A friend has recently become involved with Landmark, and phoned my husband and me last night to tell us all about how wonderful it is. I had never heard of Landmark before, but my skepticism reflex was instantly stimulated because his language reminded me of the way my parents used to talk back in the 70s (and beyond).

I've been doing some research on Landmark and the philosophy is essentially exactly what my parents believe. As far as I know, they were never involved in anything like est or any other LGAT, but the similarities between their views and those put forward by LGAT are striking. They used to say things like, "You are responsible for your own happiness" and "Only you can hold you back" and similar. So I started wondering how pervasive this is, and why some people feel the need to spend so much money on advice they could get from back issues of New Woman magazine?

As a related sidenote, somehow even as a young child I hated this philosophy -- I used to debate with my parents constantly. The last conversation I had with my father on the subject was approximately 2 years ago. He said (in response to me making a "negative" comment about someone): "I never met a man I didn't like". I'd heard this throughout my childhood and it always annoyed me, so I say, "That's just stupid, nt everyone is good. What if someone raped and murdered me and scattered my chopped up body parts over your front lawn, would you like that person too?". He didn't speak to me for the rest of the evening but he's dropped the "I am a saint who loves and understands everyone" act, so we get on much better :)

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Hey Savernake,

Your parents’ philosophies really are like the concepts taught at Large Group Awareness Trainings. They were developed from the same sources. So, you could say that you grew up in a SGAT - Small Group Awareness Training! We all did really . . .

It appears that you disagreed with the philosophy because you were trying to get your needs met as a child and these ‘gems of wisdom’ that your parents picked up in their everyday lives and then used in their interactions with you were not appropriate to the situation. They may have been trying to give you good advice or a new way of looking at situations or they may have used those blurbs to get you to stop bugging them at the moment. I don’t know. You would have to go back and remember what they were trying to communicate and why in various situations.

That conversation you had with your father reminded me of something. I have been reading ‘Releasing The Bonds - Empowering People to Think For Themselves’, by Steven Hassan. It is about how to communicate with people who are in cults (any belief system really), using what he calls the Strategic Interaction Approach, and hopefully they eventually will see how the group has changed their thinking processes and their personality. Last night I was reading about how various groups use ‘thought stopping’ techniques whenever someone questions them about their beliefs.

How this relates to what you said to your father is that he seems to have used his saying ‘I never met a man I didn’t like.’, as a way to stop ‘negative’ comments about basically anyone. The fact that the word NEVER is in the sentence means that this is an example of ‘all or nothing thinking’. He wasn’t used to looking at the good aspects and the bad aspects of people’s behavior. He would just STOP any negative information from entering his consciousness that way, and A: He could pretend to be a ‘saint’ or good guy, and B: He didn’t have to confront anyone about their negative behavior. He just pretended that it didn’t exist! C: This would also STOP people from confronting him on HIS behavior. It’s like saying, ‘Don’t look at that person’s behavior, don’t look at my behavior, don’t look at your behavior . . . Don’t look period. That way we won’t have to deal with anything or change anything.

So, what you said, the example you gave, was something he HAD TO consider because it was such an extreme example. It said basically, ‘So. You wouldn’t care about ME? ME BEING RAPED OR MURDERED? YOU WOULD LIKE THE GUY?

I’m glad it worked and you two are relating better now. You can find more info if you need it in Steven Hassan’s book. It could help you communicate with your friend who has just joined Landmark too. :D

Sylvia

HI Sylvia -- thanks for the book suggestion, that sounds really interesting.

What do you mean by saying we all grew up in a SGAT? (it's just that, when our Landmark friend was trying to pitch it to us, I said, "I grew up with these ideas, they're very common in America" -- and he seemed very surprised. Occasionally I reflect and think perhaps it was mainly my family and not all of America. Truth be told, a major motivation for leaving the US was to get away from this kind of thinking -- when I came to the UK and was surrounded by people who felt free to complain and to dislike other people on occasion and to not think that anyone could achieve absolutely anything if they just put their mind to it, it was such a relief that I decided to emigrate)

As a child I resented it because I hated being told what to think or how I should feel. I hated being forced to try to see the good in absolutely everyone. I felt stifled, not being able to express my doubts or insecurities. I wanted someone to acknowledge that sometimes life is unfair and the cards are stacked against you, that not everyone has a heart of gold if only you dig deep enough. Sure, it's great to tell your kids to try their hardest and to try to understand others and all that, but taken to extremes it's just frustrating.

