Hi, I have been reading some of the threads on here and was wondering how ingrained the Landmark training is in me and if it has had a negative effect.

I don't know anything about psychology(sp?) so I can't really compare or explain how it works.

I've never thought negatively about it until reading some of the posts on here (apart from annoying Landmarkers going on about enrolling/registering people lol).

Just wondering if there were any questions you could ask me or things I could read to understand if or how it has affected me - positive or negative.

Thanks.

welcome to the group. why dont u just check out this place
and join in in conversation with people. we dont bite.

u can decide for yourself and make your changes if u feel
u want to.

we are here.

Quote
JF
Hi, I have been reading some of the threads on here and was wondering how ingrained the Landmark training is in me and if it has had a negative effect.

I don't know anything about psychology(sp?) so I can't really compare or explain how it works.

I've never thought negatively about it until reading some of the posts on here (apart from annoying Landmarkers going on about enrolling/registering people lol).

Just wondering if there were any questions you could ask me or things I could read to understand if or how it has affected me - positive or negative.

Thanks.

Welcom JF :)

-What brought you here?
-How many different courses have you taken?

As for a couple of questions:

- What has Landmark brought you, that you could of not obtained
without it?
- How did you get into Landmark?
- What was the reason you decided to take the courses?

Hi JF and welcome,

Together with Montreal's questions, I have a few:

1. What do you remember from the Fear Exercise on Saturday Night in the Forum;

2. Did you get the feeling of euthoria and what did you put this feeling down to?

3. What is the meaning of life in 50 words or less?

Take care,
Oz

Hi guys, thanks for the replies.

I first did the Forum for Teens in London when I was 16 back in 1996.
My mother had done it and was quite keen for me and my brother to do it.
She had always been into new-agey kinda stuff so to me it was just another course she had been on. She resolved a lot of issues she had with her mother after doing the course. She also got a bursary for me and my brother to do it for free from Landmark so I thought why not.
Then I reviewed the forum in 2001, then did the Advanced alongside the Forum in Action course and then the SELP - which I dropped out of in the last few weeks. I havent done any courses since 2002 I guess, but I still use the technology occasionally when talking to my mother.

[b:e92a83018e]What do you remember from the Fear Exercise on Saturday Night in the Forum[/b:e92a83018e]

I can't remember if we did this on the teen forum but when I did it on the standard Forum I didnt really get into it. I thought it was a bit tacky and people were getting a bit too into it. There was no sense of 'going through the other side' as it seemed other people did judging by their range of emotions.

[b:e92a83018e]Did you get the feeling of euthoria and what did you put this feeling down to?[/b:e92a83018e]

Definately on the Advanced course on the last day when you have to get up and share your possibility. I didnt really think about what was causing it and I dont think I could now as Ive read quite a few posts on here that have probably clouded my judgement on what caused it.

[b:e92a83018e]What is the meaning of life in 50 words or less?[/b:e92a83018e]

Life is empty and meaningless and that doesnt mean anything :wink:

I think some people on here are taking the anti-Landmark thing a bit too seriously. From my experience only good has come of it. I wouldnt say anything amazing has happened but I didnt really emerse myself in it as fully as was available so who knows what could have been.

It's definately something that causes a shift in your perception that I dont think that will ever go away. You can choose to ignore what you have learnt but you always know it could be different.

I'd definately recommend the Forum to anyone who asked.

Look forard to reading any replies.

Joe[/b][/quote]

Hi, JF, and welcome.

There's a wealth of information here on Landmark.

Have you read this recent thread, started by a former paid staffer of Landmark education? You might find it interesting:

[board.culteducation.com]

And if you're at all interested in reading up on the psychology of the processes used in the Forum and the other courses, you may find this study of Lifespring, a group similar to Landmark, informative:

[www.culteducation.com]

I think it's great that you're looking for information.

Glam

Hi Joe --

I'm surprised you asked what possible ill-effects you could be suffering, given that you're still so positive about it. Was this just a roundabout way of trying to understand why so many of us here on this board seem to be against it? If so, you only needed to ask :)

I was brought up in a LGAT type environment -- at first I thought my parents had not been involved in any sort of LGAT, but recently my sister told me that our mother did EST. Aha! It all makes sense now ;)

Personally, I felt the EST philosophy was very damaging to me (yeah, I know, that's just my "story" ;) ). I'd been taught to create other realities for myself, but in effect what that meant was that I was just avoiding the truth, so a huge issue in my life remained unresolved, because I would not allow myself to look at it until I was nearly 30. I also had very low self esteem, because I "took responsibility" for lots of things that weren't my fault.

