MelanieToniaEvans

My honest review as I experienced it: Codependent model - there's not much effort to offer freedom, yet this program is at worst is a codependent model and at best supportive if we know how to work it. I'm one for interdependence and a community, curiosity and allowing others the space to share and express their voice with boundaries but in a more flexible way. They keep shutting people out and down in the name of safety - they really push this agenda. This is quite controlling. I feel controlled and can barely express myself without being judged or told what to do. I don't want that at all. I want to be guided not pushed. I appreciate the intentions of the meditative work, and the level of integrity that the program offers us to have for ourselves and our healing. But's its just overbearing... Healing TAKES SPACE. It requires more of a step by step and peaceful nature. I have been using MTE modules for years and have been supported on occasions too. But I avoid the forum honestly... The support is superficial at best. It's not in depth. It's repetitive and unclear. They keep saying the same words. Sometimes it's others with the issues! I'm only responsible for my side but the rest is up to others. I can't take full 100% responsibility for myself and others. NO!
There are some lovely people there too! And I'm grateful for them. It's not about ownership and taking an interdependent stance on our healing. I dislike that MTE motto pushes the idea of relying on their membership as a means to heal, instead of empowering the people to be their own source of empowerment in conjunction with theta healing. I do theta healing myself and I love quantum healing modalities. I'm super frustrated by the passive aggressive forum moderators who really don't have the capacity to support people in a helpful way most of the times. They all, and I mean even Melanie Tonia Evans, need to get coaching training and client care. They are wounded people in charge with a lot of people pleasing and codependency. This doesn't feel safe for me - I dislike that Melanie uses a lot of triggering and big scary words - her energy can be pushy - This teaching model has made me feel worse at times and turn against my loved ones because of the discord and dissonance. She's not a licensed practitioner to diagnose or truly show the way to who's a narc and who isn't. Some are unavailable and selfish yes. I had to take breaks to gain clarity from trusted sources. It's not helpful to scare people. Telling truth is one thing, but using truth as a means of attracting clients is marketing and it's not right... True empowerment is telling people they are their own healer and teaching them to align with their Self, rather than rely on a program and get hooked on a forum... not supportive. Overall, I'm glad I gave this program a try for the second time since the pandemic. But I always end up here: Frustrated. And I have worked the program daily for months at a time... I gave this work a couple of consistent tries and it really traumatized me more. The forum people say it's wounds opening up to the surface, which may be correct, but how to empower people to heal these wounds to heal is way more important than to codependently tell them what to do. I had on an off experienced on the forum. I like that helped me to consistently meditate. But I have other practitioners who have both the therapeutic and the holistic/integrative approaches. Body work and cognitive work BOTH work to heal. One isn't better than the other, but somatic experiencing is essential and primary - I love my mind! I dislike the resistance I get as a human, but I'm human! Even the Dalai Lama has an ego... NARP doesn't offer that much compassion or peace for me. Their energy speaks more... I appreciate and am grateful for the experience and now will walk away from this. I may keep the healing as a way to keep my integrity, because I do appreciate the good nature of the people behind this program. But MTE is not a god and it's scary to see others treating this program like god. Unhealthy and codependency mindset honestly. Energy medicine or EFT work WAYYY faster and better in my opinion.
I'm grateful and will continue to walk my path, empowered in my boundaries and rights. I will express my voice. I will not let a group take away my voice and need for safe expression, even when I'm healing, especially now. I was so afraid to speak my truth because of a few bad instanced before the pandemic and during the pandemic on the forum. It's absolutely unacceptable how passive aggressive these people on the forum can be. That is not supportive for me. I needed more space to learn, ask questions, and speak my mind and be seen.

P.s. Christiane Northrup is not a healthy individual to promote Melanie Tonia Evans. I'm concerned. Cult like jargon and a lot of shutting people down... and a lot of praising each other as god or MTE as god. She's not. She is a channel like all of us, if we allow and unblock ourselves. I'm learning to stop giving my power away to programs. This program does remind me of a cult at times and that is scary. I had to follow and force myself more than enjoy the program.