A very small example: many years ago (when I was 26) I applied to do a medical degree at Oxford. I have a very good academic record and in fact had been offered a scholarship to do a PhD at Cambridge 5 years earlier -- when I applied to Oxford I had a PhD in biomedical engineering and had won all sorts of awards. Anyway, I didn't even get an interview, never mind a place at the college. Fine, fair enough, sometimes these things don't work out. Then there was this big scandal and it was in all the papers, about racism in medical schools in Britain -- there had been an undercover study and one of the things it said was that at Oxford comparing people with the same A level results, you are something like 6 times less likely to be offered a place if you have an ethnic sounding surname than if you have a solid English sounding surname. And at the time, I had an extremely ethnic sounding surname (Armenian and six syllables). So I mention this to my Dad, and immediately he cuts me off with, "You got in at Cambridge, you didn't get in at Oxford, face up to it". It just would have been nice to have a tiny bit of acknowledgement, rather than a blanket denial that racism could have played any part. Even a "That's not necessarily what happened" would have been fine, but the solid gate coming down, as if I was trying to make excuses for myself, just made me angry.

Amazing -- I must still have "issues" in American parlance ;) That happened ten years ago, and it's only a tiny example, but it still annoys me when I think about it.

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What I meant about growing up in a Small Group Awareness Training is that a family is a small group whereas organizations like Landmark work in large groups. The parents are like the seminar leaders and the children are the ‘participants’ who have come to the seminar to learn the parents’ ways of dealing with life. So, since you already learned a lot of the philosophies of LGATs at home when you were growing up you recognized what was happening with your husband’s friend and you were forewarned.

So, it appears that your father hasn’t known how to communicate with you in a way that makes you feel acknowleged and cared about. It’s like he’s speaking another language and it made you feel like he doesn’t love you sometimes. But he does. He just hasn’t learned your language. You might need to teach him some more by saying, ‘You know Dad, I sure love you but when you __________, it makes me feel like you don’t care about me.’ That will give him the opportunity to re-phrase what he is saying and tell you he loves you.

I know that this is a blanket statement but most men don’t communicate their feelings well - unless they are taught to by the women close to them. They aren’t women. They communicate in different ways that aren’t verbal. Men are more ‘buck up and keep going babe’ with each other and with us. They minimize negativity. They love GOOD news. If you would have said, ‘Well Dad I didn’t get into Oxford and I’m really disappointed.’, he would have said something like, ‘Hey daughter dear, I’m sorry to hear that, but you are so intelligent and successful that I know you’ll be successful anyway. Who needs Oxford anyway?’ I think that that is what he was trying to communicate. That he loves you and he knows how intelligent and capable you are. Isn’t it sad that we can speak the same language - English - and still not communicate in a way that leaves us feeling good? Actually we can, it just takes some translation. Then, after he tells you in his own way that he loves you and acknowledges you, you could say, ‘Thanks Dad (for acknowledging me). I know it will all work out, I was just feeling disappointed and angry about it.’

Men also don’t realize that talking (what they consider bitching) is the way that women release negative emotions. To them it just drags them down - and it does. It works better to do this with women because we understand the process better. Although, I must say that we can overdo it sometimes and I have had to limit how much time I spend talking with my friends who do this. It gets my adrenaline up which I have learned can put me in a potentially manic state of mind. I have to just let them talk it out and not give too much advice - which we women don’t want. What we are really doing is clearing out the emotional energy so that we can come up with our own solutions to the problem.

I think British men - and women - do this a lot at the pub . . . but I found when I was in England ten years ago touring around that the ‘pub people’ might be spending too much time drinking and talking and not getting around to changing the bad situations they are discussing. Maybe I’m overly optimistic sometimes - American - and didn’t understand the process. They didn’t seem very happy. I could be wrong. Maybe I just saw the unhappy British people (laugh) because I expected to.

John Gray of ‘Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus’ fame has learned the hard way how to communicate with women but he has become quite good at it and has been teaching men and women how to translate each other’s languages and behaviors for years now. I love his material. He has probably saved a lot of marriages and other relationships from going down the tube.

