Thank your friend with a steak dinner Done. Usually organizations like Discovery Cult prey on persons with weak ties to friends and family. It makes it easier for them to make the “training” stick. You are probably still inundated with calls and emails from people from the “group.” They don’t want you to think too objectively about what has happened to you, which by the way, is despicable. They will comfort each other by telling themselves that you have to be broken down before you can build yourself back up. It’s a good approach, if you know when to stop the breaking.

From my experience, Discovery breaks people down further than a even trained professional therapist would dare. You never know whats in some people basement, and if you aren’t trained to deal with emotional and mental illness then you shouldn’t play with their heads. If you went to all three days of D! 1 then you have been emotionally raped. Sorry, no nice way to put it. My lady friend needed to see a professional to work through the way she was stripped of her dignity and personal boundaries. The Pee Pee to Pee Pee hugs are a source of great anxiety to some people, especially women. The facilitators told her that if she didn’t let them press into her while they hugged, then she wasn’t opening up enough. Seems like theres easier ways to cop a feel, but to each his own I Guess.
The facilitators of Discovery Cult are not therapists, psychiatrists, or anything close. The co-owners are a LAWYER and a GAS STATION TYCOON! Hard to fathom how, with the help of Dr Phil McGraw, they started this twisted group. Dr. Phil sold off his share of the “business” when things started getting weird, moving on to more legitimate enterprises……To be continued, duty calls ; )

Hmm. I posted a response, but it got deleted. Isn't this an open forum, or are you only interested in posts that agree with you?

I've gone through Discovery training, and it was the best decision of my life. It saved my life! I've survived a very painful life, and Discovery gave me my healing and peace. I can't recommend it enough!

marko:

Is your only purpose in posting here to support Discovery?

I first attended Discovery in November of 2008. Everyone has a right to thier opinion about a matter. And if you believe in your opinion strongly enough then by all means stand up for it. That is what I am doing on here. I believe that Discovery does make a difference in people's lives. I am not attacking anyone's point of view, I am merely expressing my own. I have never been asked for money or told to give up on friends or family that would not go to Discovery. I met a roomful of people on a Friday and by Sunday I knew thier stories, thier pain and thier sucesses. And they knew mine. Facing truths about yourself is hard and it doesn't matter in what type of setting you accomplish this. My verbal description of my first weekend was it was the worst/best weekend of my life. No one knows what some else has lived through or dealt with on a daily basis, or as someone stated," what is in someone's basement." This is true of the person standing next to you in the line at the grocery store. No one is forced to go through the training and you can leave at anytime. I am not brainwashed nor have I ever been. I am not a weak person with no family ties. My ties are very strong and supportive. I am still friends with people that I met there. They do not attempt to coerce me into doing anything that I do not want to do. I talk to them just as I do my other friends. And that is what they are, friends. I went through this training to improve my quality of life. I will not share the personal details of what I have expierenced in my life on this page. I know that I came back home and I questioned certain areas of my life. Discovery gave me tools that enabled me to believe that I am a strong, beautiful and worthy woman. I am now a nurse. I went to back to school approx. one year after attending Discovery. I know that if I had not attended that training then I would still be in the same situation that I was before. I feel so strongly about this subject because if Discovery had not taught me the tools that I have inside me, then I most likely would not be here. I would not have had the belief in myself to leave an abusive relationship. Anyone that wants to can call me weak for being in an abusive relationship but there are more out there than people are aware of. I live my life everyday, fully and completely with no regrets. My children will tell anyone that wants to know that they are happy that I attended this training. It has helped me to be a better mother, friend, sister, daughter, granddaughter, and nurse. There are people on here that have made remarks about some of the tools that implemented in the training, magic beans or medicine. These are not in reality "magic beans or medicine" but if I were to send out an email to some of my friends and made the statement, "I need medicine.", everyone one of them would respond and tell me something positive or uplifting. I guess that it some people's eyes that is a bad thing that there would be a whole group of people willing to take five minutes out of thier day to make you feel better or just to let you know that you are strong enough to deal with whatever life has dealt you, death of a family member or anything tragic that may happen. In my opinion if you view this support system as a cult then you will need to include other support systems as well, such as alcoholics anonymous. People need people. A sense of belonging is one of the steps on Maslow's hierarchy of needs it comes right after the need for air,food,water and the need for physical safety. This is recognized by psychiatrists, psychologists, medical doctors and nurses all over the world. I have expressed my opinion just as others on here have, and I will wait to see if it is posted.

