This is a HAI Issue
It seemed to me that the first step in any effective course correction would be for HAI to acknowledge clearly to itself, me and others that a facilitator charging a client to traumatize them and lead them into harm while breaking facilitator agreements, therapeutic guidelines, professional ethics and standards of human decency was actually the most important issue the facilitators could possibly attend to, and that the protocol of denial, silence, secrecy and abandonment was making the entire organization criminally negligent on the basis of willful ignorance and willful negligence. I therefore wrote to Jason Weston, who had delivered the facilitator verdict, explaining exactly why this was a HAI Issue:
1) How could HAI grow and change if it was denying problems it's protocols had created?
2) If a facilitator abusing a participant was not a HAI issue, what was?
3) The public could not trust the facilitator power-structure if they learned from a participant about gross negligence that had been covered up.
I have been very transparent in books and in all my relationships. I believe that when you have people with good intentions the safest thing is to make as many data-points visible as possible because people with good intentions use that data to act more consciously and kindly. I don't believe that anyone but the shame-shadow-structure benefits by keeping facilitator negligence, mistakes and lack of experience a secret. In fact, if the full lack of training and licensing were known to me, none of this would have happened to begin with, thus protecting HAI from legal action. I concluded by telling Jason: "An organization professing to teach love, intimacy and healthy relationships cannot survive an unpalatable secret it has worked to protect. So change the script. Don't ask me to keep a secret in which you abuse me. Instead, step out in front of this issue by announcing to everyone that a facilitator has made a mistake, that HAI is very sorry, grateful for the support of community and committed to learning from it and coming out stronger. In the meantime the most important thing is insuring the participant's safety and well-being by making sure they feel welcome and safe." This is the statement a man or group, committed to the safety of a participant would make. I've been around enough communities to know that if HAI took this stance they would come out stronger and would grow a lot."
Jason Weston ignored this e-mail and never explained why he and the facilitators and board thought that this was not a HAI issue. If you can imagine me in a state of physical collapse, unsure if I would survive, coming to terms with the fact that the head of my community was choosing to commit his organization to a path of suicide that breaches all trust, and in the process position me, the client and patient as the enemy of the organization rather than the teacher and client of their abuse, you will understand that at a gut instinctual level I lost trust in their ability to keep me alive, sane or safe emotionally, mentally and physically. This is a terrifying position to be in because in the depths of trauma what one needs most is trusted family, community and care-givers who know what they are doing and who put your safety first. The people who could say in front of the "room of love" that "we are committed to creating a world where everyone wins," but behind closed doors that we are not even going to read and respond to your urgent communication about their negligence and my safety were not people I could trust. Some part of me knew that...
Questions: Where do you turn when you cannot trust yourself and need help desperately, but the people at the head of your community, that represent four of your personal therapists and are also your teachers turn away from you? Do you dive into trauma alone, or do you try and hang on to hope that they will do the right thing if you can just be heard?
Concern: I have absolutely no doubt that this is a recipe for death, intolerable pain, loneliness and violence as a statistic. I don't know if one in ten men treated this way and in this particular state (see Peter Sandhill) would die, or one in five. But watching the eddies of emotion, energy and the extremes to which I went in order to numb some of the unbearable feelings left me clear that this was a recipe that led to murder of a certain demographic of people as a statistic (see video on the distinction between statistics and free will).
Suing For Best Practices at HAI
