Dear Dr. Kress,
I found your website just couple of days ago. I wish I’d found it sooner! Thank you for your expertise and being…human.
I’m 45 years old woman. I have this burning desire to share my unfortunate story with law of attraction materials. I have read some of the articles from you website that I found very calming, healing.
I don’t regret basically anything in life, but I do regret I lost many years to this loa craze. I read so many (too many) loa articles, books and did (and paid) courses. I lost myself…and certainly didn’t attract the things I wanted! I’d say I became “worse”.
It’s an irony that “self-improvement” did not improve me but made me quite crazy, anxious, obsessed.
I have become allergic to the words manifest and abundance.
Once I did a loa course for finances. The teacher adviced us to focus on the tree leaves. That would, apparently, make us “align with abundance”. I don’t know how focusing on tree leaves makes us attract more money?! If loa would work as these gurus say, then focusing on tree leaves would make us attract…more tree leaves :) How silly.
Or to focus on the abundance of the nature. I’m a biologist. So in a way nature is rich and abundant but I understand that nature is meant to be in balance, not so much in abundance. There’s constantly competition of resources between species, that’s how the nature maintains its balance.
It’s been haunting me for years when one loa guru said, that “you cannot break the law of attraction”. How come then it commonly happens?
Recently in my country was the finale of the tv program Big Brother. This one young woman won it. She had been unemployed because of the pandemic, called herself “poor”, was worried about finances, didn’t believe she would win Big Brother. But she did (and won very large sum of money). She was a lovely, energetic, fun, entertaining person. So according to loa gurus, she should have been 100% sure that she would win, see herself as the winner, and feel herself rich. She did none of those things. She focused on current reality; felt poor and didn’t believe she would win. Isn’t this exactly “breaking the law of attraction”??
I have been in similar situation. Was unemployed, zero income, in panic, fear, desperation…then got my dream job! I wasn’t “aligned” emotionally/vibrationally with it at all! But I prayed. I think there are forces stronger than us, to help us, when we are too weak and scared…Thank God!
When I have tried to “confront” the loa gurus, they have responded (attacked) with sarcasm, blaming me for negativity, becoming very defensive. Of course. That’s about their income. Common sense is free, and I lost it along the way :(
If their material doesn’t work for me, their solution is to sell me more…more programs, more coaching. That’s how I “lost” myself. And before this madness, I used to be pretty normal person, graduated from university, so I had believed I’d have enough analytical, smart thinking. I feel they prey/appeal to desperate, lost people, like I was :( And I became even more lost.
Also sinister are the free master classes…usually they are actually long sales pitches. At the end of one of them, the teacher said, now you have two choices, continue doing what you have always done (and be “doomed to fail”) or do my way and participate in my course. Isn’t this demeaning, manipulative? (then I did participate in the course, which was the one about the “tree leaves”!! I’m none the wiser, none richer).
Summer 2017 I hit the rock bottom. Looking back those times, I think I would had needed some emergency mental help.
I experienced some sort of derealization. I was at the stable and met this woman, younger than me, and she was a teacher, dog owner, horse owner, a mother, married…And I was 42 no children, never been married, no job, mentally really unwell. I realised, all this time I had been consuming the loa materials obsessively…other people had been LIVING their lives.
I had some grandiose sense of self, felt superiority, that I knew some secret of the universe that other people didn’t know…and yet my life was much worse than many so-called normal people have. It was a horrible and good wake-up call to me!
I also did a loa based course “7 weeks to attract your soulmate”. Embarrasing, it’s been several years ago and still haven’t attracted the soulmate. Other course participants acted as “vision keepers” but to me it started to feel like “prision guards”.
As if I would own it to some people (that I’ve never even met personally) an explanation, why I still not yet have found the soulmate. Or any partner at all. Part of me hopes I’d never done that course. I feel so embarrased, failed, pressured.
After the course ended, I did meet one man. Naiively I believed, this MUST be “the one”. After promising start…he turned out to be a malignant narcissist. Took me couple of years to heal from that emotional torture. I’d say loa taught “in the wrong way” or incomplete way…can be dangerous, as this story proves. I had this false sense of security, that “now I have done the soulmate course, logically this man is the soulmate”. I think narcissists prey vulnerable people with an “urgency to love” and initially he played the role of a “soulmate” very well. This was a very dangerous experience. Not only he was a narcissist, but also a professional criminal. Does the course teachers take any responsibilty about the “results” this kind of a course can produce? Nope!
Also I have been scared for years, when one loa guru adviced NOT to take any action. That (taking action) would “show the universe, we don’t trust it, if we try to figure it all out by ourselves”. Now I see how silly that is. Some action is always required! Like this young woman who won Big Brother…she had quite a good chance winning it, because she actually participated in it! Winning Big Brother is impossible, if you just sit at home and think about it.
Also I don’t like when the gurus say that loa is scientifically proven. If something is scientifically proven, it means an experiment can be repeated countless of times and always get the exact same results. It would be impossible to do such an experiment, because this is…life. Everyone and every circumstance is unique, with so many “variables”. This is life, always somehow mysterious…Even if loa works in theory, what’s the use if it doesn’t work in reality?
I have never used alcohol or drugs. I do not have any mental health issues. But I did experienced abuse in childhood.
I do not try to “manifest” anything anymore, I found it exhausting and crazy-making. The worst thing: I found it doesn’t work.
But I do have goals; nowadays I only do plain good old goal setting. That requires some work, and not magical thinking and magical practices. I’m much more happy and balanced this way!
It makes me feel afraid how I let myself become manipulated so easily, why I didn’t never question the validity of the materials? I blindly accepted everything. I feel gaslighted. Isn’t it what this was? They made me question my reality and replaced it with their version of reality. I feel I need detox from that cult-like industry. I’m upset I believed 100% what I now consider to be lies and even paid for such courses! And still they insist that they are right and I am wrong.
I’m still dealing with confusion, cognitive dissonance etc. I just want to be normal again. What should I do?