Man, this gets more disturbing each day, as each layer is peeled away.

Byron Katie is manipulating something called "Automatic Thoughts".
Here is an excerpt from Dr. Aaron Beck on treating Delusions, with a comment about Automatic Thoughts.
Using Cognitive Therapy to treat Delusions
[cttoday.org]

I do think Cognitive Therapy, and Assertiveness Training might be a good antidote to The Work.
In Cognitive Therapy you vigorously "Dispute" automatic thoughts within your own mind that are creating problems. You also work with a Thought Record which is a worksheet for this, looking at the factual evidence, etc. Its very well done.
So there is HOPE, there is a way to get your own mind back, and undo the Programming from Katie.

So again, it looks like Byron Katie has taken some valid psychology, and then warped and abused it for her own ends. In NLP, they have a technique called "Create A Compulsion".
One could say The Work could be called...Installing Delusions.

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jj52
You said that right. BK tells you that eventually The Work becomes automatic. I've experienced that myself. At the School, we trained our brains to automatically flip reality around. I'm still struggling to get it to stop... and just hang onto my thoughts for awhile. Doing the worksheets, writing it down, is a good way to train your mind to do it on it's own.

I remember doing an Assertiveness Workbook once... that was written by legitimate counselors and was very helpful. In it, you were supposed to write out a little worksheet for every encounter you had where assertiveness was needed. The idea was that the more you wrote it out, the more it had a certain impact on your mind, and the more automatic assertive responses would become.

I think writing out The Work is for the same purpose, but that's not what people are told. People are told that writing it out helps you because your mind will try to get away with stuff, but writing it out prevents that from happening.

You mean, my mind will try to tell me this isn't right if I don't write it down? But when I write it down, it will become more solidified in my mind, and I won't be able to escape it?

Talking to BK followers is a real mind-warp because they do turn everything you say around on you. Some will accuse you of things, tell you turn stuff around, but then not do it themselves. (ralpher) It leaves you feeling like you've been hit in the face by a bus. I remember feeling frustrated with people the last few days of the School, and not wanting to talk to them... because every time I said something someone would reply "Is it true?" and then pick apart what I'd said, telling me what I need to question.

They tend to all act like YOUR personal counselor.

Or your personal deconstructor, depending on how you look at it.

-jj

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corboy
Erasing Personal Integrity and other ‘Sorceric Techniques’
By David Worrell

If he is not being sarcastic, that is Antisocial Personality Disorder, and being a sociopath, and literally a psychopath.

He also left out the part about getting caught, ending up in jail, and saying everyone is against you.

One wonders...it was said by Carol that Byron Katie was molested as a child, and Katie now believes that SHE is the one who caused the molestation to happen.

Now, any sane person knows that child sexual molestation and child-rape is NEVER caused by the child. Even Oprah says if a child got naked and jumped in a bed, obviously its up to the adult to stop it.
Its a criminal offense, and the blame is 100% on the adult offender. Any sane person can see that.

I am not into psychoanalysis...BUT, if Katie has warped her being victimized as a child, into HER victimizing herself in the name of sick-Love...does that not sound like The Work?

Allowing yourself to be victimized by Katie for (sick) "Love" based on exploitation?
Sometimes victimizers were once victims themselves who have not dealt with it. Although many victimizers were NOT victims, this is why they have no empathy.

But since the Katie story is that she blames herself for being molested as a child (as most children do), and the foundation of The Work BLAMES THE VICTIM, and is a type of sick and twisted version of Love-Bomb-Exploitation?
An abusive exploitative one-way relationship with an offender, trying to win approval?
We've all seen it.

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jj52

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The Shadow
p.s. I'm glad you kept Issac, jj

Thanks! Me too.

I can see the differences between your experience and the one at The School. Not only did you give something, you got something... and it wasn't "something of value". It actually sounds like a very sweet experience... not one that would leave you wondering how you were going to get back across the country without and ID, money, or plane tickets!

Thanks for sharing that. The contrast is helpful.
Good luck at the doctor, Shad.

-jj

fortunately, by the time i was in school, i had had various experiences around "weirdo", for example a friend of mine was nearly kidnapped by the moonies. Her ex-husband literrally rescued her at the Peach Arch border crossing as they were in the line-up with her, her dog and her VW van. He jumped in the van, kicked the two young men out and drove off with his wife, back to his place. She showed me two shoe-boxes full of literature (religious in nature) that they had used in the brain-washing process. Also, I worked with a young women who had been involved with a commune (she was in the middle of a mental breakdown)....so...i am very wary...

i LISTEN to that little voice that niggles away when something does not feel right...but when you are tired and emotionally distraught, it is hard to realize what that little "voice" is trying to tell you. BUT IF YOU GUT DOES NOT FEEL RIGHT, that is the time to question. - when in doubt DO NOTHING, someone once told me, and i think that is good advice.

but these guys are so clever, i remember when I went with my friend to the Landmark/EST seminar he made reference to that little voice, but then he made the mistake of saying that that little voice might not be telling you the truth, and he went on and on, and then finally i realized that he was trying to tell me exactly WHAT my little voice was saying, and i said to myself: "hey, wait a minute, YOU are not in my head, so how the hell do you know what my little voice is saying"...and of course i realized that it was just his clever way of manipulating everyone....

man alive, they know all the tricks, eh?

