"I felt awful for ages!"

November 1999
By a Forum Graduate

I was invited to a "Landmark Forum" evening--my best friend has recently gotten into it. She's not a blathering zombie yet, like her other new friends, but I'm hoping that after reading your page she'll reconsider the Forum. I'm so worried about her right now.

After attending the 'intro' night at the Forum--I felt awful for ages! I was doubting myself, feeling bad about life decisions I'd made and I was made to feel bad because I didn't have a boyfriend!

The woman up the front went on ENDLESSLY about how members had been single for ages--then suddenly had meaningful relationships after the course. This so nearly sucked me in, but my "BS Detector" as you put it, was ringing like a fire bell.

I never really had that many hang ups about being single before going to this place.

What worried me was that everyone talked the same and my friend not only put her name in the basket for volunteering, but she also is spending $500 bucks, or I think it's $700--for the next course! She's a university student and can't afford diddly! But the people at this place are convinced totally that the Forum will help them.

Now, I'm someone that has been through severe depression and is on medication--yet I could still see it for the mind numbing shit it was. I sat through this introduction with some woman who blathered on about "is" realities etc., and seemed to speak in vicious circles.

One anecdote I heard really cracked me up. That is, if you go to talk to your boss about something and he says "Talk to me later I'm busy" and you ingrain it in your mind that "he's busy"--then he really will be busy. I asked, "What if you ingrain it in your brain that he's busy and then he's not"? They couldn't answer that one.

What worried me was that when I came forward with my own ideas about something (when the woman was talking about "lucky charms" and superstitions), which was that lucky charms were just something that helped focus people's positive energies--the group leader kind of tried to make me be quiet. She just said "yeah" to me and moved on.

Nothing of what she said made that much sense and blaming yourself for all the bad things that have happened to you in your life is really dangerous!