What I love about the British is their sense of humor. Do you ever watch 'Absolutely Fabulous'? That Jennifer Saunders! She makes fun of everything. She's been around the block baby. She spoofs Buddhist chanting, Scientology, Kabbalah, 'new age retreats'- and she keeps up on every fad that comes by. I just love her.

Good luck with dealing with your husband’s friend. Don't let him bug you. Maybe you could invite him over to watch an Absolutely Fabulous video . . . just an idea.

Sylvia

John Gray is another author and expert with dubious credentials.

[www.culteducation.com]

While it may be true there are gender differences in communication, the mindset is one of avoiding true connection. There is no empathy, no compassion, no praise. Feelings are dismissed and discounted, and to be brought up in a household leaves one second-guessing just about every feeling they have.

In The Forum, the leader explained how we are all just a bunch of cry babies because we wanted our parents to do this and that and when we didn't get it, we made up all these stories about what happened. He explained that parents are only required to provide the basic necessities to survive (food, shelter) up until age 18. How sad that parenting boils down to only to legalities.

You are very insightful Sylvia. Do you work in a psychology-oriented profession?

I'm sure you're spot on with the men-women dialogue thing. I don't even mind the "buck up and keep going" attitude, that's fine -- it's the mind closing/stifling dialogue that irks me. I remember having this conversation with him over a week-long holiday -- my sister had a bit of a breakdown and suddenly unleashed all these frustrations she'd had with him for over 30 years. He was baffled, he just decided that she was crazy and hated him. I tried very hard to explain to him that far from pushing him away, her outburst was actually a way of reaching out to him. I said (paraphrasing) "If she didn't care about you, she wouldn't tell you how she's really been feeling -- we've all had so much pressure to be 'positive' all our lives that she's never dared being honest with you before. She's often told me how this upsets her, and how she wishes she could talk to you like a real person -- and now she's finally done it. Granted, not in the best way possible, but try to see this as an opportunity to get to know each other better and grow closer". But he just couldn't get it. He stopped speaking to her and threatened to walk out on the holiday -- ultimately it was resolved, mainly by her going back to her usual Dad-communciation mode (which is to pretend that everything is great and there are no problems in life).

On the other hand, my mother is just the same. She doesn't want to hear anything that isn't positive from her children. It's not that she's masculine, she does have a typically feminine communication style -- but my feeling has always been that she's been so pumped up with self-help propaganda over the years (probably starting inthe 60s) that she can't tolerate anything that doesn't fit within that mould. I think I may be different because I'm the youngest -- but I always notice my sisters competing in what I call "happiness contests". Whoever is the "happiest" is the best daughter. I never had the stomach for it (maybe being the youngest I wasn't as good an actress as the others and so decided that, since I could never win the happiness contest I just wasn't going to compete. It's not to say that I'm not happy or that I don't have a genuine zest for life, because I do. I just don't think it's appropriate material for a competition.

As for the British, I think they're more even-keel than most Americans I've known, less prone to manias or depression. I agree with you that they spend too much time moaning and not enough time getting on with things though! And in my later years, I am beginning to miss the American "can do" attitude -- the British are sometimes too quick to find reasons why things won't work instead of trying to find ways of overcoming the obstacles. I think what I'd really like is a bit of balance -- optimism balanced with realism. But, given that there are no utopias, I think I'm better suited to life in Britain :)

btw, Ab Fab is brilliant -- it was one of my favourite shows before it ended! Have you ever seen The Fast Show? I really like some of the quirkier serials too, like "At home with the Braithwaites" and "The Riff Raff Element" etc.

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Hey Savernake,

No. I don’t work in psychology. I studied some psychology in college and double majored in Cultural Anthropology and Middle East Studies. I also went to Iran in 1975 on an exchange program. I never graduated though. My depressed phases kept me down too often and I chose to just work, as I have mentioned in another post. Maybe someday I'll finish college and get those degrees. I attended a couple of LGATs in the early 1990’s and staffed on several of them. I also trained and worked as a ropes course facilitator for two years. I was one of the people at the other end of the rope while the people climbed the trees in their full body harnesses and kept them physically safe while they went through the processes. Some were what are called ‘low events’, on or near the ground. Some were ‘high events’ that involved tall trees.

