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Research the consequences of any training and
trainer before attending - especially if covert hypnosis, belief and value change
are themes of the training. Some trainers and training organizations are notorious
for abusing and damaging students - and maybe you have heard of some. If not -
ask around.
Continued
from Training Abuse 1
Training, Trainers & Mentor Abuse
Some training programs have toxic consequences for
both participants and trainers, and some trainings are designed to attract
students who will comply with cult-like rules.
Trainers generally teach content - information,
skills to expand capabilities and beliefs about the context taught.
However trainers also impart, overtly or covertly, information about their
values, relationships and sense of life, although these
are more commonly the domains of mentorship.
Consequences for Abused Students
As students learn explicit skills, awareness and practices,
they also model (imitate) implicit attitudes; and may express those attitudes in
their own lives. If they were victims of an abusive trainer, they may act out
their abuse with their clients, customers or family. A code of ethics does not
prevent abusive behavior. Abused students may damage the
lives of other people - often with good intentions.
Consequences for Abusive Trainers
Although trainers who abuse students may enjoy some short-term
rewards (often egotistic, financial or sexual), the longer
term consequences often include guilt, entanglements and diminished sense of life.
Victims of severe toxic mentorship cannot be happy and may immerse themselves in
distractions, obsessions or addictions.
They may damage their most intimate relationships, and become suspicious of potential mentors.
They may cut themselves off - first from healthy people and then from the world.
In this chart, mentor roles are shaded pink and trainer roles
are shaded cream.
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Healthy Training or Mentor Damage? |
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Sense |
A mentor can encourage or discourage students to find
deep and lasting happiness.
- Does a mentor help students assess their sense of life?
- Does a mentor create an egocentric charismatic mission?
- Does a mentor promise to fulfill students deepest needs?
- Does a mentor promise spiritual power?
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| Identity |
A mentor can bond to students with healthy
or toxic relationship bonds
- Does a mentor boost or damage their students' self-esteem?
- Does a mentor try to become a focus of student fantasies?
- Does a mentor enmesh students in a closed system?
- Does a mentor lure confused people with dreams of utopia?
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| Values |
A mentor can accept or deny that students have different values
- Does a mentor demand alignment and allegiance?
- Does a mentor require group conformity and compliance?
- Does a mentor blame, silence or expel independent students?
- Does mentor expose or ignore unpleasant thoughts or emotions?
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| Beliefs |
A trainer can influence the empowering or
limiting beliefs of students
- Does a trainer enforce rules by manipulation and scapegoating?
- Do students hide or expose limiting beliefs to the trainer?
- Does a trainer teach secrets that exclude other people?
- Does a trainer require students to show faith in course material?
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| Modeling |
A trainer may be competent or incompetent
in the training context
- Does trainer claim that resistance to training is regressive?
- Does trainer requires that students 'work through' their resistance?
- Is a trainer trapped in high expectations and dependency?
- Do students repeat their own abuse with future clients / students?
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| Behavior |
A trainer's relationship skills can encourage or
discourage bad manners
- Does a trainer avoid or seek tests of own competence?
- Does a trainer avoid or encourage student objections?
- Does a trainer admit or hide incompetence?
- Are outsiders considered fair game for manipulation?
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| Reality |
A trainer may welcome or avoid feedback from real-world tests
- Does a trainer invite or discourage external influences?
- Does a trainer protect students from real-world tests?
- Does a trainer demand faith or arrange real-world testing?
- Does a trainer distort feedback to hide own limitations?
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With these questions, you can recognize and avoid
mentor damage, and you can recognize and evaluate some cult-like schools and
guru-like trainers. .
Exit Coaching from Cults . Abusive Therapists
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I took courses on energy healing. We paid a lot of money to learn
how to use energy to heal disease, although little was demonstrated and there were always
good reasons why those few demonstrations didn't work. Halifax, Canada |
Cults vs. Training
Some people need people who recognize their
specialness. The desire to be special often originates in the
early family, when a parent is missing or entangled with a child.
See Mother-Son Entanglements and
Father-Daughter bonds. Unhealthy
trainers may specialize in recruiting and training cult members.
Some signs are:
- Need for success
- Desire for authority
- Fascination with power and powerful people
- Desire to found a special group of special people
- Desire to fulfill the expectations of the new cult family
- Desire to fulfill idealistic expectations of loving relationships
- Perception that cult membership ensures or improves specialness
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Since I entered the world of NLP, hypnotherapy and
inspirational self-improvement, my life has changed. I definitely don't like
these changes, but I can't get out of them because they were imprinted in me on
an emotional level. |
Were you an Abused Student?
We can help you heal yourself of training abuse.
We cannot do it for you - emotional healing is an adult responsibility
- we can coach you through the steps. A paradox is that one symptom of
training abuse or mentor damage is that a victim may refuse
guidance from any other trainer, coach, mentor etc. This person may be
suspicious of and unable to trust any trainer or helping professional.
As many people who suffer from trainer abuse or
therapy damage were previously entangled with family members, it is important to
identify the most important transferences. However, training damage and
therapist abuse can diminish a person's ability to identify inappropriate mentors.
We can help people dissolve most forms of abuse.
Do You Want Results?
Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2005-2011 All rights reserved.
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