“It Wasn’t a Cult… Right?” Understanding High-Control Religious Systems
For a lot of people, the word cult lands like a brick. It may feel too dramatic. Too extreme. Too Netflix documentary.
You might picture white robes or matching clothing, isolated compounds, charismatic leaders with multiple wives, or people handing over all their money while chanting in unison. And if that wasn’t your experience, it’s easy to shut the whole idea down immediately.
That wasn’t me.
That wasn’t my church.
I wasn’t brainwashed.
And yet. Something about your experience still lingers in your body.
Leaving felt terrifying, not just sad.
Questioning felt dangerous, not curious.
Obedience mattered more than consent.
And even now, years later, certain language, music, or authority figures can send your nervous system into a tailspin.
So let’s start here, gently and clearly:
You do not have to call your experience a cult for the harm to be real.
You do not need a dramatic label for your recovery to be valid.
And you are not “overreacting” because your church looked normal from the outside.
This blog isn’t about convincing you that you were “in a cult.” It’s about helping you understand high-control religious systems and why they can leave such a deep imprint, even when everything looked respectable.
Moving beyond stereotypes: what we actually mean by “high-control”
One of the biggest barriers to understanding religious trauma and cult recovery is the stereotype problem.
Because when we use the word cult as shorthand for only the most extreme examples, we miss a huge number of people who were harmed in environments that were socially accepted, legally recognised, and even praised.
High-control systems aren’t defined by how strange they look. They’re defined by how power operates.
In high-control religious environments, authority tends to be:
External rather than internal
Hierarchical rather than relational
Moralised rather than negotiated
Obedience is framed as virtue, doubt is framed as danger, and leaving is framed as betrayal, deception, or spiritual failure.
You might have been told:
“Lean not on your own understanding”
“Your heart is deceitful”
“Submission brings protection”
“Questioning is pride”
“If you leave, you’ll lose God / truth / covering / community”
None of that requires a compound or a cult leader with a microphone and an ego. It just requires control wrapped in spirituality.
And that’s where harm quietly takes root.
“But there was good stuff too”, holding complexity without minimising harm
One of the reasons people resist the word cult is because it feels like it erases the good parts.
You might genuinely miss:
The sense of belonging
The certainty
The structure and rhythm
The shared language
The feeling of being “held” by something bigger
And here’s something I want to say clearly, because it matters:
Acknowledging harm does not require you to rewrite your entire past as evil.
High-control systems often meet real human needs like connection, meaning, purpose, identity before they exploit them. That’s not a failure of discernment on your part. That’s how coercive systems work.
You can hold both:
“This gave me something I needed at the time”
“This also harmed me in ways I’m still unpacking”
If someone tells you that recognising abuse means denying any positive experience, that’s just another form of black-and-white thinking and many of us have had more than enough of that already.
Recovery isn’t about forcing your story into a clean narrative. It’s about letting it be complex, contradictory, and honest.
Control doesn’t always look like control (especially when it’s religious)
One of the most destabilising parts of religious trauma is realising that control didn’t show up as force, it showed up as care.
High-control religious systems often regulate:
Behaviour (what you do, wear, say, consume, avoid)
Information (what you’re allowed to read, listen to, or trust)
Emotions (which feelings are acceptable and which are sinful)
Identity (who you are both inside and outside the group, if that’s even allowed)
But it’s rarely framed as control. It might have been framed as:
Discipleship
Accountability
Pastoral care
God’s design
Loving correction
You might have learned to override your own instincts because someone “more spiritually mature” knew better. You might have ignored discomfort because obedience was framed as faith. You might have stayed in unsafe situations because leaving felt spiritually catastrophic.
That’s not weakness.
That’s conditioning.
And when people leave these environments, they’re often shocked by how hard it is to trust themselves again. Decision-making can feel overwhelming. Authority figures can feel threatening. Even simple choices can bring up anxiety.
That’s not because you’re broken. It’s because your autonomy was systematically disrupted.
Why leaving can feel terrifying, even when you know it was harmful
One of the most misunderstood parts of cult recovery (and religious trauma recovery more broadly) is how intense the aftermath can be.
From the outside, people might say:
“But you chose to leave”
“At least you’re free now”
“Why are you still affected?”
What they don’t see is that leaving a high-control religious system often means losing:
Your worldview
Your identity
Your social network
Your moral framework
Your sense of safety in the world
For many people, religion wasn’t just a belief system, it was the lens through which everything made sense. Leaving can feel like stepping into freefall without a parachute.
Your nervous system doesn’t experience that as liberation. It experiences it as threat.
Which is why recovery is rarely neat or quick. And why it makes sense that symptoms can show up after you leave, not during.
You survived by adapting, and recovery is about gently undoing what you had to do to survive.
You don’t have to decide what to call it
Let’s come back to the most important piece.
You do not have to label your experience a cult.
You don’t have to use language that feels too loaded, too public, or too final.
You don’t need certainty before seeking support.
What matters is not the word, it’s the impact.
If your religious environment:
Undermined your autonomy
Used fear or shame to enforce compliance
Positioned authority as unquestionable
Framed leaving as catastrophic
Left you struggling with trust, identity, or safety
Then your experience is worthy of care, support, and recovery. Full stop.
At RTC, we’re far less interested in debating definitions and far more interested in helping people make sense of what happened, at their own pace, in their own language.
You get to decide what words fit.
You get to change them later.
You get to take your time.
Recovery from high-control religion isn’t about arriving at the “right” conclusion. It’s about slowly reclaiming your right to choose, including how you tell your own story.
And that, in itself, is a profound act of defiance.
If this piece stirred something or helped put words to an experience you’ve been carrying quietly, you don’t have to sit with it alone. The Religious Trauma Collective exists to connect you with practitioners who understand religious harm, high-control systems, and the slow, non-linear work of recovery. You can explore the directory, learn more about our work, or simply start by reading at your own pace, in your own time.
