How Tony Robbins Promotes a Conservative Worldview
By: Stephanie Leguichard
Tags: Work, Self, Productivity, Women, Politics

2. His interventions with trauma survivors and mentally ill people are based on victim-blaming

When I watched one of his $6,000 weekend retreats, I noticed that an alarming amount of the passionate attendees were survivors of trauma and/or people struggling with mental illness. These poor souls had endured inconceivable suffering and abuse and were desperate for relief, love, or a solution to their trauma. So desperate that some had even sold their belongings to scrounge together the $6,000 to attend.

One of them had been born into a cult in which she was sexually abused for the first decade of her life. Another was a refugee from a war-torn country who had grown up as disadvantaged as possible. Many had been traumatized by poverty. Some were immigrants struggling to find a footing in the US. Many others were on the verge of suicide, or burdened by mental illnesses like severe depression, OCD, or bipolar disorder.

His solution for them?

“Get your shit together.” Be stronger. Try harder. Stop being weak and lazy. Pick yourself up.

But in reality, what would actually help these people is not the power of willpower or “uncovering their truth,” but therapy or societal changes that would give them greater social support. What they really need is a social safety net that protects them from poverty and relentless financial insecurity. Immigration reform. Greater protections for women and people of color. Universal healthcare that gives them access to therapy.

In a sense, Tony is preying upon people’s trauma by charging them $6,000 for an event that promises to radically transform their life, without actually tackling the root of their problems, or the systemic societal issues that caused them.

He might think of his approach as much-needed “tough love.” But what he’s really doing is blaming people for their own shitty life circumstances, which are completely outside of their control. This is a very toxic and insidious form of victim-blaming.

As for mental illness in particular, he often gaslights people by blaming them for not overcoming their symptoms — he insists that mental illness is “all in their head,” that they’re only “making excuses” for not getting their life together.

For example, in one of his interventions, he spoke to a woman who was struggling to succeed in life because of her severe OCD. How did he react? Not with empathy or understanding, but by denying the reality of her condition.

He said the following:

OCD is a story you tell yourself. Mental illness is a story. We get to decide every second of our lives what our story will be.

This might sound empowering on the surface. But by dismissing mental illness as a delusion, he further stigmatizes it and exacerbates it. For many people with serious mental illness, their symptoms are far from “imagined.” They’re very real, and way beyond their conscious control.

They can’t magically “snap themselves out” of mental illness. As if it’s that easy. They can’t rewire their own brain in an instant.

He even proposes that you can power yourself out of severe depression by simply “changing your physiology.” How can you do this? By standing taller, talking faster, talking louder, moving faster, holding your head up (literally), etc. One quick method is by assuming a masculine posture of putting your arms behind your head and propping your feet up.

He cites “science” that supposedly shows that these “power poses” can immediately increase your testosterone by 20% and lower your cortisol (stress hormone) levels by 22%.

This also supposedly makes you 33% more likely to “take action.” The posture “produces more certainty,” which makes you take better actions than you otherwise would have. He neglects to mention that these claims about power posing and snapping yourself out of depression have been thoroughly disproven.

On one occasion, he gives this “power pose” advice to a woman lamenting her mom’s diagnosis with stage 3 ovarian cancer. He urges her to use these techniques to overcome her sadness and fear of her mom dying.

What if what would help her feel less worried is affordable healthcare for her mom, not a power pose?