I actually had an experience that would no doubt be described as a "transformation" (except I guess it couldn't be, as it didn't happen through attending Landmark ;) ) -- and ever since I've discovered that LGATs existed, I've thought that had I gone through something like Landmark before I was in a position to understand what had happened to me, it would have set me back decades -- it basically would have just reinforced the training I'd had throughout my childhood, the training that made me so screwed up to begin with.

I'll try to describe this briefly (alas, I'm not prone to being brief, but I'll try -- [b:61e2a47679]edit[/b:61e2a47679], I failed, so sorry, this is long :) ).

I was a typical child of the 60s and 70s, self-help was a daily part of our existence. My parents are both big into personal responsiblity (or at least, they say they are), and I always had it drummed in to me that I could achieve anything I wanted, if only I tried hard enough. Any failure was due to me not trying hard enough, or creating excuses. I was also never allowed to express dislike for anyone else -- any bad thing I saw in another person I was taught to view as lacking in understanding. I was also taught not to blame others for anything that went wrong in my life. These all sound good and sensible things, but really I find that they are unrealistic when applied in such a blanket, "there are no grey areas" sort of way. I was also taught that I could create alternate realities for myself, that I could choose to remember the positive or the negative about a situation, and that if I chose the latter, then I was creating "excuses" and only had myself to blame. Sickness was also frowned upon, as this was likely to be an excuse, a reason for trying to get out of something. (the only time I was ever taken to the doctor as a child was when the school board required evidence that I'd been immunised)

Ironically, within this backdrop of personal responsibility and seeing the best in people and so on, my parents split up when I was 18 months old and my mother took us far away. My mother was an alcoholic and didn't like kids much (I always thought self help was as much an addiction for her as alcohol). I don't know if this is a result of my upbringing, but even today I don't "blame" her -- she was a person with mental health problems, she couldn't help herself (how's that for irony? The total opposite of what Landmark and EST preach ;) ).

In any case, I was severely neglected as a child. By the time I was 10, I weighed less than 50 lbs (I wasn't fed regularly). I wore the same unwashed jumpsuit to school every day between the ages of 8 and 9. My elder sister actually dropped out of college to look after me and my brother for a while, because the situation had got so bad and she couldn't get any authorities to take her seriously. As you might imagine, I was pretty hugely unpopular at school, and so I used to skip probably 2-3 days a week

What did LGAT philosophies do for me then? Well, to start with, I was very ashamed of my early childhood. I wasn't old enough to really understand what was happening, but I'd always had the underlying message that everything was my responsibility -- and I also knew that I could "create alternate realities" for myself. And that I needed to escape the influences that might remind me of what my early years had been like. So, from the age of about 11 (the point at which I learned to wash my own clothes and to get enough food) I relentlessly attempted to create that reality. Problem was, although I got good at telling the story of my happy childhood, deep down I didn't really believe it. I believed I believed it, if you get my drift -- but the chasm between the story I was trying to tell myself and what really happened was just too great to bridge, so way under the surface I knew the truth. But I wouldn't let myself look at it or think about it. Because I wasn't allowing myself to look at the truth, I could never understand it from an adult's perspective. Along with those memories, I was accepting responsibility for the way things were -- it was [i:61e2a47679]my [/i:61e2a47679]responsibility to make sure I ate, it was [i:61e2a47679]my [/i:61e2a47679]responsibility to bathe and wash my clothes as a child, nothing to do with my parents -- and so it was [i:61e2a47679]my [/i:61e2a47679]responsibility that I became a filthy scarecrow child that no one liked.

So far, so bad ;) I grew up to be a fairly dysfunctional adult. I never saw a shrink, but if I had, I'm pretty sure I would have been diagnosed with manic depression. I'd go for weeks, believing I could do anything (influence of my childhood training still strong), then fall back to earth with a big thud when I'd realise that despite my best efforts, I'd failed "to achieve my full potential". My responsibility, my reality -- no more creating excuses, and on to another manic phase. This became the cycle of my life -- euphoria, amazing accomplishments, followed by severe depression.

And then, at about age 30, I had a profound experience. Now, in part, what happened isn't important -- what matters is that I believe that had it happened in the context of a Landmark seminar, it would have screwed me up worse that I had been -- it would have reinforced everything that I already believed anyway, and put me back into that cycle of euphoria and despair.

