The Landmark Wives

which when I was around only meant either calling someone to talk or writing a letter) We're not talking about getting home from class and chatting with a friend. According to my friends, the phone calls and letters are, generally, intended to be emotionally devastating. From the Landmark Website: The Landmark Forum takes place over three consecutive days and an evening session (generally Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday evening.) Each full day begins at 9:00 a.m. and typically ends at approximately 10:00 p.m.Making difficult calls right away, while you are tired and still euphoric, would seem to be bad advice coming from anyone else.

"You mean leave the course entirely? They'll talk with the person to find out why, and try to help the person work through the issue and stay. Or not. The metaphor here is coaching. "You said you wanted to win a gold medal. That takes work. Are you going to leave now after one workout that left you out of breath?" Or another metaphor - would you quit going to your therapist because they made you think about something sad?" Just to say, this is the technique James Ray (who is currently on trial for the deaths of three people at his retreat) used to keep people inside a dangerously hot sweat lodge when people were FOAMING AT THE MOUTH AND PASSING OUT. It totally skeeves me out and I think is crappy. Landmark is NOT your therapist. And no ethical therapist would tell you, "Well if you don't like my therapy you're giving up on yourself." It's an incredibly demeaning and horrible tactic. Any therapist, yoga teacher, retreat runner or ANYONE who tries to convince a person to do something they have stated they do not want to do is not ethical. Just my opinion. I have had a lot of friends into Landmark and Byron Katie and a bunch of other sketchy gurus and most people get what they want out of it, but for those who express doubts you can get positvely shredded. NOTE: I have not and would never go to a Landmark forum, but Darlingbri's point is enough for me to doubt their integrity completely. UGH, and thehttp://www.dcourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=91443 The way that people STILL can't see through how despicable that guy is and literally believe that these people died because it was their "choice" on their "spirit journey" makes me want to stay the heck away from for profit money/advertising mind game groups like this. Nothing against people who get something out of it (and I mean that), but it genuinely worries me.

This is absolute and complete bullshit. You can go to the bathroom whenever you want. There are breaks for lunch and dinner. "Homework" took about 20 minutes. I was never singled out or harangued. Or brainwashed. Come on. The courses my $[acquaintances] went through were not this. They were indeed encouraged to go with the plan, and were questioned and harangued whenever they deviated or demurred from the plan. The plan being what is detailed above: using the restroom, crying when it is expected, yelling when it is expected, sharing when it is expected, etc. I found the results to be very perverse and negative. It made the three people very depressed after a while, because it encouraged them to attempt to do basically impossible things. And because of all the phoney positive reinforcement ("you can do anything!" and "if you want something and it doesn't happen, it is because you didn't try enough" sorts of things), they felt awful because of it. Ruined a nice relationship, too, because it turns out that when you encourage people to be selfish sociopaths, they tend to not want to do the compromising that goes into maintaining a relationship. "I want to go to Spain and nothing will get in my way" and "I want to build my business and nothing will get in my way" can't live under the same roof. These things probably do help plenty of people. But ONLY the people who actually need the kind of help they give. They probably aren't Evil, but they are a little bit evil. They seek out the weak, exploit those weaknesses to extract cash, and then proudly cash the checks while the misery they have created spreads out into the world.

Let me just take one example. Yes, you can get up and go to the bathroom whenever you have to. There will probably be a volunteer at the door asking you where you're going. You just say "to the bathroom." They might write your name down. Why is this? Because the material of the course can be very emotionally challenging to a lot of people, and some people might try to deal with that by avoiding it and leaving, or similar. So if someone's gone for too long, the staff running the course want to know about it so they can make sure the person is OK. That's it. Really. I know it seems sinister because it's unusual, but it's really no big deal. This is such fucking bullshit. The bathroom thing is a control tactic, plain and simple. They're not looking out for your best interests in any possible sense.

Yes, you can get up and go to the bathroom whenever you have to. There will probably be a volunteer at the door asking you where you're going. You just say "to the bathroom." They might write your name down. Why is this? Whatever the intent is, the effect is to at least discourage if not outright forbid people from going to the bathroom. If I saw another guy get up to go to the bathroom, be questioned & have his name written down on the way out the door, I'd certainly think twice about doing it myself. So the context is That's one context, sure. Another one is that people feel pressured or coerced to stay. People have had both very positive & very negative experiences with Landmark. It's hard to be sure going in which type of experience you'll end up having.

