"Why I left My New Age Career" - Karla Mclaren

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"I saw too many untreated anxiety disorders and too many untreated depressive disorders, and too many untreated PTSD sufferers, and it just got to me. I couldn't ethically support what was going on."


"Sociology also helped me understand my entry into, and exit from, the new age. I was able to see that I left my new age career for the same reasons I entered it:


I was really concerned about the number of trauma survivors there, and how they were being confused and pandered to and marketed to, but not truly helped.

I saw too many untreated anxiety disorders and too many untreated depressive disorders, and too many untreated PTSD sufferers, and it just got to me. I couldn't ethically support what was going on.

And though I was a voice of dissent and I got pretty far in my years of writing and teaching, I realized that in my 30-plus years in the new age, I had seen no one get truly well. People acquired a better vocabulary for their pain, and they had more ways to soothe themselves than regular folks tend to have, but that was about it.


And while self-soothing is very important, I found that the new age made too many promises with no responsible research behind them. No money-back guarantees, and lots of blaming the victim if the promises don't deliver (you must have negative energy, you're not praying hard enough, it's your karma. Feh.) No checks and balances, no consumer protection agency ... unacceptable.

In response to my concerns about the ethical lapses and the many ways that the new age trains people (especially women) to be unquestioning, undiscerning, and totally pliant consumers, I've allowed all of the books and tapes I control through Laughing Tree Press to go out of print, and I'm in talks with my other publishers to do the same. I am just now reopening this website after years of silence. But I'm really pondering my next steps. I'm now writing a book about my unusual transition, but the intensity people have about their beliefs makes me queasy, and I don't want to be out there as an apostate flag waver, since the place I've come to in my thinking and in my studies doesn't really square up with anyone else's ideas.

I saw that pain when I was up on stage being the spiritual healer gal, or the empath. I don't even know how to describe it to you – the sorrow, and the fear, and the naked longing that I saw in people's faces. There was this aching hope that if they listened to me (or someone), or if I (or someone) looked at them in the right way, or if I (or someone) said the right things, or if I (or someone) wrote the right words, their pain would be suddenly healed and they would be able to breathe and live more easily. It was oppressive up on stage for me – to see all that, and to try to do something, anything ... to make it better for people. But while I could do a great deal just by being a highly empathic mensch, I can't fix a broken world and make everything all right,or make racism and sexism and classism and greed and stupidity and warmongering and abuse go away.

I think we can all create sanctuaries for each other, and be as kind as we can while holding each other accountable, but the magic promises aren't changing anything for the better – they're only providing temporary relief from the pain. That's nice and all, but it's no solution.

And as I saw endlessly in the new age, dulling the pain only helps people learn to tolerate it. In so many cases, that pain relief actually stops people from changing things for the better, because they're so inundated with an endless, serial pelting of magical cures that they sort of forget to ask why they are in so much pain to begin with."



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