way to stop a cult is to question it, offer a network for escapees, and actively inoculate people against the traps cults lay. But we’re not ready to have that chat, are we?
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.