It's been a loooong time since I went to discovery but apparently I get emails about this thread still! I just wanted to respond to the last message on here:

If it worked for you, fine. But your experience doesn't sound anything like mine. I'm going to go ahead and be open on here...I was 19. I was not allowed to leave, I tried at least 4 times. I was forced to relive a sexual assault by my male teacher...by roleplaying it with an older man. It was traumatizing. The worst thing about this whole mess is the secrecy around it. My friend made me go with her and didn't tell me what they would do. The first day I was there the main guy got upset with me for making a joke and in front of my whole group said in a horrible, condescending tone: "I think you're just hurt because you were sexually abused so humor is how you deal with it" and insisted upon doing all this in front of a room full of complete strangers.

I am not an open person, that is not how I deal with things. Before you go you write out your problems and send it in. I put everything down, thinking it would be some private therapy or something. And they used every bit of that info as ammo against me that weekend. And don't even get me started on the nametags... I don't understand how anyone can back this sort of thing. If it worked for you, great. It didn't work for a lot of us. What are you trying to prove by coming here and discussing it with a bunch of people who it hurt?

To whom it may concern:

"Mass marathon training" aka "large group awareness training" has a history of problems.

See [www.culteducation.com]

This paper by a psychologist points out its pitfalls.

13 liabilities of encounter groups, some of which are similar to characteristics of most current mass marathon psychotherapy training sessions:

They lack adequate participant-selection criteria.

They lack reliable norms, supervision, and adequate training for leaders.

They lack clearly defined responsibility.

They sometimes foster pseudoauthenticity and pseudoreality.

They sometimes foster inappropriate patterns of relationships.

They sometimes ignore the necessity and utility of ego defenses.

They sometimes teach the covert value of total exposure instead of valuing personal differences.

They sometimes foster impulsive personality styles and behavioral strategies.

They sometimes devalue critical thinking in favor of "experiencing" without self-analysis or reflection.

They sometimes ignore stated goals, misrepresent their actual techniques, and obfuscate their real agenda.

They sometimes focus too much on structural self-awareness techniques and misplace the goal of democratic education; as a result participants may learn more about themselves and less about group process.

They pay inadequate attention to decisions regarding time limitations. This may lead to increased pressure on some participants to unconsciously "fabricate" a cure.

They fail to adequately consider the "psychonoxious" or deleterious effects of group participation (or] adverse countertransference reactions.

The groups were determined to be dangerous when:

Leaders had rigid, unbending beliefs about what participants should experience and believe, how they should behave in the group. and when they should change.

Leaders had no sense of differential diagnosis and assessment skills, valued cathartic emotional breakthroughs as the ultimate therapeutic experience, and sadistically pressed to create or force a breakthrough in every participant.

Leaders had an evangelical system of belief that was the one single pathway to salvation.

Leaders were true believers and sealed their doctrine off from discomforting data or disquieting results and tended to discount a poor result by, "blaming the victim."

See [www.culteducation.com]

Coercive persuasion and thought reform are alternate names for programs of social influence capable of producing substantial behavior and attitude change through the use of coercive tactics, persuasion, and/or interpersonal and group-based influence manipulations.

The key factors that distinguish coercive persuasion from other training and socialization schemes are:

The reliance on intense interpersonal and psychological attack to destabilize an individual's sense of self to promote compliance

The use of an organized peer group

Applying interpersonal pressure to promote conformity

The manipulation of the totality of the person's social environment to stabilize behavior once modified

Many of the complaints about LGATs like Discovery is that they seem to use coercive persuasion techniques.

I went through Discovery when I was 17 and they first launched. I was taken down, psychologically tormented during their stupid "circle/contract" and sexually abused/touched by a man named Tracey. This was 22 years ago and I blocked that *&^% out.

[www.facebook.com]

Hey out there, if anyone is listening, this "training" ruined by life. Would love to talk about it with others. I experienced exactly what other people said when I was 17 (In 1998) at the hands of Fred Lowder and some a*&hole named Tracey and another character named Mark. A bunch of grown men around a 17 year old girl. They forced me to tell my sexual experiences publicly through an act of humiliation. Tracey told me I had been raped by my dad and when I said I had not, he grabbed my vagina and fondled me. He put his arm around my neck and whispered in my ear that he had always wanted to f*&^k me. He knew my sister and said I was "hotter" than her and that's why daddies like to f87k me. Great therapy. He broke my brain and I was never the same. There was a tremendous psychological impact that still plagues me, although I'm finally fighting through it, 20+ years later. WHERE IS EVERYONE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS NIGHTMARE? I know Fred is dead. Rest in peace dickhead.