Hello

[Anonymous]

L.I.F.E.r from '86-'88 here. Had another one of my first phase nightmares recently: sitting on the pews again with everyone motivating around me; the benches bouncing up and down; those group songs are lurching in the background. Always the ones that no one ever knew well: My Father's Eyes, A Little Goes A Lot -- mashed up with a particular three-fingered guy endless chants of "I am the master." And I know when I see the fifth phaser, not yet seeing me, I'm never getting out of this place again ...

And so, having some freetime at work today, I googled L.I.F.E. program and arrived here.

Reading through some of the posts, I wanted to reconnect with some people and recoil from others. And now that I'm finished reading the entire site, I wanted to say something profound to make me feel better about the 407 days I spent there, to sum in all up in one pithy phrase, but I can't. I guess I'm a little speechless. So I'll just say hello.

I hope I, or anyone else, never have to go through anything like the L.I.F.E. program again.

[Anonymous]

hi chuck, I was in the program on the other coast. It's hard to find any words to describe the horror that was the program. It's why talk therapy doesn't work for ptsd ... what can you say? gt was a much smaller group yet the same long hours were spent in the group... i remember visiting life and feeling better sitting in a larger group but worse talking in front of all those ghost white freak-made teenagers there. i had the privilege of making peanut butter sandwiches for lunch for the group w/ this girl from life who was in w/ her brother, she said they used to start fires and then she came onto me.... the whole time i was there there was never any peace, i remember waking myself up in the middle of the night b/c i was motivating. it invaded every space, i had no privacy, no personal identity. one of my observations of this site in regards to the trauma we experienced in life and gt is it was/is the worst... i know that sentence w/ catch shit b/c truly all programs are bad however when you notice the posts on this forum they are so incoherent where as some others are much more intelligent and legible. anyway i think the more of yourself you got to keep to yourself the better off you were when you got out...plus if when you got out you had good support that went along way in your overall mental health later. well it's tragic thats for sure. i guess i'm jealous of those better adjusted cause i feel very messed up from it all and i don't know what to do if i should do anything. and this place is the best support i've ever had and how sad is that especially when people go at each other here like they did in the program?