Post Cedu Therapy

[Anonymous]

Has anyone chosen to seek out any sort of therapy directly relating to the confusion that resulted from being a student at CEDU? Are there therapists that have some sort of specialty in working with young adults that survived therapeutic and emotional growth programs? Three years later, I still can't sort my emotions and experiences out from that place, and am thinking about seeing someone that could help. But from my experience, no one can grasp what CEDU was like except for those who lived it.

[shanlea]

I have to say that I have not gone to therapy to deal specifically with the impact CEDU had on my life.  However, the impact was huge. One could say how so? Afterall, I was an honor student who did not partake in drugs or other "deviant" behavior after CEDU. (Truthfully, I quit drugs prior to CEDU).  The reason CEDU affected me so much was because it weaves itself into your psyche in insidious ways.  

You are much smarter than I was three years after I departed CEDU. I still brought into CEDU values for years after I left the program, and did not question it until over a decade later.  In fact, this forum helped me to articulate exactly what was wrong with CEDU.  (I always knew it deep down, but had no one to talk about it with because no civilian could possibly understand a cultic experience.)

CEDU is a artificial bubble that does not prepare you for the exigencies of every day life in the real world.  How can they teach you healthy communication techniques or emotional growth if its primary therapeutic tools support coersion to the point of false confessions, humiliation, verbal and emotional abuse, highly manipulative experentials that are too sophisticated and contrived for the psyche of a teenager, and "values" that exist only within its confines.  It is also an environment that is so isolated and controlled that you are not able to weigh it against anything real.

After going through a set of artificial, contrived experentials with your peers, how can you expect to relate easily to regular folks once you leave the compound? I know people who were AFRAID of real, non-CEDU civilians after leaving the "school" (really a group home.)

The fact is that the only thing most staff were expert at were power plays and manipulating parents.  The truth was, many of them were more fucked up than we were, and working out their own shit on us.  

CEDU made normal things (like flirting with the opposite sex) abnormal, and abnormal things normal.

Raps were nothing more than psychological and verbally abusive mosh pits that simultaneously and arbitrarily stripped you of your self worth while giving you a distorted sense of power.

Could you imagine talking to people outside of CEDU the way you talked to your peers in raps?  How could you possibly develop a healthy sense of boundaries when the staff had no sense of therapeutic boundaries or ethics?  How could you possibly relate to people afterward if you are conditioned by CEDU to overdramatize every minuscule event and have a roller coaster of highs and lows?

Did CEDU ever deal with the student individually? NO.

CEDU occured at a developmentally pivotal time of our lives; of course, it will leave an impression.

I know of a few people who have gone to therapy to deal with the scars CEDU left a decade later.  Some are diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Maybe someone could give more information pertaining to specific therapy in response to CEDU.  Anyone?

I totally understand how confusing it would be to sort it all out, but you are much clearer than I was three years after CEDU when I knew something was "off" but didn't even know to question it openly.

I couldn't talk to my parents about the lovely place in the woods with campfires and farm animals.  (They sure as hell wouldn't want to know what some people were doing with these farm animals.)

[Anonymous]

First off, thank you for your response. It's already comforting to realize that the emotions you felt are right in line with my own. One of the things that is hardest for me every day is thinking that I'm the only person on the planet that thinks the way I do. I look at everyone I encounter on a daily basis, which is quite a few because I'm still in college, and just view them with this overwhelming jealousy because they can live what I see as a "normal" life, while I'm trapped in my mind berating myself and trying to achieve for myself what they have, whatever that may be.

Sometimes I think that all the BS that CEDU confronted me with, the "bubble", the false sense of comfort/pain in raps, the scrutiny of things that are perfectly normal in the outside world, set me up expecting a reality that simply didn't exist. I was at Boulder Creek for the long haul...I did not stay for my Summit, but was pulled only one week shy of it. When I left, I had such clear cut expectations of the happiness the outside world would bring to me. I was expecting some euphoric existence, and it did not take me long to realize that that's not what I was in for.

