When idols fall

I have admired certain people through the years, and I am guessing that you have too. What does it mean to create heroes, especially when these heroes crash to the ground?

Here’s something that’s happening:

It seems that people we’ve looked up to — wellness teachers, spiritual guides, social justice icons — are being one by one revealed in ways that are at least deeply uncomfortable, and at worst truly devastating.

Their reputations are crumbling by the minute, and these idols are crashing to the ground. We are left to consider what it means for ourselves and our culture.

Deepak Chopra, the alternative medicine advocate who’s been a hugely influential voice on spiritualty and consciousness, is mentioned in thousands of emails with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, revealing them as close friends.

Martha Beck and Bryon Katie, two super-prominent figures in the personal growth world, are outed by former colleagues and others as people who are quite different in private life than they appear in public, with carefully manicured memoirs and websites that distort pertinent facts about themselves and their lives.

Cesar Chavez, widely celebrated as a social justice leader who brought rights to millions of farmworkers throughout the United States, is being named as a rapist of women and a sexual abuser of girls.

There are many more people who can be added to this short list – like Oprah Winfrey who spotlighted and elevated John of God on her television show, ignoring reports that this Brazilian spiritual healer had sexually abused several of his women followers.

And we could make a long list of the people who have stayed silent about the transgressions, abuses and enabling that they have experienced or observed with these and other icons.

Lissa Rankin, the physician who has turned best-selling author and spiritual growth coach, has written about the cost of holding secrets and how this secret-keeping has damaged her nervous system by what she calls “bystander trauma” in a recent article.

She and others give us the opportunity to take this information with a clear eye and open mind, and I hope you will too. Not to pile on and blame and not to reflexively dismiss information that is coming to light, but rather to consider what it means to be a follower — and to be a teacher.

A habit of making heroes

In our modern culture, we have the habit of making heroes out of people who become widely known, who show up on television, who write lots of books, who go viral on social media and generally gain tons of attention. They are considered “successes” in their fields, their words and photos are all over everywhere and they are obviously becoming very rich.

At one time, I wanted to become one of these people. I wanted that kind of attention, because people like these seemed to have found the route to what we call success. But now, we are seeing that they have found the route into high-level capitalism, capturing vulnerable people who are often desperate to find ways out of their distress with slick advertising and social media campaigns.

Through the years, I’ve dialed back, becoming way more modest in my ambitions and questioned the kind of ambitions that I have held – and have held me – for so many years. Perhaps it is simply enough to bring what I have to offer, and trust that enough people will find my offerings valuable so I can continue my work of teaching and training.

Perhaps it is even good to dissolve ourselves of heroes, to experience disillusionment of the idols we have placed on high, to find other ways of being in relationship with the people who inspire us.

It turns out that pedestals are dangerous — not only for the people standing atop them, but also for everyone looking up.

When we make someone larger than human, there is a part of us that becomes a bit smaller. We can easily hand over our authority and dismiss our personal experience. We start filtering our doubts through the lens of “But look at all the good they’ve done” or “They know everything, and I don’t know anything.” And the people standing on the pedestals — even those with genuinely good intentions — often begin to believe it themselves. That’s where the trouble starts.

The role of “Enlightened Teacher”

Dr. J.L. Moreno, the developer of psychodrama whose philosophy deeply informs my practice, was fascinated by the interplay of roles, creativity and spontaneity. He understood that the our roles can expand to fill the available space — including the role of “Enlightened Teacher” or “Movement Hero.”

When a person becomes identified with a single role rather than living a whole, complex, accountable human being, the consequences can be damaging for the person in the role and for people around the person.

Mind you, Dr. Moreno himself was more than a bit eccentric and had quite a few foibles, flaws and failings of his own. Although his brilliant observations about society and relationships created his powerful methods of role play and social network analysis that have become firmly integrated into today’s culture, his family members have openly talked about his predilection for affairs with women not his wife and other certain self-important habits.

