Rampant Indoctrination in Therapy + Coaching Culture

I recently wrote you all a post on overprocessing in growthy type communities and so it’s been on my mind. And then facebook showed me my memories and I saw how I’ve been talking about this for years.

I want to share because this perspective forms so much of the foundation of SomaField. In part, I created it born out of the complaints my clients have been coming to me with for years about therapists and coaches and, honestly, their nonsense. (Not all of us, I know!)

Here’s the post:

My point isn’t to discredit the new age movement, to insult the hippies, or to talk shit about wellness influencers.

I have been into all of these things because there was something good that drew me in.

Just. Ok here’s the thing. Have you noticed how religions and cults alike have often started with a principle or practice that’s actually really good and beautiful? And then shit gets really warped?

Think Christianity, Jonestown, Org*smic Meditation, Circling, life coaching…

It seems when a new idea or practice gains enough popularity, indoctrination begins. “The process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.” Don’t you see A LOT of this these days?

And with indoctrination comes a little micro-world that develops around it where the rules aren’t written but felt and everyone kind of adheres and acts and talks similarly. Some might call that a bubble.

I’ve spent a lot of the last 7 or so years (most heavily the last 4) thinking about how indoctrination has become a huge part of these communities, how few of these beliefs and practices square with my values (especially around social justice), and how therefore, we often do incredible damage to ourselves. Not to mention how logically or scientifically silly some of it is. 

And I’ve also sat with client after client as a therapist coming to me with the weight of these invisible belief systems causing them pain and them not knowing where it was coming from but thinking it was THEM that was somehow broken when really it’s the culture around them be it new age or wellness or whiteness. Which is just one of the reasons I chafe against the hyper personal responsibility thing. 

And then the pandemic happened and I was sick and isolated with long covid and had to pull away from all my communities and watch the way that people made sense, made meaning, made alliances, and how the contagion of belief spread. I watched the gaps in logic, how people thought, and how others who’d been indoctrinated responded to each other and me. 

So my point is to say that living it and then studying and thinking about something for this long makes me want to talk about all of this with you. I want to hear what you see, what you’ve experienced, what doesn’t make sense. I want to hear your story.

I’ve been quietly working with my clients around this stuff in my own little office but some have started to ask me to put together a training for practitioners so that they don’t just pass on their own indoctrination and do harm. Some of them feel not quite right about certain things they’ve been taught in their training and so I do really feel like wanna create something for these people. 

But not until I’ve talked about it publicly more because the conversations really help me understand what I see more deeply and how I want to talk and teach about it. So I’d love to hear what you have to say.

And that’s the post. It’s wild to see the fruits of this years later now. Those conversations that came out of that DID help me. A lot, actually.

I share it because I haven’t stopped thinking about this. And also because I recently completed teaching my yearlong Hone Your Craft program for therapists and coaches that was born out of this discussion. And in that program, I discovered, named, and taught SomaField for the first time.

The thread that runs through my post, the Hone Your Craft program, and the creation of SomaField is that we need the discussions, the collaboration, and the group to help us see more clearly, to flesh out ideas, to learn from each other. With coaching and therapy being so siloed, so solo, we need to be able to discuss our questions, client scenarios, and our practitioner selves in a confidential place so that we can keep getting better at what we do.

This is necessary for our profession and many therapists don’t have it. Most coaches don’t have it. If you want to learn SomaField and have a supervision/consultation/mentorship group like this, please respond here and let me know.

Please forward this to anyone that comes to mind if you think they’d enjoy it. :)