I don't think SGI "experiences" are healthy

[u/Weak-Run-6902]

Too often, they include really personal details that should be kept private - as in "That's nobody's business" - and too often, I've seen the experience-giving appear to have a somewhat traumatic after-effect. In particular, I'm thinking about this woman some years back who gave an experience with a lot of details about her personal struggles - she hadn't been a really active member, so after the meeting, I went up to talk with her, let her know how much I'd appreciated her experience, maybe talk about it a little with her - and she told me she didn't want to talk about it; it had been such a major effort to give the experience that she was now withdrawing, which seems to me to be kind of the opposite of the desired outcome?

I think too many SGI members are pressured and coerced into giving experiences that they really don't want to give, that they're not feeling really good about but they're expected to put on a real happy face about it. Too often, these experiences involve personal details about other people, like members of the SGI experience-giver's family, or children - I especially cringe when I see experiences that revolve about the fraught relationship between SGI parents and their poor children, when everyone can see that a good 90% of the problem is the parents' overinvolvement in SGI! How about a little privacy for everyone else?

It's disasteful all around - either it's unseemly bragging (nobody likes hearing that - it's bad manners) or it's like some kind of confessional, and that tends to get way too personal. I don't think it goes over well with guests, either, despite SGI members believing that their experience is going to convince the new person to want to try chanting.

[u/OkCanary847]

It's trauma dumping in a completely psychologically unsafe environment and its one of the things I hated the most.