I am trying to assess the experience of victims of LGAT's, concerned family members, concerned colleagues, or individuals who have general concerns about psychological, or other abuse associated with this 'training', in bringing their issues to:

1) mental health professionals
2) regulatory bodies, (mental health)
3) legal professionals
4) employee advocacy bodies (independent, or internal HR, or ombudsman)
5) anti-cult groups
6) academic review boards
6) law enforcement

Feel free to contact me by private message. All stories will be kept confidential.

Thank you for your support!

Bakkagirl

My son has attended his 3rd trip to San Diego to attend Ascension Leadership Academy. I am feeling very nervous and concerned as I see him change and seem to be hounding us, his family to now come along and go to the leadership training. I am researching this and I am not liking what all I am reading about ALA.

What steps can I take to help my son realize that the so called wonderful things he is learning are for him to improve on his life and not to impose on others. I have shared with him that I am glad he has found ways to improve his life and that if he just focuses on his life then others will see his improvements and then ask him about the good changes they see him living out in his life and then that will seem more appropriate for him to share his experiences.
I feel like they are pressuring him to get recruits so they can get more money.

Help a mother out!!

Dear Jkall,

It would seem that there is a small army of mothers out there with your same concern.

My query above is directed at people who have approached various resources for help with concerns about LGATs. I have raised this question based on my own experience of attempting to 'get help' from folks in psychological services, legal services, citizen action groups, and/or to just elevate awareness in my field regarding the dangers of LGAT.

My concern has been prompted not by my own experience of an LGAT but rather the very negative effects I have observed in colleagues; and these were people who had no idea what they were walking into. FYI, with these people, I saw the same zealousness to convert that you are reporting in your son's behavior.

My sense at this time is that it is difficult to DO SOMETHING ABOUT LGATS because the harm caused by them is diffuse, and, frankly, nobody seems to be tracking expressions of concern.

Bakkagirl

Actually I think there are a lot of parallels with LGATs and domestic abuse.

The way participants are often treated in these seminars, alternating between psychological abuse and love bombing, it's a bit like someone telling their wife they love her and can't live without her right after giving her a black eye or calling her a "worthless whore" or something (in LGATs you can substitute "you're an asshole").

But violence is most likely just the tip of the iceberg of domestic abuse. I'm sure there are countless more relationships where physical violence is not a factor but nevertheless there is a strong psychological imprisonment/enslavement. I would say taking action against these types of relationships is equally as difficult to achieve as dealing with LGATs.

For example why do people repeatedly go back to abusive partners after leaving them? Perhaps there is a similar psychology in people who are addicted to LGATs and and their advanced courses.

The problem with LGATs is how sugar coated they can be. Especially the most widely known one with its veils of corporate training, personal development and no end of astroturfing testimonials to find on Reddit, Quora and Yahoo.

Your likening of the psychology of domestic abuse and LGAT abuse makes sense to me in so far as:

1) abusive spouses tend to impose new, and tyrannical sets of rules on their victims -- the walking on eggshells thing;
2) abusive spouses gaslight their victims to the extent that they doubt their own feelings and judgment;
3) the psychic glue in both dynamics might be love-bombing, or simply the cessation of abuse

Nasty stuff.

I would observe, though that there is competent HELP out there for people attempting to escape and heal from domestic abuse; whereas refugees from LGATs and their helpers seem more challenged to link cause and effect.

This suggests to me that we are confused about LGAT because elements of it are embedded in many institutional cultures, including the mental health professions.

What I can say is that in my own efforts to raise my concerns about the outcomes I was seeing in participants of LGAT-based professional development programs -- well, I could relate a given scenario to a psychologist and get one response; to an attorney and get an entirely different response.

This differential in response might be germane, too, to domestic abuse situations, in that mental health practitioners would tend, I think, to focus on raising the victim's awareness of the dynamic, whereas legal professionals would be looking to secure that person's safety and to explore existential and justice-related options.

Also, I believe that many mental health professionals have in their own training experienced some of the same activities present in LGATs, and may see some benefit to these, and so it becomes a question of why did this person react negatively to an activity others find beneficial.

I just find HUGE BLIND spots in the field of psychology with regard to issues related to 'consent', and these relate, I think to how personal boundaries are construed.

Bakkagirl

StopLGATs wrote:

"But violence is most likely just the tip of the iceberg of domestic abuse. I'm sure there are countless more relationships where physical violence is not a factor but nevertheless there is a strong psychological imprisonment/enslavement..."

Physical violence is just the tip of the iceberg. I wish that I could cite, but I have read several recent articles stating that psychological abuse is a part of any other form of abuse, be it physical battery, sexual abuse, financial abuse. Psychological abuse underlies all of them.

"For example why do people repeatedly go back to abusive partners after leaving them? Perhaps there is a similar psychology in people who are addicted to LGATs and and their advanced courses."

