Falling for the cult of wellness?
Why the booming self-help economy should be approached with caution
If you haven’t already devoured A Very British Cult, you should. I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen about the gripping BBC investigation into Lighthouse International - a life coaching company that takes over peoples’ lives.
I was stunned as, while chatting to journalist Catrin Nye, the stories of its victims unfolded. These are ordinary people like me and you, wanting a little guidance and they were brainwashed by a conman posing to be a life coach who persuaded them to part with thousands of pounds for his services.
It’s worlds away from my own life and yet aspects of it felt close to home. Not because I’ve been involved in anything like the cult that’s at the heart of this BBC series but because I’m aware that I can be, like the victims in this story, impressionable, especially when it comes to my wellbeing. Would I have fallen for Lighthouse International’s empty promises?
Unlike sceptics who roll their eyes at the ‘mystic woo’ that gets packaged up as a wellbeing hack, I’d call myself ‘mystic woo curious.’ I have at times spent more money than was sensible on practices that promised to make me feel better – just to see if they work. From gong baths and energy field healing to floatation tanks and meditation pods - I like road-testing alternative therapies. I enjoy talking to practitioners about how their practice or method has transformed peoples’ lives - especially if their USP touches on something I want to work on - being braver, building confidence, feeling calmer.
But hearing about this life coach course gone wrong forced me to look at how sketchy the line is between trusting a wellbeing practitioner, coach or therapist to support you and them manipulating that trust for profit. At what point does support and guidance turn into manipulation? And how do we know when it’s happening? This is a line I toe regularly but one I’ve not given too much thought to - until now.
I’ve seen both sides: I have been a wellbeing practitioner relying on people putting their trust in me to make an income. I am also someone who spends a fair proportion of her disposable income on paying wellbeing practitioners for treatments, sessions or classes.
Pre-pandemic, I practiced as a massage therapist every Monday evening. I avoided giving clients a sales pitch as to why they needed to come back, too aware that by telling them they needed to return I was using my expertise to make myself more money. Instead, I would share my expert opinion on their ailment, send them home with after-care advice and leave it to them to decide how frequently they’d return. Perhaps, though, if massage therapy had been more than a side hustle for me, I would have felt more of a desire to build a business case to my clients as to why they needed a course of treatment.
With something like massage, acupuncture or reflexology there’s a physical impact - a treatment that you feel an almost-instant benefit from. And you can discuss the reasoning behind the practitioner’s proposed treatment plan - why it would be beneficial based on this ailment? What will each session entail?
On the flip side, the results of some therapies like talking therapy, life coaching or Reiki take much more time – sometimes years. Often the results at the end of each session are less tangible. It’s rare to get that eureka moment where you know your treatment is complete, perhaps because they’re dealing with matters of the mind which are constantly evolving and incredibly complex.
Unlike a physical treatment, it becomes difficult to see the fruits of your financial investment and the course of treatment becomes less transactional. It’s not as simple as paying someone £60 for an hour’s class or treatment. It is £100 a week on talking therapy for the foreseeable - for exactly what? Until when? Who decides? These are the murky waters where the likes of Lighthouse International and manifestation coaches charging $2000k per session operate.
If you’re the one committing to a course of therapy or coaching, you’re probably feeling open-minded and seeking a new way of doing something that’s currently not working for you. So, it seems only natural that your course of treatment is decided upon by an expert on the matter. If the expert you’ve consulted stands in front of you and says you need to commit to more sessions or invest more money in ‘fixing’ your problem – aren’t you going to listen?
If you’ve struck upon a trustworthy practitioner who genuinely wants to support you through something, you absolutely should trust their judgment. But it’s problematic when that level of trust falls into the hands of the wrong people.
Years ago I remember raising this point with a counsellor I was working with. I couldn’t move beyond the fact that by telling me I still had things I needed to work on, she was profiting. She, at least, was a registered therapist abiding by some guidelines and rules of conduct but still, the line felt blurry to me.
How did I know her true motivations? Did she want me to carry on because she needed the business? Or because she genuinely thought she could help? It was an awkward conversation to have but an important one - for me be able to work with her, I needed to trust that her motivations were good ones. In the end, she explained the course of treatment she’d laid out for me and I agreed it made sense.
Therapies that work with the mind, when they go well, can change your life for the better. Regular talking therapy helped me hugely in my twenties and many friends talk of similarly transformative experiences. Emma Gannon wrote a powerful piece talking positively about her experience training as a life coach. But for all the empowering success stories there’s another misadventure into the world of self-improvement.
With people hungrier than ever for this kind of guidance (the number of life coaches grew by a third between 2015 and 2019) A Very British Cult has started an important conversation about trust in the wellness world - and it needs to continue.
Lighthouse International is an extreme case of a situation where a manipulative person makes money off people by making them believe there is something wrong with them – and that he can fix it. We may never fall for a cult organisation like this but in a world where therapy, manifestation and life coaches are on the rise, there are lessons to be learned from Lighthouse’s victims.
Had very similar feelings to you watching to this Alice!!!!! (I saw the TV documentary.) Cleverly written and very thought provoking. I haven't had coaching myself and tbh it's mostly because I'm a bit daunted by the prospect of knowing who's right for me, how long for but reading this I realise these are questions I could ask upfront to be sure it's right for me. Thanks for writing this.