Re: REAL LOVE
Date: July 23, 2019 04:02PM
I have copied this post from the thread about Coercive Persuasion because it is about cults, sects and new religious groups too. This Joner person responded to a post and basically praised the cult behaviours put forward by ex-leaders of the RealLove destructive cult in the UK who are now all promoting themselves as the most amazing and wonderful coaches in the whole world, with 'thousands' of happy clients. I think they are referring to RealLove victims and not necessarily their own list of 'clientele' that have been genuinely and exclusively coached by them. It is totally shameful that these folks close down the RealLove destructive cult but continue doing some of the exact same activities that RealLove did previously, and touting the same old tripe as before - BUT - all disguised as a new and completely different venture. We're talking about taking innocent, open and vulnerable people and shoving this tripe down their throats as if it is medicine. So please BEWARE folks in the UK of any offshoot so called 'group' or 'meetup' or 'coaching' organisation that works along these particular emphases:
Marriage guidance coaching - pre-marriage and post-marriage, with special help to get the marriage going
Getting Over an Affair or Marital Infidelity - probably the nastiest group of the lot and downright unethical. The former RL daddy and mummy like to make fake posts of persons begging for help, and then answer that call with the RL tripe.
Emotional Support Groups - beyond belief and not run by professional mental health counsellors, so please stay away if they are not qualified (and especially if their so-called qualification was from the crisp packet of Greg Baer). Being told that not a single living soul on this planet is 'qualified' or 'authorised' to give love other than Greg Baer and RealLove coaches is complete nonsense. Being told that you are empty and incapable of loving anyone, and in particular yourself, unless you go through the RL process is not in any form a way of therapy leading to freedom of mind, peace and balance. The leaders of such groups have been 'at' or 'doing' the whole RealLove thing for many, many years and still have massive identity and ego problems - probably many more issues than what they ever had to begin with. If their head chatter is still not healthy after 4, 5, 6 or more years then it never will be with this destructive cult ideology.
Baby Love Groups - being cuddled and caressed like a baby, being a child again. Some sort of regression therapy promoted as 'loving' which copies much of the RealLove holding and group sharing, but with unqualified persons.
The Agony and Ecstasy of Marriage - a vomit inducing group focused on the Mormon concept of remaining stuck in a partnership, marriage, relationship etc with someone you no longer have feelings or love for, don't gel with, don't get along with, don't connect with and to whom each other are being coached to stay together forever because the RealLove principles tell them so. Yeah, its much better to stay in a toxic unloving relationship and learn to just accept it rather than move on, grow from the lessons, and embrace that you have different journeys. This group promotes heavily Greg Baers third concept of loving bliss and supposedly what 'unconditional'love (as in the RealLove version of it) is all about. The first is love each other dearly and stay together. The second is don't get along and are not compatible anymore, don't like it so break up and move on. But the third (Mormon and RealLove) version promoted here is when you don't actually get along, gel, love each other etc. but you are coached to stay together regardless and are forced to enact unconditional love to keep it that way while suppressing how you really feel inside. Totally unhealthy.
Soulmate Solutions was another idea bandied about.
So here follows is my reply to Joner…...
Joner, you are indeed a Cult Apologist and should not be on this forum.
Here we go, all cheers for Cult Apologist and Supporter Joner – we all knew that this sort of post would not take too long to come along. Just as RealLove itself and the various creepy Meetups groups have asked adherents to do in the past it seems Pete & Nikki, Ben, Kathryn (the naked holder), Tara, Kimberly (another naked holder) and whoever else, have once again put the call out for their ardent brainwashed sheep to praise, recommend and promote them highly once again. Adherents have been called to put up positive reviews about RL books on Amazon, about Meetup groups, and RealLove itself. And now it’s time for the various offshoot RL Cult groups that have sparked up in the UK from the closure of RealLoveUK by the various daddies and mummies. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to the see the total addiction and dependence on RealLove – in whatever form or name it takes shape – when people are still stuck in so-called coaching or love therapy many years later with almost worship of the people they ‘need’ to help them get through their lives.