I do realize that I'm lucky enough to have some sort of perspective on who I am as a result of CEDU, but the confusion is still too much for me to handle. A rollercoaster is the perfect way to look at it; some days I wake up, get in the car, and drive to campus feeling like I own the world. I am so happy to be alive, I love every aspect of my life, and I just feel in control. But then, in the blink of an eye, it all shifts to the other end of the spectrum. I feel I'm missing out on everything, life just seems overwhelming and utterly painful, and I just don't even want to be alive. I never felt like that before I was sent to CEDU, and I can never tell if it was simply because I was only 14 back then and had no grip on reality, or if it is because of the false reality CEDU set me up for.

It's not that I'm not trying hard in life; I work so hard every day with nothing but the blind faith that some day it will all be ok. It's just hard to put it into words. I feel as if at some point during those 2 and 1/2 years that I was de-railed from the normal flow of life and haven't been able to find my way back since. I question and scrutinize every friendship I have, it's become a task just to forgive people for the smallest things...I just constantly feel like I'm going it alone. So is it just me? Or does this ring true for any of you that have had the patience to read this far...

[Anonymous]

It's not just you. I have heard of many former attendees who feel similarly. CEDU is a highly artificial environment that promotes an extremely dialectical world view. That is why it is difficult to have relationships outside of the school. (Besides the fact CEDU did not promote healthy boundaries and effective dialogue.) Even people who are pro-CEDU have admitted to difficulty acclimating to life outside the campus. After everything you've been through with your peers at CEDU--which is so far outside the norm--it is difficult to relate to regular folk outside the compound.

The truth is you were derailed from a normal flow of life and relating to people. We all were.

The only thing I can do is validate your feelings as normal. I wish I could say something to make the confusion go away.

After CEDU,I viewed people in strictly polemic terms and also unconsciously expected every relationship or event to be transcendental to merit value. You know, cue the music, dim the lights, raise the voices... (On the other hand, maybe I just get bored too easily!)

I think some people who rebelled against the program early were better able to shake it off afterward.  I know the FEW times I discussed it with "Civilians", they were shocked and dumbfounded.  They would have an easier time relating to juvie or prison than that place.

I don't know if it's a bad or good idea, but maybe you should find out if any former students are in your area and talk to them.

Or maybe you should private message the Former CEDU Therapist and see if he/she has any suggestions on dealing with this expediently.

Good Luck. --Shanlea

[Troll Control]

On 2005-10-01 21:36:00, Anonymous wrote:

"First off, thank you for your response. It's already comforting to realize that the emotions you felt are right in line with my own. One of the things that is hardest for me every day is thinking that I'm the only person on the planet that thinks the way I do. I look at everyone I encounter on a daily basis, which is quite a few because I'm still in college, and just view them with this overwhelming jealousy because they can live what I see as a "normal" life, while I'm trapped in my mind berating myself and trying to achieve for myself what they have, whatever that may be.

This is really terrible.  I hope that, with the passage of time, you will be able to overcome these feelings.  I find it incredible that people actually SUPPORT this kind of "treatment" for "emotional growth" when it clearly stunts natural growth and damages the developing mind (money does strange things to people I guess).

How many cases of PTSD do we have to see to come to the conclusion that traumatizing children for profit is bad business?

I recently read the first two books in a series by Dean Koontz called "Frankenstein."  The "new race"  (Dr. F's creations) were developed in such a way that they were prohibited from free thought and emotion.  The problem was that, over time, being semi-sentient beings, they developed a sense of understanding of how the "old race" lived and in the "new race" eventually grew a hatred and contempt for the "new race" and their ability to think, feel and act with free will.

I find an astonishing amount of parallel similarity between the depiction of the "new race" in the books and kids who have recently left programs.  This similarity seems to validate a simple point:  When reason, thought and free will are extinguished, severe problems ensue.

If an author of horror novels can plainly see and accurately depict the pain, rage and anguish of being stripped of free thought and free will, why can't parents and so-called "professionals"?

In any case, it is not my intention to trivialize your experience, for I can personally identify with the problems you're experiencing.  I wish you the best of luck and good fortune.  Try to remember that you are an intrinsically good, whole person, but have been badly damaged, though not irreconcilably.  Stay strong.