Secure attachments emancipate us. Secure attachments free us to explore, leave the next, free us to ask questions and disagree.
Alexandra Stein has found a way to understand abusive groups and relationships as unstable relationships from which one has been indoctrinated to seek stability.
Methods for Total Control
[aeon.co]
Abusive groups promise stability and nurture, promise orientation, and as bait, give new members intense feelings of joy, hope, relief. After the recruit has attachment bonded to the group and its leader, the member is then kept busy, drops outside friends and interests or hides their commitment to the group from outside friends and family.
This is the same as abusive "lovers" romancing, abusing, isolating us. The alternation between romance and abuse is disorienting. The abuser isolating us from our previous outside relationships tricks us to rely on the abuser for validation, and makes it hard for us to find someone to validate our doubts, support our indignation, and shelter us when we flee the abuser.
Further on, the recruit, having come to rely on the group as main source of validation and emotional supply, is subjected to unpredictability, fear, confusion, kept off balance and disoriented, with just enough doses of joyfulness and kind treatment to renew their hopes. but keep us off balance and disoriented, with just a bit of kind treatment to renew our hopes of nurture and stability.
Abusive joking and teasing are therefore hazardous because these foster ambiguity and fear, and can conceal hostility in the guise of humor.
Get people laughing in unison and its a feeling of instant belonging.
A feeling of belonging is a genuine human need. It makes us vulnerable
and deserves respect, not exploitation.
Without that feeling of belonging, we cannot stay healthy, our bodies go into
stress reaction. Without a feeling of belonging, some slide into physical depression, others become vulnerable to addiction.
Secure feelings of attachment actually free us to go beyond a relationship.
When people cling to a guru, refuse to allow any criticism of the guru, that is a clue as to the hidden insecurity between guru and devotees. A secure relationship fears no dissent. A secure relationship can hold and contain the stress and irritation of dissent.
The hidden insecurity between guru and devotee is a secret that cannot be discussed or even thought about. In a secure relationship, any question can be asked and any question will be heard and respected.
A feeling of belonging with others usually develops slowly over time, just the
way that it takes a long time to form a pearl.
Genuine human relationships are like pearls in another way.
Irritation is part of a genuine relationship and without the irritation of a grain of sand, a pearl cannot develop in an oyster's tender folds.
That powerful intense feeling of belonging generated by commercial gurus is (in Corboy's opinion)
an artificial product, a plastic pearl.
Unlike genuine relationships which do include irritation, a commercial guru and devotee group avoid any irritation which disrupts their artificial feeling of belonging.
That is why room set up and rules may be very important at many guru group events.
Online discussion groups which discuss troubling features of a guru and group are resented to varying degrees by by devotees, perhaps for the same reason that hecklers are unwelcome at a comedy show.
The feeling of belonging generated between comedian and audience, a rapport rapid fostered by the artifices described in the thesis quoted in the earlier articles - this is something easily disrupted by a heckling joke -- because that rapport is an artificial creation.
An artificially rapport is a fragile creation - and anything perceived as a disruption is hotly resented.
That is Corboy's guess.
Certain drugs, such as the opiates trigger the same neural pathways that
are triggered by physical intimacy.
Adroit technicians such as expert salesmen and commercial gurus know how to use
social techniques and room set ups to trigger intense feelings of intimacy -- far more intense than most of us experience in genuine gradual friendships.
This is deeply physical. We are social mammals. We are creaturely.
All my life, I was convinced I was supposed to be self sufficient. Got it
from my family, (lots of alcoholics and alcoholic attitudes in both sides
of my family) and further entrenched by American culture and its myth of
self sufficiency.
What rocked my world was finding a book entitled Addiction as an Attachment Disorder.
It may be helpful understanding some problems with gurus who foster dependence in devotees.
[www.google.com]
It is a user friendly book . The author gives the current
research and demonstrates that humans cannot stay psychologically stable or
physically healthy unless we are embedded into human relationships.
Addiction as an Attachment Disorder provided the insight that secure
relationships emancipate us, insecure attachments entrap us.
This may tie in with Alexandra Stein's insight that a cultic relationship is
one in which the person or group we look to for orientation and promises us
orientation actually fosters insecurity and confusion, leaving us trapped.
These are not confined to love relationships.
By relationships, whats meant is we need to be affiliated with groups
where we know and are known by each other. Coworkers. The people who
recognize us at the cafe, at the grocery store, the bus routes we use.
Places where we volunteer. Places where we worship.
Where people say, "We have not seen you in awhile. Where've you been? Are you all right?"
We need to be part of a "puppy pile".
Without this, our body chemistry and mental chemistry go out of alignment. Our stress chemicals go up. We get depressed, tense, angry, immune system is less efficient.
I hope some of this helps.
One does not stay in the puppy pile forever, though. The puppy pile is
part of the process that fosters our growth into social beings who can connect,
care for each other --- and explore new opportunities.
