Fornits

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An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

That's the basic idea with Second Nature.

My particular ordeal began with being kidnapped and shipped there as so many. My crime consisted entirely of.. being sad. I still love the idea that taking a depressed transsexual and shipping her to Mormon Utah, minus what few comforts did exist and plus sadistic staff and insane 'therapeutic' ideas were going to make it better.

As noted, the therapist (who was everyone there's therapist) was around at most once a week. This in contrast to the therapist I had at home, who I saw once a week, liked, and respected, and if something came up I needed to talk about he could usually be on call within a few hours at most.

I won't get into the gory details, but staff were every bit as sadistic as any other program, only they really weren't allowed to beat people up randomly - bad PR, I guess. They were perfectly happy with mind games, and those were about the extent of the "therapy".

Now, they get paid for processed meat turned over to more 'long-term' programs, so throughout this they were buttering up my parents to make me such afterwards, of course. They did, the 2 other places and 2 stints at Second Nature gave me PTSD, and that's a story for you.

Conclusion: While I don't doubt the value of doing so, I don't even need to trash Second Nature with its obvious faults and false advertising (which, I will confirm, is false as they come). My argument is a bit simpler: It DOESN'T WORK.

"Even the kids that don't make it at TBS liked SNWP"



That is absolutely correct.  Many kids keep in touch with their therapists from 2N and have really good feelings about it.  It is a class operation.

Okay, i'm jumping in here late, but... No. It's not. It's an abusive shithole like any other, and it played at least as much part as the rest in severely screwing me up. k? k.

Second Nature Wilderness Program is NOT a boot camp for troubled teens. In fact, Second Nature Wilderness Program strongly disputes the enduring efficacy of any boot camp program for troubled youth. Boot camps, by design, are behavior modification paradigms, using coercion and hardship to negatively reinforce appropriate behavior. Second Nature is not a teen boot camp and has no affiliation with any such programs. Second Nature is a wilderness therapy program that provides psychoeducation, sophisticated and individualized therapy, and wilderness realism to highlight choices and consequences for your troubled teen, which aids in guiding students toward long term ambitions.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Bullshit

Do me a favor, would you, O struggling parents?

Visit your favorite beloved programs around Christmas. In fact, do it today. Look around - just look at the kids. You probably don't even need to say anything. Don't worry about whatever faux festivities, if any, they're putting on - just look at them, really see them.

Then tell me that you're helping anyone. I hope for your sake that you can't.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LzEhjTdqanM

I can't speak for everyone, and I don't know what listed reasons people have for such protests. I've never had a chance to go to one. I'm sure it's fun to spit in their faces and know there's nothing they can do about it, but that's (I hope) just a perk.

I can, however, say pretty surely, and i'm sure most survivors will agree with me here... that in the courses of all the places I was shuffled through, if i'd seen just once that there was even one person who understood and wanted to help... it might have made staying relatively sane a lot easier.

Gateway survivor here... I can basically confirm everything being said. 'Staff' at Gateway have pretty much no training whatsoever, my therapist, one Jeff Hintze, was fired for reasons unknown to me (but.. Fired. From a job as a program therapist. You have to try pretty hard for that), et al. It was standard program fare, more or less. They were VERY heavy on the 1984 aspects - largely in turning 'students' against each other.. the only way to advance was to 'hold boundaries', which was a not-so-nice way of saying play Thought Police.

A major note I think might be worth pointing out, though, is that they were also very much offenders of the program tendency to take people with completely unrelated problems (or none at all) and put them in the same mold. The bit about 'specialized groups' is bullshit. Their groups basically consisted of daily indoctrination (or, if there was any dirt they could use, bringing up private problems to be attacked by the more thoroughly brainwashed kids, another characteristic tactic). But getting to the point... all the references to the 'young men' in their very Newspeak descriptor?

I'm a transitioning MtF transsexual.

Part of the plan as prescribed by my none too supportive parents seemed to be to use this as an opportunity to shit on me whenever possible. I was, as if being there wasn't alienating enough, forced to go by my birth name, threatened upon trying to even note that hey-there's-a-mistake-here and then accused of 'isolating' when I got more depressed than I'd already been as a result. Of course, it was my fault for being transsexual in the first place.

I'd prefer not to dredge up too much more.. I'm still trying to block out the memories. But in the hopes that I can be of some help... I noticed the reference to a kid from Canada. He was a friend of mine, the other least-brainwashed there... I remember that he was trying to get in touch with an embassy, as under Canadian law he was of age and couldn't be held there - not that they cared, of course. I don't know if what I remember about him would be enough to help if someone's trying to find him, but drop me a line if so. I'll do whatever I can.

Anyway, um.. yeah, that's Gateway in a nutshell. Standard NATSAP torture facility with a flair for dragging stays out to milk more money and incompetent staffers with control issues. Any other questions, i'll try to answer them as they come.

Cheers,
Lain