Being Truthful and Authentic Will NOT Get You Many Fans

Being truthful and authentic will not get you many fans. I speak from experience, and I can testify to that.

Yes, when our goal is to control and manipulate others perceptions we lose what is important and what really matters in life. 

"The period of influence consists in leading someone, without argument, to think, make decisions, and behave other than he would spontaneously on his own. During the "seductive stalking" period, the targeted is unable to freely consent a priori because his sensibilities and vulnerabilities are influenced and manipulated.  As in any manipulative process, the victim must first be made to believe he is free, even when he is insidiously deprived of the freedom to act. There can be no question of a discussion between equals; the abuser must subtly impose himself while preventing the other from becoming aware of the process and from discussing or resisting it. The victim's ability to defend himself is withdrawn, and his judgment is negated, thereby eliminating any possibility of rebellion. We find here the types of situations in which one individual exerts undue and abusive influence over another without his knowledge. In daily life, we are constantly being manipulated, destabilized, and muddled, and every time it happens we are furious at the perpetrator but even more ashamed of ourselves." 

Except from the book Stalking the Soul: Emotional Abuse and Erosion of Identity by Marie-France Herigoyen, page 90.

“…I really want to reinforce the idea that so-called therapists and gurus only substitute one dangerous illusion for another. As Alice Miller writes, “What can happen when a doctor doesn’t stop at self-deception in his flight from pain, but deceives his patients, even founding dogmatic institutions in which further ‘helpers’ are recruited to a faith advertised as scientific truth,’ can be catastrophic.”64 

The key to effective therapy is learning how to use your present triggers productively. They can help us clarify, understand and consciously feel our intense emotions within the context of our own childhoods without losing our adult consciousness. 

A good therapist can help us regain our adult consciousness if we lose it and encourage our autonomy, so we can deal with present issues from an adult perspective. 

But when a therapist regresses us to the state of the desperate child we once were and keeps us feeling old pain over and over again, that just reinforces our dependency, keeps us vulnerable to all kinds of manipulations, and makes our addiction to pain harder to shake.

Why do people keep punishing themselves? As Alice Miller writes, “… the awareness was borne in upon me that in a state of regression, it is not possible to judge the competence and integrity of the person one has turned to for such guidance. 

This opens up all kinds of opportunities for abuse. The intensive phase with which primal therapy begins is an immediate obstacle to the formation of a balanced, critical, independent assessment of the therapist’s abilities by the client. 

The fact that the attendant uncritical and irrational expectations of healing and ‘salvation’ can lead to the establishment of totalitarian sects is borne out by the crass example of mass abuse at the hands of the exponents of ‘feeling therapy’ as described in detail by Carol Lynn Mithers in her book Therapy Gone Mad: The True Story of Hundreds of Patients and a Generation Betrayed (1994). But this study was possible only after the community she describes had disbanded, something that frequently takes decades. 

Today we know that such groups exist and that members of sects are done irremediable harm before they become aware of the fact.”65 

In another book, she goes on to say, “The thing that concerns me most about cult groups is the unconscious manipulations that I have described in detail in my work. It is the way in which the repressed and unreflected childhood biographies of parents and therapists influence the lives of children and patients entrusted to their care without anyone involved actually realizing it. 

At first glance, it may seem as if what goes on in cults and cultlike therapy groups takes place on a different level from the unconscious manipulation of children by their parents. We assume that in the former instance, we are in the presence of an intentional, carefully planned, and organized form of manipulation aimed at exploiting the specific predicament of individuals. … First, they had learned how to reduce people to the emotional state of the helpless child. Once they had achieved that, they also learned how to use unconscious regression to exercise total control over their victims. 

From then on, what they did seemed to come automatically, in accordance with the childrearing patterns instilled into them in their own childhood.”66 

Most people who search for answers never actually find them, because people suffering with their own repression are the ones who practice traditional therapies. Since the beginning of human history, priests, teachers, gurus, psychics, doctors, philosophers, and psychologists have all duped people into thinking they could provide real assistance, when it was never possible because the healers were also victims of their own childhoods.” 

From the book:  A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions, pages 129, 130 and 131