Maxui, earlier you asked me - is life not like this? In other words, "do as I say, or pay the price".

In places, yes. To the extent that the world operates on this principle of unjust autocratic power, its a crappy place. As people challenge unjust systems and work towards systems with checks and balances and objective systems for defining and enforcing rules eg constitutions, bills or rights etc, the world improves.

I won't 'infer' that lgats are unust authoritarian systems. I say outright, they are. The trainer as an individual may be sweet as pie, but they are running systems that put them in positions of absolute power, where they themselves make and enforce the rules, over people who frankly don't have a clue what's going on or how they are being manipulated.

The trainers like to give "life rules" and "universal rules" - by what authority? If life rules were that obvious and evident then humans wouldn't bother with complex legal systems, we'd just read the sky and agree on everything, or ask the most charismatic guy in town what he thought.

Your arguments so far are quite consistent with the results of the F-Scale - that people who approve of authoritarian structures and tend to be are less likely to be damaged by being subject to them; people who tend to be conformists tend to adapt to a bad system rather than be broken by it.

In real life there are people who rebel or speak up or do not conform, without being broken and these are who Zimbardo calls the heroes. Looks like neither of us fall in that category.

Quote
"Maxui"
[The LGAT I attended, while insisting on strict adherence to the rules of the seminar also insisted on adherence to the rules that govern us as a society.

That was the meaning you took on it. You can't say that is how every participant took it.

I am like you and took what was taught with the same perception. It took my wife choosing to have a whole different way of looking at it and its meaning for her in how she is choosing to be in life to wake me up to this contradiction that exists in these seminars.

I can now look back and see many other examples in other participants who was doing what my wife is doing also.

My focus was so fixed on me from having Klemmer drive me in only looking at me as being at cause, and etc...

Well not all of us in society follow the rules of society and just because I try to do this. Doesn't mean all others do this.

Also it places me in a delusional state that blocks me from hearing how my behavior is affecting another. Which is not their problem always. Many times it is mine, and I need to hear that my behavior is unwelcomed and needs to be changed.

This is what I believe causes much of the harm in participants in LGAT's.

Some will hear this from others. While others choose to not hear this.

Actually I don't think they choose not to hear it. I think they turn of the megaphone that is telling them about it.

Pain, and conflict. Sometimes it is a megaphone that needs to be listened to. Sometimes it is what I need to hear about me that is very negative and at the same time very needed to be heard by me.

Many in LGAT's come in to these seminars with this megaphone turned off in their lives. All the seminars do for them is to seal off access to turning on this megaphone as pleasure, and hedonism is encouraged to be sought by those in attendance.

It is a emotional unhealthy breeding ground where participants are stirred up with such intensity that both good and bad come out of the controlled chao's used to brainwash the participants with encouraging interactions that are both good and bad.

The good gets used to promote the seminars. While the bad are discarded and glossed over as being the participants fault of not getting it.

What a huge SCAM. I punch you in the face, and then tell you that your face hurting is because you did not get it and missed what was needed to get from being hit in face. Besides the bystander who watched me hit you in the face has taken your being hit in face and has created some amazing things in his life. He got it. Why won't you get it?

What a joke... This is never ending in how it can go round, and round, and round...

Maxui wrote:

[/quote]I was interested to find out why when my experience was very positive others found it extremely damaging...

Quote


Maxui, maybe the better question to is here is. Is it a healthy seminar for participants to be involved in that has these opposing results on participants lives?

My Therapist continuously stops me when I want to debate with him why something is so messed up in certian destructive relationships in my life.

He states that you can't understand the reason a trauma bond is so destructive when trying to understand the destruction that is a result of the trauma bond.

I believe the same thing applies here with regards to LGAT's. I believe you will understand this question of yours about LGAT's. The answer can't be found in trying to understand this difference in how it help some, and destroyed others.

It is the whole method, and how the large group dynamics work as a whole.

It produces both good and bad in people. For us to debate that is a never ending argument that is based on each persons perception on it.

The common denominator in all the posts on this website and including your question being asked here is the same.

It is the powerful emotional influence that an LGAT influenced a participant to do in their lives.

Remove the influence? Remove both the good, and bad outcomes.

So would you not believe it... The common denominator is the LGAT in all this stuff.

So here is my question to you. What would all these peoples lives be like if they did not get involved in an LGAT, or a friend or loved one did not get involved in one?

That is the better question? Not trying to understand why it worked for you, and failed for others.

Get your focus off of yourself only, and make it a broader view and look at the bigger picture.

Stop believing the lie that just because the results in your life are so wonderful. That it nullifies the destructive affects in others like me.

I know your not attacking me here. Your just wearing the blinders that your LGAT experience placed on your eyes and heart in looking at others.

Please don't see this as attacking you. I am discovering that I have been focused on your very same question from the other angle.

Why did my LGAT experience fail so miserably and create such destruction in my life?

Which is the same question your asking, and is just a mirrored oposite question.

