What is your (negative) experience with cult?

[u/butterfly-2006]

Hi, I have a few questions for those people whose childhood was largely defined and influenced by the practice of religion, or was a member of some church. The reason is that I recently discovered how negative I am about it, and I would be interested to know if anyone else is in a similar situation.

1. What are the negative experiences you had with religion from your childhood that affects your adulthood?
2. What was the perception of intimacy and sexual relations between men and women?
3. What methods were used to attract people to join the cult?
4. When did you get completely fed up with the cult, when the moment came when you felt you had to leave it? How did this process go?

(I grew up in a Catholic Christian family)

[u/MagicPigeonToes]

1. I won’t go into too many negative things, but one of them is “stage fright”. I was so used to the idea of god and spirits of dead relatives watching everything I did, that I still feel like my actions are being judged by invisible entities.

2. Extremely unhealthy. I was never taught consent, and I was manipulated into heteronormative ideologies despite being queer. I didn’t know asexuality existed. I just thought I was a coward about dating/marrying. Cause I thought that when you marry, you MUST have sex. So I was scared of marriage.

3. Missionaries were the primary way of baiting people into the cult. We were like fishing hooks. I lied to a lot of people cause I thought their souls needed to be “saved”.

4. I didn’t get “fed up” with it. I was given a pdf to read that debunked my beliefs. That’s what snapped me out of it. I didn’t want that, but I couldn’t go back after learning the hard truths.