If I had avoided the forum, maybe I would have done better... but I'm really not happy how stressful this "healing" space has been for me... I would love to use the healing modules but now I'm just scared and don't trust them at all. It's just sad.

Now that I have expressed this and got it off my chest, I can move on.

After watching a number of her videos I must agree with commentor Anna A. 3/20/16. Having had experienced being raised in a family in a cult for several years she comes off as such. On the surface they're very nice people willing to help and can offer generically sound advice specially for narc victims on the severe end of the spectrum. Anna A really made sense. Texted cogently and thoroughly. Thank you Anna A.

The work from Melanie Tonia Evans is great to bring awareness to the topic of narcissistic abuse and the healing modules are really great. However I'm not a big fan of the support of Melanie's team. I asked them for help to support the Juno-Movement in our fight to help all children that are suffering from child abuse, to help to end parental alienation and they wrote me that I'm harrassing them and codependently trying to manipulate and guilt people into solving problems for me. That's not very nice in my opinion. But what do I know, I'm not an expert.

I want to present a balanced review because there is a lot of worth in what Melanie is intending to provide for people who have been narcissistically abused, but I found that the overall package fell short of what is advertised.

Narcissism:

Melanie's programme is for those could be at any point on the spectrum between having been seriously abused by someone with NPD, and those who have experienced what you might call a 'toxic relationship', or emotional abuse in a relationship. This in itself is what makes it so helpful to so many people. The problem with then going on to call anyone who dished out such abuse (NP disordered or not) 'a narcissist' and 'a false self' is that it encourages the idea of separation between 'us' and 'them', which is unhelpful when considering that we are all connected and that separation is in fact an illusion, which is some of what is happening when we find ourselves suffering at the hands of another's behaviour: we are a part of that dynamic, which is exactly what we are addressing when we do the NARP work - OUR part in things ('as within, so without'). Melanie does acknowledge that so-called 'co-dependents' are similar to so-called 'narcissists' in terms of their 'wounding', and I suppose that the categorisation is helpful to provide a language in which to help people understand the dynamics involved, but it also seems to have the effect of encouraging those using this programme to act in what might be seen as narcissistic ways in defending themselves from 'narcissists'. It's so important to learn about boundaries as part of the recovery process, but when we become too fixed and rigid in these then we start to become like that which we think we are defending against, which is evident in the behaviour of some of the moderators and MTE 'support' staff (please see my experiences detailed below). Similarly, when 'no contact' is encouraged/employed as a blanket rule (without considering that while some individuals are downright dangerous, others are far less so), then this starts to edge into 'devalue and discard' territory - classic narcissistic behaviour.

Videos, Articles and eBooks:

There are so many of these available, which is fantastic, and I found they really helped me to make sense of my experience and to frame it in helpful ways. Melanie is very clear and brings the subject matter to life, and her presence, experience, and insight is inspiring. However, as stated above, there are holes and anomalies in the content (as I've found there is anywhere on this subject to be fair, since the current culture is so keen on labelling people). While it's useful to have a clear philosophy to cling to at a time when you are taken over by the confusion of trauma, and cognitive dissonance, I found that digging deeper left me realising that the subject of how and why we attract certain things and people into our lives is so complex that the labelling part just undoes some of that wisdom and can leave you more confused so beware of relying on explanations that seek to categorise people too far.

Meditations:

I found these relaxing and soothing, which is very useful with trauma.

NARP modules:

These have a mix of different ways of shifting or clearing the felt experience in the body, bringing in source as light, and connecting with past lives or selves that may be related to the feeling in your body. Over a 2-month period I did the moduling dozens of times: generally once or twice per day. They are each around 30 minutes long so it is a big time commitment. I don't mind that given that right now I am dedicated to healing, but I didn't feel I was connecting with it in the way that others have. I stuck at it and tried different things like putting some of my blocks into the Goal Setting Module, and sought help on the forum to try to make sense of my own experience and to help myself trust the process. I had such a bad experience there (see below) that it affected my feelings about the whole moduling process, which I was already struggling with. I think it's something you need to really believe in for it to work. I struggled more and more with believing because I wasn't feeling much change in my bodily feelings that I could really attribute to NARP. When I then found the behaviour of some of the moderators and support team so incongruent with the ideas behind NARP, I lost my confidence with it even more. I also now think that there are alternative approaches out there that might be more helpful for me, which I am going to try. I am already aware of Focusing (an approach created by Gendlin following research of what works best in psychotherapy), and found that the key elements of the modules involved something similar. Focusing goes into far more depth in terms of working with the felt sense so I feel that there could be a lot of value in trying this for the trauma caused/brought up by narcissistic abuse. What I found the most valuable about the modules was how they helped me to identify unhelpful core beliefs with greater colour and clarity alongside reading and listening to some of the resources I found this really helpful in uncovering what it is that is 'within' that had led to the 'without'. Now, for resolving these... I feel that EFT (tapping) and hypnosis might be more useful alternatives to NARPing.