The guru structure — whether it is a political leader, a teacher, a wellness influencer, a social justice icon, or a life coach — creates conditions that make accountability difficult. Followers don’t want to see the cracks. Guru figures might start to believe they are exempt from ordinary moral standards. The circle around them closes. And the result of the harm that often simmers quietly for years before it comes out.

Yes, me too…

I’ve had a few missteps of my own as a teacher, and I’m the first to admit they are embarrassing. During a one-day training last Fall, I mistakenly ended the training one hour earlier than scheduled. Sure, the sky had darkened because of an approaching storm, and a glance at the clock on the wall seemed to show that the clock hand was quickly approaching closing time.

It wasn’t until the participants had gone on their way that I looked at the watch on my wrist – instead of the clock on the shadowed wall – and exclaimed to my helpers, “Wow, we’re really cleaning up ahead of schedule!” that I realized what had happened.

No one in the room had called me on this mistake, saying later that they considered the leader to be “right.” Nevertheless, my task was to repair – to contact the participants and organize a one-hour Zoom call to apologize, give them the extra credit hour that they had paid for and complete the concluding activity that I had planned.

Fortunately, the participants seemed to show grace about my embarrassing mistake, although I don’t know what they expressed privately. I suspect all of us learned a few unexpected lessons about that day. For me, it was a big lesson in humility, one that I’ve had to revisit more than once.

What this means for us as followers

I am not suggesting we view every public person with suspicion but rather develop a more nuanced approach:

Bring your whole self to anything you take in. That you keep awake, that you question authority – as we used to stay in the 1960s – and step away from hierarchical and patriarchal patterns that promote one up, one down thinking.

Some things to notice if you are a follower:

Does this teacher welcome questions, or do they discourage them either overtly or subtly?

Is there a culture in the community where criticism is labeled “resistance” or “low vibration” or “not yet evolved enough to understand”?

Are they financially transparent?

Do they cultivate genuine community, allowing many people to contribute, or do they promote dependence only on themselves?

I would like to think that good teaching supports you in making you more available to your wisdom, not more attached to the teacher.

Good teaching should increase your capacity to think, feel, question and act — not hand those capacities to someone else.

A teacher worth following knows they are human, says so freely, and isn’t threatened when you push back.

We can grieve the loss of figures who we have admired and idolized. We can acknowledge the good that they have offered in the world. And if they have caused harm, we must hold space for that as well.

As I like to say, two things can be true at the same time.

What this means for us as leaders, teachers, facilitators and mentors

There is something seductive about the reach that social media and the internet make possible. A workshop here, a Substack post there, a following that grows — and with it, a momentum that might start to feel like confirmation that we are more special than others.

We might forget that although we have special skills, certain insights or significant training, we are still human, that we are able to make perfect mistakes and be imperfect people.

Yet that seductive pull says we must be doing something right because people are responding. And maybe we are. But still:

The size of the audience or the level of visibility has never been a reliable measure of the integrity of the teaching.

Here’s what we can do as leaders and teachers:

Have or develop a community of colleagues and friends where we can be human, accountable and humble.

Focus on staying in genuine relationships with peers, mentors and supervisors who will tell us when we’re wrong.

Remember that we are always students, and every trainee, student or newcomer has something to teach us.

Take opportunities to learn and stay curious.

Be honest about what we don’t know. It’s keeping our egos curious rather than defended.

Keep having conversations about how we tend to idolize people.

And it’s remembering that the people in our rooms are not there to confirm our greatness — they are there because they are hurting, or growing, or searching, and they have entrusted us with something fragile and tender, their very selves.

Karen Carnabucci, LCSW, TEP, is a psychodramatist, trainer and storyteller who finds meaning in everyday acts of generosity, service and connection. She writes about community, compassion and the surprising places where grace appears. She is the founder, director and main faculty member of the Lancaster School of Psychodrama and Experiential Psychotherapies in Lancaster, Pa.

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