It sure looks like Weener The Magnificent was suffering from a dual condition, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (in spades) and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (also in spades).... anyone who wants a mighty fine handbook to review these conditions should get a copy of:

Emotional Vampires : Dealing With People Who Drain You Dry by Albert J. Bernstein. EV has the advantage of being EASILY understood by the lay reader, yet professionally and thoroughly written. Actually, I would like to see every kid in senior year in high school memorize this text before going out into life. With each syndrome you'll find a checklist at the end of the chapter which breaks out the significant traits of that syndrome.

Given what I had seen and done in EST, the organization at the time scored very high on the Narcissistic, Obsessive Compulsive, and Paranoid
traits.... did they see it that way ? Naaaah, they were Impeccable, gone so past those trivial "assessments" (ah, "assessments", another Fernando Flores-ism..... that's not ME you're talking about, that's only your ASSESSMENT ! How BOORISH of U !... but thanx 4 sharing !)....

Quote
sonnie_dee

Quote

She was so excited about being the forum leader's "personal assistant" as she calls it. To me, it sounded like personal slavery. A corporation that makes that much money, and has that many people paying $400 for three and a half days of the seminar, and they can't afford to hire him a driver or rent him a car? Suuuure...

Its disgusting that they use volunteers for this considering the price people pay to do the courses. Remember its only $400 for the forum, the advanced course is $900-$1000 and the communication courses are similar.

The course leader assistant does more then drive the leader to and from the programme, they are there to make the coffee or tea, prepare meals exactly how the leader wants, to do odd jobs like collect laundry, and people rush to do this job which is little more then as said "slavery"

I know she was doing much more than that, but that was the one thing that she was obsessing over. She asked if she could borrow my vacuum cleaner because she wanted to make her car as clean as possible for him. Whenever I've gotten in the car, I've had to move week-old leftovers, wrappers, and no less than 3 beverage containers (I very rarely let her drive me anywhere :wink: ) Her outlook on doing the job, copied and pasted from her email (this was from a few months ago):
"I have a really long weekend ahead of me. I'm gonna be the personal assistant to the Landmark Forum leader this weekend starting tomorrow at 6pm, I'll be lucky if I even get a chance to check my e-mail once a day. I think I already told you what my schedule is gonna be like. I'll even be responsible for picking him up at his hotel each morning and making sure he gets all his meals on time, etc. - yeppers full blown personal assistant. And I'm so looking forward to it. I had 2 fone calls tonight (one was the ucsb person) and the other was someone from Landmark who was telling me the details of what I would be doing this weekend, and I am quite excited about it and really looking forward to working so closely with a Forum leader."

There's just so much unhealthiness packed into the smallest things she says these days. I just wish there were something I could do to start deprogramming her!

Quote

Dear Diary, I am quite excited about it and really looking forward to working so closely with a Forum leader.

Now doesn't this sound just like a teenage crush ? I think in psychoanalysis this is called "transference"... happens a lot when you age regress somebody.

Since your probably dealing with a partner who has been hypnotically age regressed, your task will be, as the anthropologist Charles Case put it, to demonstrate the qualities of a mature, developed, coherent mind. Case said that a healthy mind has athleticism... it has the qualities of stamina, strength, and flexibility.

She's been, or is being programmed to resist a frontal attack on her new belief system.

To borrow their jargon, "show up as the possibility of being otherwise", avoid petty emotion, enlarge your thinking (start reading 2 or 3 books about subjects that she wouldn't expect), try listening to music that challenges you, learn to cook a few new things and do an impressive job of it... in other words... start learning to surprise yourself with your own capacity for growth.... the narrower she gets, the larger you get... get into an improv comedy class if there's one available (a good comedic workout is most therapeutic) or get good comedy DVDs... which helps see the humor and absurdity in life, go get a long massage, do yoga... anything BUT implode, sulk, drink and get moody, lash out and confirm all the crap they're setting her up to believe about your relationship...

She's not a partner; she's just a friend. Her last boyfriend (of a whole month) couldn't take her personality, so they split.
As for the age thing, she already knows she doesn't act her age. Never has. It's something she's actually proud of. She's going to be 28 (or is it 27?) this month, and she more often than not acts like a 13 year old girl in junior high.
She called last night, very excited about going to dinner with me tonight. She wants to tell me about her weekend. Apparently, she spent all of yesterday running errands!!! Can you imagine the fun? Sadly, I don't think I have the energy to deal with her bs tonight.

Quote
joe6
This is one of the many bad effects EST/LE has had on people, which goes to my question on how to talk to my friend who has been involved since the Werner days.
He thinks of himself as an ethical "good person". So how does someone who's been involved for so long ever come around to seeing Landmark for what it really is,
because you would have to think about all the people that you helped Landmark abuse, which may be too much for my friend's "nice guy" brain. How does someone get from here to there in realizing what they've helped do to people?

I have learned you can't talk to them. I agree with nutrino, that if you're going to do anything at all, you have to show them.