Many LGATs use ropes courses somewhere in their programs. Other facilitators I worked with had been through other LGATs so I got to know some details of programs other than the one I went through. Sometimes therapy programs for adults and teenagers also use ropes courses in their therapy plans. When we worked with them there was always a therapist working with the clients. We were just the stage crew in those situations.

There are different events in ropes courses to show you how you handle working alone, with a partner and with a group. They are outdoor versions of ‘experiential education’. There are many ‘games’ or ‘events’ that have been developed in the experiential education field. Some can be used indoors but some require the outdoors where tall trees or poles are available.

I still love ropes courses. People can have some amazing realizations about themselves during events. The good thing about ropes courses is that they are a stripped down environment where you can see clearly how you operate in your life. There is very little to hide behind or distract yourself with. You live a ropes course day just the way you live your life. However, some people are very vulnerable emotionally and the ropes course can be dangerous that way. The guy I worked for was very good at running his courses. Very professional. But, I’m sure that there are some who aren’t and a ropes course can be abused just like anything else.

I also have had some therapy and am still seeing a prescribing nurse at the local county mental health department. But I must say that the reading I’ve done over the last fifteen years - since my first LGAT - has helped me further process and understand my experiences the most.

My mother sought counselling at various points throughout her life. Sometimes she didn’t tell us kiddos - we were too young to tell that to. But she was always ashamed of it too and it didn’t seem to help her much. Maybe it did in some way. She was a non-talker and at least a little paranoid - meaning she didn’t trust anyone. She did some pop-psychology reading but there wasn’t much available in the 1970’s. She rarely gave me any advice let alone good advice. In fact the only thing I remember her telling me when I was younger was, ‘Never tell people your weaknesses. They’ll only use them against you.’ How’s that for advice that will keep you from getting help? Whew. I took her advice when I was younger, but by my mid-thirties it definitely wasn’t working. My mother had been going through her severe manic-depressed phase for five years, was still drinking, and would call me at 3:00 in the morning, at work, whenever. I won’t go into all the details but that’s when I went to my first LGAT. I was already hypo-manic before I attended that first five-day LGAT and the lack of sleep and other stresses made me more manic.

But anyway, I have read a lot and attended twelve-step groups sometimes when I need it. This summer I got back to the nutrition quest - inspired by my maternal grandmother’s vegetarianism and my poor digestive system. My poor grandma. She didn’t know that we need protein to make our neurotransmitters and stay sane. The vegetarian diet and exercise were great for her body but her brain didn’t last as long as her body did. By the way, her version of an LGAT or retreat was occasional trips to ‘Dr. Jensen’s Health Ranch’ in California. I guess it’s just in my genes.

That’s sad about your sister. It would have been nice if your father would have been able to handle it better at the time. She can work on herself further though if she wants to. Sometimes you just have to get to the point where you accept that the parents probably aren’t going to change and you have to quit banging your head against the wall and save yourself. However! Steven Hassan’s book has made me realize that we can communicate in these situations more subtly rather than blasting people. It does require patience though and time and there are no guarantees of a result. It requires a decision that you will persevere to a point and then reassess the situation. In other words, there are no quick fixes. That’s where the systems developed in the 1960’s and 1970’s went wrong. And they are still around, in one form or another. They are like a computer virus or worm. They just keep showing up under new names.

I haven’t seen ‘The Fast Show’ or ‘The Riff Raff Element’ yet. I have BBC America so maybe we’ll get them someday. They did run ‘At Home With The Braithwaites’ though. Now that is a good show. Definitely quirky. Definitely British. It’s great. I think I will buy ‘Monty Python and The Holy Grail’. It’s a guaranteed laugh attack. A great way to release energy in a fun way.

Sylvia
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If you read the article by Karla McKlaren mentioned on this thread, it may ring some bells. She's a former New Age healer and teacher who eventually left the entire profession.

