This paper explores how former members of high-demand religious movements in the Netherlands engage with the label "cult" when reflecting on their past involvement. Drawing on life-narrative interviews, it considers how this category may function as a discursive resource through which experiences are explained, legitimized, or resisted. Rather than treating "the cult" as an analytical given, the paper approaches it as an emic and relational label that appears to take shape in relation to processes of disaffiliation. For some former members, adopting the term seems to offer a useful language for articulating negative experiences and perceived coercive dynamics, as well as rendering past sufferings more intelligible. For others, the label is rejected or engaged with more ambivalently, as it may be experienced as flattening complex trajectories of involvement, obscuring meaningful aspects of participation, and positioning the past within an oppositional frame that does not necessarily align with their perspectives. These personal narratives and labeling practices suggest that accounts of high-demand religious groups are rarely unambiguous. Former members often describe their involvement in ways that combine both appreciation and critique, emphasizing belonging, purpose, and development alongside more negative experiences such as control, dependency, or pressure. In this context, the label "cult" itself becomes an interesting site of ongoing negotiation, through which individuals seek to balance divergent evaluations to sustain a coherent understanding of their past involvement. By bringing particular attention to labeling practices and lived ambivalence, the paper suggests that interpretations of unconventional religious experiences are not fixed, but emerge through ongoing discursive and biographical processes, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of how such experiences are named and interpreted following disaffiliation.