Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults

by Steven Hassan

This realization is often more difficult for long-term members. Imagine going into a group at age 18 and coming out at 30. You’ve been deprived of a huge amount of life experience. Your twenties, typically reserved for self-exploration, experimentation, education, skill development, career and relationship building, have been lost. Chronologically, you are 30, but psychologically, you probably feel 18. Friends from high school have good jobs; many are married; some have children; some have houses. At 30, you may be inexperienced at dating, and have been out of touch with world affairs for more than a decade. At a party, you have little to talk about except your cult experience, which only exacerbates the feeling of being in a goldfish bowl. You have to catch up on everything. You may feel an acute sense of having to make up for lost time. Some long-term former members liken the experience to that of POWs coming home after a war. In fact, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) seems to apply perfectly to some cult member veterans. When they come home, they have to catch up on everything. In the 1970s one person I worked with had never heard of the Watergate