It's Tuesday and all of us drive to the forum. They ask if I'm excited and I shrug. I am morbidly curious and definitely want to know what's up with this whole forum thing, but I am still extremely cautious of it. They charge an awful lot of money. I could spend 1/5 as much money and go to a convention in the same city, which costs a lot more money to throw, where I'd have a lot more fun.
We get inside and I fill out a card that asks for a whole lot of information just for me to attend. I suspect telemarketers will be calling me. I put my name tag on and we sit down. A blonde, middle aged woman wearing all black steps up and starts talking to us. It is heavy sales pitch. She talks a lot about the breakthroughs that Landmark helps people to achieve and interacts with the audience.
She asks questions and lets people respond with a raise of hands. She tells us that Landmark isn't about changing us, it's about finding out who we really are and throwing away behavior that doesn't benefit us. She does a lot of reassuring that this is not a scam and pulls out all the stops to counter everything negative I have read on the internet about them. She assures us that nobody is forcing us to be here and heavily encourages those in the audience who don't want to be here to leave.
This sales pitch lasts for about an hour. I am irritated by it because of how obvious and scripted it is. However because Sarah, Leah and Rachel are there with me I implore myself to keep an open mind.
We have discussions with each other about how Landmark benefited people who had just completed it. We ask Leah how it helped her and she doesn't appear to actually know. She says she has a new perception of how to interact with her dad and that it inspired her to apply to a college she's been afraid of applying to despite what her parents think about her career of choice. In other words, what Leah got out of the Landmark Forum was the courage to apply to school. She seems unsure, and it's almost as if she feels pressured by Sarah and Rachel to give enthusiastic answers. I am suspicious but I know Leah will never tell me the truth.
The blonde woman begins a presentation that is actually educational instead of a sales pitch. She talks about the difference between what we know we know, what we know we don't know, and what we don't even know we don't know. She brings up the past and tells her story about how she was rejected and cheated on by boys when she was a teenager. I admit that blonde woman is very good at telling stories and I find myself excited. She then talks about how her past rejects affected the way she approached men.
Putting on a pair of sunglasses, she exclaims that men are lazy and stubborn. She walks over to a man in the audience, introduces herself to him and shakes his hand. She immediately begins giving a dialogue about how she can tell just from the way he dresses and shakes her hand that he is a lazy, stubborn mule. She uses the way he talks as evidence that he is a jerk. Then she goes up to the front of the room and says that most of us don't even know we are wearing these glasses.
When you go to the Landmark forum, she says, the glasses are taken off. You see life for what it really is. She takes the sunglasses off and walks over to the man, introducing herself again. Instead of being gruff and standoffish, she is cheerful and enthusiastic.
"Hi, how are you? Nice to meet you, oooh you're cute!"
People clap after this. It makes sense, even to someone like me. The people close to me in my life love me, but since I am an acquired taste many other people who don't know me dislike me. I had one person in my college class hate me for years, convinced that I was an overly dramatic psychopath and that I was stupid. Not to toot my own horn but one of my "identifiers" is that I'm smart. That is how teachers refer to me, my close friends, family, and heck even one of my enemies in high school listed the reason she hated me as "She's just a gross, know-it-all nerd. She may be smart but intelligence isn't everything!". As for the psychopath bit, I mentioned in my previous post that I have been through therapy. I have been evaluated by several psychiatrists and declared sane. The bottom line is that this person hated me. Some of the things she pointed out were valid--yes I did get into arguments quite a lot. Yes, I could be defensive. This woman however thought I was the literal scum of the earth. She hated me. And she used her having been around me for years as evidence of this.
Does she really know me? No. Not a single person close to me appears to think these things about me. And I trust those people to be honest. Not even an ex-friend of mine who I had a falling out with believes those things about me, and she has every reason to dislike me. Understanding that she had her own biases that were leading her to dislike me rather than it being something inherently wrong with me is something that has helped me a lot. However, that philosophy can be dangerous. I've met some pretty awful people who genuinely believe that anyone who dislikes them is just plain wrong about them. Terrible, terrible things have been done with the excuse of "oh you just don't understand me". I sincerely hope that Landmark covers the distinction between when other people are letting their bias distract from reality and when other people are offering valid criticism.
Blonde woman goes on and picks up a chair, holding it out like a weapon.
"Hello, I'm jealous of any woman that even so much as looks at you, I think you're a stubborn mule who can't be trusted and will ultimately disappoint me and that you're probably lazy too. Wanna date me!? Why doesn't anybody want to go out with me? WHAT'S WRONG WITH THEM?"