I went to a workshop in Denver a long time ago, and I hid my airline ticket under my mattress - NO WAY was i going to surrender ANYTHING, but they did not ask, i was just being ultra-careful.

I guess the thing is to try to educate people to ASK QUESTIONS. - WHY do you want my plane ticket, WHY do you need my ID??? -- I know it is hard, because we are socialized to think that there is always someone who knows more than we do.

anyway, off to my pain management workshop.

later,
Shad

thx for sharing that jj, others in the same boat are going to be helped by it.
And unlike so much of the madness coming from The Goddess of Guilt, it "makes sense".
Why? Because its honest and true, its not a sham.
That is the problem with some New Age ideas, they are just plain wrong. There is such a thing as "true", not Absolute True, but a reasonable true. Its ok for us to be sane, normal humans, who know if something is reasonably true, even if "Constructivist".

I only read your story AFTER I put forward my little Neo-Freudian theory that The Work springs from Byron Katies own false internalization of her own abuse as a child. Blaming yourself for being the child-victim.
But one wonders if Katie really believes that anymore, or just uses that on other people, while she now acts out the role of (false)Loving Seducer/Victimizer.
Its clear that most sexual abusers of children are not violent child-rapists. As even Oprah has shown, most of them are manipulative (false) loving seducers who lure and groom the vulnerable child with false-love, use them for their own gratification, then do a Turnaround on the child to make the child feel like its all their fault.
Sound familiar?

I snipped out some parts of your own text below that seem to confirm some of that was done to you.
If we blame ourselves for being hurt by others, what does that do? It makes us depressed, self-hating, and also become dependant on the very people that are hurting us.

Like a little doggie that takes the abuse from its owner, and tries to submit more, and be more loving to the owner, to get one shred of Love, only to get more abuse.
This is how many sexually abused children and girls can behave due to the power dynamics. That is what proper therapy tries to repair.

So its convenient for Byron Katie to get her mostly female followers to engage in Self-Hate, Self-Blame, self-blame the victim, especially over sexual-abuse as a child...many folks are halfway there as it is.

And then she magnifies that, and creates a closed loop system.

But is BK being victimized anymore? I don't see any. From fresh outside eyes, its clear that BK has reversed roles, and is now acting out the psychodrama of being the manipulative seducer, deceptively luring others into her grasp, exploiting them, while doing a Turnaround so the victims blames themselves for what is being done to them, and thus deepen the pathological bond to the abuser.

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jj52
...and I started to feel like I was falling apart. The attacks were wearing on me. I was pretty desperate for a way out.

...Suffice it to say, I was desperate... and because of the Eckancar-style brainwashing I was enduring at the time, I was very vulnerable.

...I came to see that I was at fault, and I hadn't thought so previously. I wrote an apology to my friend, and felt some peace. It took a few more tries before I was willing to try it on my in-laws.

Lo and behold, I discovered that everything was all my fault, and I was filled with a strange sense of love and appreciation for my in-laws. I wrote them apologies (which was offered by the in-laws as evidence that I was guilty of their insane accusations, and worked against me in the end.) I kept "testing" it and doing The Work on other situations, and strangely... it seemed to work. I learned that I was responsible for so many things that I hadn't known before, and suddenly felt in control of my life in a different way.

...It was around this time when I discovered that if I tried to turnaround a stressful thought like, "My mother-in-law is evil" to myself... I would break down into tears, and feel nauseated.

...BK says that until you get to the point where you can see your enemy as your friend, you're not done with your Work.

.. It's just not smart to call your enemies friends... and to fail to see how they are hurting you... and to let them keep doing it. It's pretty dumb, actually... unrealistic, and potentially harmful to your own well-being. (However, I realize how this belief could be valuable for BK among her followers.)

Sort of like:"Someone raped you? Oh, he was your friend, can't you understand that? He did it out of love, and when you see that, you'll be enlightened."

by the way, here is an outsiders viewpoint on just how "bad" Byron Katie is, in case that perspective might be useful.

Obviously, she and her Katiephiliacs think she probably is the new Jesus Christ, or whoever.

Clearly she is not, she is a very fallible human, just like anyone else, and of course, even much more fallible than the average Jane.
That being said, BK is also very very cunning, smart, forceful, manipulative, charismatic, and is clearly extremely talented at her craft. Its not easy to run these complex LGATS, you have to internalize hundreds of techniques and make them flow, it takes years of daily practice. She is obviously very good at that.