It's due to trauma bonding. There are tons of articles about that. In my case, the people in my LGAT had access to 12-step and other support group information. By the time i realized what was going on, they were so deep into my personal life that i wanted to know:

What do they want?
What else have they done?

I spent a lot of time trying to assess the damage. All that accomplished was to allow them to do even more of it. I felt as if I had been psychologically impaled. I felt paralyzed. There is no way to repair that kind of damage.

Most people in 12-step groups talk about people in their lives, often family members, who are doing things that drive them nuts. These behaviors often thwart efforts to overcome whatever they are dealing with. For example, husbands sabotage diets, drinking buddies tell the alcoholic that "just one won't hurt." Almost everyone faces people on the outside telling them, "I liked you better when... (you were fat, you were drunk, etc)." People in 12-step and other support groups commiserate on these things.

LGATs recruit from 12-step groups. I met my recruiter in a 12-step group. When you are in the group, what you say is never supposed to leave the room. My Landmark recruiter got to a level in the organization where she was willing to throw me under the bus to advance her position at Landmark. I could tell that she was rationalizing that it was "for my own good." Then, everything that I had told her over the years became fair game, no matter how private, to use as Keth Raniere- style "collateral." She, and a couple of other people could remember a few names that i had mentioned. They knew what my interests were, and the communities I hung out in. They contacted people and blabbed. Although she told me that she was "taking a stand" for me to "get it," the motive was purely malicious. There was nothing to "get." People at Landmark were repeating 12-step group information back at me. It had no potential to do anything but destroy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2019 12:17PM by kdag.

I wrote:

"By the time i realized what was going on, they were so deep into my personal life that I wanted to know:

What do they want?
What else have they done?

I spent a lot of time trying to assess the damage. All that accomplished was to allow them to do even more of it. I felt as if I had been psychologically impaled. I felt paralyzed. There is no way to repair that kind of damage."

I literally could not accept that what had be done to me was real. I would expect to wake up, as if from a bad dream.

I wonder how many people stick around at this point hoping to do some type of "damage control," or even hoping against hope that, if they can figure out what these people want, the damage was either not real, or could somehow be undone/reversed. I think that's what I was hoping. And the cognitive dissonance at this point was so bad, that I truly did not believe my eyes.

I had once trusted the woman who had recruited me. I had been so convinced that she was a good person that I simply could not believe that she could be involved in anything so vile, or would deliberately do me enough harm to irreparably destroy my life.

My expectation of reciprocity also got in the way of any clear assessment of the situation. I had always been kind to her; had gone out of my way to be supportive, and had done her countless personal favors. In the end, it meant nothing.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2019 01:16PM by kdag.

kdag wrote:

"I wonder how many people stick around at this point hoping to do some type of "damage control," or even hoping against hope that, if they can figure out what these people want, the damage was either not real, or could somehow be undone/reversed. I think that's what I was hoping. And the cognitive dissonance at this point was so bad, that I truly did not believe my eyes."


It seems to me that this logic may resemble what goes on in some domestic abuse scenarios, and where we have the abused spouse trying desperately to reconcile the mixed messages.

It also seems to me that in cases of domestic abuse and LGAT abuse, there has been emotional intimacy, or the perception of it, and then a MASSIVE violation of trust. Dealing with this violation of trust may seem more painful to the victim, than severing ties with the abuser(s).

Bakkagirl wrote:

"Dealing with this violation of trust may seem more painful to the victim, than severing ties with the abuser(s)."

And scary, because then one would be waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or wondering what else they've got up their sleeves. It may be bad with the abuser, but how much worse might it get when one leaves? I know i was at that stage. It's an easy place to get stuck. In the case of domestic abuse, that is the most dangerous time. Remember all the people who have been killed, at that point.

I would never assume that there is any limit to how low these people will go, and would never assume physical safety



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2019 05:19PM by kdag.

Pulling out another little thread from what Bakkagirl wrote:

"It seems to me that this logic may resemble what goes on in some domestic abuse scenarios, and where we have the abused spouse trying desperately to reconcile the mixed messages.

It also seems to me that in cases of domestic abuse and LGAT abuse, there has been emotional intimacy, or the perception of it, and then a MASSIVE violation of trust."

Yes, I had considered this person to be a real friend. There had been intimate conversations, in both directions. It is very difficult to reconcile.

There is another factor to consider. Landmark would always push the discrepancy between "what happened," and our perception of it. In their gaslighting, they would mess with your head, and then come up with some seemingly harmless explanation.

Whenever someone was upset about something, we were encouraged to "push through it," and led to believe that things would get better when we got to the other side of it. After having been in the program for a year, I was prone to telling myself, "There must be another, perfectly innocent, explanation."

They train you to think that way!



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2019 06:22PM by kdag.