In Reply to: Good approach posted by Perry on August 13, 2004 at 14:40:56:
I've felt the same way. I'm about your age and yet I have felt so much younger than I am, and I think it has to do with all that big gap of my life spent in the family when my mental growth, spiritual growth, relationships, etc were all on hold, "frozen" so to speak. Remember the movie Superman when he went off to the Fortress of Solitutde in the 50's and came back in the 90's still the same age? As far as living in the normal world, we are maybe half-frozen still back in the 70's and 80's or whenever we joined.
Cults do stop people's normal social, career, mental and spiritual development. Then we only pick up again as we thaw and start taking our life's road again, but 20 or more years behind everyone else our own age. We find ourselves in the same classes as people 20-30 years our juniors, catching up on our education. We are 20-30 years older than our fellow-workers in the same kind of career spot in life. So at lot of it is not even mental development, but physical reality.