It is worth asking whether physical exhaustion plays an important role in determining when people leave or fall out of abusive situations.

People's physical constitutions differ tremendously. Some people thrive on a high adrenaline lifestyle (think of border collies), others dislike high adrenaline, rapidly becoming exhausted (think of basset hounds, slow, steady, get the job done, but they get very unhappy when nagged and yelled at).

People who thrive on high adrenalin and a hectic, high demand life style may become leaders and recruiters in abusive groups, and be held up as examples to stimulate and shame quieter people to keep overworking in a way that is non sustainable and will wear these quieter people out.

It may be that when we over-tax our bodies, trying to obey a high demand group we may reach a point where our neuro-transmitters become so depleted that we gradually lose the ability to feel hope, enthusiasm (emotions that are massaged and exploited by indoctrination), even lose the ability to feel anger at being treated badly.

Doubts may finally surface, when we lack the vitality needed to 1) respond to pep talk/indoctrination and 2) lack the energy needed to suppress doubt.

But if we take a vacation and rebuild our energy, we may once again become responsive to a group's pep talk and our previous conditioning. That may be why people keep leaving, then returning. You get burned out, dont respond to the propaganda, have doubts. Then you leave, get some rest, start feeling hopeful and responsive to the propaganda, (and perhaps are talked back into it!) then return for more depletion.

Eventually we 'fry out' and either leave through illness or exhaustion, or perhaps are kicked out because we've become like squeezed oranges with nothing left to give.

When people do speed for a very long time, they are high, just so long as their bodies can manufacture enough neurotransmitter for the drug to stimulate. Eventually they deplete their neurotransmitters, the drug doesnt give the same 'high' and eventually they collapse into depression because their neurotransmitters are bankrupted.

You mention you got depressed--that may have happened because after years of pressure you squeezed out your juice and were left dry.

Are you still depressed? If you feel you recovered, what helped you most to recover?

There is a good reason why many advisors recommend that survivors of high demand groups go get medical, dental exams, and even consult with nutritionists.

The saddest thing is if we become stressed and shame ridden and depressed, that after a long enough time, we take this for normal and forget that we once had a time when we felt hearty, not miserable.

Like speed use, the intensity of a high demand group can mask the extent to which we've being pressured to shift into an unhealthy lifestyle that's making us feel intense, 'high' while embezzling our baseline health and setting us up for eventual depletion and illness.

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I was told I was failing and causing the centre to go under, I was told I needed to cause a breakthrough.

Hi, Sonnie.

It may help you to know that you're not alone -- from what I've read about the effects of coercive groups, your experience sounds very much like what others have gone through.

Try to keep in mind that while the foks at LEC were blaming you for your centre's "failure," they were undoubtedly blaming everyone else who worked there as well. They probably made each one of you feel as if the weight of the world rested on only one pair of shoulders.

Have you heard of Carol Giambalvo? She was involved in est (Landmark's predesessor) and The Hunger Project. She realized what she was involved in when she begain researching her daughter's involvement with ISKCON. You may want to visit her website:

[hometown.aol.com]

And especially her page describing what thought reform is:

[hometown.aol.com]

Glam

Looking back at things I can logically make the leap that everyone on staff in the centre was being subjected to the same sort of thing, I know the seminar leaders, SELP leaders, TMLP and ILP were all being told to cause breakthroughs.

It amazes me how at that time I did not logically make that same step. I truely believed that the office was failing because I in my role as registration effectiveness manager and participation manager was not causing a breakthrough.

At one point in 2000 there was a series of newspaper articles written about Landmark in our country (a few of which are on the Rick Ross site). They were articals about goverment groups being paid to do the Landmark Forum and also about one person who had pychological counselling.

During that time we had non stop phone calls from people who were in some of the courses who were pulling out. Now my job was literally to talk them into staying. Most of these people would not enter into discussion. we had to cancel courses and I was told it me causing that.

Now I can look back logically now and see that it was not "me". people were reading the news paper and making informed decisions about being invovled with Landmark. But I still remember being shouted at, told I would need to "get off it" to deal with my rackets to cause a breakthrough. I spent alot of time being told that I was causing the downfall of the centre, that the people who had caused the centre to happen would be disgusted.