[board.culteducation.com]

McKlaren is convinced that there's an entire New Age culture that stifles critical thinking, and in which you're forbidden to disapprove or have misgivings about anything or anyone. So its adherants really have no way to 1) acknowledge the inevitable pain of life and 2) have no way to discern when something could be harmful or someone trying to exploit them

corboy, that was a great article. I think I must've been a skeptic in a New Age household. This line particularly rang bells for me: "I know that my culture's sloppy and disrespectful use of science is something that angers and confuses many people in the skeptical community" -- I read that and thought, yes!!! That [i:b9268d56b9]has[/i:b9268d56b9] angered me (eg, my mother always used to argue for the existence of an immortal soul by parroting the phrase, "energy is neither created nor destroyed, and the soul is pure energy so it can't be destroyed" -- a phrase that was guaranteed to push all my buttons simultaneously -- but we won't go there just now :) )

Sylvia -- you've had a really interesting life! I'm surprised you say that self-help was scant in the 70s -- to me it seemed that it was everywhere, inescapable. But then I guess the US is a big country, I suppose there could have been regional differences.

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Hey Hope,

Thanks for the info on John Gray’s lack of credentials. I’m not terribly surprised. It seems to be an epidemic among new age authors. Isn’t there some similar problem with Deepak Chopra? I understand that he uses ghost writers too.

It’s difficult to separate the information from the author. What we know about an author’s life and credentials really colors how we perceive what they are saying. Some writer’s styles make what they are saying so hard to understand. As I did with Steven Hassan’s book sometimes I have to insert or change terminology while I’m reading a book so that it applies to my situation and I can use it. That’s why I’m reading the book after all - for helpful information.

What I meant about liking John Gray’s material is that after at least one divorce - I can’t remember his ex-wife’s name but she is a brunette who also writes relatinship books! - he started learning from his mistakes. He is doing what he can to help couples communicate with each other and stay together - and enjoy their marriages instead of turning them into war zones which is what has happened in the United States, judging from the 60 percent divorce statistic. He is teaching people to appreciate each other’s ways by understanding them better. Some people are attached to the battle mode though. They grew up with battling parents and so they think that it is normal and proper - and downright RIGHT to fight. Nothing gets resolved and the children just become the next generation of damaged, hurt adults who go looking for the perfect mate to fight with. They learned that fight equals love.

I saw a John Gray workshop on ‘The Wisdom Channel’ on TV recently. He was talking about how he had learned to actually meet his young daughter’s emotional needs by actually hugging her and listening to her as she expressed her feelings to him and cried. Since he did this she felt validated and relieved and secure that he was there for her. No parent is perfect, but he’s doing it - unless he’s lying about that. However, even if he is lying, some poor schmuck in the audience might give it a try with his daughter or son - just because John Gray, a successful author told about how he did it and how good it was for his daughter. In other words, people who grow up in dysfunctional families need a new example of how to behave effectively as a parent. They learn from whomever they trust to be a good example, and whoever provides ‘proofs’ and personal examples of what they have done. It’s like, ‘See? I did this and it was great for me and my daughter. Maybe it will be good for you too.’

So, on the scale of teachers out there I think John Gray is trying to do a service for people, and I’d give him an 8 out of ten at this point. He may be a liar about his credentials, but compared to say Jack Rosenberg (Werner Ehrhart) I think he’s doing pretty well. I haven’t seen anything dangerous about his recommendations yet. Whether he really takes his own advice only time will tell. Maybe his daughter will write a tell-all book someday.

I was reading the customer reviews of his book, ‘How To Get What You Want, and Want What You Have’ on Amazon dot com today. It is the book in which he discusses his concept of ‘love tanks’. It is his way of describing the various emotional developmental stages we all go through growing up. If we don’t get our needs met in each time period we try to fill in the empty tanks later in inappropriate ways for our age. The material is not new. He just describes it in his own way. I saw it the first time on the Oprah show. He also talks about how people cover one emotion with another. This is generalizing again. Women go for sadness and crying before anger, because it’s acceptable - and it works for them. Men go for anger first to avoid crying and appearing weak.

As the years have gone by since the feminist movement began more women are using anger first - and verbally, if not physically, beating the crap out of their husbands, boyfriends and children on a regular basis. Men, especially new agey or spiritual men started using passivity more. They bought the idea that women want sensitive, nurturing, compliant men so they adjusted their behavior - yes, to get sex and closeness. They meditate and surround themselves in white light instead of expressing anger or sadness. In other words they started ‘numbing out’ in the new, allegedly acceptable way. New agey women think that they want that new agey man, but eventually they get an ‘ick’ feeling about them. They intuitively know that they want a man who will protect them in dangerous situations and keep a steady job to support the family, not Mr. White Light of the heart chakra, and they drop the guy - IF they listen to their instincts.

