Many thanks Gloria, your a good soul! :)

While your info helps make sense of everything and eases confusion. I'm still stuck with the absence and pain of losing what would've been my wife in a matter of minutes.

It's like I'm grieving the fact she used me/wasn't real for so long, grieving the loss of her and love, grieving loss of relationship and grieving all the negative things she said about me that brought up past triggers all at the same time. While she walked away clean and free, showed 0 emotion or remorse or sadness and left me abandoned cold with no closure. She spawned this choices thing randomly one day late in our relationship,2 weeks later she returns and I never existed to her it seems; erased everything about me in days.

Maybe bc I'm curious by nature, but how can attendees lose sight of the good in their lives so quickly? Are these seminars and trainers THAT good/convincing?

I guess I would think if I mentioned to friends or family I was going to this type of thing, they'd be the first to pull me away or make me realize what's going on. Guess that's something I need to work on personally.

I can't get over how used I feel or still pains me to think all those good tinder moments with my ex were fake/a big con. I bet if I agreed to Choices she'd still be with me.

Every tactic or teaching I've learned they used at Choices, she indirectly applied them to me which caused me to go back to being depressed when at the time we met, I've never been better in life. I feel more stupidity and self shame for not being a stronger person to myself about this, I was compromising for (one-sided) love.

I know I can't change who she is,and with her narcissistic tendencies it escalated to ugly, but as a forever optimist and loyalist to those I get close to,I want more than anything for her to be her own self, unique personality and live a long healthy life without using an lgat seminar.

thank you again for your help and support. it's good to know I'm not alone in this sad situation unfortunately.

his website explains my relationship a lot better than i could

[outofthefog.website]

Sportsguy,

I'm sorry you're in pain. You are in the company of many. My experience is also with LEC, but sounds like it would also apply to other LGATS.

To answer your question about narcisism, and I also suspect sociopathy ~ yes, LEC, changes people's character for the worse. The only loyalty I saw in my "friends" after the ILP was to LE.

They believe that they are better or at a "higher level," but I think what they are experiencing is a freedom from any sense of responsibility, (though the word "accountability" is ubiquitous throughout the whole LE culture). This includes freedom from any responsibility for the consequences of their actions to friends, family, spouses ~ you name it.

There IS a certain sense of "freedom," in not having to think for yourself, (akin to the "freedom" some demented person may feel if they should decide to forego their toilet training).

This would be especially true if you consider all of the convoluted reasoning they use ~ it's exhausting.  It's so much easier to just follow orders, and to assume that the person giving the orders must be right than it is to argue with them.

After about 18 months in the program, I think I finally "popped." I was suddenly giggling hysterically, and felt as though someone could have sucked me down a drain without a fight.

I felt free of EVERYTHING, especially free of all responsibility or the need to make decisions, but also felt that what I had experienced was the breaking of my will, (or, as someone suggested, my conscience). I was simultaneously giggling and furious. On the one hand, I felt "liberated," and on the other hand, I felt so incredibly violated. The degree to which they had stuck their noses into my personal life to accomplish this was grotesque.

This anger bordered on rage. I resolved to stay away from anyone associated with LE until I had recovered. I did not answer phones calls from these "friends" for a few days. I had my ex-boyfriend come over and stay with me for the weekend,  and took a meditation class from a friend. I trusted these people.   Both were very wary of LE, and had never taken any of their classes.
I felt very fragile.
It was shortly after this when I left.

* I should have added the qualifier, "In my humble opinion." :-}

kdag,

Thanks for sharing this insight into Landmark.

I had a chill reading it because I remembered someone coming up and whispering in my ear that I make a great introduction leader. [The ilp programme you referred to.] At that moment, I was flattered. But luckily I didn't take it too seriously.

And in hindsight, reading your account kdag, I again recognise my lucky escape. And I know why they chose me too because I am trustworthy and people do believe me. So if I hadn't realised how fake it all was when I did (during the 3rd section SELP - can't remember what this stands for for those who don't know), so if I hadn't been freaked out during this phase, I might have gone on to do this. And I would imagine that do have discovered how I was conning people by becoming an ilp leader at this point would have seriously damaged my mental state. I was very shaken by it by what I did but I'm fine now.

These are powerful tools that they use. Don't be fooled by those that say otherwise and avoid all LGATS.

Friends, just in case this is useful, here is something about books that
Werner Erhard may have studied.

You may be able to identify the source of some 'Landmarkianisms'.

[forum.culteducation.com]

@Gloria,

SELP =Self-Expression and Leadership Program. I wasn't in it, but knew people who were. I'm glad you got out when you did.

They kept trying to get me into the ILP as well. I told them I wasn't ILP material, and they argued that I was a "perfect candidate."

I had two former friends who were in the ILP. It took up almost every moment of their lives. They would go away for a week or so at a time for training, couldn't talk about it, and it seemingly turned them into completely different people. They had no empathy, and a person who I once believed trustworthy began lying and gaslighting.

Here's a little gem:

"No” is a word that must never be negotiated, because the person who chooses not to hear it is trying to control you."
~ Gavin de Becker, "The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence"

Although Gavin De Becker does not deal with cults, as far as I know, the information in his writings can applied to any situation in which one has some unexplained discomfort around the person with whom they are dealing.

One of my favorite points that he makes is that we have thousands of little pieces of information entering our awareness at any given moment, though we can only focus on 2 or 3.
I suspect that LE is well aware of this, and uses it liberally, thus the room environment mentioned by corboy.

The main point of the book is this:
if you sense that there is something wrong, there probably is.

You got that right.

Here's a warning: some slick types can turn our No into a Yes by teasing us
and joking with us until we laugh.

Once we laugh, it is much more difficult to continue to say no.

So...here is the take home lesson:

If you say no and the other person/s start teasing you and trying to get you to
laugh -- GET AWAY.

Am sorry to say that I learned this the hard way. Laughter is a sneaky shit
way to dilute and disrupt boundaries and resistance.

I've started a new discussion thread about uses of laughter. If anyone
who has been processed through an LGAT has observed anything special
about uses of laughter, please feel free to contribute.

[forum.culteducation.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2016 02:07AM by corboy.

First page of discussions about LGAT room setup here:

[forum.culteducation.com]

Another page, containing an extensive quotation from an article
which described an analysed the Landmark room set up - something
used now by other LGATs.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Trolls rapidly appeared at the end of the first page of this room environment
discussion. Which shows how important the topic was -- and is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2016 07:59AM by corboy.