Some stuff about how brainwashing works
I started to believe pretty much anything they told me. There was still a logical part of me that realized how ridiculous, and even completely untrue some of the things they said were, but if you're surrounded by people who beleive the same untruth, and they make an active practice of affirming this untruth enough times, it becomes difficult for anyone to be sure what is true anymore. Even when you know you're being manipulated, and you're angry at the people who are surrounding you and lying to you, you start to believe them. You can hardly help it.
A cult isolates a person from his or her normal environment, as much as is in their power to do. Sometimes by illegal means, like kidnapping. I the case of the LYM with me, it's by convincing a person that the outside world is evil in some way; immoral, unsatisfying, substandard, not as good as the cult. The cult creates extremes of good and evil, right and wrong. Why anyone would choose to think this way, is beyond me.
A cult will never admit that it's a cult. A group that isn't a cult will also deny that it's a cult, so that doesn't help you much in determining whether a group is a cult.