Terms of Service - The Hidden Cause

Who you are dealing with

The Hidden Cause is a sole proprietorship owned and operated by Mattie Blevens, at 730 Maple Ave, La Conner, Washington 98257, United States. It is not a separate company. In these terms, “we”, “us” and “our” mean The Hidden Cause; “you” means the person using the site, holding an account, or buying from us.

These terms, and the ones that go with them

Read these alongside our disclaimer, privacy notice and cookie policy. The disclaimer matters most: everything we share is educational, and it is not therapy, treatment, or clinical care. Nothing in these terms changes that.

Where a particular program, event, or product has its own written terms, those apply as well, and where the two disagree, the program's own terms govern that program.

Who may use the site

You must be 18 or older to buy from us or hold an account. Anyone may read the public parts of the site.

An account is personal to you. Keep your log-in details to yourself, use accurate information, and tell us promptly if you think someone else has access. You are responsible for what happens under your account. Accounts and program places cannot be shared, sold, or transferred to someone else.

What we offer

Live online programs and webinars, recordings and written material that go with them, digital products through the shop, and a community space for people taking part. Some of it is free. Some of it is paid. None of it is medical or psychological treatment.

Enrolling in a program

Your place is confirmed when we send you a confirmation email, not when you submit the form. Places are sometimes limited, and we may decline or cancel an enrolment where a program is not the right fit, where a place is oversubscribed, or where these terms have been broken.

Sessions run live online at the dates and times shown. We may need to move a session, change who is leading it, or adjust the format. We will tell you as early as we can. If we cancel a program outright, or cancel sessions you have paid for and cannot reasonably replace them, we will refund the part you did not receive.

Missing a session does not entitle you to a refund or a credit. Where recordings are provided, they are there for exactly this reason.

Prices and payment

Prices are shown at checkout in the currency displayed there. Where we are required to charge sales tax or VAT, it is shown before you pay. Payment is handled by a third-party payment processor; we never see or store your full card details.

Where a payment plan is offered, each instalment falls due on the schedule shown at checkout, and access may be paused while an instalment is outstanding. If a payment fails, is reversed, or is charged back, we may suspend access until it is settled.

We may change our prices at any time. A change never affects something you have already paid for.

Cancelling and refunds

You have 14 days from the date of purchase to change your mind and ask for a full refund. This applies wherever you live, whether or not the law where you live requires it, and you do not need to give a reason.

Opening the recordings closes the refund window. Programs and digital products include recordings and written material. When you open the page where a program's recordings are held, or download or stream a digital product, you have received the thing you paid for — you are asking us to give you access straight away, and you are giving up your right to withdraw from that purchase. If you want to keep the 14 days open, do not open the recordings until you are sure.

In short: the window runs for 14 days from purchase, or until you open the recordings — whichever comes first.

To withdraw, use the withdrawal form, or write to us through the contact page. A clear statement that you are withdrawing is enough. We will acknowledge it by email.

Refunds go back to the payment method you used, normally within 14 days of us receiving your withdrawal. If we cancel a program, we refund the part you have not received, whether or not you have opened anything.

If money is genuinely the obstacle, or something has gone wrong, write to us before you write us off. We would rather hear about it.

What you may do with the material

When you buy or are given access to something here, we grant you a personal, non-transferable, non-commercial licence to read it, watch it, listen to it, and print a copy for your own use. That licence lasts as long as your access does.

Please do not:

record, screenshot, or re-stream a live session
share your log-in, or pass recordings and materials to anyone else
republish, sell, or sublicence any of it
use it as the basis of your own paid teaching, training, or coaching
use it to train, fine-tune, or build a dataset for an AI model
scrape the site, or try to get around access controls

If you want to use something with a group — a class, a workplace, a prison program, a support setting — ask us. We are usually glad to say yes.

