suffering in the aftermath

[Anonymous]

I am new to this site, but in the last couple of days it has really helped me out. I have lived the last few years feeling very alone. NO-ONE can understand what happened to me, unless they went through it. How can you ever explain what it is like to be forced to feel everything to the extreme 24hours a day, 7days a week. To be screamed at endlessly for not showing enough emotion, to have to scream for hours at floors and walls and other people in order to express what it was that you weren't expressing ::bangin::  
Does anyone relate to this feeling?

[Troll Control]

great post.  welcome.  i think you'll get some meaningful responses.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the above poster, I don't have time at the moment, but I know EXACTLY what you feel. I love some of them, but then I think of my real family and I think of how fucked up the relationship with them can be. I am forced to see that even those people who I really did care about, were making their rent, and even if they did more than pretend to care, they were still part of a problem much larger than either of our individual selves. Have you contacted these ex-staff? What do they say?

[Anonymous]

I have contacted some of these ex-staff, and with a couple it was really nice to talk to them. However, with some of them it was like they wanted to stick me back in a rap when I was explaining how I feel.
I get a much clearer sense of being understood by reading what it said here, mainly because we went through it every day all of the time, while the staff were able to go home to their cozy houses and have days off.

Hey, did any of you guys ever go to staff's houses on work assignments? I remember going to one of the staff's houses for like a three day weekend, and it was awesome. We worked on her house and some shit around her property during the day, and in the evenings we were just able to sit around and relax. It was nice. No raps! She did use some of the work as "metaphorical emotional release" but other than that it was cool.

[Anonymous]

I have been coming to this site for a few months now and I haven't responded to anything. This made me want to respond, I understand what you are talking about. I also have serious problems relating to anyone. It has been 6 years since I left and I have horrible social skills and I constantly feel like I am being attacked or that I am close to being attacked. My stomach hurts and I feel like Im going to puke when I am in large grops. I constantly feel like I am so much different than everyone around me, like I feel so muc deeper than them. I have recently been diagnosed as bi-polar but I honestly don't think that I am. I think that I just feel everything to the extrme and ti gives me the apperance of being bi-polar.
I feel like I came out of the school worse off than I was when i wnet in. I was sent there for smoking pot and fighting with my parents. While at the school I lost my virginity and learned how to cut to ease the pain. There are still times that I remember good times at the program, but they are pretty few, and usually involv doing something and not getting caught! :smokin:
In some ways I miss the school because at least while I was there I felt like I was at a place where people actually listended to me and sometimes Ifelt like they really cared. But mostly I am just pissed that I was ever sent there. (BTW it didn't do shit for my parents and my relationship!) ::

[Anonymous]

Bipolar can be a pretty convenient tag at times. Sometimes we simply have a low tolerance for deep feeling, eccentric, or unique individuals.  On the other hand, someone with true bipolar will often function in relationships and life better with proper treatment from drastic changes in diet to a more traditional approach.  That is a personal journey. Do research from an impartial resource (not a drug manufacturing site!) and go from there.

As far as your CEDU experience is concerned, I think many people share your sense of social dislocation after attending the program.  Years after CEDU, I was affected in the social realm in two ways. One, I distanced myself from people because friendship at CEDU consisted of bullying, humiliation, snitching, and exploiting your pain. On the other hand,CEDU placed us in a tightly controlled environment with highly contrived, intense peer experiences that cannot be duplicated on the outside.  It would be easy to subconsciously feel that outside interactions were pale or shallow by comparison.  

Unfortunately, leaving CEDU and knowing there was something very, very wrong about the place did not help me.  I had no one who I could discuss it with who would understand, and because I split, I was completely cut off from peers inside. I really wasn't capable of making a mental appraisal of the situation to at least gain a cognitive awareness of why I felt so dislocated.

[Anonymous]

YEAH I STAYED AT A STAFF'S HOUSE...AND STUCK IT IN HER ASS WHILE HER STUPID PITIFUL HUSBAND WATCHED.

[Anonymous]

I just found this site through another former RMA grad...it pains me to see that everybody seems to be fucked up in the same kind of ways...it has been almost two decades since I graduated and I seem to have similar social issues that stemmed from my RMA experience.