Here's the thing that gets me, any professional who is challenging you to push your boundaries when you have expressed they are pushed and you don't like it, should be well trained in the potential aftermath of pushing those boundaries and should be trained in what to do in the event that you get pushed well passed the limits of you mental and physical health and have a serious breakdown. " A woman, Stephanie Ney, attended a Forum course in 1989; in its immediate aftermath, she experienced an utter psychological collapse that required her to be institutionalized. A few years later she filed suit. In the interim Forum had become Landmark Forum, so she included Landmark in her filing." Steve Salerno breaks down some of the ironic inconsistancies of their waver form and more in a http://shambook.blogspot.com/2010/03/landmark-forum-in-largely-its-own-words.html that I think is excellent. He's got a pretty obvious bias as a skeptic of self help in general (this doesn't bother me personally as I share his skepticism) "As the waiver rouses to its dour finish, we encounter a section titled INFORMED CONSENT. Here, among other things, clients must affirm via signature that they're aware that "certain persons with no personal or family history of current or previous mental or emotional problems and no history of use of psychotropic or mood altering drugs reported having experienced psychotic episodes following the Program." A few lines later the participant is again reminded that he has been "STRONGLY ADVISED NOT TO PARTICIPATE in the Program if...I have concerns about my ability to handle stress." What makes this excruciatingly ironic and even tragicomic is the way Landmark, in other areas of its site, hypes the stress-busting potential of its coursework. F'rinstance, Landmark's online syllabus, DAY TWO, Section IV, is titled, "Freedom From Anxiety." The syllabus observes: "Consider that one of the primary obstacles to effectiveness is fear. No matter how accomplished, successful, or courageous we are, fear and anxiety seem to play a role at some point in all of our lives. Often, we allow fear and anxieties to stop us...assigning them an unwarranted power and magnitude in our lives..." (In truth, any number of Forum segments seem designed to address conditions that laypeople would probably describe as "stress-related" or "depression-like." Consider, for example, the language of DAY 1, Section V: Rackets™: The Payoff and the Cost, and Day 2, Section 1: The Illusion of Someday. The language is the rhetoric of philosophy, but the payoff—it is strongly suggested—occurs in the realm of psychology.) Landmark even uses stress as a sales hook in this testimonial from one Gabor Mate, MD: "As shown throughout [my] book, it is these fixed but unconscious interpretations that underlie and trigger many of our chronic stresses." Does it not seem reasonable that if you're offering a Program that teaches people how to free themselves from anxiety and "chronic stresses," your target audience would consist in some part of people who "have concerns about [their] ability to handle stress?"

Let me just take one example. Yes, you can get up and go to the bathroom whenever you have to. There will probably be a volunteer at the door asking you where you're going. You just say "to the bathroom." They might write your name down. Why is this? Because the material of the course can be very emotionally challenging to a lot of people, and some people might try to deal with that by avoiding it and leaving, or similar. What do course organizers do when someone states that they want to leave?

I have a friend who took the Landmark free introductory session and the beginning session. Thankfully he stopped just short of signing away his meager savings to take more courses. It really helped him to talk to someone who became disillusioned with the program, rather than to skeptics like me. I can try to connect him with your partner if you'd like - memail me any kind of contact information. Essentially, it's a pretty typical self-help seminar, except for the restrictive rules (no bathroom breaks, few meal breaks, long homework assigned after a long session; if you get up to leave, you will be singled out and essentially harangued into staying "what are you afraid of???" type stuff) that inspire groupthink and maybe a mild form of brainwashing. As you go through each level, courses become more and more expensive. I'd probably have little problem with it save for the recruitment tactics (it is very VERY common to get hooked by one of the free introductory sessions) and exorbitant fees.

Okay, years ago I did the three-day introductory session of Landmark (I think there are two more "levels" that come after.) I did it because 2 old friends I trusted had done it and really loved it, thought it was amazing, etc. I am by nature a skeptical person and so went into it being self-protective. I definitely did not want to be brain-washed in any way. The experience did, however, have an effect on me and while it certainly wasn't all bad, I'd be wary of exposing myself to anything like that again. I think that for people who are vulnerable (which might include your recently depressed partner) there can be a cult-like aspect. The people who run these things are passionate and charismatic and that, mixed with the group mentality and many hours together, is powerful, even for a relatively smart and strong person. I did not end up signing up for any further courses but a lot of people did. One negative effect I saw of that is that in the final level there is lots and lots of pressure to get other people in your life to sign up and that is creepy and a big turn-off. This happened to one of my friends--he was pressuring everyone way too hard--but eventually it wore off and he's totally detached from it now, but it took a little while. As far as myself, the positive gain I got was, oddly, a more open mind. I remember going back to work (at a Montessori preschool) after and feeling overwhelming understanding and empathy and love, even, for the kids, in a way I hadn't before. And that sort of opened me up to some aspect of spirituality, for lack of a better word, that I'd been closed to before. That might sound to some people like negative brainwashing but it didn't feel that way to me. I'm still critical, analytical, etc. but Landmark was one small piece in my moving into a slightly new, larger, healthier (for me) world view. On the dark side I will also add that soon after I got home I had some high anxiety, which I think came from my repression of doubts, fears, etc both about Landmark and about life in general. Unlike psychotherapy, which I believe in strongly--in part due to its gradual speed of change--Landmark encourages denial and this leads to all kinds of unconscious shadow stuff bubbling up (for me in the form of intense anxiety).