On being in a Cult and Waking Up or But I Really Wanted To Have Fun

[Rebecca Kalamata]

GROUP
It was 1968 and a lot of kids were starting to act out with drugs and rebelling. So much was going on! So much drama, so much excitement. I wanted to be part of it more than anything else but I was only 13. 13 going on 20 as my mom always says. The sex, the move to California, the jump into the upper class, my father and his influence, my mother and hers, and my God! The times! It was a cocktail of life, pretty much all of a sudden.

 

Parents had absolutely no idea how to cope with us. A man named Jim Brennan was hired by Palos Verdes Unified School District to help the kids. Jim was a psychologist who brought his program, "Group Dynamics" to the district.  He started an afterschool group at Palos Verdes Continuation School with kids who had been kicked out of Palos Verdes High regular school and he started a group at Malaga Cove Intermediate School. He also had a group of college kids in a private practice in Santa Monica, on the other side of Los Angeles.

Jim got the school counselors involved and they recommended and recruited the first kids. I was one of them and very proud and excited about it. We gathered after school in the teacher's lounge, a special room reserved for the teachers only. Couches, carpets, nice. Not a classroom. Jim had us go around and introduce ourselves and say how we were feeling. What a shock! We immediately learned that we didn't know how to do this! We didn't even know how to identify how we were feeling! Jim did not accept, "I feel good." Or bad, or nice or fine. We learned to be more specific and to identify what "good" was. Happy, excited, grateful. And bad; angry, lonely, sad. Jim was tough in his demand that we be clear in identifying and saying how we felt.

The fundamentals of the group were really important to me. And they remain really important. I always know exactly how I feel and have always known since 1968. The next thing we learned was how to look at each other in the face when we talked. And then to look at each other and talk to the other person about what we saw. And then how we felt to hear from the person talking to us.

It went something like this...

"I am happy today. I'm excited to be here and I want to respond to Karen." Then, "Karen, you look happy and I really like your hair." And Jim would prompt us to be more specific about what it was we liked. So then from Jim, "How does that make you feel Karen? Tell her how you felt when she complimented you."

Jim introduced the idea of "sponsors" to us. Everyone in the group had a sponsor and everyone was a sponsoree. The sponsor had to call or talk to their sponsoree every day. They had to find out how the sponsoree was feeling and generally how their day went and how things were going at home and in school.

They also had responsibilities  with their sponsoree in Group. Jim had begun to expand the group's objectives. Now we began to learn how to have relationships with each other. And terms like reality and confront as in facing reality and confronting our feelings and each other were introduced. Confronting our issues within our families and between each other became the focus of  Group. We met after school for 2.5 hrs. 3 times a week. The sponsor's job was to "bring up" ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING their sponsoree was not bringing up themselves. The focus and objectives were to feel our feelings and to express them...NO MATTER WHAT OR HOW HARD IT WAS.

We learned to look deep and deeper still within and to speak about it. We cried and screamed with and at each other. "HOW DOES IT FEEL WHEN YOU....WHEN SHE… WHEN THEY…

And we went deeper and deeper into our relationships with each other. We learned about how people transfer their feelings. About how we could have love for someone and rather than preserving that feeling specifically for them and sharing it, how people give their love away to others. We learned about manipulation and how we manipulated each other and our family members and how we were manipulated by them.  We learned about what was valid, true and real. And we called each other out on EVERYTHING.

A big deal was "selling out". We learned that people sell themselves out all the time to get approval, especially from parents. And that parents manipulate kids all the time and we learned all the many reasons why and how.  And we screamed hate about it and held each other afterward. And loneliness, we learned all the ways we try to run from loneliness. And about getting attention in invalid ways.

We learned about being self-centered and about being jealous and envious. We learned about possessiveness of people and about how NOBODY OWNS ANYBODY. Not a mother or father, not a boyfriend or girlfriend, not a best friend, not a husband or wife. And we learned all these things EXPERIENTIALLY in the group.

When school got out Jim announced that we would be meeting every day. He had made arrangements to use the school auditorium. The high school and college kids joined us. We had our original core groups of our age level people that he began to call by Greek letters. Alpha Group, Beta Group, Gamma Group, Delta Group. Then he started leadership training groups and sponsorship, training groups. Every day we had huge, "Encounter Groups" in which we would keep it real to the moment and respond to people we barely knew from the other groups.

