Confronting The Line

Anne L. Peterson
  • 4.7 (7)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

We are here to explore the world of personal development, and examine the often blurry line between transformation and exploitation. We are dedicated to finding that line, then looking, listening and learning in service of safer seeking for life long learners, like us.

  1. 4d ago

    E73 | 50 Years Treating Trauma and Mind Control — A Therapist on Where Self-Help Crosses the Line

    Susan Pease Banitt has spent nearly fifty years as a trauma therapist, including decades working with survivors of mind control and trafficking. In this conversation, she turns that clinical eye on the self-help world: where it helps, where it crosses the line, and how to tell the difference. Susan is a licensed clinical social worker trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy in the Harvard teaching hospitals, specializing in PTSD, dissociation and complex trauma. She is also a yoga teacher, a Reiki practitioner and the author of The Trauma Tool Kit, Wisdom, Attachment, and Love in Trauma Therapy, and the new anthology Women Therapists on Healing. With Anne, who spent thirty years as a participant and leader in Landmark, she looks at the quiet moments where agency changes hands. One is the familiar invitation to "just try these ideas on for the weekend." Another is responsibility teaching that slides into "you caused everything that happened to you." Susan's central tool is the difference between content and process. Content is what a teacher says. Process is what the dynamic is actually doing to you. When the content sounds wise and the process is controlling, the whole thing becomes harmful. From there, the conversation moves through love bombing and our deep need to belong, why people with early trauma reach for outside structure, why smart people are not immune to influence, and why good people inside harmful organizations keep repeating the same harm. Susan closes with a hopeful challenge. Organizations, practitioners and individuals can all take an honest moral inventory, keep what is good, and look directly at their areas of denial. This episode is for anyone who has felt something was off in a personal development setting but couldn't name it, and for any coach, therapist or facilitator who wants to hold people without taking their agency away. A note before you listen: this conversation touches briefly on mind control, trafficking, abuse and a training exercise involving mock strangulation. These come up as references rather than in detail, but if they're tender topics for you, take care as you listen. RAINN offers confidential support at rainn.org or 1-800-656-4673, and Rachel Bernstein's recovery group is linked below. Resources mentioned:Women Therapists on Healing, ed. Susan Pease Banitt and Larissa Miranda https://www.suepb.com/books Connect with Susan: ⁠www.suepeasebanitt.com Book - The Fund by Rob Copeland Jon Atack's Family & Friends podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI4tcSMV2kEh3BooY_XFSYQ Rachel Bernstein's Healthy Healing group: https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/ Chris Shelton's What Now: Reclaiming Your Life class: https://ilumn8.life/op/reclaiming-your-mind-and-life-chris-shelton/ Seek Safely: https://seeksafely.org/ Anne Peterson's book, Is This a Cult?: https://isthisacultbook.com/ Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development. We explore what separates genuinely transformative work from environments that exploit the very people seeking growth. Go Beyond the Line: I just started a companion Patreon for those who'd like to explore deeper into what I've been learning about the Human Potential Movement, what works and what doesn't. https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio Read about how Confronting the Line is funded and our commitment to transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

  2. 6d ago ·  Bonus

    Getting Clear: A Preview from Beyond the Line

    This episode is a sample from Beyond the Line, the companion space to Confronting the Line. Over the next few months, Beyond the Line is running a series on the clichés that show up all over self-help and personal development: phrases many of us heard so often we stopped asking what they meant. We're looking at where they came from, when they can be useful, and when they cause harm. We're starting with "getting clear." In this clip from my conversation with Chris Shelton on Speaking of Cults, Chris traces the idea of "clear" back to Scientology and Hubbard's Dianetics, and I compare it to how clearing and "being complete" were taught in the transformational training world I was part of. We talk about what's useful in the idea, and what happens when people are promised a permanent state that brains don't actually work toward. Continue the conversation on Beyond the Line: Tools, conversations, and resources for safer seeking. Beyond the Line adds context and perspective to the podcast without replacing it. Everything there is optional, and you can take part at your own pace. Some content is free, and paid memberships help keep this work going.https://www.patreon.com/c/BeyondtheLinesStudio Listen to Chris Shelton's full episode on Speaking of Cults:YouTube https://youtu.be/pKhUEvhNqKE?si=siY6j2LxhOI3gH5h Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/3w14CfgCLKWlcUaqpxU3ML?si=95c5948f54e34271 Content note: This episode briefly mentions PTSD and suicidal thoughts. If you're struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or a local crisis line. In the US, you can call or text 988.