The audience laughs.
She explains this in even more detail, and then has people who went through the forum describe what changed for them. A few came up and told their stories, but in all honesty it sounded the same. Rehearsed. Everything was vague and generic. I expected to hear sob stories about orphans and abusive parents but instead I just got generic descriptions of how empowered they felt. One girl did mention that she came out to her parents, but that was the most detail I got. At this point I knew this was one giant sales pitch, but ultimately, I was curious and it was no longer irritating. I wanted to figure out what exactly this was all about.
We have a "break" in order to allow people to sign up for the forum. I go and sign up. Apparently, there's another hour in which people will share even more, but we decide to leave and get ice cream. All of us have to be awake at 5AM the next day and it was already 9PM. We didn't want to be out until midnight. I was assured by Sarah and Rachel that I wasn't missing anything dire or important. Leah seemed very relieved to be leaving. That was odd.
I put my $150 deposit down, got some ice cream and we booked it. I will be attending a Landmark Forum in November.
I am going into this with a skeptical, open mind. I want to figure out the mystery of what exactly the Landmark Forum is, how it can help me, and how it is such a money grubbing organization. I know I can gain some knowledge form their "technology", but at the same time... there is something fishy about the forum as a whole. Many people have gone in and called it brainwashing or a cult, and I want to find out exactly where it falls. Open mind, closed wallet.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Background Story
This isn't going to be a story of my life or past prior to these events. Rather, it's about why I have chosen to go through with the Landmark Forum and the event that lead up to my attending a Tuesday night guest session for a friend. Names and certain irrelevant details (locations, etc) have been changed to protect both my identity and the identity of the others involved. Enjoy.
- - -
It is cold, even for March. Sweeping the hallway I overhear an interesting conversation between Rachel (the one in charge of everything) and our new paid intern whose name I never bothered to learn. The intern is doing a one month trial to see if she'd be a good fit for this place, and she has flown out here from over a thousand miles away just to give it a shot. This isn't entirely uncommon in the field I am in. I am a measly volunteer because I lack the experience to qualify for a paid position and I am instead learning on the job. All of that is irrelevant however.
"It's fantastic, you really begin to get your life together and understand other people," Rachel gushes. "You begin to see people for who they really are instead of just noticing their bullshit."
The intern is agreeing though not with quite as much enthusiasm. Having been out of earshot for most of the conversation, I don't have any context. Intern girl agrees that she should definitely attend whatever Rachel is talking about because she sees how it can apply in her life.
Rachel starts to talk again.
"There are days when I have my own problems and I'm acting immaturely and I will be all upset that so-and-so is yelling at me. I'll say 'stop yelling at me!' and Sarah will be like 'No I'm not yelling at you, I'm yelling at your bullshit'. That's what it is all about. Learning to get over yourself and realize when you're the one making everything miserable for yourself. There's who you are as a person and you are wonderful and then there's the bullshit you put yourself through to make yourself miserable. Once you realize that that isn't you you can really start to move on from it and that's what it's really all about."
"What are we talking about?" I chime in.
"The Landmark Forum, it's like... it's sort of an educational course you can take on living life."
There isn't much I have to say in response to that.
Sarah is Rachel's assistant, for lack of a better term. In many ways she is her own boss though she does have to report to Rachel. The two are good friends and I've seen them call each other out on stuff. Time goes by as I remain a volunteer. The nameless intern leaves, claiming that she does not feel the place is really the best fit for her. I don't fully understand but I forget about her quickly enough. We get a new intern who I befriend, but she eventually leaves. That intern did not want to do the Landmark Forum. After she left I heard some interesting tidbits about how the intern was committed to "being mediocre" and refused to adhere to the lifestyle and philosophy of the business. It just wasn't a good fit.
- - -
We're caught up to modern times. I've been offered a more official position with actual work days. In exchange for my work I get education and a discount on services. Sarah's sister, Leah, is out to visit for a month or so and I quickly find out that Leah is here to attend a Landmark forum and have her life changed. Leah is fresh out of high school. Over the weeks leading up to Leah's forum, I hear a lot about Landmark and their philosophy. I decide I'm going to look this up and see what it really is.
