I am not going to mention the name, but it is part of the Catholic church, and these people have been accused of being a cult before, even by Catholics.
I went to a school opened by them and they would always make you feel like a failure. They would say that getting "too arrogant" was bad for you; ambitions were bad. They never pointed out the good things, only the bad things about you. Anybody who was not like them was worthy of ridicule. I never really got that involved with them, though, until college. They wanted me to become an active member and started out this crazy plan to get me.
First, they got to me through a member my age who "befriended" me. The friendship lasted for a week and after that it was indoctrination. Then, the older members would come to me, invite me to retreats and talk to me, and my "friend" would force me to go to mass and confess and stuff like that. The members would also barge into my room at night (I had no lock) to talk to me about religious stuff. I was really insecure and I had been led to believe that the only way of fitting in was acting like them. I also had a scholarship that was tied to the residence I was living in, and I knew that not fitting in was a cause of expulsion (that would mean no more scholarship) so I was desperate.
After a while, I started believing their lies. I begun isolating myself from anything outside this cult and would not even leave the residence that much. They begun talking to me about "vocations", and would take me to seemingly normal activities but in reality those activities had to do with people who wanted to talk about their vocation. I remember once a member invited some girls and I to a "secular" nursing home but it turned out to be the house of a couple of elderly members. I remember the one we went to visit wanted us to talk about our life at uni, but the girl who took us would not let us and wanted the conversation to be about vocations and the founder of this movement.
Finally they got me to believe that I had a vocation. I did not like that, I did not want that, and the guilt and idea of having that led me to a panic attack. I called my mom and she wanted me out of there (she actually wanted me to leave way before anything happened, she just had a feeling). The members begun telling me that my mom did not know what was really good for me, and in order for me to stay, they told all the residents to treat me super nicely. They also told a couple of them to try to convince me to stay. When I didn't, everybody, including the members, begun treating me coldly and harshly, making my last month there very stressful. I had developed anxiety during my year there, and my depression resurfaced.
I have been out of that place for one year but I am still dealing with issues that shit left me with.