Their former defense mechanisms are dismantled in the Forum, and they are systematically programmed with new LEC-friendly defenses. Things are switched now, however, and the abuser is on the inside, protected against reason and critical thinking. Landmark's first commandment, "Give up being right, even when you know you are" comes from the primal sin of making someone wrong.

From what I have seen in my ex-gf, that is the core of the defense. In the last conversation we had before we called it quits, I asked her if she was open to the possibility she had been manipulated, that she was wrong. I explained that two possibilities exist about my view of Landmark. I could be right, and it is manipulative, or I could be wrong. I said I viewed the probability of my being wrong was infinitesimally small, but there was a chance. She would not even acknowledge that there was a possibility that she was wrong. Not just zero probability; that possibility did not even exist. She could not say: I COULD BE WRONG. How narcissitic, infantile-omniscient is that? They get to define which possibilities exist and which do not. How convenient is that? For all their talk of giving up being right, being right and only right (and that you are wrong and only wrong) is their defense. You cannot talk to someone who believes that they are infallible.

The histoical stories (I say it that way because of LEC's damnable hijacking of useful words) people have shared here seem to indicate that one of the first steps in getting out is realizing that they may be wrong about their LGAT, or that they have been lied to/manipulated. Once truly open to that, then they can start to hear.

Add in the weight of the consequence of being wrong -- that you have harmed others -- and the retreat into "I have to be right" surely must get deeper. People have committed suicide for less.

-lightwolf

Quote
nutrino
To borrow their jargon, "show up as the possibility of being otherwise", avoid petty emotion, enlarge your thinking (start reading 2 or 3 books about subjects that she wouldn't expect), try listening to music that challenges you, learn to cook a few new things and do an impressive job of it... in other words... start learning to surprise yourself with your own capacity for growth.... the narrower she gets, the larger you get... get into an improv comedy class if there's one available (a good comedic workout is most therapeutic) or get good comedy DVDs... which helps see the humor and absurdity in life, go get a long massage, do yoga... anything BUT implode, sulk, drink and get moody, lash out and confirm all the crap they're setting her up to believe about your relationship...

Forgot to address this-- I have tried getting her involved in other things. I've been taking extension courses from the university, and I'm taking cooking classes, and reading well outside of my course curriculum. I've tried getting her to take cooking classes with me, or do something outside of Landmark (or their homework/ideas/improvement), and she'll just tell me that she doesn't have the time to do any of it, and that she isn't interested in anything I'm doing anyways. She'll tell me that before she even really knows what I'm suggesting sometimes.

Quote

she'll just tell me that she doesn't have the time to do any of it, and that she isn't interested in anything I'm doing anyways. She'll tell me that before she even really knows what I'm suggesting sometimes.

Well, for God's sake, don't get caught up in a rescue drama/savior complex... there are men who go to strip clubs and try and "save" the girls... this type is so familiar to the strippers that they are considered one of the occupational hazards of that business...

If this chicko is dead set on discovering her inner embryo or whatever, move on, it can't function as a friendship any more... Why does she even call you up and drag your brain through this rigamarole if you have no common ground ? I'd tell her to sod off and find other members of her species more suited to her new identity.

Quote
nutrino
To borrow their jargon, "show up as the possibility of being otherwise", avoid petty emotion, enlarge your thinking (start reading 2 or 3 books about subjects that she wouldn't expect), try listening to music that challenges you, learn to cook a few new things and do an impressive job of it... in other words... start learning to surprise yourself with your own capacity for growth.... the narrower she gets, the larger you get... get into an improv comedy class if there's one available (a good comedic workout is most therapeutic) or get good comedy DVDs... which helps see the humor and absurdity in life, go get a long massage, do yoga... anything BUT implode, sulk, drink and get moody, lash out and confirm all the crap they're setting her up to believe about your relationship...

In my experience with my sister, even actions are useless. The programming in LGATs is such that there really is only one correct perspective ([i:3a164ca513]theirs[/i:3a164ca513]) and it literally blinds the programmed to anything that does not correlate with their programming. They "interpret" everything to support what they want to believe. They can easily twist your actions/your words such that the reality in front of them is not the reality they see. Because if the reality they see contradicts or threatens the reality the LGAT installed, they have all the tools they need to DENY what they are plainly seeing.

Quote
lightwolf
She would not even acknowledge that there was a possibility that she was wrong. Not just zero probability; that possibility did not even exist. She could not say: I COULD BE WRONG. How narcissitic, infantile-omniscient is that? They get to define which possibilities exist and which do not. How convenient is that? For all their talk of giving up being right, being right and only right (and that you are wrong and only wrong) is their defense. You cannot talk to someone who believes that they are infallible.

This speaks to the IMpossibility of an LGAT-contaminated mind seeing any validity or reality to anything that exists outside the programming, and if something[i:1f8665c67c] threatens [/i:1f8665c67c]the programming, watch out! I agree, you cannot talk to someone who believes they are infallible.

Quote
skeptic
This speaks to the IMpossibility . . .

That's a great way to say it skeptic! It's absolutely true.


-lightwolf