11 Comments

Great read. Too damned true. Loved the Heinlein quote, he's a personal favourite.

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As a retired (thank the stars!) psychotherapist, I saw what I termed "treatment du jour" coming along. Not so much by charlatans, but offered, initially, as focus on one type of disorder, soon to morph to a bullshit panacea. There is no damned panacea! (although whisky helps when I'm watching the spouting dipshits enough to turn the tv off and pour something!). Thanks for the reality check, although I believe you're preaching to this choir. Too bad more won't listen.

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And Oz is becoming more and more full of shit. Let’s hope enough people in PA see through it.

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I'm adding the word "quacktacular" to my vocabulary!

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Nov 7, 2022·edited Nov 7, 2022

Ah yes - people who "don’t wish to look like fools by coming to their senses". If that doesn't encapsulate the fucked-up, shitsucking, cerebroanal inversion that is the human condition, I don't know what does.

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Alternative practitioners, however, and not beholden to such ethical codes of conduct.

Should be "are"?

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Absolutely excellent analysis.

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I'm reminded of sociologist Leon Fessinger who developed the theory of cognitive dissonance. I think it is the exact definition of what goes on visa vi the dunk cost argument. Always enjoy your posts and as a fellow Canadian now living in the US I'm both proud and envious of you.

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I’m not entirely sure I want to admit this to you...I got sucked into NLP. I did a 9 day course in London, I bought the books and the CDs. Yeah.

It was incredibly useful to me, just not in the way that perhaps they intended.

I was on the Personal Development trail, trying to figure out how to be a Functional Responsible Adult. Hindsight is a wonderful thing: I’m ADHD. Life was harder than I figured it ought to be, they said they had answers.

Tony Robbins though...made my skin crawl, the stories...ugh.

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I have a story very similar to yours. Except I spent years on NLP!

Years later a simple cognitive assessment answered all my questions. Thanks for sharing.

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If I made it sound like I escaped with my wallet intact, please don’t let that thought linger. They got me good and proper.

Having said that, I’ve come away with an awesome bullshit detector and a huge dislike of CBT which frankly is the academic, cleaned up version with more peer reviewed papers.

It also led to me recognising I’m completely incapable of working with corporate structures that tend to drink that particular flavour of Kool Aid, claiming productivity & sales tools. Team Building & Networking gave me hives and sarcasm. I’m also very careful of ‘gurus’.

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