Kim posted re Landmark:
The main activity of the Landmark is to make--not urge--participants to apologize to the people around them for the "rackets" they have dumped on them. A racket is a state of being, Sophie explained, a story one tells oneself where one is a victim in a permanent state of complaint. We are constantly affixing "stories" to events rather than seeing the separation between "event" and "interpretation," and these stories are usually based in our self-righteous feeling of being wronged.
I find that totally shocking. It would discourage victims from seeking justice, for example, or discourage people from organising to right wrongs. Sometimes people need to complain and need for their story to be heard and acknowledged. If this doesn't happen a lot of the suffering will continue.
Orla
I agree. This Landmark philosophy sounds like just another fanatical, intolerant religion. It is its own racket, in black or white.
Whether one believes that illness is a punishment from god, your bad karma coming back to haunt you, fate, destiny, chance, etc., any of those "inevitables", the more moderate factions of every religion or philosophy still teach us to have compassion for other people's suffering. And if we can have compassion for others, we can have compassion for ourselves. In fact, if we have no compassion for ourselves, how are we to have compassion for others?
Acknowledging suffering, in all its many degrees, is the compassionate thing to do, IMO. It is also my opinion, based on the person I know myself to be, that receiving compassion from others does not mire me in self-pity, does not encourage me to remain sick. I, and others, have been wronged in many ways, for what ever the reason. (ie
efrauded of research, denied medical treatment, denied disability payments, miscast as liars, malingerers and crazies...) Denying that reality doesn't change it, and in the case of ME/CFS, only perpetuates the wronging. As Orla says, how do you right a wrong if you can't even acknowledge that it exists? To call the acknowledgement of wrongs a "racket" is some sort of manipulation toward self-hate, for those who have been wronged.
I also know the value of accepting what you can't change, but like most of us here, I rarely can be sure just what I can change and what I can't. I have learned from that, that "authorities" and "experts" can't be sure either, so I have to go by my own observations and experiences.
If this illness has taught me anything, it is that my personal reality is not obvious to anyone who hasn't experienced it. Any that tells me that no one else's reality can be totally understood by me, not even someone else who also has this illness. So, I choose to accept their reality as they reveal it to me, to the extent I can.
So, it comes down to that: a choice. Do I set myself up in judgement that other people's realities are just a "racket" or do I accept them, to the degree I can, as they claim to be? This doesn't mean I can't notice that
some people play the game of being a victim, or the polar opposite, of being the tough guy. As Orla has mentioned before, we need to practice discernment, not blanket condemnation.
The nature of this illness has kept many of us in isolation. One of the best things a forum like this does is provide a place for sufferers to connect with others who have had, or are having, the same experiences...the ones our families, friends, doctors and others "don't get". After we have been invalidated for so long, in so many ways, it's very affirming to have a place where we can share those experiences that others have used to invalidate us, and to not be invalidated again by sharing them here.
Therefore, it's very hurtful when "our" advocacy organization, or "our" forum creator seem to be denying our personal realities and, thus, seem to be allying themselves with our tormentors. If it's a philosophical difference behind this seeming disconnect, then I think we deserve to know just what that philosophy is.