Justin Sterling, whatever his real name is, has used this fact to create his men’s weekends - unfortunately . . . He’s over-doing it and getting in his punches at women and turning them into evil ‘bitches’ in the way he uses them during the weekend. Of course it is staged that way to goad the men into getting back to their tougher style and they get to release some anger about women that they have saved up, but somehow it just seems to make it worse. I don’t know . . . there’s something very wrong there. Do the men deal with their ‘father issues’? Or is it a bad mommy versus idealized, good daddy thing?

But, anyway, the reviews on that John Gray book are mixed. Most had complaints about the style but not the information. One or two (Christian) people complained that he had brought ‘God’ into the picture, whereas he had not done that in his previous books. Amazing. So, hey, people can always find something to complain about. I just wonder . . . why did these Christians have a problem with him bringing up God? My nose tells me that THEY have a problem there. He picked a scab off of a cut in their minds, and exposed an emotion that they don’t want feel, so . . . out pops the anger. But, since they aren’t (probably) in therapy with a good therapist who knows how to work with that and move them into working out the buried emotions instead of away from them, they are stuck writing a negative review on Amazon dot com - and they are still angry.

I know what you mean about the no empathy, no compassion, no praise mindset. I was so essentially ignored by my mother, father, and step-father it was incredible. They were so into the alcohol cult that we kids didn’t get much emotional connection at all. We got fed and clothed, but my mother, as she finally told me after a major stroke, had decided in her mind that we were all ‘perfect’. I know that this is the opposite of what most kids get - the ‘you are bad’ message - but we didn’t feel perfect, or loved, just ignored and abandoned = unsafe. So, we just went numb and picked up various addictions along the way to help us feel ‘safe’.

I didn’t realize how numb (vulnerable and scared really) I was until after my step-father died eleven years ago. I was an emotional wreck so I went to my first ACOA meeting. They passed out packets of information. On the front page were little faces that showed different emotions - like emoticons. They talked about how adult children of dysfunctional parents don’t know which emotion they are having when they have it - IF they have it - because we really don’t have practice in a wide emotional range, and we’re actually phobic about what should be perceived as normal emotions. We get scared about any emotion that we haven’t experienced for such a long time. I went to a few meetings and little did I know that in just a few months I would experience my first major manic episode. It wasn’t a fun type either. I bounced back and forth between rages and crying for six months. It was scary but good because I got to grieve all of the stuff I didn’t have a chance to when I was young. It really cleared out my lungs too. But finally I got tired of it and made a conscious decision to stop both the rages and the crying. I released a lot of anger and felt a lot of sadness, but it was wearing me out. I faded into a moderate depression which I was used to.

That Forum crap, whew. Is that the old ‘punishing parent’ crap or what. It’s no wonder that Jack became a salesman. He was probably always trying to ‘sell’ himself to his parents. Let’s put those words back into Jack Rosenberg’s mother’s or father’s mouth - where they probably originated:

‘Jack, son, you are such a crybaby! You want me to do this and that and you just don’t get it! You keep making up these stories in your mind about me. I’m only required to provide you food and shelter until you turn 18. Then, you are on your own sonny boy! So shut up and be grateful for what you have. You aren’t going to get any love out of me no matter how hard you try. Give it up.’

And so Jack did - and he so generously gave his cold, punishing parents to the whole world, in the form of EST and Forum leaders! And the people in Landmarkland loved their Forum leaders . . . well, most of them anyway. A few escaped Landmarkland. It’s magic . . .

I’m glad you went after them and got your money refunded Hope. It seems like that was your way of doing the forum. I would have loved to see you up on stage on graduation night with the forum leader introducing you saying, ‘Hey people! Here’s Hope! She had the unmitigated gaul (courage) to try to get a full refund out of us! And she did! Isn’t she amazing?!’ Then the crowd stands up and applauds for several minutes as you curtsy and bow, and blow kisses. You wave a fond good-bye and leave the building, having not enrolled one new customer for the bastards.

How’s that for fun? I for one applaud you.

Sylvia

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