But for completeness, what happened was that a friend kept, in my opinion, ducking responsibility for her life. She created excuses for everything, never seemingly willing to put in any hard work for anything, she expected it all to be handed to her on a plate. I was in a "mentoring" relationship with this person, and I was finding her quite trying, to be honest... (but again my training wouldn't allow me to recognise that she was exasperating me -- instead I was "allowing myself to be exasperated". Then she started seeing a shrink, and this shrink told her that none of her behaviour was her fault, because she had been "neglected" as a child. Turns out that "neglected" in her case meant that she hadn't been punished when she was naughty. Anyway, she started to use this as her get out of jail free card, now she had a shrink-approved excuse for not trying harder. I was getting to the end of my tether, as I tried one approach after another to try to get her to take responsibility for herself and her life. And then she did something pretty awful (I won't go into the details -- that would take even longer). So much of my training remains that I am still unable to "blame", but whenever I tell anyone else what she did their jaws generally drop.

Anyway, between this huge betrayal and the history of irresponsibility and the propensity for crying "It's not my fault! I was neglected!" -- something just exploded in me one day. I've never been so angry before or since (not allowed to be angry as a child either -- definite no no) -- I felt practically insane. But with that blinding anger, I was able to say it, I screamed, "[i:61e2a47679]I[/i:61e2a47679] was severely neglected, and I don't lie, cheat and steal. I work hard and take responsibility for my life, I don't shirk like you do, so stop making excuses!". I gave her some of the details of my childhood, and as I came out with it, I realised that what I'd said was true. It was a really dramatic moment, because looking at it as an adult I could finally see that, rather than being ashamed of my childhood and trying to create alternate realities for myself, I should remember the full truth and be proud of myself for having achieved so much with so little outside support. It completely changed my life.

But if that had happened in a Landmark seminar, what would have happened? Do you think I might've been mocked for re-living that painful memory, for feeling sorry for myself perhaps? do you think I would have had the opportunity to view my background and my achievements with pride as I do now? Or would have been advised to "create another reality" (as I had been doing for the previous 20 years). Would I have been encouraged to "stop blaming" my Mother, and then given double-speak if I tried to argue that I [i:61e2a47679]don't [/i:61e2a47679]blame her, that I don't "feel sorry" for myself? I just feel that the whole thing would have been geared to stamping me down, rather than allowing me to find the truth.

Lots of people say that it's the sales tactics and not the philosophy that are so worrying about Landmark. My feeling is that the philosophies are pretty crap too.

Hello JF

You didn't really answer my question, you replied, "From my experience only good has come of it.

-What good has come out of it, that you couldn't of had without it?
-What has Landmark given you, that you could not of obtained without
it?

In reference to "I think some people on here are taking the anti-
Landmark thing a bit too seriously.

I will speak for myself.

When you've been very close to someone for years, and all of a sudden you become inexistant and whatever shared becomes just a story, it is serious!!!

When you can practically say you know the person inside/out and see them go through drastic changes and make life decisions without much thought put into it, it is serious!!!

When you can't get into their minds anymore and anything said to them, doesn't mean anything, and you become their "racket" instead of the true caring friend that you have always been to them, it is serious!!!!

Seeing that I am not the only one that has or is experiencing this very same thing, tells me that it is Damn Serious.

[b:39457aaaac]JF Wrote[/b:39457aaaac]

Quote

I think some people on here are taking the anti-Landmark thing a bit too seriously. From my experience only good has come of it

People take this seriously because we have seen the negative impact that Landmark is having on peoples lives. Family split up because a couple divorce or break up.

Friendships lost because landmarkians often become so focussed that anything or anyone who disagrees or opposes is ignored

People having psychotic episodes, people becoming suicidal.

You can't really get more serious then that. These are the things Landmark don't tell you about.

Yes you may have got some good things out of Landmark. But to say that someone is taking it a seriously with the anti landmark thing is to disregard others experiences and feelings. [/b]

Hi again.

Firstly let me appologise for my comments about 'taking the anti-Landmark thing a bit too seriously'. I guess I can understand how it could affect someone to have a partner/friend become involved in Landmark when they themselves are not interested in it. I've known many people who have done it and I have never really heard any negative situation ariseing that have been attributed to Landmark training so I wasnt aware of what you are speaking about.