I have discovered in my venting on this website. This is the wrong question and can't be answered ever.

So, I am learning to ask the right questions to myself in my professional counseling as I am learning to deal with the emotional destruction from my childhood trauma and abuse that I experienced at the hands of my mothers chaos abuse done towards me in my formulative years between birth and 6 years of age.

I have never dealt with the emotional damage in me from this stuff. Which is what led to my being sucked into Klemmer from the emotional pain of not facing this and working through emotional healing in my life.

Klemmer promised a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow emotionally that I ran after with all my might.

Well, I reached the pot of gold only to discover it was empty and full of poison as nothing can be gained when you have unresolved deep emotional wounds and trauma in my life.

I am now more than committed than ever to professional counseling to resolve these past infected emotional wounds in my life.

Klemmer and all the other LGAT's do not take steps to understand this in people.

Thus placing people in various levels of emotional health into a cauldron called seminars and stirs up the pot within peoples psyches.

Some are left unharmed and full of self realizations that help while others are hurt by others in seminars who get there self realizations at others expense emotionally.

Well, sorry for needing to say it like this. I resent being used in an abusive way to help another gain powerful self realizations that help them except their greatness. I am definitely refering to how they influenced me, and how they influenced my soon to be ex-wife.

But, at the same time the destruction between me and my wife is what has openned my eyes to the lies, deception, and delusion of Klemmer and other LGAT's.

Wisdom comes from seeing others mistakes and learning from them and avoiding doing the same.

Maxui it is time to learn from the destruction in others on this website and quit trying to support these LGAT's as good.

It is time to learn from the common destruction that is being shared here on this website.

Rs, these are great posts, thanks. I like the way you think through things.

I agree with you that its the wrong question - who will have a good experience and who will have a bad one. It takes away a person's mental freedom either way, so why even bother? I'd rather be a flawed and faulty person of my own design that is 'me', than a perfect happy love peace joy robot created by a seminar.

But it IS a good question because of faulty thinking around it, like I had. Before I did inquest I heard a story about someone who did inquest then went into a bad depression for about two years. Someone was trying to warn me not to do it. And stupid me - I thought - well obviously that person was depressed to start with, and I'm not, so I'll just go ahead and do Inquest.

Big Mistake.

I've read every article i can lay hands on to do with severe problems after lgat training, like psychosis, panic attacks requiring hospitalizations, suicide, and general nervous breakdown.

In most of them around about 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 out of those who had a severe bad reaction had a pre-exiting problem like history of anxiety / depression, bipolar disorder, childhood abuse or history of LSD use. The rest - NOTHING.

So the point is:

There is no way of knowing who will have a good experience and who will have a bad one. Nobody knows. The risk is there for everyone. If you have a history of psychological problems its a really really bad idea. If you don't have a history of problems its still a really really bad idea.

I only raise other possible explanations to get out of this mindset of 'the person who had a bad experience must have been messed up to start with".

As long as the seminars and the general medical establishment make out that people who are damaged by lgats must have had something wrong to start with, there will not be proper research into lgats and their effects and proper treatment of the victims. Its good to acknowledge that it is damaging for people who are unstable in some way, but there is far more to it. It is actually a deliberately implemented recipe for creating mental health disasters, in all types of people. The processes are too severe, too subject to chaotic elements, like what kind of people end up in each group, and too open to abuse by trainers who have absolute power in the training room and inspire god-like devotion in their followers.

And Rswinters I agee with you, there is also the ethical side where its questionable to take part in something at all, if you know it is damaging people. And thanks for this too, I hadn't thought about it:

Quote Rswinters:

"Some are left unharmed and full of self realizations that help while others are hurt by others in seminars who get there self realizations at others expense emotionally. "

SaneAgian.

I have really been taking myself on since my atomic destruction that erupted in my life from Klemmer philosophy application upon my life.

Unfortunately. I am not able to come from a place of being healthy emotionally going in.

I do have extreme abuse and trauma in my childhood. As my soon to be ex-wife has also in her past.

So it was very hard not to buy into the mindset that Klemmer teaches in their LGAT philosophy of we are each at cause for what happens to us.

I am currently dealing with a situation of needing to have no contact with my mother who lives less than a mile from me. She chose as a 62 year old adult to dominate and control a verbal disagreement with her 44 year old adult son standing in her kitchen while she was standing outside the screen door with a hose in her hand watering plants. She chose to threaten to blast me in face with hose, and then commenced in doing so.

It was a very humiliating, and abusive thing to be done to me by my mother.

I am in no contact with her since July 5th when this was done. I have been working it out in professional counseling and have much to sort out from the past with her.

I will not go into details on this. But I will say that at the beginning of my Klemmer experience. I was in a place where I was having no contact with my mother and trying to sort out the mess in counseling with same therapist.

Along came Klemmer and wowed me. I went into a period of denial of how my mothers behavior was, and chose to ignore things being done by her.

