Question: How many ex-members or ex-pupils

[grimep]

... have talked to people who have never even heard of the SES about their experiences or the school? And what sort of reactions did such conversations, if they took place, provoke? Helpful? Unhelpful? Understanding? Sympathy? Confusion? Suspicion?

Or if you never or hardly ever discuss it with people who know nothing of the SES, why is that?

[a different guest]

not that i have ever been a member - but i have talked about the SES with a close girlfriend who is a pom (for you yanks here that is aussie for "Brit"). Anyway i said how I felt it was a lot to do with the english class system and I emailed her the link from that dialogueireland site about the adult courses.

My friends reaction was to say the SES sounded "dodgy, cultish and a load of claptrap".

[Daniel Gregory]

Hello Grimep,

I used to talk about St.Vedast up to about the age of 23. I used to get so many funny looks that I stopped through embarrassment, feeling friends thought I was either a wierdo or permenantly damaged. I just wanted to 'fit in', not easy when youre painfully shy, had what little confidence you might have had knocked out of you by St.V, and crap at articulating yourself!

I still talk about it sometimes with my best friend, my wife.

Danny

[erikdr]

[quote]
And what sort of reactions did such conversations, if they took place, provoke? Helpful? Unhelpful? Understanding? Sympathy? Confusion? Suspicion?
/quote

Well my situation might be slightly different than that of the average. I went on to another religion/group (not often labeled as a cult, contrary to SES) and my 8-year SES background does not sound 'strange' to whomever I talk to, whether religious too or not. For me it's just a cult, and cults are both (potentially) more powerful and more dangerous/damaging than normal intense groups of people - even religious groups like in the Dutch and US Bible Belts. At the moment that the damage started to outweigh what I could learn I left, that's basically my 'career'...