But is she the Antichrist or something like that? Of course, one can never know! and she may function as that for a person going through it.
But outside eyes see her somewhat as some businesswoman trying to act all New-Agey to make an easy 50 million bucks!

Will BK's The Work change the world? Hardly. She has her niche, and she will milk that for the rest of her life, if she does not run afoul of the law. She does not have wide appeal, many people instantly see her as a cunning, forceful, creepy person, who might be half nuts.
If one searches Google Images for her, you see how each photo is carefully staged, her EYES STARING LOVINGLY AT YOU, like a hypnotist from a horror movie, trying to seduce you...
For many folks, you look at those pics of BK, and your skin crawls...

of course, not for everyone, she does reach into many people, and that is all she needs.
We all have our unique vulnerabilities. For example, some men who want to be a "success" get lured into LGAT's with some big dude wearing a suit and a rolex, but doing basically the same thing as Katie, just without the overt Love-Bombing, as a lot of men, don't want that.

So BK is extremely dangerous for those who are vulnerable to her. That is clear.
But an outsider eye really just sees a person out to make an easy 50 million, using every LGAT trick in the book, and damn anyone who gets in the way.
On the other hand, what if she builds another massive global system like Scientology? so maybe...

It would be interesting to find out if EST was in Byron Katies area around 1986. Would it not be interesting, if BK went to EST, had a mental-breakdown like some do, and then thought..."I can do that", and had her Werner Erhard moment?

Some years ago I corresponded with Carol Skolnick, before she hooked up with Byron Katie. I met her via the various incarnations of the ex-SY lists. SY is Siddha Yoga, the Baba Muktananda and Gurumayi cult. I joined and mostly lurked on those lists as I had been part of a yoga-based guru-centered cult that shared some similarities with Siddha Yoga. Carol had been pretty badly burned in the cult and had what I saw as a very clear understanding of all levels of the cult dynamics. She's a very intelligent, witty person and I enjoyed getting to know her a bit way back when. It is disconcerting to see that she's become a true BK believer. However, I am guessing that as the BK Cult continues to grow ever wackier, somewhere down the line Carol is going to start feeling the burn and will wake up and get out. At least I hope so. Given how clearly she saw what was going on in SY, she's gotta be able to see it at some point.

BTW, BK's maiden name is Rolle. So we have Rolle and Tolle. However, they do not rhyme, as the pronunciations are Rolly and the German Tolla.

By saying Byron Katie is an "anti-Christ"...

I mean that I literally came to see how she was subtly talking people out of their Christian belief systems. She did The Work with people who were concerned about evil and the devil, and had completely convinced them afterward that evil did not exist, nor did the devil or any dark forces, whatever you choose to call them.

I asked one woman, while on my quest to understand this, how it made her feel when BK told her there was no devil. She said it really helped her, and then went on to talk about her Christian beliefs, and how she had realized they were all wrong.

But, The Work is advertised as being able to enhance anyone's religion, and is supposedly compatible with all religions. Not true. The only religion is it compatible with is that solipsism thing... and probably only BK's version of it.

Remember the excerpt from her website where they compared "The Secret" to The Work? The Work isn't even compatible with the Law of Attraction, for those who believe in it.

I'm not an expert on the Bible, but I know enough to know that the role of an "anti-Christ" is to lead people away from their beliefs in God. Whatever a person's beliefs are about God, through The Work, they may find them slipping away.

All in all, it really doesn't suit her purposes to let people believe whatever they want. She needs them to believe in her to keep her empire growing. And, she does lead people in that direction with The Work.

While I was writing that story, I remembered that we were not allowed to read or listen to anything that wasn't Byron Katie. I broke that rule, and thank goodness. But... what purpose could this possibly serve? I think it was partially to isolate us from even our own religious beliefs. (We weren't to read ANYTHING that wasn't Byron Katie. My roommate actually turned in a Bible she had brought.) Her teachings were supposed to be the only thing we heard for 9 days.

That may not sound like a long time... but it was the longest 9 days of my life.

-jj



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/29/2008 06:19AM by jj52.

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Guruphobiac
BTW, BK's maiden name is Rolle. .

That is very interesting, only some german wiki sites carry that name. the english Wiki site for her is an advertisement scrubbed clean.
Looks like the Rolle name is not too popular.

It would be useful to know her name from 1986, and before. If she was a businesswoman at the time, there would be information available that might shed some light.

Does she have any other names from the past that anyone might know?
One wonders if there might have been another marriage name in there before Rolle?

this is from the german, please correct it if it is not right.

