When Workplaces Start to Feel Like Cults

If you’ve ever watched Severance and thought, “This feels uncomfortably familiar,” you’re not alone.

There’s a conversation we’re still not having enough — even though the breadcrumbs are out there if you look — about how certain workplaces quietly slip into cult-like territory.

I’ve worked in more than a few of them myself. And when you zoom out, it actually makes perfect, disturbing sense. A workplace is the ideal structure for cult psychology to take root: a group of people under the influence of a leader (a boss, a founder, a CEO) who may or may not have your wellbeing anywhere on their list of priorities. Let’s be real — plenty of people climb into management on the back of ambition, ego, and self-interest, not empathy.

The Cult Leader in a Suit

The parallels between a toxic boss and a traditional cult leader are honestly uncanny. The higher someone sits, the more their personality becomes the measure of “normal.” Company culture is not some abstract thing; it’s a reflection — often a funhouse mirror — of whoever’s steering the ship.

And that means who’s in charge matters. A lot.

If your leader thrives on control, fear, secrecy, hierarchy, or praise, that energy eventually trickles down through every meeting, every email, every performance review. People learn the rules of survival quickly.

When Workplace Culture Starts Using Cult Tactics

In Steve Hassan’s Combating Cult Mind Control, he outlines the common features of cult behaviour: authoritarian leadership, discouraged dissent, isolation, micromanagement, rigid hierarchy, and an “us vs. them” narrative that keeps people compliant.

Sound familiar?

Toxic workplaces recreate these dynamics with terrifying ease:

• A boss who shuts down questions or disagreement.

• Teams discouraged from comparing notes or talking to outsiders.

• Micromanagement marketed as “high standards.”

• Former employees or other companies painted as the enemy.

• Critical thinking treated as disloyalty.

  
  

Nobody calls it a cult, of course. But the psychological fallout is the same: confusion, self-doubt, dependency, and a quiet erosion of your boundaries until you barely recognise yourself.

Signs Your Workplace Might Be Cult-Like

Not every intense environment is a cult. But there are red flags — and once you see them, you can’t unsee them:

• The Leader Is Idolised, Not Just Respected

  Healthy workplaces admire leaders. Cultish ones worship them.

  
  

• Curiosity = Rebellion

  If questions make you the enemy, that’s not culture — that’s coercion.

  
  

• Your Time, Emotions, and Autonomy Are Controlled

  Micromanagement, surveillance, invasive check-ins: classic control.

  
  

• “We’re a Family” Is Weaponised

  Family talk becomes emotional blackmail in unhealthy systems.

  
  

• Leaving Is Seen as Betrayal

  Healthy teams celebrate growth. Toxic ones smear people who leave.

  
  

• Information Is Withheld or Distorted

  Secrecy is not strategy. It’s manipulation.

  
  

• A Strong “Us vs. Them” Narrative

  Fear of the outside world keeps people compliant and small.

  
  

• Burnout Is Romanticised

  Exhaustion is treated like devotion.

  
  

• Your Identity Gets Fused with the Job

  You forget who you are outside your role.

  
  

• You Feel Constant Fear or Guilt

  Your nervous system speaks before your mind does.

  
  

Reclaiming Your Autonomy — and Your Worth

Realising you’ve been caught in a cult-like workplace can be deeply unsettling. Especially if you’ve spent years believing your value was measured by output, loyalty, or how much of yourself you were willing to sacrifice.

But here’s the truth: Your worth was never up for negotiation.

Reclaiming yourself often begins in small, almost invisible ways:

• Taking a full lunch break without guilt.

• Pushing back on unreasonable expectations.

• Reconnecting with friends outside the job.

• Letting yourself imagine a life beyond your workplace.

  
  

These tiny acts matter. They crack the illusion that the company owns you.

Rebuilding Your Inner Compass

Cults — corporate or otherwise — dull your instincts. They condition you to default to “What would my boss want?” instead of “What do I know is right?”

Rebuilding that inner compass takes time. Therapy, journaling, honest conversations, and reconnecting with your body’s signals help untangle what’s actually yours from what you were conditioned to believe.

Redefining Success on Your Terms

Toxic workplaces sell you a narrow definition of success: more output, more devotion, more self-abandonment.

But success is allowed to look like:

• balance

• peace

• creativity

• presence

• financial stability

• community

• rest

  
  

You get to decide what a meaningful life looks like — not your employer.

Rebuilding a Life Beyond the Office

The most healing thing you can do is rebuild the parts of yourself that have nothing to do with your job. Hobbies, rest, connection, passion, curiosity — these aren’t frivolous. They’re protective scaffolding. The fuller your life becomes outside the office, the less any one workplace can distort your reality.

You Deserve Better Than a Corporate Cult

Leaving a cult-like workplace isn’t failure — it’s self-respect.

And even if you aren’t ready (or able) to walk away yet, naming the dynamic gives you power. Awareness creates room for boundaries. Options. Clarity.

You start to see the environment for what it actually is — not what you were conditioned to believe.

Because at the end of the day, you are a whole, complex, worthy human long before you are an employee. And any workplace that can’t honour that truth simply doesn’t deserve you.