It was a nice bandaid that temporarily anesthetized the emotional pain with my mother. While I did not exist in a relationship with my mother that existed on her terms and her terms only.

I remarried a women from Klemmers influence who was a spitting image of my mother in how she treated me. I agian put on the Klemmer blinders to the truth of things.

I will edit out the details that make it able to be connected to people. But I will post the letter that I just wrote to my mother after 2 months working on it in therapy.

It is a little off subject. But it is where I was at emotionally that turned on the magnetic pull to an LGAT mindset with the promise of relational bliss at the end of the rainbow.

Well, that pot of gold turned into a pot of old decaying bones for me.

And I see for many others on this website.

August 23, 2007
Dear Mom,
I have been working on a response to your voicemail left on July 5th requesting a joint session with my counselor. I will set one in time, and will let you know when we will meet. I would like to be the initiator in this process. I also want to acknowledge that I have received your emails sent on August 10, and 13th.
I have been struggling with how you have failed to accept responsibility for losing control of your anger. As a 62 year old adult, you chose to blast me in the face with water from a hose in an attempt to dominate and control while having a verbal disagreement. I believe you are not even aware how abusive and degrading this behavior was toward me.
This hose situation is indicative of how we have related with each other during our whole life. I can no longer tolerate this dynamic between us. There have been many other disagreements in the past that have left me feeling emotionally blasted in my face. There are too many to count, or even explain to you here. It has been this way for me (in one degree or another) my whole life.
Mom, I am choosing to no longer let our pain-driven dynamic control me. It is emotional territory that I don’t want to walk into anymore. I have full right to claim territory of my own right now… to look at it, to break it down, and to work through it.
I will let you know when I am ready to meet with you. Until then, I would appreciate having some space. Space to me looks like… no emails, no phone calls, and no personal contact or third party contacts for at least 6 months. At the end of this 6 month period you can call my therapist XXXXXX at XXX-XXX-XXXX Extension #X. He has agreed to mediate our reconciliation should you choose that. He will be able to arrange scheduling and a payment schedule at that time.
Your son,
XXX

I posted this letter that just mailed to my mother this week. I live less than a mile from her and have much emotional work to do in my life in the near future.

Yet this has been posted in an attempt to help expose LGAT's for the messed up aspects of how they influence their participants to interact.

There is no in depth evaluation of where people are at emotionally. There is an assumption that participants are not seeing themselves at cause for things in their lives.

In my case as I am sorting out in therapy. I have taken on way to much of being at cause in my life.

I have never had the relational template that most learn from their family dynamics in how to relate emotionally to people.

Can you even imagine how difficult it is to sort through the emotional mess of facing that my mother is abusive, and is unsafe for me to be connected too in my life. Especially while she refuses to take responsibility for how abusive her behavior is towards me as her 44 year old son.

I am going on my third divorce. The second one is the same as the third one thanks to Klemmers influencing me to remarry a women who is a carbon copy of my mother in how she treats me relationally.

But, that is what Klemmer refuses to be accountable with.

I would never have remarried her without Klemmers influence upon me.

I was a mark big time for this LGAT scam. My life was a mess in all areas and when I was told I had the power to create different relationships in my life. I wanted the quick fix in doing so that they promised.

Only problem was the fact that no relationship in my life was remotely a good one. The template was skewed in me from my childhood. I did not even know this.

Until now. This is what I can thank Klemmer for. The destruction in my life from their LGAT philosophy upon my already existing emotional damage that was festering with extreme infection from not being addressed and cleansed out emotionally is what finally made me face it in my life.

So. In that respect. I am finally dealing with cleaning out, and healing this deep emotional wound from extreme trauma and abuse in my life as a child.

SaneAgian. I hope your okay with my posts on here. Maxui posts stirred this up in me. I have been wanting to share it on this website anyway.

I was just debating about how to begin it, and where to place it.

If it was to much venting on my part? I apologize and will try to not vent so much where it is not wanted.

Thanks for your consideration ahead of time on this matter.

Quote
"Rswinters1"

Quote

I have really been taking myself on since my atomic destruction that erupted in my life from Klemmer philosophy application upon my life.

Unfortunately. I am not able to come from a place of being healthy emotionally going in.

I do have extreme abuse and trauma in my childhood. As my soon to be ex-wife has also in her past.

So it was very hard not to buy into the mindset that Klemmer teaches in their LGAT philosophy of we are each at cause for what happens to us.

.

It makes sense that your childhood experience would make you suseptible to that philosophy. Kids tend to think that they were the cause of the abuse they endured. Of course I think the philosophy is also attractive to many people with basically good childhoods.

What a seductive philosophy that we can simply change ourselves and thereby change relationships with abusive people into healthy relationships. I think one of the hardest things in life is to accept that there are many things, and definitely other people, that are not within our control. It would be lovely if we could be "at cause" for everything.

Bravo Mr. Rswinters. You seem to be seeing clearly and taking care of yourself. I'm cheering for you.