“You are getting sleepy…you are getting very sleepy…listen only to the sound of my voice…”
How Often Do You Say “Yes” When You Mean “No?” ….Now, granted, you may not realize right away that you’ve said “yes” when you meant “no.” Sometimes you’re already on the roller coaster…or the two giant half-mastiff puppies are eating your couch…or perhaps you’ve exchanged vows.
So what happened to the three people who died during the sweat lodge ritual in Arizona? How could they have ignored stress signals coming from within their own bodies? The apparent goal of the ritual was for participants to push themselves beyond what they believed they could tolerate. The theme of the weekend was that the leader knew what his followers needed better than they knew for themselves. The experience of listening to Ray instead of their fears in the sweat lodge was ‘supposed to’ resultant in a life-changing boost in self confidence.
When asked by the press one participant (Dennis Mehraver) said that after attending many courses led by self-help guru James Arthur Ray, he developed great trust in his mentor and came to believe that Ray “knew how far I could go better than myself.”
The ‘sea of emotions’ drummed up in a torture weekend gets people bursting with ‘ideas of specialness’ and super capability. (And who doesn’t want that?) Because there is a lot of emotion, participants perceive that great change has happened. Because there is a lot of emotion and pressure to agree that lives have been forever changed (who wants to be the failure, the loser who didn’t ‘get it’?)… Amid all the good feelings, no one wants to think or talk about what sorts of ‘work on self’ actually results in long term change. Also, participants have spent a great deal of money (and will be asked to spend more) making it harder to see clearly what’s happening.
How does ‘group think’ work, and who is likely to rely on ‘group think’ over thinking for self? “The less developed a person’s “self,” the more impact others have on his functioning and the more he tries to control, actively or passively, the functioning of others.” See differentiation.
Oh. I thought that was the deal I made when I got married. I thought we agreed that you would change to keep me comfortable and non-anxious at all times. To be continued.