Google search yields interesting results. The curriculum on Landmark's website makes enough sense--reads a lot like typical psychology theories to me--and the first page of results is promotional garbage. They definitely made search engine optimization a priority. I start to uncover claims that Landmark is a religious cult. I learn about their history as a business, about EST and about all their questionable, pushy business practices. There are plentiful articles about independent studies showing it to be successful, journalists who went through it and approve of it, and journalists who went through it and found it to be a scam or cult. Usually in the comments some people are vehemently defending Landmark Education, while others talk about relatives or family members who got sucked in to the "cult".
Perhaps it's not for me.
Hanging out with Rachel one day though changes my mind. She really begins talking about Landmark and what it's all about and it made a lot of sense to me. Basically, Landmark is a three day long experience which teaches you some of the basic skills to get through life. Much of it is stuff you already know but you don't apply it for whatever reason. Its necessity hasn't gotten through to you. Rachel compares it to knowing how to eat right and exercise but not doing it because you haven't had anything major in your life happen to change your behavior. Landmark is that "major experience".
Rachel explains Landmark's philosophy as this: you begin to realize that you have let your past define who you are now and in the future. Say you are adopted but 30 years later you still have this complex in which you feel sorry for yourself because your parents abandoned you. That, according to Landmark, is on you and not on your parents. Why should what these two strangers 30 years ago did affect you in the present? We repeatedly allow things that have happened to us to define who we are.
She points out my tendency to recoil and "shut down". I am someone who suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Last year, they labeled me as cured or "functional". Since starting my volunteer position and being around these people who are positive I have definitely improved a lot more. I have a lot of crap from my past that most people never have to deal with and it has affected the way I interact with other people and my level of social anxiety. I am so terrified of how others will perceive me and of failure that I tend to shut down emotionally and become unavailable to others. Think of it as a turtle recoiling into his shell.
Online, I have a tendency to get overly defensive. I try to explain everything to other people and I don't like feeling attacked. This of course stems from my having parents who blamed anything and everything on me and constantly pointed out my flaws. I have improved a lot though I can still fall into the trap of getting defensive about stuff that doesn't matter and engaging in long arguments on forums or in comment sections.
We move on. Rachel says that she knows my recoiling isn't me. The girl hiding in the corner and being afraid of talking isn't me. She says that when the real me comes out and I'm confident in myself, she is floored by me. I am wonderful to be around and when I shut down I'm not just keeping myself from having any fun, I'm selfishly keeping other people from being able to experience the real me. I think about this for a second. She goes on to say that Landmark can help because it's about realizing what causes me to shut down and then letting it go and getting over myself.
Rachel expands on this even further and says that the vast majority of drama in our lives is an illusion. We create drama in our minds by making mountains out of molehills. For example when you have a fight with someone, and they slam a door in your face, and you get all these feelings about how they dislike you or want to get divorced or whatever else. In reality what happened was words were said, a door was slammed. This doesn't mark the end of a marriage. It doesn't mean the other person hates you. All that happened was that they slammed a door.
We get ourselves all worked up about how we perceive other people and how we perceive situations and forget our own bias. We are biased. The way we experience the world is based on our own knowledge and experiences and often that can make us judge people or situations blindly. We may find evidence that another human being is a stubborn jerk when in reality we've never given them the time of day to actually know a thing or two about them. There may be a person you've disliked for years who is actually pretty cool. That's your perception messing up what is actually there. Ever meet someone--bullies in school perhaps--that was convinced they knew everything about you and that you were a bad person? Did those people actually know you? Probably not. That is the philosophy of Landmark. You get rid of those blinders or tinted glasses so you can see situations for what they really are instead of getting caught up in your own self-created drama.
There is truth to this. There is a lot of pop psychology about this. In fact, in my Psychology 101 book there's an entire section dedicated to perception and how our brain makes assumptions in order to prevent bad things from happening again. The basic summary of the section is that, say you were mugged by a person who was bald. You may get a bad feeling about new bald people you meet. Your mind is trying to use past experience to protect you in the future. In some cases, this is useful but in many others the result is just you making assumptions about people you really know nothing about.
A self-help book I read (my grandmother sent it to me) called The Misleading Mind by Karuna Cayton digs pretty deeply into this theory. That book was fantastic and I highly recommend it.
So ultimately, I agree with the philosophy, but something in my stomach can't swallow throwing $525 down the toilet to attend a three-day seminar. I figure I'll just apply this philosophy to my life and leave it at that. Leah attends her forum and then I am invited to go to a Tuesday guest forum which is 3 hours long with her. I would be going with Leah, Sarah and Rachel. The three of us. On Monday Leah spends a lot of time talking about how she really feels changed since she went to the forum and how she really sees things a different way.