At that time I just believed what I was being told, I put more time and effort, I stopped all other non landmark activities to spend time at work to attempt to be successful. My life became even more focussed on Landmark. I stopped going to church, stopped seeing friends (other to harrass them into going to introductions)

I look back and wonder why I didn't pick up on the continual putting down/breaking of my self image. I didn't think of my pre-landmark time where I was successful in my role. Where by the age of 24 I was a deputy principal of a school where I was teaching I didn't think about the achievements I had with extra curricula activity. I just thought of myself as what I was told continually by these people.

Hi, Sonnie...

What you're saying reminds me of nothing so much as one of my friends who's had abusive husbands. They berate her and knock her down, telling her she's "ugly," "fat," "stupid," nobody else will ever love her, etc. After a while she starts to internalize this and to believe it herself -- even though, in reality, she's very pretty, in terrific shape, bubbly, popular, smart, etc.

When someone you're close to, who supposedly "loves" you (Landmark does teach their own definition of what love is) constantly puts you down, you start to believe it after a while. And I think it's very hard to see that it's their problem, not yours. It must be even harder when the person who's putting you down is also telling you that what they're doing is for your own good, that it will help you have a "breakthrough," get over your "rackets," etc. This must be very confusing and cause a lot of guilt and anxiety.

This is a method used by all sorts of coercive groups and abusive people. It makes you question yourself, makes you insecure, and then you have to keep putting even more effort into the "relationship" in an attempt to make it work....it's a downward spiral. The more you get caught up in it, the more you question yourself, and the worse you feel, and the more you blame yourself and redouble your efforts.

Glam

here are some speculations on what Sonnie describes, different models. See which one fits your situation:

Inflicting shame by nagging people to feel responsible for things that are actually not within their control may take us back to the helplessness of childhood, induce regression. In a child's state of mind, we cannot access areas of adult logic. Its the same mechanism that causes even the smartest people to get utterly bewildered when they get a terrifying diagnosis from their physicians. When you're scared, your mental age returns to early childhood and you lose the ability to stay adult in relation to your surroundings. (One sign is hearing your own voice suddenly go high and childlike. Or feeling small and the other person suddenly 'feels' taller!)


[www.depersonalization.info]

See if the article describes anything resembling what you've been through.

Finally, there is another type of dissociation described by Robert J LIfton
called doubling. In doubling, you respond to a stressful/traumatic environment by creating another self that can deal with it.

Often, doubling is socially positive. Surgeons, paramedics and police officers may have to create a doubled 'work self' to handle some of the shocking work experiences they face. But their work, though stressful is still ethical, serves society, and they knew what they were in for when they signed up.

But doubling may be part of what creates a 'group personality' that serves a hurtful agenda.

You revert to your baseline 'normal self' when at home. Lifton first noted this when interviewing people who committed atrocities (see his book 'The Nazi Doctors')

From the interviews, Lifton got enough information to estimate that it took at most two weeks of exposure to a harsh environment for people to construct this new, doubled self. First they were horrified, then gradually went numb, then they remembered the progaganda that had been pumped at them by the German government about certain groups of people being subhuman, and by the end of the (at most) 2 weeks, ignored their Hippocratic Oath and humanistic educations and created new 'work selves' capable of performing deeds they would formerly have refused to do.

This proves the importance of getting away from a bad social scene the instant that you have misgivings, and the reason why its advisable never to go through any social program where they refuse to tell you in advance what the program will be.

Glam, the kind of continual belittling that occurs when on staff at landmark is very similar to that which occurs to "battered" wifes. What stuns me is that I could not see it.

As part of my training as a teacher we were actually shown what to look for so that we could provide support to children with in that kind of situation. Yet in reality when I was in the thick of it I didn't recognise it.

Reading some of the scenarios that Corboy has written there are parts in all three that could apply to my situation.

The hard part of sorting thorugh all this is my own self critisism such as "why did not I not pick up on this", "why did not I not listen to the people in my life who I trusted completely"

that applies, both to battering relationships and high-demand groups.