  3. Sep 21

    PART 2 | Inside a High-Control Coaching Culture: Who You Surrender Your Agency To (E72)

    AUDIO FIXED - PART 2 OF 2: In Part 1, Garry Norman was told to erase what he filmed. In Part 2, he and Anne Peterson ask how a culture teaches good people to look away. CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses psychological and verbal abuse in a workplace and coaching setting, including how a "training exercise" involving simulated strangulation is understood through the lens of domestic violence. If this is difficult territory for you, please take care as you listen, with support, in pieces, or another time. In the US, RAINN offers confidential support at rainn.org or 1-800-656-4673. For support around high-control group experiences, see Resources below. While quality-checking archived footage, Garry Norman found a course where participants were being trained in "ruthless compassion," and watched them freeze. Anne Peterson had spent three years pushing her own organization for accountability before she wrote her book, and in Part 2 of their conversation, the two compare notes. Garry spent eight years behind the camera inside a major personal development organization. Anne, author of Is This a Cult?, spent years on staff and leading programs in the same world. In Part 1, Garry described the footage he was asked to erase and the moral injury of staying silent. Picking up from there, they look at how the language of accountability, status and responsibility worked on the people inside it: being taught to speak truth to power and then cut out for doing it, "accountability" that meant owning results with very few resources, and a culture of social climbing where status outranked expertise. They also talk about why smart, well-meaning people rationalize on the side of a leader they have already surrendered their admiration to, and what an emotional need for belonging, mattering and being seen has to do with staying. This conversation draws on their shared history at Landmark Worldwide and the work of Werner Erhard, but it is not about any one organization. These patterns show up across high-control groups and coaching cultures of every kind. This episode is for anyone who has felt something was off in a personal development setting but couldn't name it, and for former staff still carrying it. The takeaway: watch who you surrender your agency to. About the guest: Garry Norman is a performing artist, music and performance coach, and multimedia project manager, the originator and facilitator of Life Is A Stage, with 30+ years coaching guitar, bass and piano, and 15+ years producing streamed educational events for multinational training organizations. https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrynorman01/ Resources mentioned: Part 1 of this conversation: Look for E71 on your favorite Pod place or YouTube @Confrontingtheline Rachel Bernstein's Healthy Healing group: https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/ Chris Shelton's What Now: Reclaiming Your Life class: https://ilumn8.life/op/reclaiming-your-mind-and-life-chris-shelton/ Anne Peterson's book, Is This a Cult?: https://isthisacultbook.com/ Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development. We explore what separates genuinely transformative work from environments that exploit the very people seeking growth. Go Beyond the Line: I just started a companion Patreon for those who'd like to explore deeper into what I've been learning about the Human Potential Movement, what works and what doesn't. https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio Read about how Confronting the Line is funded and our commitment to transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

  4. Sep 14

    E71 Inside a High-Control Coaching Culture: What One Staffer Saw — and Was Told to Erase (Part 1)

    CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses psychological and verbal abuse in a workplace and coaching setting, including a training exercise involving simulated strangulation, and references to historical assault allegations. If this is difficult territory for you, please take care as you listen, with support, in pieces, or another time. In the US, RAINN offers confidential support at rainn.org or 1-800-656-4673. For support around high-control group experiences, Rachel Bernstein's Healthy Healing group and Chris Shelton's "What Now: Reclaiming Your Life" class are linked below. For eight years, Garry Norman worked behind the camera inside a major personal development organization, Landmark Worldwide, archiving decades of footage and sitting in private offices with the senior leaders who trained everyone else. He was rarely on stage and rarely named. But he saw almost everything. Garry connected with Anne Peterson through her book, Is This a Cult?, and the two share years of staff experience inside the same organization. In this first half of their conversation, Garry describes the unusual role he was hired into, why staff like him accepted a fraction of market pay to do it, and two moments he says landed as abuse: a senior leader screaming at a young assistant in a private office, and a training exercise involving simulated strangulation, which Garry filmed before being quietly asked by the organization's president to erase it. This episode is about what it costs to witness abuse and say nothing, even when silence is the safest choice in the moment. Anne and Garry talk about moral injury, the toll of being made complicit simply by being present and unable to act, and about something harder to understand: that the people asking for silence are very often not monsters, but ordinary people who got in too deep to see clearly. While the conversation draws on their shared history at Landmark Worldwide, the patterns they describe show up across high-control groups and coaching cultures of every kind. About the guest: Garry Norman is a performing artist, music and performance coach, and multimedia project manager — the originator and facilitator of Life Is A Stage — with 30+ years coaching guitar, bass and piano, and 15+ years producing streamed educational events for multinational training organizations.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrynorman01/  Resources mentioned: Rachel Bernstein's Healthy Healing group — https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/  Chris Shelton's "What Now: Reclaiming Your Life" class — https://ilumn8.life/op/reclaiming-your-mind-and-life-chris-shelton/  Anne Peterson's book, Is This a Cult? — https://isthisacultbook.com/  Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development. We explore what separates genuinely transformative work from environments that exploit the very people seeking growth. Go Beyond the Line: I just started a companion Patreon for those who'd like to explore deeper into what I've been learning about the Human Potential Movement, what works and what doesn't. https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio Read about how Confronting the Line is funded and our commitment to transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