We can visit our puppy pile and enjoy it, but are not meant to stay in the puppy pile forever.
Alexandra Stein has found a way to understand abusive groups and relationships as unstable relationships from which one has been indoctrinated to seek stability.
Methods for Total Control
[aeon.co]
Abusive groups promise stability and nurture, promise orientation, and as bait, give new members intense feelings of joy, hope, relief. After the recruit has attachment bonded to the group and its leader, the member is then kept busy, drops outside friends and interests or hides their commitment to the group from outside friends and family.
This is the same as abusive "lovers" romancing, abusing, isolating us. The alternation between romance and abuse is disorienting. The abuser isolating us from our previous outside relationships tricks us to rely on the abuser for validation, and makes it hard for us to find someone to validate our doubts, support our indignation, and shelter us when we flee the abuser.
Further on, the recruit, having come to rely on the group as main source of validation and emotional supply, is subjected to unpredictability, fear, confusion, kept off balance and disoriented, with just enough doses of joyfulness and kind treatment to renew their hopes. but keep us off balance and disoriented, with just a bit of kind treatment to renew our hopes of nurture and stability.
Abusive joking and teasing are therefore hazardous because these foster ambiguity and fear, and can conceal hostility in the guise of humor.
Get people laughing in unison and its a feeling of instant belonging.
A feeling of belonging is a genuine human need. It makes us vulnerable
and deserves respect, not exploitation.
Without that feeling of belonging, we cannot stay healthy, our bodies go into
stress reaction. Without a feeling of belonging, some slide into physical depression, others become vulnerable to addiction.
Secure feelings of attachment actually free us to go beyond a relationship.
When people cling to a guru, refuse to allow any criticism of the guru, that is a clue as to the hidden insecurity between guru and devotees. A secure relationship fears no dissent. A secure relationship can hold and contain the stress and irritation of dissent.
The hidden insecurity between guru and devotee is a secret that cannot be discussed or even thought about. In a secure relationship, any question can be asked and any question will be heard and respected.
A feeling of belonging with others usually develops slowly over time, just the
way that it takes a long time to form a pearl.
Genuine human relationships are like pearls in another way.
Irritation is part of a genuine relationship and without the irritation of a grain of sand, a pearl cannot develop in an oyster's tender folds.
That powerful intense feeling of belonging generated by commercial gurus is (in Corboy's opinion)
an artificial product, a plastic pearl.
Unlike genuine relationships which do include irritation, a commercial guru and devotee group avoid any irritation which disrupts their artificial feeling of belonging.
That is why room set up and rules may be very important at many guru group events.
Online discussion groups which discuss troubling features of a guru and group are resented to varying degrees by by devotees, perhaps for the same reason that hecklers are unwelcome at a comedy show.
The feeling of belonging generated between comedian and audience, a rapport rapid fostered by the artifices described in the thesis quoted in the earlier articles - this is something easily disrupted by a heckling joke -- because that rapport is an artificial creation.
An artificially rapport is a fragile creation - and anything perceived as a disruption is hotly resented.
That is Corboy's guess.
Certain drugs, such as the opiates trigger the same neural pathways that
are triggered by physical intimacy.
Adroit technicians such as expert salesmen and commercial gurus know how to use
social techniques and room set ups to trigger intense feelings of intimacy -- far more intense than most of us experience in genuine gradual friendships.
This is deeply physical. We are social mammals. We are creaturely.
All my life, I was convinced I was supposed to be self sufficient. Got it
from my family, (lots of alcoholics and alcoholic attitudes in both sides
of my family) and further entrenched by American culture and its myth of
self sufficiency.
What rocked my world was finding a book entitled Addiction as an Attachment Disorder.
It may be helpful understanding some problems with gurus who foster dependence in devotees.
[www.google.com]
It is a user friendly book . The author gives the current
research and demonstrates that humans cannot stay psychologically stable or
physically healthy unless we are embedded into human relationships.
Addiction as an Attachment Disorder provided the insight that secure
relationships emancipate us, insecure attachments entrap us.
This may tie in with Alexandra Stein's insight that a cultic relationship is
one in which the person or group we look to for orientation and promises us
orientation actually fosters insecurity and confusion, leaving us trapped.
These are not confined to love relationships.
By relationships, whats meant is we need to be affiliated with groups
where we know and are known by each other. Coworkers. The people who
recognize us at the cafe, at the grocery store, the bus routes we use.
Places where we volunteer. Places where we worship.
Where people say, "We have not seen you in awhile. Where've you been? Are you all right?"
We need to be part of a "puppy pile".
Without this, our body chemistry and mental chemistry go out of alignment. Our stress chemicals go up. We get depressed, tense, angry, immune system is less efficient.
I hope some of this helps.
One does not stay in the puppy pile forever, though. The puppy pile is
part of the process that fosters our growth into social beings who can connect,
care for each other --- and explore new opportunities.
We can visit our puppy pile and enjoy it, but are not meant to stay in the puppy pile forever.