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Tidbits to Threads No. 5
- Susan Stirling
- May 12
- 9 min read
Personal Development aka LGATs
Let’s take the tidbit of how, as a twenty-something, I was introduced to the world of personal development and dive a little deeper into how that thread began weaving itself into my life.
“It’s an experiential course. I can’t tell you too much about it, it’s something that’s meant to be experienced.” That was the introduction. It came from someone I trusted. She beamed with aliveness, and that was the hook because I wanted what she had.
I was being introduced to a course that would “change my life for the better.” You may remember her name in my book as Iva.
I’ve since learned there are a few names for the way I was ushered into this new world of personal development. One is social bridging: when someone is introduced to a new belief or system through a trusted relationship. Another is trust-based entry: when credibility quietly transfers from the person you know to the system itself.
In both cases, influence travels through genuine human connection. And at the time, it didn’t feel like influence at all. It felt like possibility.
Hindsight is real. I followed this thread for years believing I was seeing yet I was being unduly influenced.
Influence doesn’t automatically mean manipulation, but when things are kept hidden and framed as, “I can’t share what we do… it’s something you need to experience…” today my red-flag warning bells would be ringing. Back then, I was young, trusting, and searching for answers. I leaned in. I trusted Iva. This was my entry point. (aka vulnerability)
Looking back, I can also see an established pattern of black-and-white thinking woven through my experience. A way of interpreting things in rigid binaries; safe or unsafe, true or false, right or wrong; with very little space for the grey in between. At the time, it often felt like certainty. It even felt like safety. But it also shaped how easily I could be drawn into something I thought was true except it wasn’t.
When a person’s behavior or thinking has no flexibility, no tolerance for nuance, that’s often a clue. From my experience, black-and-white thinking came wrapped in certainty and safety and it felt solid, as if it was something I could count on. But it came at a cost. Emotionally. Mentally. And eventually, physically.
Hindsight is real.
Arriving back in Canada in 2011, it would be another 12 years before I found myself sending an email to a man I had heard speak on a podcast, in that email I asked him if he’d be willing to talk with me.
If you are new to deconstruction, I would encourage you to reach out to people who’s story you connect with as you deconstruct and re-learn. Honestly, it took courage for me to push send on the email to Dr. Hunter, especially since he was the first person I had reached out to.
If I can do it – you can do it.
I listen to Dr. John Hunter share his experience in both the LGATs and his religious experience on the Influence Continuum with Steven Hassan.
Dr. Hunter is a South African researcher and lecturer based in Johannesburg. In that conversation, he spoke about his experience in a Large Group Awareness Training and its effects on him. But what really stopped me in my tracks was hearing that he was writing about a similar impact from a religious experience in his book Manufacturing Mania.
Hearing Dr. Hunter speak was the first time I had ever heard someone describe a personal development program and a religious experience in the same breath. Something about that landed deeply for me, because I had lived through both a religious background and spent time in the personal development space.
I reached out to Dr. Hunter, and we set up a time to speak. On our first Zoom call, I knew that reaching out was a wise risk to take (remember I had to muster up courage to hit that send button). Dr. Hunter shared some of his generous wealth of knowledge, his experience, book recommendations, and he was willing to offer names of others who might help me in my information gathering.
This is how I first came to hear about Anne L. Peterson. I’ll speak more about Anne in a moment, and I’ll share links to their websites at the bottom of the article if you’d like to do your own research.
But first, I want to share what I uncovered as I kept following my own thread, the one that led me to my connection with LGATs, and some of my deconstruction process from being in this system.
Let’s begin by following the thread where I discovered information about the personal development courses I had taken were created and brought to Canada by someone who had previously been a facilitator with Lifespring in the United States. Lifespring encountered significant controversy in the 1970s and ’80s. Various academic articles described its training methods as “deceptive and indirect techniques of persuasion and control,” and there were allegations that the organization functioned like a cult and used coercive methods to prevent members from leaving. These concerns were highlighted in a 1987 article in The Washington Post, as well as in local television reporting in communities where Lifespring had a strong presence.
As I continued following this thread, I would eventually meet someone who had worked for Werner Erhard, the founder of Erhard Seminars Training, which would later become the basis for Landmark Education. Yes, that would be Anne.
Anne L. Peterson and I spoke over the phone for the first time in 2024, and I immediately found her authentic, direct, and an important voice of firsthand experience when it comes to understanding the inner workings of Landmark. Anne and I also discovered we had more in common; we were both navigating pivotal changes in the second half of life. We cheered each other on, and yes, she even wrote a testimonial for my book.
I came full circle the day I typed the words… Personal Best Seminars Calgary, Alberta. If I do the math, it’s been close to 40 years since I first walked into those seminars.
As I kept researching, I learned that one of the young men in a seminar that I had been a volunteer team member for, by the name of Jay Fiset, would go on to purchase the seminars in 1991 (the same year I was married in the church) and take them to the next level, expanding them throughout Alberta. Today, Personal Best Seminars are in new hands, and Jay is now coaching within the psychedelic and personal accountability spaces.
When I take this all in today, it feels strangely surreal to realize I’ve spent time in environments and atmospheres where ‘hidden things’ were quietly running in the background.
And yet, there is a part of me that still believes in transformation. I still believe in human potential and the desire for growth.