It is quite clear as Cult_Free states that Joner is only on this forum to promote RealLove and its various offshoots that deceptively hide it within the façade of being a genuine ‘helping’ profession. But RealLove by any way it manifests is most definitely NOT a bona fide genuine member of the helping professions. The ‘helping’ professions (therapy, coaching and counselling, nursing etc.) are for vulnerable people or those at a weak or vulnerable point in their life who need help in a neutral and empowering way to move forward and gain their autonomy, independence, self-worth and empowerment to run their own life in their own way by their self. That’s what the real thing does, but not what any of these RealLove based groups do. The genuine helping profession helps you to get back onto the journey of your own life and to be able to navigate it yourself without any help. The RealLove based Ideology is embedded in the work of these groups that Wiseowl has spoken about (soulmate solutions, get over an affair, the agony and the ecstasy, the marriage people etc.) but unsuspecting people will ‘believe’ or think they are getting genuine help from genuine helping professionals that have trained for many years and are registered and qualified when in fact they will be getting themselves into something that they will be stuck in and dependant on for a long time.
There’s a difference between what and how the genuine ‘helping’ profession helps people and what becoming involved with these people who make it look like they are genuine helping professionals when in fact they are Cult Proponents set on running your lives for you and taking lots of money in the process. You know something’s not right when you question things because they will act all like the victim while telling you that you are being the victim and stating that they have given you loads of love of which they feel you are ungrateful for while going on to turn things on you being a bully of them. (DARVO technique I think it’s called and it is explained elsewhere on this forum).
So what are the differences………
Helping professions don’t overload people with expectations of attending highly expensive (usually costing in the thousands of dollars/pounds) urgently and ‘desperately needed’ interventions, weekend seminars, year-long programs etc. to provide some magical instant healing or recovery. Genuine helping professions don’t ever undertake to promote such a fanciful idea of putting so much financial pressure on people who are vulnerable and weak. In fact there are industry guidelines as to fees and costs, lengths of sessions and no one ‘has’ to do anything other than the sessions that they sign up for. This means no year-long programs, no seminars or courses, and definitely NO interventions. There is no psychological, emotional or mental need for a 3 day long intense psychological profiling session – even though it looks and feels like you are just sitting there telling the intervention team everything about you, your life, your loves, your fears, your hates, what bad things you’ve done, regrets, shames, etc… No genuine helping professional needs this amount of depth and prying into your life and psyche to help you.
The helping profession does not overload persons emotionally, mentally or psychologically and know how the mind functions so much so that they help people to safely and ethically navigate through their traumas and problems to the other side – the side where one no longer needs the helping profession anymore! Each session is structured to ensure emotional safety and that the client is not left emotionally ‘open’ or vulnerable in between sessions. They also plan in advance how many sessions may be required to work through the concerns and very often as specific issues are dealt with many others are removed and lifted away at the same time as a consequence of the techniques and methods used. People don’t necessarily look forward to going to therapy, coaching or whatever helping they are getting as it’s not pleasant to work through painful things. Rarely do people feel that the helping they are getting is something to enjoy and very often it is draining and tiresome for the next 24 to 48 hours afterwards. It is also uplifting too, but in general when confronting painful things it’s not something you look forward to all week as you are usually concentrating on working through what came up the previous session. No one gets addicted or dependant on genuine helping sessions. No one excludes love, help, kindness, compassion or caring from others in their life in the misrepresented notion that they can only get what they need from the helping professional. No one needs to rely on the helping professional in this way and they do not manufacture or cause this type of reliance and dependence to happen. But RealLove based cult ideology offshoots that are posing as helping professionals do do this. Joner’s words, as well as others on this forum elsewhere confirm that this is so. Your emotional well-being should not be tied in to a helping professional – if it is, then they are not a genuine helping professional.