  5. Sep 6

    E70: Jen Coached People 30 Hours a Week for Free and Called It Integrity — 17 Years Inside Landmark

    For seventeen years, Jen Coken was a Landmark seminar leader, coaching people thirty hours a week for free, leading sessions with a 103-degree fever, and calling it integrity. It took her more than a decade after leaving Landmark Worldwide (formerly Landmark Education) to say the word out loud, on this episode with Anne Peterson, for the first time in public: cult. CONTENT WARNING: This episode includes discussion of psychological manipulation and coercive control within a high-control group. If that's difficult territory for you, please take care as you listen, with support, in pieces, or another time. Rachel Bernstein's resources are linked below. Jen and Anne go back nearly three decades, to the same est-and-Landmark ecosystem that shaped Anne's own story. Jen started the est training at fifteen years old, went through Landmark's leadership programs in her twenties, and spent seventeen years as a designated seminar leader, alongside a parallel career in national political organizing. She left in 2015 to 2016, and in the eleven years since has published two Amazon-bestselling books and built a coaching and speaking career helping women in male-dominated industries step into executive presence. The conversation traces how "100% responsibility," taught as "being cause in the matter," can turn into a psychological double bind: one that erases boundaries, excuses abuse, and shifts the blame for institutional problems like sexism and racism onto the individual carrying them. Jen and Anne talk through Jon Atack's definition of a destructive cult and why they believe Landmark fits it, and how a program can hand people genuine, life-changing breakthroughs while also extracting years of unpaid labor, strained family relationships, and a fear of ever saying anything critical out loud. Underneath it all is a harder question than whether it was a cult: why do smart, accomplished, mission-driven people stay for years, even when part of them can tell something is off. Jen and Anne's answer keeps coming back to one word, belonging, and to the shame that follows once you can finally see clearly what you couldn't see before. This episode is for anyone who has felt something was off in a personal development setting but couldn't name it, and for any coach, teacher or facilitator who wants a clearer picture of what ethical practice actually requires. Resources mentioned: Anne Peterson's book, Is This a Cult? — https://isthisacultbook.com/ Seek Safely — https://seeksafely.org/ Healthy Healing, a confidential support group with Rachel Bernstein for high-control group recovery — https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/ A Little Bit Culty podcast and the HBO documentary The Vow What Now? A Practical Guide To Life After A Cult by Chris Shelton — https://ilumn8.life/op/reclaiming-your-mind-and-life-chris-shelton/ Bonus conversation on Patreon: Jen and Anne kept talking well past this episode, including a deep dive into "word salad" as a manipulation tactic — now up on the companion Patreon, Beyond the Line, open to all subscription levels. https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio About Confronting the Line: Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development. We explore what separates genuinely transformative work from environments that exploit the very people seeking growth — because knowing the difference just might change your life. Go Beyond the Line: I just started a companion Patreon for those who'd like to explore deeper into what I've been learning — both what works and what doesn't — about what is known as the Human Potential Movement. Your support directly funds this work and helps keep resources accessible to those who need them most. https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio Support and Transparency: Read about how Confronting the Line is funded and our commitment to transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

  6. Aug 24

    E69 30 Years Inside Transformational Coaching — Then She Started Asking Where the Guardrails Were

    For thirty years, Vera Sheranova has stood inside the rooms where "transformation" gets sold. First as a language teacher, then as the person doing live, unrehearsed simultaneous interpretation of a high-stakes leadership course into Russian, with no script and no warning of what the instructors would say next, and for years, as the romantic and business partner of the man running it. Vera is a Moscow-based linguist, coach and psychological consultant who met Anne Peterson while coordinating Russian-language interpretation for a series of leadership courses in the lineage of Werner Erhard's work. In this conversation, she and Anne trace how a wave of post-Soviet transformational training grew out of that methodology, why teaching people they are "100% responsible" can sound empowering while quietly becoming a way to avoid accountability, and what it actually means, as a teacher or coach, to hold responsibility for how your ideas land on another person. Vera argues that powerful ideas without guardrails are not neutral. Like any medication, they need clear information about safe use, unsafe use, and what they were never meant to do. Underneath the conversation is a very human contradiction: we are wired to want someone else to be responsible for us, and the practitioners who understand that wiring have a choice, to name it and share responsibility honestly, or to quietly use it. This episode is for anyone who has felt something was off in a personal development setting but couldn't name it, and for any coach, teacher or facilitator who wants a clearer picture of what duty of care looks like in their own work. CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses coercive control and psychological manipulation within a personal relationship and coaching program. If that's difficult territory for you, please take care as you listen — with support, in pieces, or another time. RAINN offers confidential support at rainn.org or 1-800-656-4673. Resources mentioned: Rachel Bernstein's resources and Healthy Healing group https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/  John Atack's podcast - Search jon atack, family & friends Anne Peterson's Book - Is This A Cult? https://isthisacultbook.com/  The Seek Safely - https://seeksafely.org/  Go Beyond the Line: Anne  just started a companion Patreon for those that would like to explore deeper into what I have been learning — both what works and does not — about what is known as the Human Potential Movement. Your support directly funds this work and helps keep resources accessible to those who need them most https://www.patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development. We explore what separates genuinely transformative work from environments that exploit the very people seeking growth.  Read about how Confronting the Line is funded and our commitment to transparency: https://isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod/

