Hi all,
I honed in on ex-l's thread above this one as I saw "Reach", but I'll post my response here too as the thread is active. I see my concerns about Reach were well-founded. I will talk to my current counsellor about this and see if she has any ideas on how to proceed.
Alanna
I haven't posted here for quite some time as I have been working a lot of things out regarding my BK experience, which I will share with you all soon.
I wanted to reply to this though, as last year (well, Xmas 2009-Jan 2010) I saw a Reach Approach counsellor so can offer some insight. The counsellor is BK insofar as she believes in Baba and The Knowledge, but she recognises there are significant problems with the organisation, that it has really harmed people and agrees with me that children should not be subject to the teachings. I don't think she went to morning class etc, she just did her own thing with The Knowledge. I think Easton is a BK.
As far as I can tell from my limited exposure, Reach offer a bit of a one size fits all approach to counselling, which includes the four key stages set out on their website: Life Map Work, Hall of Shame, Dark Room Work and Lifestyle (see more here:
http://www.thereachapproach.co.uk/approach.php?id=5). Life map work just involves going over you life and discussing it - talk therapy really - and I found this stage helpful. However, the counsellor also recorded some "deep relaxations" with me, designed to prepare me for change and learn to love myself. I recognise now that these were hypnotism, and my current (cult expert) counsellor has listened to them with me and confirmed as much. The script for these deep relaxations was prepared by the counsellor and I did not read it before she did a live recording with me, so I was in a hypnotic state when I first heard them, and I always fell asleep/drifted off when I listened back to them at home. So she was completely in control of the process and the ideas that were going into my head in that state - clearly this is not the way therapeutic hypnotism should be conducted. We only did 2 (I think there were 4 in the series) and they were fairly innocuous on the surface, but included BK trigger words and what my current counsellor views as potentially dangerous ideas along the lines of "no matter how hard this [process] gets, I will carry on with it because the fact that it's hard means it is the right thing to be doing". A few weeks into the deep relaxation process I decided I did not want to carry on working with Reach because much as I believed - and still believe - that the counsellor's heart was in the right place and she really did want to help me, I felt I couldn't trust her because she was a BK.
I am incredibly glad I came to this decision. Listening back to the tapes, reading the articles on their website and seeing the BK-inspired logo (all of which I discussed with my current counsellor) I am very concerned that the Reach view of a whole, happy, healthy person may be modelled on the BK idea of a whole, happy healthy person, and it was this very model that caused my depression and suicidal feelings. It seems like they have a set idea of where a person should be and what they should be like when they are "healed" and this ignores the client's individuality, needs and right to determine their own path and identity. It scares me a bit to think what might have happened to me if I had carried on with the Reach Approach - particularly if we had got to the "Dark Room" stage where the counsellor would have been "in the driving seat". I am also shocked at myself for just going along with the deep relaxation and being so trusting, not asking critical questions etc., but the counsellor was so nice and did have some genuinely useful insights during the talk therapy stage, so guess I just carried on based on that. But as we all know, that's how they get you
.
So I do think Reach has a BK agenda. I was told all the counsellors have been through the process themselves before they start helping others through it, and this means they really believe it works and they genuinely think it can help others. But counsellors shouldn't be steering clients towards a goal that has been pre-defined without the client's input, particularly when said counsellor is a member of a cult! (Although I am not sure if all the counsellors are BKs.) Of course I am only basing all this on one limited experience and my own subjective conclusions, but my current counsellor is very concerned about their practice.
In terms of Reach being a counselling service for BKs, I know someone at my old centre had problems with depression etc. and he went to them and is now better, but of course still a BK. I decided to give it a go as I thought it would be useful to speak with an insider who understood the BKs, but I now think I had a lucky escape, and what I actually needed was someone who could give me an outsider's view and who understood cults. I also know that my counsellor had at least one other BK/ex-BK client. One could potentially view them as a re-programming course for troubled BKs, but I really don't have enough information or experience with them to come to that conclusion.
Hope this helps.
If anyone does want some specialist post-cult counselling, I very much recommend
http://www.hopevalleycounselling.com.