The reasons you're saying you'll stay in are techniques high control groups use to...keep people in.
Here is some info from a site run by ex-Scientologists.
The individual is prepared for thought reform through increasing rewards and punishments, efforts are made
to establish considerable control over a person's social environment,
time, and sources of social support. Social isolation is promoted.
Contact with family and friends is abridged, as is contact with persons
who do not share group-approved attitudes. Economic and other dependence
on the group is fostered. (In the forerunner to coercive persuasion,
brainwashing, this was rather easy to achieve through simple
imprisonment.)
Disconfirming information and nonsupporting opinions are prohibited in group communication.
Rules exist about permissible topics to discuss with outsiders.
Communication is highly controlled. An "in-group" language is usually
constructed.
Frequent and intense attempts are made to cause a
person to re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience
of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to
destabilize and undermine the subject's basic consciousness, reality
awareness, world view, emotional control, and defense mechanisms as well
as getting them to reinterpret their life's history, and adopt a new
version of causality.
Intense and frequent attempts are made to
undermine a person's confidence in himself and his judgment, creating a
sense of powerlessness.
Nonphysical punishments are used such as
intense humiliation, loss of privilege, social isolation, social status
changes, intense guilt, anxiety, manipulation and other techniques for
creating strong aversive emotional arousals, etc.
Certain secular psychological threats [force] are used or are present:
That failure to adopt the approved attitude, belief, or consequent
behavior will lead to severe punishment or dire consequence, (e.g.
physical or mental illness, the reappearance of a prior physical
illness, drug dependence, economic collapse, social failure, divorce,
disintegration, failure to find a mate, etc.).
Robert Jay Lifton's Eight Point Model of Thought Reform
1. ENVIRONMENT CONTROL. Limitation of many/all forms
of communication with those outside the group. Books, magazines, letters
and visits with friends and family are taboo. "Come out and be
separate!"
2. MYSTICAL MANIPULATION. The potential convert to the group becomes convinced of the higher purpose and special calling of the
group through a profound encounter / experience, for
example, through an alleged miracle or prophetic word of those in the
group.
3. DEMAND FOR PURITY. An explicit goal of the group is to bring about some kind of change, whether it be on a global, social, or
personal level. "Perfection is possible if one stays with the group and is committed."
4. CULT OF CONFESSION. The unhealthy practice of self
disclosure to members in the group. Often in the context of a public
gathering in the group, admitting past sins and imperfections, even
doubts about the group and critical thoughts about the integrity of the
leaders.
5. SACRED SCIENCE. The group's perspective is
absolutely true and completely adequate to explain EVERYTHING. The
doctrine is not subject to amendments or question. ABSOLUTE conformity
to the doctrine is required.
6. LOADED LANGUAGE. A new vocabulary emerges within the context of the group. Group members "think" within the very abstract
and narrow parameters of the group's doctrine. The
terminology sufficiently stops members from thinking critically by
reinforcing a "black and white" mentality. Loaded terms and clichés
prejudice thinking.
7. DOCTRINE OVER PERSON. Pre-group experience and
group experience are narrowly and decisively interpreted through the
absolute doctrine, even when experience contradicts the doctrine.
8. DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE. Salvation is possible only in the group. Those who leave the group are doomed.