  7. Aug 9

    E68: 11 Years Inside a Buddhist Community: A Cult Researcher on Spiritual Abuse and Trauma-Coerced Attachment

    A cult researcher spent 11 years inside a Buddhist community, rising to her teacher's inner circle, before a spiritual crisis broke it open. CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains open discussion of spiritual abuse, coercive control and psychological manipulation within a high-control spiritual community. If you are a survivor of spiritual or religious abuse, please take care of yourself as you listen — that might mean listening with someone you trust, taking breaks, or choosing not to listen right now. Your wellbeing matters more than any conversation. She spent 11 years inside a Buddhist community, rose to assistant to the teacher, and watched abuse allegations surface from within. Then a concussion changed everything. In this episode, Anne talks with Rayann Gordon, a writer and researcher finishing her master's in the psychology of coercive control, about a topic most people don't expect: spiritual abuse inside Buddhist communities. Rayann shares her path from an early apprenticeship with an unregulated channeler who claimed to be infallible, into 11 years inside a Buddhist group where she rose to one of its most trusted roles, and finally to the disorienting experience that broke the spell and let her see clearly. They dig into what spiritual abuse looks like when there's no physical or sexual abuse to point to, how coercion gets woven directly into spiritual teachings, and what Rayann calls "trauma-coerced attachment" — when a leader manufactures crisis and then offers comfort, binding people tighter the more chaos they create. They also talk about implicit versus explicit coercion, why "suspend your boundaries until Monday" is a red flag in large group trainings, and why it so often takes 7 to 10 years to fully understand what happened. This conversation is about how a genuine hunger for meaning and growth can be quietly redirected until questioning it feels like betrayal — and why no space, however sacred it looks, is automatically safe. Find Rayann at rayangordon.com and rayangordon.substack.com Resources mentioned: Rachel Bernstein's resources and Healthy Healing group https://ilumn8.life/op/lgat-recovery-group/  A Practical Guide to Life After a Cult by Chris Shelton https://ilumn8.life/op/what-now-book-chris-shelton/ Confronting the Line is dedicated to the safe and ethical practice of personal and professional development. Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/cw/BeyondtheLinesStudio Financial Transparency: isthisacultbook.com/confronting-the-line-pod

  8. Jun 28

    SPECIAL: Nobody Taught Us How to Keep Our Minds Safe — Until Now

    Anne Peterson and Chris Shelton — author of What Now: A Practical Guide to Life After a Cult — are teaming up for a 21-week workshop designed for anyone who has ever found themselves in a group, relationship, or environment that left them confused, smaller, or asking what just happened to me? We know how to lock our doors. We were taught to park under the lights and have our keys ready. But nobody taught us how to keep our minds safe from manipulation, coercive control, or predatory influence — and that gap is exactly what this workshop is here to close. Chapter by chapter, week by week, you'll explore how coercive control actually works, why smart, capable people get caught in these dynamics, and what it takes to truly understand — not just survive — what happened. Understanding is what protects you next time. ✦ 21 chapters, every Tuesday at noon Pacific✦ Join at any point — all recordings included✦ Private community group for participants✦ Education-focused, not therapy — though insight has a way of doing its own healing Workshops start June 30. Join at any time over the 21-week run. All the details and registration here: https://ilumn8.life/op/reclaiming-your-mind-and-life-chris-shelton/

See All (70)

Trailers

Ratings & Reviews

4.7
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

We are here to explore the world of personal development, and examine the often blurry line between transformation and exploitation. We are dedicated to finding that line, then looking, listening and learning in service of safer seeking for life long learners, like us.

Information

  • Creator
    Anne L. Peterson
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    70
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Anne L. Peterson
  • Show Website
    Confronting The Line

You Might Also Like