The Work And Byron Katie: Reviews?

[dharmaBum]

I'm giving a heads-up that I am going to stop receiving notifications about this thread. Over time since this thread began, I've decided that I'll not be utilizing The Work as developed by Byron Katie as a strategy for managing "negative thoughts" that are part of my PTSD symptoms. If I begin another thread to discuss some of the strategies that I have used effectively that have commonalities with The Work, I'll post a link here.

I find it unsettling to have this thread bumped every few months by typically new members who have joined only to comment on Byron Katie and who have not joined the community of discussion about PTSD in depth. This may be happening because the forum administrator has done an amazing job at linking this forum to the rest of the world wide web through search terms and other largely unseen efforts. Because this thread comes up in search engines when people are trying to learn more about Byron Katie and PTSD, it seems there will continue to be an influx of one-time posters.

I would ask readers of this thread (and online materials related to The Work in general) to be wary of those posting rave reviews of their experiencing using The Work to "cure" their PTSD or eliminate their symptoms simply by changing their thoughts and to keep in mind often:

• The posters/authors are anonymous
• Typically only one supportive post is made with no follow up to questions asked by established PTSD forum members
  
• They may have no investment in and/or connection to the community
• Byron Katie's own materials encourage facilitators of The Work to "move The Work" in online forums, book reviews, and article comments

I don't think The Work is all bad, and I'm certain that it has helped some people to reduce stress and increase the positive tone of their relationships with others. However, this is a PTSD forum, originally constructed for individuals looking for help with diagnosed PTSD, and I continue to have strong concerns that without the guidance of a compassionate and masterful mental health provider, a person with PTSD who is volatile and/or suicidal may experience more harm than help using parts of The Work to try and relieve anxiety, anger, or depression.

 

[Bluerose]

I was into this for awhile. I was working on taking care of my own business, like she says.

It seems there are three types of business, my business, your business, and God’s business.

The things I can do something about is my business. The things I can’t do anything about is probably someone else’s business. And changing world stuff is God’s business.

If I understood her correctly, she says stay out of other people’s business and only take care of you own. Doing so will relieve personal suffering.

I thought I was doing quite well. I even felt better, much less stress and second guessing what others expected of me.

The trouble is, I’m the oldest of four siblings and they didn’t see it how I hoped they would. I thought I was being considerate and allowing them to get on with their lives with no interference from me. Their attitude was that I had stopped caring about them.

I think the only thing The Work can do is make you aware of how over involved you may be in other people’s lives. But it’ll take a cleverer person than me to make it work with my siblings and our children.

(So many lovely people expecting my input)

 

[Hashi]

It seems there are three types of business, my business, your business, and God’s business.

Call me cynical, but I think there's also Katie's business.

 

[Bluerose]

Sorry, Hashi, not sure what you mean.

 

[Hashi]

I mean she's getting money/motivation/satisfaction from The Work as a business.

That doesn't have to be a negative thing, but in this case I get a bad vibe. When people put forward an ideology, system, viewpoint (whatever you want to call it) from the heart, then making money or getting recognition comes second to them and that comes across. It comes across partly in a little flexibility, and a willingness to acknowledge that they don't always know everything.

Nothing comes across to me about Katie Byron so much as marketing, dogma and unjustified smugness. Just my view.

 

[CathJ]

Very dangerous bullshit

I would strongly recommend staying away

x

 

[SarainSantaCruz]

I would agree that is going over-board also. I know what she is saying, but there are plenty of other ways t...

I get it that the comment about the woman raping herself over and over with the memory after she was raped once is disturbing to people. I understand the intention though. Let me explain. I did do The Work extensively for several years and while I no longer do it I did benefit. When I was a kid my father would get drunk and violent. When I would scream for my mother he would cover my face with a pillow. I would turn my head and breathe slowly through the pillow, pretend to be asleep or dead and wait. He would become distracted by something else after a minute or two and release the pillow. I told myself for years, "My father tried to suffocate me." "My father tried to kill me." In doing The Work I came to realize that my father tried to silence me but the beliefs in suffocation and death were products of my mind, not reality. When I got to the turnaround, "My father didn't try to suffocate me or kill me" I found freedom from that horrifying thought because: 1) I was not dead. 2) I could breathe through the pillow and 3) If a grown man wants to suffocate and kill a 7 year old child in her bed then the child would be dead! There was incredible peace and forgiveness for me in realizing that what I thought to be true all those years that caused me mental anguish was not true. I was suffocating myself over and over for 40 years with that memory and belief UNTIL I realized through The Work that the facts indicated my belief was not reality. The Work is not perfect and I no longer participate in BKI events because I saw and heard some things that I did not think were right, moral or kind but the process of inquiry can have merit.

 

[Mona-mo]

what did you hear exactly SarainSantaCruz?

 

[Justmehere]

Everything that is helpful about the "inquiry" process can be found in CBT technique of challenging distorted thoughts, without all the problems of Katie Byron's teachings and methods.

By the way, I am not the previous person who posted under "justmeagain" and "justmehere." :)

 

[AbbyR]

what did you hear exactly SarainSantaCruz?

Perhaps that Byron Katie does The Work with prisoners and child molesters. She doesn't really discriminate against anyone or any path.

 

[Interested]

Whether or not Tolle or Katie are genuinely enlightened, whatever that means, I like how it apparently happened overnight to them because it challenges the idea that you have to work to make progress. The idea of hard work appeals to people because it suggests enlightenment is achieved; that it is meritocratic. In way, what Katie is saying is the same as Christianity, which is that we cannot earn salvation by good works, we simply received it by grace. If a person could achieve enlightenment then surely it is their ego that has achieved it?

Katie says the only things a person every does are lie, sit or stand; the details of what we do while we are sitting, lying or standing are just stories. This seems OK to me up to a point, until I think about being tortured. I am terrified of being locked in a small bamboo cage, as I saw on TV done in a Thai prison. I am also terrified of being hung from meat hooks through my pectorals, as happens to the hero in 'The Last King of Scotland'. But can I say FOR SURE that either of these happenings would not be for the good if they helped me not to believe my thoughts - if they 'brought me to God', in Katie's words. The answer is that I simply cannot say, because I have not experienced either of them. All I can say is that in my life so far, I would not wish to undo anything, having enquired into it.

 

[joeylittle]

I dunno, @Interested - I don't believe that hard work is more valid because of a meritocracy concept; I believe that as little as is known about the mind, one thing seems to hold true in both research and practice - we can teach ourselves anything, but there is time involved as a component.

Could I mend a broken arm faster by believing it was only temporary? Actually, possible - because belief itself is a kind of self-teaching, and who knows how the mind joins the healing process at that level? No one knows for certain.

But: there's pretty valid, quantified science about the time factor (range) in the body mending a bone. And no amount of 'deciding' or 'enlightenment' will bring about that healing in 24,48,72 hours.

So I challenge the notion that traumatic memory, which does have some demonstrated neurological correlations - still, research in its infancy but data nonetheless - can be healed with a single, 'enlightened' moment.

Besides: doesn't someone doing the 'work' need to choose to believe that their trauma no longer affects them - and make that choice daily, moment by moment?

So regardless - it's not 'faster' - it's just a different internal script.

Everything is still a theory, really. Nothing is completely known. But I see more evidence towards physical, mental, emotional - biological - healing/recovering/erasing - as something correlative with time. AKA if it feels like a shortcut, it probably is.