Bottom line I could say everything I (or most all of the rest of us) got counselled on was ridiculous.
For all of us a lot of the counseling had one thing in common. Someone went to the elders and complained. Now if that ain't one of the big signs of a cult I don't know what is. In the regular articles in the WT and KM about Judicial Procedure (tm) they always refer to what Jesus said, go to your brother [sister] first. Now honestly, how many times does that actually happen? More often than not, someone's going straight to the elders. Call that what you want but that's the unwritten rule. They don't expect anyone to follow what Jesus said, they want informants running right to the elders at the slightest infraction.
There were far too many times when I was called into the back room because "someone said...." Sometimes it was even the case of people eavesdropping on my conversations in the hall and then embellishing what was said, or making things up and lying altogether.
What really takes the prize for me is what happened to my brother a few years ago. Matt met some chick from Savannah and they hit it off at some convention. They ended up bumpin' uglies. Well she had a conscience attack and went to her elders about it. Get this, she didn't even know his last name! So her elders had to do some serious detective work to find Matt. Now when the incident happened he was already an adult and living on his own. When they finally did track him down, oh this still makes me so mad. Instead of approaching him, they called his body of elders and his body of elders called our parents first and told them all about it and made them contact him about the committee meeting.
Again, is that not cultish behavior? And of course our folks showed their blind loyalty to the cult and turned him in.
Mike.