BYRON KATIE LIST OF NAMES:
Current name: Byron Kathleen Mitchell
Divorced: Byron Kathleen Rolle
Born: Byron Kathleen Reid

Some Google results for: Byron Katie Rolle, Katie Rolle,
There are also results just running the middle and last names together.

it seems knowing the name she went by when she was doing real estate, if that is what she did, might be useful. That would be before 1986.
Something will turn up...

Didn't people who were successful in Real Estate in the 1970's and early 1980's do all sorts of wacky seminars sales trainings, like EST, Lifespring, and the other first LGAT's?
:-)
If she was doing Real Estate at that time, there will be information out there.
Its just finding the NAME she used at that time! These gurus always have so many names, you can't even keep track of them...wonder why?
;-)

Information is going to turn up...just have to get the correct name from that period.

here's some info below, don't know if its true or false or misdirection.
____________________

"starting out in Barstow, California, her hometown in the Mojave Desert. When an early first marriage ended in divorce, Katie’s ambitions bloomed. She supported herself and three kids with a successful career in real estate. “I always knew how to make money,” she says.

Her ten-year downward spiral began during her second marriage, to a retired businessman who had had four heart attacks. Katie became so depressed in the early 1980s ...

... Her second husband, however, was less than pleased. He could never accept the transformation and wanted the old Katie back. Katie spent increasing amounts of time apart from him and they eventually divorced.

Here is information for reporting any concerns a citizen might have about damages being caused by psychotherapy in California, or concerns about those individuals who may be practicing psychotherapy illegally without a license.
One should never seek psychotherapy, or any type of psychotherapeutic service from an unlicensed person, as they are not regulated, as..

"Such licensure permits the consumer to pursue recourse against the licensee should the consumer believe that the licensee engaged in unprofessional conduct."

_________________________________________________
This is where complaints can be laid against LCSWs, others, and "those individuals who may be practicing illegally without a license."
California, Board of Behavioral Sciences Online Consumer Complaint Form
[app.dca.ca.gov]

___________________________________________
Filing a Complaint with the California Board of Psychology
[www.psychboard.ca.gov]
"Complaints received by the Board of Psychology (Board) are considered confidential, and not subject to disclosure."
__________________________________________

[www.bbs.ca.gov]
[www.bbs.ca.gov]
Notice to California Consumers Regarding Psychotherapy on the Internet
The Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS) would like to make the following recommendations to California consumers who choose to seek therapy or counseling over the Internet.

Individuals who provide psychotherapy or counseling, either in person, by telephone, or over the Internet, are required by law to be licensed. Licensing requirements vary by state. Individuals who provide psychotherapy or counseling to persons in California are required to be licensed in California. Such licensure permits the consumer to pursue recourse against the licensee should the consumer believe that the licensee engaged in unprofessional conduct.

Be a cautious consumer when seeking therapy over the Internet, or by any other means, by doing the following:

-Verify that the practitioner has a current and valid license in the State of California.
[...]

Over time, it would be very useful to do more research into the founding of The Work, by Byron Katie Rolle.

Obviously, she just did not get tickled by a cockroach, and then it appeared by Magick. That obviously is not true. Is it true? No it ain't!

It was cobbled together from various LGAT, Human Potential seminars, New Religions, Scientology, hypnosis, Gurus, and psychotherapeutic stuff that went on through the 1970's and early 1980's, and ever since.

There are some interesting tid-bits out there.
The BKI folks refer to her by the names, Byron Katie, Byron Kathleen Mitchell, Byron Kathleen Reid.

They seem to always leave out...Byron Kathleen Rolle, Byron Katie Rolle, Katie Rolle.
There are a few references about:

Byron Katie Rolle, Founder of The Center For The Work in Barstow, CA.

These Gurus always have a list of names and aliases, Werner Erhard has 6 names listed here!
[www.culteducation.com]
How many for Byron Katie so far? 4-5 depending...

There probably are more variants on her early name, or a different name. Hopefully some curious cats will do some reseach on that. One could look up public property records in Barstow CA for that time, and see what the legal name on the properties was.

Katie says she founded in 1986 - The Work.
What else was founded in 1985? - The Forum. (Werner Erhard from EST).

Is it too hard to conceive that a burning-out depressed and anxious, real estate hustler in Southern California in the 1970's, started attending various advanced sales trainings, personal growth seminars, maybe even EST, and maybe in 1985-86 The Forum, with Werner Erhard?

Could a person then have possibly thought..
---------I make a few grand flipping a real estate property, whereas these Seminar Gurus make 10x that on one weekend, and they sell books, tapes...I can do that! But I don't like all of this overt verbal abuse...I want to do it about Love...so the next step after "The Forum"____"The Work?

Speculation certainly. But at some point a journalist could do a little trip down to where it began, and try to clear a few things up. Anyone can see the similarities in various aspects.

Reminds one of how when one social worker was trying to pitch The Work to some lady...after 5 minutes she says to him...that sounds just like EST(The Forum) which was also around in 1986!!