 

I have not tried to explain any of this to anyone. It was an incomprehensible thing to be involved with and to my knowledge nothing like it has ever been done before or since. We were committed to being real, being completely honest in and about everything, being able to face and confront any and every invalid way we were acting or being treated.

It was hard. Really, really hard. Day after day. Jim pressured us to bring in new members, family, friends, other kids from school. That first summer there were 50 or more of us at one point. But Group was definitely not for everyone. Kids dropped out all the time. And when they left they badmouthed Group. And if they were our friends they'd bother all the time about how could we put up with all that shit and that we were being controlled. Actually, before Group I had begun to make a few friends. I lost them because of Group.

 

Another hard thing was that we were expected to be doing well in school. When school started up again Jim introduced, "Lifestyle Training groups".  We had to meet at lunchtime with one of the kids who had been around the previous year as the Leader. Each kid had to report on their homework and grades. Then we had to talk about what kind of cultural things we were pursuing. What books we were reading, what movies we saw, how much TV we watched.

Because of the the intensity of Group and all the kids who had dropped out, it became very controversial and Jim's contract with the school district was not renewed. Not to worry. Jim had involved the head of a local church and we began to meet there. A bunch of people from the church joined then. We had to pay now though. I got a job and so I could pay my own way. I also got my little sister in cause Jim had started a little kids group and my sister Lisa was only 6 yrs. but was a real pain in the neck. I was worried about her because all she got was negative feedback from the family. She needed to change her ways or have a very difficult life. So I paid for her Group too.

I swore to them that I would not quit. I would not join the fucked up people who lied and cheated and manipulated each other. The chickenshits who wouldn't face reality. I would not sell out like the quitters and losers. So another year passed and then I was out of middle school and moving on to High School.

 I can't tell the incidents in a way that will serve any purpose. One of them though taught me that when there is a sudden change in a relationship, there is always more going on than meets the eye. So when I find myself reluctant to do or talk about things that were no problem before, first I think about and look very carefully at my actions and words and then I try to understand how I might have caused hurt feelings, anger, annoyance, resentment, jealousy or any other of the myriad of painful feelings that arise in all relationships between people. I can always find something. It's usually very difficult for me then.

My inclination is to feel defensive and to look for justification of myself. That's another thing we learned about in Group. We were not permitted under any circumstances to get defensive. No excuses, no reasons, no explanations. Being defensive was just hanging oneself. And it was easy to watch it in others and see what they themselves couldn't and wouldn't see. So I force myself to recognize my responsibility whether or not the other person figures their part out. It doesn't matter if I act hurtfully in reaction to feeling hurt or mad or whichever of those hard feelings that I hate. It isn't valid. It is acting out instead of confronting my feelings and telling the person. So even doing something hurtful out of carelessness or being unaware was and is not acceptable. It just means I'm being out of touch with myself.

I am not sure that I am going to write about the rest. I am beginning to regret even starting this saga. Well... I'm going to have to I think.  Cause I began to have a real problem. And it is very hard to write about. See I didn't want to be in Group anymore. I hadn't wanted to be in Group for a long time.  And I couldn't quit. I was REALLY tired of abstaining from low consciousness things.

See we were being taught to see ourselves as very special. Very different and to see everybody that wasn't in Group as all messed up. Especially the quitters. To leave Group meant rejecting this high level of relationships and these people who loved us and we were told that we would regret copping out and selling out for the rest of our lives. We weren't allowed to have friends outside of Group or to participate in any of the faddish things going on. No sports or surfing. Those boys had to quit their teams and surfer friends. No dances, no rock music. Jim called these things scitzy from schizophrenic. We'd get blasted if we were ever scitzy and out of touch with our feelings. We'd get yelled and screamed at by our sponsors, the student group leaders, the other members, and Jim. And during the yelling sponsors would start yelling at their sponsors if they weren't participating/helping. "You fucking selfish bitch!" How are you feeling? You're just sitting there like an asshole! What's going on with YOU?" "Get out f yourself God damn it!"