What has changed for me is the understanding that the real issue often lies in the method used, that line that can be crossed between helping and hurting, between support and exploitation. Now I find myself watchful, paying attention to whether the methods being used truly serve people… or whether they cross the line into harm.
The second part of this Tidbit to Thread on LGATs is about what happened after leaving that intense environment all those years ago, and the impact it had on my brain and body (I wrote about this in my book Velcro Kisses). I realized that, just like deconstructing from my religious indoctrination, I also needed to deconstruct from my personal development experience. Otherwise, I would only have left physically. My psyche, thoughts, and beliefs would still be influenced, and in some environments, easily triggered. I would continue to have circular thoughts instead of having the language and ability to define and label what I was feeling.
What helped me was learning to cognitively deconstruct first and then begin the process of untangling the many emotions I was carrying rather than the other way around.
Why is this important?
Initially, I was emotionally identifying by watching documentaries, joining groups discussing religious trauma, and eventually finding myself in cult recovery groups. I believe this was an important part of my process, because I found people who, like me, who each had very different experiences but the same symptoms, which is often the case in these systems.
But this is where my connection to the deconstruction process began to shift.
After many of our Zoom calls, I noticed I often felt activated in my body and emotions. Being on the calls amplified my emotions rather than grounded them. I wondered if it was simply because I’m empathetic and sensitive to the emotions of others, even online. Then one day, I heard someone say they had finally cognitively defined and processed their experience and were ready to leave the group and focus on something else (which is encouraged and healthy).
And it hit me.
I hadn’t yet cognitively deconstructed. I didn’t have the language for what I was experiencing, and I couldn’t explain it in a structured way. I was only relating to it emotionally. I was focused on recognizing it through how it felt, and the symptoms it produced rather than defining and understanding and clarifying what happened to me.
In wellness circles we often hear the phrase “emotions are energy in motion.” It works well as a metaphor for the way emotions can feel dynamic and shifting, but scientifically, emotions are not defined that way. In psychology and neuroscience, emotions are understood as complex processes involving the brain, the nervous system, the body, and how we interpret meaning in context.
Emotions are also social. We can pick up on them from other people without even realizing it. It’s what psychologists call emotional contagion. Facial expression, tone of voice, posture, and presence all play a role in how emotional states can be mirrored and internalized between people.
Over time, I started to realize what I was needing most was a cognitive container. Language. Labels. Definitions I could place my emotional experiences into. Not to reduce them, but to make them more understandable so they weren’t just something I was experiencing, but something I could begin to reflect on.
Without that container, my emotions were spilling everywhere, into my thoughts, into my interpretations, and into what I was beginning to take as truth. I believe that this was a Velcro hook.
This was my aha moment.
Once I saw this, my focus shifted. Instead of only asking How do I feel? I began asking, What happened to me? What are the mechanisms? What are the patterns?
I started learning the language of influence, group dynamics, nervous system responses, trauma, and cognitive bias, even attachment styles. Piece by piece, experiences that once felt confusing and overwhelming began to organize themselves into something I could understand.
Naming things didn’t make the emotions disappear, but it changed my relationship to them. Confusion began turning into clarity. Intensity began turning into understanding. Reactivity began turning into choice. For the first time, my emotions had somewhere to go. They had a framework. A structure. A container.
And inside that container, they finally started to make sense. For me, the most healing shift was that my mind stopped looping in the same familiar circuits.
I experienced a kind of internal settling. I didn’t feel the need to constantly reprocess or re-explain everything. Instead of getting caught in repetition, there was a little more space between thoughts, I now had enough room to simply notice them, rather than chase them.
In my last Tidbits to Thread on Word Salad, I shared how this was used in my LGAT group. I wrote that word salad can be used as a way to temporarily suspend a person’s critical thinking when they are in an environment where new beliefs are being planted. When the brain is overloaded, critical thought pauses, and you, the person sitting in the seat, can begin to take in a belief without consciously assessing it. And that belief then sits and begins to take root in your mind and body.
Back then, I didn’t have the language or the understanding. Today, I can see that I had internalized a new thought/belief because of the environment and the system I was in.
Cognitive deconstruction for me became about beginning to tweeze apart the thoughts and beliefs that I had taken in without critical thought. I continue to examine each one as they come up. I continue to educate myself. And doing this work allows me to process these thoughts and beliefs rather than having them sit in my mind and body undigested.
It’s about boundaries.
Physiological boundaries.
Belief boundaries.
Doing this work allowed me to begin to change my day-to-day life in subtle but profound ways.
I started noticing when I was being emotionally activated instead of automatically reacting. I began pausing. Questioning. Checking in with myself before accepting something as truth.
My sense of self slowly shifted from something that felt externally shaped to something that felt internally grounded. Psychologists call this an internal locus of control. I simply say: I’m living from the inside out rather than the outside in.
And I found myself gaining confidence, because I wasn’t constantly scanning for the “right” way to think, feel, or respond anymore. I was learning to trust my own thinking again.
And that kind of self-trust rebuilds slowly but powerfully.
This Tidbit to Thread is not a rejection of personal growth itself, but a call for discernment, ethics, and care.
If you would like to take your own deeper dive into personal development and large group awareness trainings. Feel free to click on the links below. I feel to only share resources from which I know or are public interest.
Dr. John Hunter
Anne L. Petersen
I’ve included an article by Macleans Magazine and Cult Forum.
Author of Velcro Kisses: prophecy, trauma bonds & Reclaiming narrative.
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