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So... I'm in the Salt Lake City Area visiting a friend. She's invited me to a workshop, but was worried about doing so because multiple people she's invited before have said it's culty, and some got very upset and went no-contact.
I have not gotten to the workshop yet (that's tonight), but the half-day and ... the past half hour, that I've spent with her and her housemates has ... made it seem very likely that the Culty vibes people were getting were accurate.
Mostly though, I'm concerned about the teenager I'm sitting here listening to get stressed out by all this creepy emotional exercise stuff. She's seemed pretty stressed out the entire time I've been here, and I feel like I should be doing something about some part of this but I can't quite identify what specifically to do that would help.
Also all the dads in the house are worrying me. It is difficult to organize this into the kind of details that would get the point across. The ways people talk about feelings and conversations, the way touch is used... the way both my friend and the afore-mentioned teen hugged me when we parted at the train station last night was disturbingly intense for goodbye hugs (also I have known the younger one like 24h at this moment).
I also want to continue sneakily writing this comment because I was casually invited to sit in on my friend and the teenager's dad's emotional pressurethon and I am ever-so-slightly uncomfortable listening to this weird brute-force ... therapy? Or whatever you'd call it. Which means I'm missing most of what's being said because it feels rude to listen closely but I'm also trying to understand the situation enough to problem-solve ...
... Help?
At this point, it's down to my friend calling me frequently to try and convince me to attend "The Awakening" (the $7500 retreat that takes the better part of a month and which was described as kinda like the workshop I went to, but even more so), while I'm trying to figure out what I can do to get her out. She is at least still doing unrelated things with her family, including some traveling soon, which is more non-cult activity than I witnessed when I was there.
Also, after consulting Chat GPT and Wikipedia, I think I need to start referring to it as "Large Group Attitude Transformation" instead of a cult, just in case lawyers get involved. This guy claims inspiration from Werner Erhard, whose ideological successors have been known to sue people for calling them cults. So I am legally encouraged to describe it as not a cult, just an emotionally exploitative money sink of a style that has been condemned by the American Psychological Association for their practices worsening mental health. (This back before the APA became politically captured and started producing therapists who act as money sinks and worsen mental health.)
So ... I would rather not spend $7.5k and request another couple weeks off work for more of that. But everything I've found suggests that being openly negative about it would be counterproductive, and providing a supportive alternative that is outside the group is the best option. The trouble is I'm too much of a coward to just say "Yeah, I'm not going. Can we still be friends?"
WTF are you doing. This is crazy talk. GTFO ASAP.
Acronyms aside, there is a whole non-crazy world out there, and you do yourself a disservice by associating with this particular flavour of deluded crazy. Whatever it is you end up losing by categorically rejecting this business, it's not worth getting dragged into it. If a friendship breaks over this, then what kind of friendship was it? Rhetorical question.
Get out of there. Don't go along with it. Sticking one's dick in crazy is one mistake one can make, but sticking the whole of you into crazy for weeks on end is another.
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Did you go to the workshop? How was it?
Yeah. I'd describe it as slightly LDS-Flavored mystical hippy stuff that is totally not new age, for real you guys.
The main thing it reminds me of is discount Scientology, but way less scientology about it. The guy mentions his books, services, and other workshops ... occasionally. It has the structure of a lot of 30-50min Youtube ads, where they tell you something cool's coming, then spend half an hour on vague anecdotes, but there are also exercises (which are actually more scary than the part where the guy heard his toddler say he was Jesus, once, and did everything short of saying outright that he believes it, still, decades later).
What makes it work for the participants, I think, is a mix of insistent but meaningless afirmations (formally showering people with complements, talking about enough universal love and transcendant joy that he had to have met the cactus man in the 60s or 70s, telling people how awesome their spirit-realm self is). And there's the thing where people are encouraged to work through their issues with conversations crafted to get them crying and/or screaming by the end, incidentally revealing some very sensitive personal trauma at the top of their lungs to the whole room in the process, and ... OK, it's clearly not actually therapudic. Rather, it's getting people high on intense emotional expression, and using that to get them hooked.
Mainly, though, the people who stick around are clearly emotionally or relationally vulnerable, or the boyfriends that said vulnerable girlfriends convinced to join them. My friend says she's grown a lot and improved since she started going, but her resentment toward her family feels like it's grown (I also heard her complaining about how they're encouraging her to get out of it and move back in with siblings, the latter part of which would bother me more if her entire social circle weren't made of people involved in the thing), she's gone from the anxious but determined and genuinely positive person from a few years ago to a generally grumpy and discontent person using "inner child" / "energy work" things to cope. Other people were in much darker places, and it seems like the workshops are the only outlet they practically have, but it does nothing to improve the underlying issues, and, IMO, trains them to get high off expressing their suffering and just kinda hoping that enough love-bombing and emotionality-induced ecstacy will get them to project a more positive countenance for all the people they're encouraged to invite.
Also, a dad brought his 12-year-old daughter, who is already getting pressured by women in the group to come to "the awakening" in a couple months. Cue the first time I've heard a 12-year-old use the "I'm only 12" excuse totry and end an awkward conversation (which backfired and got her showered in more encouragement).
I tried going along with the exercises to see what would happen, but since I don't have daddy/mommy issues and get the impression that Spider-man's mantra was not going to fit in with all the "I AM PERFECT! EXPRESS LOVE!" speeches, and I already suck at communication period, that ... did not go well. I can't theatrically get in front of everyone and loudly weep about regretting ... Hold on, I think I just realized why I'm immune to the bullshit. Namely because it's the distilled and unrestrained essence of the hippy style stuff that was pervasive in 90s edutainment and motivational PSAs, turned up to 9001, and I took that stuff seriously in elementary school, only to unwittingly become a jerk by 11, and spend the next decade progressively recovering from the problematic stuff that was mixed in with my arrogant teenaged worldview. They might have gotten me before, let's say 2010 or so.
