In Reply to: What happened? posted by Oldtimer on December 16, 2003 at 11:05:12:
The experience is common and has been studied and documented by people who do research in the "cult phenomena". But remember too that we don't age and mature on every subject at the same time. You may be very (emotionally) mature in how you deal with your son's classroom work and a complete teenage idiot as a coach on the ball field because you haven't learnt to be "mature" about competition.
It's not just you and not because of the cult, we're all like that.
The cult experience does stunt psychological and physical growth. That's well documented. For example, there's this guy we all know who's VERY focused on doing his dad's final clean-up of this place half way around the world. So much so that he's spent TONS of money for this obsession and the rest of his responsibilities are being neglected almost completely. Obsessions stunt growth, learning and therefore maturity.
When I left the cult I was 27 and I was shaving at the most twice a WEEK. Within six months I was shaving EVERYDAY... and thinking "what a drag this is". The increase in razor blades expense did not in any way mitigate any reasons I had for leaving the cult though. ;-)