If someone wanted to quit they were expected to come and announce it to the Group. That was the deal but then the screaming, swearing and name-calling would commence with people yelling "I'm feeling HATE for you, you fucking asshole! How dare you leave me/us after all the work I/we have done with you?! My God you are a self-centered little bitch!"  All the "quitter's issues would be brought up and dire predictions of what was going to happen to them were screamed at them. "You fucking little whore! You want to go back out and use drugs and fuck assholes who just want to use you. You'll end up a prostitute and drug addict! I hate you!" It was rough going for those of us who really were at risk for that ever possible future. It was rough for the normal kids too though, all those dire predictions about the fake people and users and manipulators who they were trading Group and honesty away for.

 

And it's true. There's nobody out here. Lots of fake, plastic people with egocentric values if they are successful. Blamers and manipulators. People on the run from their feelings, defending themselves even to themselves. They buy whatever myths about God and their cultures that they tell each other, generation after generation.

That's the worst. The psychological ways they ruin their kids in the name of their loving them. That's one reason why I don't have kids. I did not want to be involved with making somebody's life so difficult and I knew what my serious issues regarding love and neediness were. Because when I was old enough to rejoin Group after they left California and moved all together to Hawaii, I had no intention of keeping my word and returning to Group as I had promised. I had a fantasy about this guy in Greece who was going to be my best friend. I had very, very high expectations. But I digress….

 

By the time I got to high school, I didn't want to be in Group anymore. I didn't recognize myself I was so perfect. But it wasn't real and that's what being in Group was all about. Being real. The kids in the program were not kids that I normally would have chosen for friends. The intellectually higher activities we pursued were not what I'd have chosen to spend my time with. School was getting harder and I was missing huge pieces of the basics in my subjects and it was a Group value that we do well in school. I wondered how I was ever going to get out of Group. I was so proud for having stayed in where so many hadn't. I stayed for TRUTH. But also I was afraid to quit. I was pretty sure that Jim was right about what would happen to me and I couldn't face them and quit. So I just kept going and living a lie. I think it went on like that for 2 years.

I was lucky because I never had to actually quit Group. Everybody who quit naturally demonized the whole thing. They made the Group wrong and bad and went into denial about everything they had learned.

So when Group all left finally, Jim decided to move to Hawaii and took the Group with him. My parents wouldn't let me go. I immediately began where I had left off before I was in Group with all the inappropriate behavior. But I knew exactly what I was doing and why.

All the time I mean. And everybody else too. I always know what everybody is doing and why. It's like wearing Xray glasses for seeing people's inner selves. It is so obvious to me. If I was to do any kind of therapeutic work, the first place I'd start would be with the connection between their problem and the amount of love and attention they felt from each parent and what feelings they had toward their siblings. And what they did about it. And what fears they believed. Most important though is how they misunderstood lies in the first place and started building a persona accordingly. One way or another we have to accept responsibility for how we cope with this drama. Between you and me, we know that this is because it is our own design, but most of us are terrified of looking at that.  We mistake responsibility for blame.

So we have to see things as they really were/are and without BLAME.  That includes without self-blame, and that's the hardest thing. I told someone recently that there is no blame, however there is responsibility and until someone accepts responsibility, there will always be the same nagging, dragging problem. Forever if they prefer. I chose to suffer for my own and my parents and siblings transgressions. To suffer and to blame. Suffering is not the key. I used to think it was. And that suffering strengthens a person.

If we like. I have learned that we WILL learn. Either by the way of wisdom or the way of woe. Learning by way of wisdom is listening to other people's stories. Learning by woe is learning from the suffering that we do. Really it is not necessary.

Buddha went out of his father's palace and realized that there is suffering. And then he suffered. I'm thinking that that is part of the lie that we buy. Yes there is suffering, perhaps it's not so necessary to suffer to become strengthened though.

Something I understood again about my story is that my brother and I talked about EVERYTHING when we were growing up. We lost that relationship pretty much when we became adults and went our separate ways. That is the relationship that I have been longing for all my life though. There has been no one since our adolescence that was interested in how it works that would talk to me about who they are and what they have figured out. Figure out? THEY don't know there is something TO figure out.

I am going to  direct attention to an expose that a guy named Craig Cornell wrote and published about Group in Hawaii and what happened. He became a lawyer so the first part of it is legal stuff he must have felt he needed to add.

 

Read through quite a bit of things Craig included until you get to:

Introduction To The Brennan Cult

Jim's name is/was James Brennan