The helping professions don’t break confidentiality and privacy which underpins the profession as a whole. The only time when these are broken is when it is a life or death situation for the client, the helper or others. Patients or clients are NOT put in touch with each other, and there are no secret social media pages for people to share private material publicly. This is not promoted by genuine helping professionals. Similarly, there are no in-between individuals who act as a go-between or support to the helping professional by dishing out guidance between sessions or in moments of so-called ‘crisis’. In RealLove these people are called ‘wise-people’ and in being in this position are privy to all the confidential and private information of the client – thus this is not genuine helping in any way whatsoever.
Genuine helping professionals ensure that their client has coping strategies to assist them with living their life between sessions and work to instil confidence and self-love. This is the total opposite to RealLove and its offshoots whereby once joining and embracing the ideology people end up having regular crises which require regular phone calls, coaching sessions and groups to keep in check. I have seen with my own eyes a completely functional person suddenly become crisis ridden and needing phone calls several times a day to coach them into coping with life. The Cult Ideology does more harm than good and does not help even though people believe it does.
The helping professions do not have expectations of pushing a particular agenda and belief system (in this case the RealLove Destructive Cult Ideology and its principles, rules, laws etc.) onto the client and all the persons in the client’s life (family, friends, children etc.). When you undertake to seek help from the helping profession it’s the client, and the client only, that gets the help - the client/patient, no one else. It’s only the client’s behaviours and attitudes, thoughts and reactions that need to be worked on and in the genuine helping profession there is absolutely no need for anyone else in the clients family to engage with the therapy, coaching or whatever. No one goes to get the help of the helping profession other than for their self and the genuine helping profession does not set out to engage as many people as possible from the client’s life into the process!!
The genuine helping profession has ethical, moral and professional guidelines and standards to which all have to abide by in order to maintain their license to practice. The industry also has the benefit of over one hundred years of professional research and development into the workings of the mind, brain, psychology and human development etc. and to be in this profession requires a lot of stringent study and practical experience guided by long time professionals. Being a registered practitioner also requires regular ongoing assessment and guidance throughout the tenure of the professionals’ entire working and practicing career. The standards are there for many reasons and protect both the client, the helper and the industry itself. Untrained self-made and self-defined gurus like Greg Baer (and many others before him) all speak of professional therapy and coaching etc. as being useless and that the standards and guidelines inhibit genuine healing and recovery. A lot of bad press about getting professional help is promoted by RealLove and very often it uses the fear people have of psychiatric methods to steer this fear of avoiding professional help and going to them instead. RealLove and its processes, as too those used by its offshoots, are unprofessional and would never pass the rigorous standards set by the profession. There are no standards. Even Mr Baer has been overheard telling Pete Uglow how good Pete ‘fakes it’ and that this is what you do! Faking it and making it up as you go along is NOT professional help as it excludes a healing plan altogether and has no end in sight. Standards are there for a reason, and these are very good reasons for all persons concerned. Promoting that there does not need to be standards and ethical guidelines and that such things inhibit improvement and healing is outrageous and clearly not in the best interests of the client.
The genuine helping profession takes itself and its work very seriously indeed. It does not use itself – the helping bit, be this coaching, therapy, counselling etc. – to be a front for a clever and deceptive attempt at building up dependence on a destructive cult ideology like RealLove. If it was coaching it would be coaching and utilise standard, well regarded and successful techniques to help people through whatever it is they need help with until they are set free – as soon as possible! Likewise, if it was therapy or counselling the helping profession is about getting people out of the rut they are in and empowered to run their own lives without the need for the helping professionals or anyone else. Genuine helping professionals do not manage their client’s every choice and decision in life either temporarily or forever. That’s what a cult does, not a helping profession. The helping professional does not make your decisions for you or coerce you into one or another choice. Never – unless it is life threatening to yourself or another person, and that is the only time they can intervene in making a choice for a client or enforcing that choice onto a client. By the way that is also Law in most countries too! The helping profession guides the client into being able to make their own decisions and ‘own’ them confidently. They do not hold emotional power over the client in any way whatsoever because they are not the client’s ‘emotional dad’ or ‘emotional mum’ – as coaches are called in RealLove. They will help to show client’s that there are three or more options for every situation – not one or the other – and work to empower the client to have the courage, inner strength, and power to make their own decision, and ‘own’ that decision for their self. They do not have the client stuck with only two choices – the one the helper coerces them to take and one other. The genuine helping profession does not take control of the client’s life or manipulates it, they give client’s the power to make their own decisions with absolute neutrality as regards to the choices that only they can make. RealLove and its offshoot groups, meetups etc. are completely the opposite to empowerment and are more about dependency and reliance on them – forever – than of letting the client go and be strong and independent forever. That’s the genuine experiences of many who have got out of RealLove and what I have seen with my own eyes. This type of one-size-fits-all ideology keeps destructive unfulfilling relationships between people going on and on while shutting down the intuition of each partner to realise the futility of their union; while continuing to go to weekly agony and ecstasy groups to have hard line jargon and ideology doing a mindfuck that keeps people together when they are unhappy. Genuine helping would not enforce an ideology and is focused entirely on the client’s needs and on building healthy intuition and instincts in the client to make their own justified decisions on what to do. There is no ideology about what they should or should not do. The helping profession does not have an agenda, rules and principles of one single person’s ideology to follow and adhere to – it’s all about therapy.