Leah isn't any different to me. The only thing different about her is how she is talking about the Landmark forum. That raises some alarm bells in my head. Nonetheless I agree to go to the Tuesday night thing. I like those people, I hope to someday get a job working for them where I am actually paid, and going to a free thing couldn't hurt. I went home and did more research on the Landmark forum. This time I found a lot of stuff defending it against the cult claim. I am more relaxed about Landmark now.
The truth is that I do have a lot of shit from the past that is affecting my life right now. I desperately want some way to work through this. I am someone who has been through therapy before and for some reason it never helped me. I knew why I acted the way I acted. I knew that things from my past were affecting me now. But all a therapist ever did was suggest I get a hobby which, while it has helped it hasn't fixed the problem. So maybe applying this psychology to my life will help me. Maybe Landmark will help me.
And that, my friends, is where this journey begins...
- - -
It is cold, even for March. Sweeping the hallway I overhear an interesting conversation between Rachel (the one in charge of everything) and our new paid intern whose name I never bothered to learn. The intern is doing a one month trial to see if she'd be a good fit for this place, and she has flown out here from over a thousand miles away just to give it a shot. This isn't entirely uncommon in the field I am in. I am a measly volunteer because I lack the experience to qualify for a paid position and I am instead learning on the job. All of that is irrelevant however.
"It's fantastic, you really begin to get your life together and understand other people," Rachel gushes. "You begin to see people for who they really are instead of just noticing their bullshit."
The intern is agreeing though not with quite as much enthusiasm. Having been out of earshot for most of the conversation, I don't have any context. Intern girl agrees that she should definitely attend whatever Rachel is talking about because she sees how it can apply in her life.
Rachel starts to talk again.
"There are days when I have my own problems and I'm acting immaturely and I will be all upset that so-and-so is yelling at me. I'll say 'stop yelling at me!' and Sarah will be like 'No I'm not yelling at you, I'm yelling at your bullshit'. That's what it is all about. Learning to get over yourself and realize when you're the one making everything miserable for yourself. There's who you are as a person and you are wonderful and then there's the bullshit you put yourself through to make yourself miserable. Once you realize that that isn't you you can really start to move on from it and that's what it's really all about."
"What are we talking about?" I chime in.
"The Landmark Forum, it's like... it's sort of an educational course you can take on living life."
There isn't much I have to say in response to that.
Sarah is Rachel's assistant, for lack of a better term. In many ways she is her own boss though she does have to report to Rachel. The two are good friends and I've seen them call each other out on stuff. Time goes by as I remain a volunteer. The nameless intern leaves, claiming that she does not feel the place is really the best fit for her. I don't fully understand but I forget about her quickly enough. We get a new intern who I befriend, but she eventually leaves. That intern did not want to do the Landmark Forum. After she left I heard some interesting tidbits about how the intern was committed to "being mediocre" and refused to adhere to the lifestyle and philosophy of the business. It just wasn't a good fit.
- - -
We're caught up to modern times. I've been offered a more official position with actual work days. In exchange for my work I get education and a discount on services. Sarah's sister, Leah, is out to visit for a month or so and I quickly find out that Leah is here to attend a Landmark forum and have her life changed. Leah is fresh out of high school. Over the weeks leading up to Leah's forum, I hear a lot about Landmark and their philosophy. I decide I'm going to look this up and see what it really is.
Google search yields interesting results. The curriculum on Landmark's website makes enough sense--reads a lot like typical psychology theories to me--and the first page of results is promotional garbage. They definitely made search engine optimization a priority. I start to uncover claims that Landmark is a religious cult. I learn about their history as a business, about EST and about all their questionable, pushy business practices. There are plentiful articles about independent studies showing it to be successful, journalists who went through it and approve of it, and journalists who went through it and found it to be a scam or cult. Usually in the comments some people are vehemently defending Landmark Education, while others talk about relatives or family members who got sucked in to the "cult".
Perhaps it's not for me.
Hanging out with Rachel one day though changes my mind. She really begins talking about Landmark and what it's all about and it made a lot of sense to me. Basically, Landmark is a three day long experience which teaches you some of the basic skills to get through life. Much of it is stuff you already know but you don't apply it for whatever reason. Its necessity hasn't gotten through to you. Rachel compares it to knowing how to eat right and exercise but not doing it because you haven't had anything major in your life happen to change your behavior. Landmark is that "major experience".