Professor Janja Lalich, who was once a member of a political group centered on a charismatic leader, terms the process 'bounded choice.'

Lalitch found that persons in these high demand groups usually remain highly intelligent, capable of rational, logical decisionmaking.

But what happens in toxic relationships and groups is, your menu of acceptable choices/options, is gradualy narrowed, and you're in a setting where you're forbidden to take notice of this process, speak out about it, question it.

My parents told me that in the old days of the mass produced Model T Ford, the joke was, 'You can get one in any color you want--as long as it's black.'

Thats bounded choice. You can have anything you want--as long as its within this restricted menu of options.

Lalitch has a new book on the subject entitled 'Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults'.

Years back, in an AA group, I heard someone say, 'I was sure I was too smart to ever become addicted. What I never guessed was my addiction would use my intelligence against me. I just became a smart alcoholic, and my IQ enabled me to lie better and make more convincing excuses.'

In bounded choice, you stay intelligent, but your intelligence is trapped in an ever-narrower range of options.

And again, dont forget the role that stress plays in restricting your access to emotion and critical thinking skills.

I met someone who is married and who is denying to herself that she is functioning as both mother and father in relation to two children and a mostly absent husband. She has such a heavy work load of responsiblities that she keeps forgetting things she means to do each day--thats the effect that stress will have on even the smartest person.

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Glam, the kind of continual belittling that occurs when on staff at landmark is very similar to that which occurs to "battered" wifes. What stuns me is that I could not see it.

Don't be hard on yourself. I think pretty much everyone can look back at some relationship with hindsight and see things much more clearly than they did when they were in the relationship (even if the relationship is with a company, like Landmark).

Who hasn't had a "bad boss," or a job they were unhappy in, or a friend who took advantage of them, or a love relationship where they felt insecure? It's very hard to see the situation for what it is when you're in it. And in the case of Landmark, they've had three decades to perfect their approach -- to make the organization seem as benign and helpful as possible at first, and to slowly erode your self-esteem and self-reliance so that you don't realize what's happening.

Remember that you paid a lot of money for Landmark's "expertise," which made it even more difficult to see what was really happening. You wanted to believe you were getting good value for your money, and everyone around you was probably saying how wonderful it was, talking about "breakthroughs," etc. making it even more likely you thought there must be something wrong with you for not being completely happy. (No doubt some of those people felt the same way you did, but covered it up because they didn't want to seem like they weren't happy, either.)

From what I've been reading, even psychologists aren't immune to the processes of coercive groups. Just take a look at the "testimonials" from experts on Landmark's website.

So don't blame yourself -- that's what they want you to do, after all.


Glam

:)

Hello Sonnie Dee,

Thank you for your replies,,,,You've come a long way,, something to be real proud of!!! As your own Landmark experience unravels, the truth behind it will help many others understand their own questions of why this and why that.

I have oftened ask myself those very same questions you asked, but reverse. "He trusted me with his life, why didn't he trust me on this" "Why wasn't I able to get through to him, "What will it take to make him see what is actually happening". Very frustrating being on the outside looking in, and not being able to do anything about it. :(

You write, "I'm lucky that some of my friends didn't ditch me". Can you explain this line? Did you keep contact with friends that weren't part of Landmark?

Montreal, in repsonse to your question about my statement "im lucky some of my friends didn't ditch me" I am referring to two things:

A) They didn't get really angry at my pushiness about attending a landmark introduction or the landmark forum.

B) They didn't get really angry at my lack of spending any time with them. I did not go out with many friends during my time on staff at Landmark, I didn't have time mostly but when I did have time I spent it with other Landmark people.

I lost a lot of my friends and I blame myself for most of it, I look back at some of my behaviour and can see that I am lucky to have kept the few I did.

Landmark draws you further and further away from your relationships. but it does it so subtlely that you don't notice. Actually looking back it wasn't that subtle. You get hooked into assisting while you are on that first high. Once you are assisting it is hard to say no because you are coached about your concerns and about causing things to happen when you say no. they ask you to do something, you say no, they say I am going to challenge you to be unreasonable. after a few minutes you say yes because you want to see the Landmark forum working in your life.