Joner’s words at the end of their post – 9 years and still going – remind me that this is not coaching, it’s not therapy or helping in any way whatsoever – that is dependence in a nutshell. The helping professions guide and support you in gaining all the strengths you need to be able to live your life your way and to be totally in check with your own instincts and intuition. These are important human talents that guide us on our unique life journey – which is completely different to everyone else’s. However, the Cult Ideology of RealLove closes these talents down – shuts them down completely causing people to fear their own gut instincts and intuition and live in fear. Our own intuition and instincts will never harm us and are there to keep us safe, so shutting them down and fearing them is not healthy. No one should ever grapple with or battle their own instincts which tell them one thing with the helper telling them something else which does not feel right to them. The genuine helping profession does not do this – they empower the client to make and be sure of their own decisions and will not ever make or coerce any decisions onto the client.
The helping professions also work to professional moral and ethical boundaries of best practice so there are no blurred lines about peoples’ roles and responsibilities. People engaging with the professional helping professions do not ordinarily fall in love with their coach, therapist, counsellor, nurse etc. (although it can happen on extremely rare occasions, and when it does the protocol is to immediately change the helping professional). The way that RealLove uses and abuses nature’s hormones and our instincts for love and affection is disgusting and will never be seen or used in the genuine helping profession. No professionally trained helping professional would knowingly or deliberately do any actions or use any words etc. that would cause their client/patient to produce oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine etc. and react in such a way as to fall in love with the therapist or be made vulnerable in such a way. Helping professionals know that when the body is overrun with certain chemicals like this that humans can be irrational and unfocused and should not be subject to decision making at such times as they are highly suggestible and open to anything. The RealLove Cult Ideology uses such methods blatantly in various ways. It is widely known and accepted in the helping profession that if the client has some form of love or attachment to the helper then it will be difficult to be able to help the client properly, appropriately and that healing and progress will be stunted. Likewise if the helper has feelings for the client, they need to step out of the situation for the benefit of all concerned.
These same hormones are bouncing off the walls in all directions wildly at RealLove and its offshoot manufactured groups and meetups, and it is clear that no real helping is actually going on at all. People needing help are basically dependent on the group for their weekly fix of love hormones to keep them going for another week while at the same time being held in some sort of suspended animation in regards to their mind, which is shut down from critical and logical thinking. Helping professionals do not keep people stuck like this as the intention, as stated before, is to get people empowered and strong and able to live their own lives as soon as possible without the need for therapy, counselling, coaching or group meetups for the rest of their life. The sad thing is that those stuck in this cycle don’t have a clue that they are – like Joner. They sing the praises of their captors and how wonderful it is to be going to the cult group sessions after 9 long years, with no end in sight, and totally believe that this is actually normal and therapeutic. To defend and openly and publicly praise and highly recommend activities that are NOT genuine in any way whatsoever – not professionally conducted or professionally trained by a professional body, not using a tested and authorised program or techniques, lacking confidentiality, lacking professional boundaries, causing weakness and vulnerability, using coercion and undue influence, being deceptive (using the ‘front’ of being a genuine helping profession, while promoting a Cult Ideology), keeping people stuck instead of letting them go, having exorbitant costs and fees that are above and beyond what is acceptable, of using unethical and dangerous methods that only highly skilled and trained professionals would use in only rare cases… and much more!!