Mostly, at this point, it seems like 90% of my friend's life now revolves around this thing, every day she talks about how brilliant the leader is (he emphatically is not and 90+% of what he's said has been garbage at best, but, uh, a less toxic way of communicating that would be helpful ... ), she's taking on a leadership role and started a coaching business, and lost other friends who she brought in and crashed out hard by this point in the process. Also, I haven't asked her how she found it, yet, but she somehow revealed on the second night that her boyfriend's ex (who he was dating whhe first got with her but told neither woman about this) was there. And the only interactions I've any evidence of between her and him is one conversation (facilitated by another member, over the phone) and a few texts. She's actually in my hotel right now, because she let another member have her bed and couldn't get her boyfriend to host her for the night. (Bro, if he'll cheat with you, he'll cheat on you. And she desperately wants to get married.) Everything she wants mostou of this, as she expressed it to me, is directly harmed by her being involved, and I have no idea whatsoever how to deal with this.
Thanks for the update! I don't necessarily have anything useful to say about it, other than that it does, indeed, sound cultish and destructive.
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I'm really glad we got an update to this. I was invested.
And uh... Yeah, that sounds like a cult. Always amazed the millions of documentaries we get about these seems to have made approximately zero dent in their ability to pop up.
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They got him.
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I think trust your instincts. If it feels culty, it is culty. If it doesn't seem dangerous, though, and you feel you're not too susceptible to peer pressure / brainwashing, it might be worthwhile to participate so you have more credibility when you try to get your friend out.
Coincidentally I'll be in SLC tonight. Happy to come pick you up on the off chance you need to make a quick exit.
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I’m baffled by this comment and responses. What is supposed to be happening? What are ‘culty vibes’ and “creepy emotional exercise stuff “? Is it like a jim jones cult, or just an MLM, which mormons are known to have predilections for? Are hugs suspicious? I know some hippies, they always hug me and call me brother, imo it’s a nice greeting for nice people. But I will defer to the wisdom of americans, who have been spotting all kinds of cults since they came off the boat.
I'd say it's more "emotionally abusive MLM" than Jim Jones. It isn't the affection that gets me; it's how much it reminds me of the legendary Bay-area Rationalist cuddle culture.
But mostly, after attending a couple workshops and listening to the other people there, I'm increasingly convinced that it's stoking suffering while claiming to improve situations, kinda like what therapy has become, only worse by using charismatic church tactics and emotional intensity to convince people it feels amazing and must therefore be working.
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Yeah, multiple people going no contact is very weird, even by friend in a cult standards. Perhaps they tried declaring "this seems like a cult," and everyone's feelings were hurt or something?
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I don't necessarily have any specific suggestions.
If the teen needs to leave the culty environment sooner rather than later, a lot of the other options are also not great, especially if she doesn't have very strong adult skills and is not yet at least 16.
Perhaps it will become more obvious what's going on after visiting the workshop?
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It does sound a bit cultish.
Why are there so many dads in the house? As a dad, I would have some significant concerns about being in a situation where my teenage daughter is living closely with other grown adult men, both for her soul and theirs.
Edit: If it helps, I would categorize myself as somewhat less normie than @George_E_Hale. But he also memorizes Shakespeare sonnets, which is noble and laudable but under no circumstances “normie” in the modern age, so now I’m starting to question his normie bonafides. 😀
A relative term, no doubt. In what I know of present company, I'm normie. Then again I'm a semi regular poster, so there's that.
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My normie perspective: It definitely 100% sounds like a manipulative weirdass culty thing. Teenagers? That's minors. If it's therapeutic what's the licensing? Based on what?
Attend as you like but there is zero reason for you to make any attempt to adhere to their framing when in interaction with them (i.e at the meeting.) Be an observer and listen as closely as you want. No hugging or touching me plz, not my thing. If they don't allow or tolerate that or try to guilt you, boom, proof that it's manipulative scam. Watch for signs of incremental steps toward closer physical intimacy. This sort of bullshit is a slippery slope into sex (probably reframed as something other than sex). I'm assuming there is something desirable in the females involved who are being incorporated into this gang. Maybe just youth and vulnerability. Any teenage boys also involved? My alarms are going off.
Then do the responsible thing and (should you agree with my assessment and your current suspicion) make one of two choices:
Ask the friend if she has had similar weird vibes or understands why others do, explore the why, say you do too, and suggest she extract herself from the influence of these people. Maybe she's actually into one of the people in the group, or maybe she just feels a connection she's been missing and wanting, etc. etc. Yeah we all have that, but there are other less obviously weird ways to fill that void.
Manipulate her into extracting herself. (Which is in essence not much better, if better at all. But manipulation works.)
I thought of a third: Do nothing, thanks for catching up, guess you'll soon go radio silent on me as you become fully indoctrinated. Lose your friend to whatever she ends up becoming (a version of this will happen no matter what you do.) Read about it later. You can't save everyone.
I only included this because it is the most common scenario. A friend seems to be drinking too much? Watch him waste away and maybe mention it to a 3rd party, but don't intervene. Another friend has a bad boyfriend? It's her life, watch it unfold and pick up the pieces later, maybe. Online, people love doling out life wisdom. IRL, people keep quiet generally. I agree with you, though.
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