Fear-based Marketing:

Melanie's focus is on 'thriving', which is fantastic, but there is an undercurrent of fear behind the marketing, which goes something like, 'if you don't go within and shift your trauma, you'll continue to experience abuse and will never thrive'. I'm sure there is some truth in this. However, Melanie presents her method as the only answer, and on the forum NARP is certainly presented as the only way the tone being that if you don't get on with it, there is a problem in you, and you're not 'going within', rather than considering that a one-size-fits-all approach may not work for everyone, and that going within effectively might look different for some people (and it doesn't necessarily mean they're not going within!).

Forum and 'support' team:

I understand that the moderating is carried out by volunteers, who I'm sure in general are nice people with good intentions (one of them tried to guilt-trip me about this), and I think this is a huge factor in the experience I had: while they are people who have used the modules successfully and know a lot about how to get the most out of them, it became clear that they are not people who have been trained in how to hold space or facilitate (at least the ones I came across). Given what the forum is there to do it should be important that anyone moderating (because they're not just moderating posts for offence etc, they're also giving the advice and it is made clear in the code of conduct that those using the forum must not challenge this advice make of that what you will) the space is skilled in communicating with people who have suffered trauma. It became clear to me that the MTE moderators are not, and the power that they are given is easily abused, which for abuse victims is a re-play of what they've already experienced. If people have an issue with anything they post, then the onus is put on the individual to 'go within' to 'work this out within yourself' so to speak, which allows abuse of power to go unchecked, especially when the MTE support people who do the email communications exercise exactly the same kind of attitude. This amounts to a complete lack of accountability, which again is another characteristic of narcissist behaviour and therefore re-plays the abuse experience. I had one particularly awful experience of the forum. I was 'temporarily banned' like a naughty child after I stood up to how I was being spoken to by one of the moderators. Then, the follow up communications I received from their 'support' team just got worse and worse. Really condescending and passive aggressive. I find their approach to be extremely punitive. The horrible experience I had on the forum amounted to being scapegoated, isolated and gaslit (very common things that happen in narcissistic abuse), which would obviously be re-triggering, and then I was treated as though I wasn't 'going inward' because I'd dared to suggest that the issue was something outside of myself. This is really dangerous for those who've already experienced abuse/trauma and have been lulled into thinking they've found a safe haven. When I said I wasn't finding the forum safe, no attempt was made by the MTE team to address any of the issues. In fairness, they did eventually give me a refund of the entire programme, but that seemed more about avoiding dealing with me or the issue, as they made no attempt to repair what had happened either with regard to the forum or their appalling communications.

I think that employing trained staff rather than volunteers would help address the problem with the forum and customer service, but I doubt it's the whole answer: I strongly believe that the composition and culture of organisations reflect the person at the head of the organisation, including their shadow. We all have one, and it is so important to develop awareness of it. This takes commitment within organisations to stay accountable and open and to 'look within' the organisation as well as individually, to avoid projecting outwards onto customers for example. This may be a lot to ask of an organisation, but it's especially necessary if you're going into the business of supporting people who've been abused in any way. I am left concerned for the people who use the forum and end up parroting the same kind of statements as the moderators, and who at the same time as being continually invited to 'look within' are actively discouraged from doing free thinking or challenging poor behaviour when they see it - what kind of message is this to give to abuse 'thrivers'?

I hope this review helps people in making a decision as to whether to purchase, and in deciding how to approach the programme safely if they do.