Rachel explains Landmark's philosophy as this: you begin to realize that you have let your past define who you are now and in the future. Say you are adopted but 30 years later you still have this complex in which you feel sorry for yourself because your parents abandoned you. That, according to Landmark, is on you and not on your parents. Why should what these two strangers 30 years ago did affect you in the present? We repeatedly allow things that have happened to us to define who we are.
She points out my tendency to recoil and "shut down". I am someone who suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Last year, they labeled me as cured or "functional". Since starting my volunteer position and being around these people who are positive I have definitely improved a lot more. I have a lot of crap from my past that most people never have to deal with and it has affected the way I interact with other people and my level of social anxiety. I am so terrified of how others will perceive me and of failure that I tend to shut down emotionally and become unavailable to others. Think of it as a turtle recoiling into his shell.
Online, I have a tendency to get overly defensive. I try to explain everything to other people and I don't like feeling attacked. This of course stems from my having parents who blamed anything and everything on me and constantly pointed out my flaws. I have improved a lot though I can still fall into the trap of getting defensive about stuff that doesn't matter and engaging in long arguments on forums or in comment sections.
We move on. Rachel says that she knows my recoiling isn't me. The girl hiding in the corner and being afraid of talking isn't me. She says that when the real me comes out and I'm confident in myself, she is floored by me. I am wonderful to be around and when I shut down I'm not just keeping myself from having any fun, I'm selfishly keeping other people from being able to experience the real me. I think about this for a second. She goes on to say that Landmark can help because it's about realizing what causes me to shut down and then letting it go and getting over myself.
Rachel expands on this even further and says that the vast majority of drama in our lives is an illusion. We create drama in our minds by making mountains out of molehills. For example when you have a fight with someone, and they slam a door in your face, and you get all these feelings about how they dislike you or want to get divorced or whatever else. In reality what happened was words were said, a door was slammed. This doesn't mark the end of a marriage. It doesn't mean the other person hates you. All that happened was that they slammed a door.
We get ourselves all worked up about how we perceive other people and how we perceive situations and forget our own bias. We are biased. The way we experience the world is based on our own knowledge and experiences and often that can make us judge people or situations blindly. We may find evidence that another human being is a stubborn jerk when in reality we've never given them the time of day to actually know a thing or two about them. There may be a person you've disliked for years who is actually pretty cool. That's your perception messing up what is actually there. Ever meet someone--bullies in school perhaps--that was convinced they knew everything about you and that you were a bad person? Did those people actually know you? Probably not. That is the philosophy of Landmark. You get rid of those blinders or tinted glasses so you can see situations for what they really are instead of getting caught up in your own self-created drama.
There is truth to this. There is a lot of pop psychology about this. In fact, in my Psychology 101 book there's an entire section dedicated to perception and how our brain makes assumptions in order to prevent bad things from happening again. The basic summary of the section is that, say you were mugged by a person who was bald. You may get a bad feeling about new bald people you meet. Your mind is trying to use past experience to protect you in the future. In some cases, this is useful but in many others the result is just you making assumptions about people you really know nothing about.
A self-help book I read (my grandmother sent it to me) called The Misleading Mind by Karuna Cayton digs pretty deeply into this theory. That book was fantastic and I highly recommend it.
So ultimately, I agree with the philosophy, but something in my stomach can't swallow throwing $525 down the toilet to attend a three-day seminar. I figure I'll just apply this philosophy to my life and leave it at that. Leah attends her forum and then I am invited to go to a Tuesday guest forum which is 3 hours long with her. I would be going with Leah, Sarah and Rachel. The three of us. On Monday Leah spends a lot of time talking about how she really feels changed since she went to the forum and how she really sees things a different way.
Leah isn't any different to me. The only thing different about her is how she is talking about the Landmark forum. That raises some alarm bells in my head. Nonetheless I agree to go to the Tuesday night thing. I like those people, I hope to someday get a job working for them where I am actually paid, and going to a free thing couldn't hurt. I went home and did more research on the Landmark forum. This time I found a lot of stuff defending it against the cult claim. I am more relaxed about Landmark now.
The truth is that I do have a lot of shit from the past that is affecting my life right now. I desperately want some way to work through this. I am someone who has been through therapy before and for some reason it never helped me. I knew why I acted the way I acted. I knew that things from my past were affecting me now. But all a therapist ever did was suggest I get a hobby which, while it has helped it hasn't fixed the problem. So maybe applying this psychology to my life will help me. Maybe Landmark will help me.
And that, my friends, is where this journey begins...
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