© Kathleen Goldhar/CBC In the CBC podcast series Escaping NXIVM, Vancouver's Sarah Edmondson shares her experience of leaving a self-help community that she now says is a cult. 

When Sarah Edmondson first joined the self-help organization NXIVM, it seemed inspiring, communal and full of exciting epiphanies. But her awakening and escape 12 years later was frightening, embarrassing and full of devastating truths.

The Vancouver actor says she felt confused and ashamed that she could have missed — or dismissed — so many red flags about the group's cult-like traits, all of which seem so obvious now.

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