Helping professionals abide by true, known and tested techniques and methods to help their clients – using the best approach based on the client, their needs and the situation being dealt with. These methods have taken years of study and practice to understand and use appropriately and successfully. Helping professionals know how easy it is to trick the mind, to instil suggestions and make it look like it was all the clients own idea. But ethically and professionally if they are to ever use any of these techniques it has to be with the full and informed consent of the client with everything explained before doing so – and the client can say no. This is a major difference between the genuine helping profession and those who are not trained and ethical professionals. RealLove and its offshoots serve to use whatever techniques to manipulate and control the client’s mind without them having a clue what is going on which is why it bothers me that Joner and others outwardly recommend practices that look to all intents and purposes as being a genuine helping profession on the front of it (the façade) when in fact they are not what they purport to be and have the RealLove Destructive Cult Ideology at its core. How can anyone promote that they were helped (as in, truly helped and are now fully in control of their life and no longer need to helping professional at all) and sing the praises of the person when in fact they are, nine years later, still heavily reliant on that person. That’s NOT helping. That’s NOT the helping profession. This is false promotion. This is catching people while they are unaware and weak and believing that the help is genuine professional help when it is not. When people go to helping professionals they assume they will be helped and set free as a confident and capable person who has their life back and is in control of it again. This is not what any of the RealLoveUK offshoots are doing. No one gets out – no one! Not until they wake-up that is. And when they wake up, like you too will one day Joner, they are distraught at what they have done to bring more people into the web of deceit and get sucked in to it all. You will feel ashamed of this one day that is for sure. The thing is, that because you have already been involved for so long when you do eventually wake up you will fall very, very hard indeed. What has happened to you and your life will be so overwhelming and traumatising that you will regret and feel ashamed of things you have done and said to get people to join up and be a part of it. You cannot see that right now, because you are wearing your Cult Personality and not being the real you at all. I feel sorry for you and for your children. Our lives are a unique gift for us and for us alone. Each life is different to everyone else’s and has a completely different goal and journey to be had. As a gift it is for us to open and enjoy that gift. It is not for anyone else to open that gift and manage it for us. The lessons are ours, everything in that gift of life is for us and no one else – because everyone has their own of course. It is both wrong to take over managing others’ lives as it is to give our life over to being managed by another. That totally contradicts what the gift of life is all about. Like others, Joner, you’ll wake up one day and wonder where all the years went and what has happened and why everything is the way it is. Because one day your intuition and instinct will break through and you will realise you have wasted so many years and missed out on the things you should have done or missed out on noticing. You think I’m deluded, and I am perfectly okay with that. But there are many who have spoken and behaved just like you have here, and who were staunchly defensive of RealLove just like you are. However, once they did wake up they were in shock and disbelief at how trapped and brainwashed they had become and how the ideology, that you speak so highly of right now, took over from gut instincts and intuition. It’s one of those things that you can only truly see and believe when you step out of it and look in objectively because while you are subjectively involved you cannot see anything else. So you have done your RealLove duty and supported the ongoing deceptive spread of tripe you call wonderful. That’s because you are deeply held within it all. It isn’t until you get some books on cults – big one’s over 700 pages each – armed with a pen to underline and write in the margins how RealLove matches what is written that you will realise what it is you have got yourself into, and what it is you are deceptively drawing other unsuspecting people into by your recommendations. Until you have the courage to do that then you are just a subjective cult adherent who is brainwashed and believing the lies of said cult. And yes, you might say that you chose to do this by yourself. I hear the words “we get to choose”. They are very famous words used by many, many cults to make people believe that they are indeed making all their own choices when in fact they are not. You will get it one day, you will wake up and as you’ve already been held in this cult for such a long time it’s going to be an awful fall for you.