Sydney Banks' work

Much of what we hold here is Sydney Banks' own words, in recordings and in print. Those rights belong to his estate and his publishers, not to us. We share the material under the permissions we have been given, and those permissions do not pass to you. Treat his work with the care it deserves, and ask before reproducing it anywhere.

The community

People come here in different states of mind, and often say more than they planned to. A few things hold the space open:

speak to people the way you would want to be spoken to
what is shared in a session or a thread stays there — do not repeat it elsewhere in any way that identifies the person
do not diagnose, prescribe, or advise anyone on medication or treatment, and do not present yourself as a licensed professional unless you are one
no selling, recruiting, or promoting your own services without asking us first
nothing unlawful, abusive, harassing, hateful, or deliberately misleading

We may remove content, or suspend or close an account, where these are broken. Where we reasonably can, we will say why first. The community is not monitored around the clock and is not a place to seek help in a crisis — the disclaimer says where to turn instead.

What you post

What you write or upload stays yours. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display, and share it within the site and the community, for as long as we run them, so that the thing works at all. You confirm that what you post is yours to post and does not infringe anyone else's rights.

We do not review everything that is posted, and we are not responsible for what other members say. If you see something that should not be there, tell us.

Our material and marks

The site, its design, text, images, recordings, and course material are ours or licensed to us. “The Hidden Cause” and our logo are our marks. Nothing in these terms transfers ownership of any of it to you.

The site itself

We aim to keep the site up and working, but we do not guarantee that it will always be available or free of faults. Maintenance, outages, and third-party failures happen. We may add, change, or withdraw features, and we may retire material that we no longer have permission to share.

Ending things

You can close your account at any time by writing to us. Closing an account does not by itself trigger a refund — the refund rules above are what govern that.

We may suspend or end your access where these terms are broken, where a payment fails, or where continuing would be unsafe for you or for others. If we end your access without cause, we will refund the unused part of anything you have paid for. The parts of these terms that ought to outlast the account — the licences you have granted, the limits on liability, and the law that applies — continue afterwards.

No warranties

The site and the material are offered as they are. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we make no warranty — express or implied — that they are complete, accurate, uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or fit for any particular purpose. We make no promise about what taking part will do for you; the disclaimer says more about that. Nothing here limits any right you have that cannot be excluded under the law where you live.

Limits on liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss, or for lost profits, income, data, or goodwill, arising out of your use of the site or the material. Where we are liable, our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

None of this limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits, so parts may not apply to you.

You cover us

If someone brings a claim against us because of something you did — breaking these terms, misusing the material, or posting something you had no right to post — you agree to cover the reasonable costs and damages that result.

Privacy

How we handle your information is set out in our privacy notice and cookie policy. You can manage your choices in the privacy center.

Third parties

We rely on other services to run this — payment processing, video hosting, email, the meeting software we use for live sessions. Their own terms and privacy practices apply to their part of it. Links to other sites, books, or resources are offered for convenience and are not endorsements, and we are not responsible for what you find there.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top shows when they last changed. Where a change materially affects something you have already bought, we will tell you directly. The terms that were in force when you bought something keep applying to that purchase; continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the new version for everything else.

Which law applies

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Claims are to be brought in the state or federal courts located in Skagit County, Washington.

If you are a consumer in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or anywhere else whose law gives you protections that cannot be contracted away, you keep them, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live.

Before any of that: write to us. Almost everything sorts out in an email.

If part of this does not hold

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest stands. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later. You may not transfer your rights under these terms to someone else; we may transfer ours if the site or the work changes hands, and your rights are unaffected. Together with the disclaimer, privacy notice, cookie policy, and any program-specific terms, this is the whole of the agreement between us.

Contact

Questions about these terms, a purchase, or an account can go through our contact page, or by post to The Hidden Cause, 730 Maple Ave, La Conner, WA 98257, United States.

Terms exist for the rare occasion when something goes wrong. Most of the time what happens here is simpler than that — people come, they sit in, and something shifts. We would rather talk than invoke a clause.