Finally, RealLoveUK closed down because it wasn’t growing enough and it got too much for Pete and Nikki to manage – all those highly dependent adult babies relying in calls and sessions was just too much. Greg loves it, but they didn’t quite get that this was what it would all lead to. They charged, and still do, very extortionate prices for what they do – and of course none of it is as properly trained helping professionals. They were so overwhelmed with adult babies that not long before closing it down, in a desperate attempt to make it work they promoted a number of people to the position of ‘Wise Person’ in order to take on some of the pressure of so much neediness. But then the big shocker was Greg’s new direction of naked holding of which both Kathryn and Kimberly embraced. Vulnerable women were uncomfortable and freaked out by the need for this to be done, and men getting erections and feeling uncomfortable just led Pete, and ex Police Officer, to shit himself. Kathryn and Kimberly were just following Greg’s new directions of which Pete and Nikki were unaware of to begin with. This, some presume, was the breaking point for closing it all down. And when it did close down there were two factions – those who steered towards following Greg and those steered towards following Pete and Nikki – and much disagreement on what should or should not happen next. As can be seen by what Wiseowl has shared it’s clear that all they did was cut down the intensity of the dependence and addiction levels to a more manageable level but done under a new name, a new guise, but using the same RL principles, ideologies and reliance on Pete and Nikki, or Kathryn, or Ben, or Tara, or Kimberly to run peoples’ lives and make their decisions for them. Just like you, Joner. 9 years and going of reliance and dependence on these people. THAT is not genuine professional helping in any way you look at it.
Finally, I forgot to add to this particular message that the helping professions DO NOT under ANY circumstances refer or talk people into joining a religion as part of their therapy. Absolutely out of the question and against all principles. This is what RealLove does in two very distinct ways. Firstly and foremost it is promoting Mormonism - it does this both outwardly and especially to those who committed to the program (almost like a constant reminder as to why have they not joined yet) and secondly it does this in a very subtle way too - through the RealLove materials and slowly and deceptively promoting Mormonic ideology so that you gradually believe it all, not realising. Then at a later stage it is inevitable that you should join them as you are a virtual believer anyway. Greg Baer has been overheard, and was NOT being secretive about it, when he has been clearly heard on several occasions stating that he only created RealLove to get more people into religion, most preferably Mormonism. Given the amount of pressure that is put on some people you can clearly see this aspect at work. While with others who are not very accepting of organised religion they back off and tone it down.
Genuine people-centred professional helping steers the patient/client into making their own realisations and NOT in telling them what they should or should not believe or do (except rarely where a formal intervention is required in cases of self harm, or a life and death situation). People are gently taken through and guided towards their own healing and gradually find their own freedom with assistance, in their own time. RealLove is nothing like this at all. Nothing. They focus on 'deconstructing the ego' and this is something that NO professional helping therapist would do. In fact this would only be done in extreme cases by a psychiatrist. This is an unhealthy and non beneficial act.
Those in the helping professions work on the concept of self-love first and foremost. This involves knowing self, respecting self, trusting self, liking self and believing in self. RealLove does NOT believe in doing this at all. In fact they don't condone this concept and express that it is a fallacy.
This whole destructive cult and all its offshoots are disturbing and alarming at what they are doing and how they are let loose on the general public to keep going on with this destructive rubbish under the guise of helping people. Roll on when governments can stop this from happening now and in the future. However, for now, all people can do is educate and make people aware of the pitfalls and what to look for. In regards this organisation, don't be fooled by the glitzy website, the fact Greg Baer now calls himself a 'motivational speaker', or that it states it is coaching and therapy, or that its goal is to create more love in peoples lives, or that it heals people (there are none), or that its methods work (unless you're a leaver and survivor who has sought genuine therapy, everyone who fully committed is still stuck and no further advanced in their healing despite believing they are), or that it calls itself a charity, or that there is no geographical commune, or that Baer publishes books and does videos. Balderdash. The damage this organisation has done as an entity and now spreading out in its various offshoots is disgusting and vile.