Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Mission Mountain School

speaking with John and Colleen

<< < (2/2)

Anonymous:

--- Quote ---
If my, say, boyfriend say to me something critical and I said, 'oh you're just against me' my b/f would look at me as if I were insane.  Well, I look at Colleen as if she must be completely out of touch... and this is someone who heavily influences the running of school (with John's permission, of course)?  what a joke this program is, or rather, the people who run it are.  That's what it is, an f-n ridiculous joke of a program.

Anonymous:
this has become a heated topic for me personally.  so i thought i'd throw in something.  i've on a couple occasions tried ot talk to colleen, but it always seems to end up turning on me.  or she somehow gets me to feel sorry for her because everyone is ganging up on them.  it's ridiculous and i wish sometimes that i was a bit more aggressive with her, but i've given up. i'm still considered a "good" alumni i guess, and i think it is because they still have a strange power over me.  stand up for myself, right?  well, it's harder than it sounds.  it's really sad that they can't back up their wonderful school, all they can do is get defensive when anything negative at all is said.  i don't understand why, if so many girls feel this way, they don't listen?  dont' try to change?  don't apologize?  things did turn out okay for me in the end, which i'm becomign more and more grateful for after reading all these posts.  it's been a battle for me to reconcile those two differences, my experiences and those negative ones of others... it all seemed confusing, but now i understand that people really do feel hurt by this power crazed man, john, and something should be done so it doesn't continue happening.  

girls that young are fragile, and shouldn't be scared into being good, but should be nurtured and loved and shown compassion for.  i think the entire reason i acted out in the first place was because i didn't love myself, i felt unloved by others, and felt worthless.  how can yelling at me and telling me i'm wrong all the time get me to develop into a normal balanced person?  for the most part i've figured it out, and i dont' really blame any current issues on something that happened over 6 years ago now, but it's still a problem for so many.  

sorry to blab, i've just been thinking a lot about this lately.

-s

Anonymous:

--- Quote ---On 2006-04-06 12:21:00, Anonymous wrote:

"this has become a heated topic for me personally.  so i thought i'd throw in something.  i've on a couple occasions tried ot talk to colleen, but it always seems to end up turning on me.  or she somehow gets me to feel sorry for her because everyone is ganging up on them.  it's ridiculous and i wish sometimes that i was a bit more aggressive with her, but i've given up. i'm still considered a "good" alumni i guess, and i think it is because they still have a strange power over me.  stand up for myself, right?  well, it's harder than it sounds.  it's really sad that they can't back up their wonderful school, all they can do is get defensive when anything negative at all is said.  i don't understand why, if so many girls feel this way, they don't listen?  dont' try to change?  don't apologize?  things did turn out okay for me in the end, which i'm becomign more and more grateful for after reading all these posts.  it's been a battle for me to reconcile those two differences, my experiences and those negative ones of others... it all seemed confusing, but now i understand that people really do feel hurt by this power crazed man, john, and something should be done so it doesn't continue happening.  



girls that young are fragile, and shouldn't be scared into being good, but should be nurtured and loved and shown compassion for.  i think the entire reason i acted out in the first place was because i didn't love myself, i felt unloved by others, and felt worthless.  how can yelling at me and telling me i'm wrong all the time get me to develop into a normal balanced person?  for the most part i've figured it out, and i dont' really blame any current issues on something that happened over 6 years ago now, but it's still a problem for so many.  



sorry to blab, i've just been thinking a lot about this lately.



-s"

--- End quote ---


Thanks S, I understand and respect your predicament and think it takes a hell of a lot of courage to say what you've just said.  Hell of a lot.  It means a lot, at least to me, to hear from someone who considers (is this correct?) John to have mistreated many of us and who still took some benefit from MMS, acknowledge and validate these criticisms, rather than just become defensive as...well, john and colleen are.  

I think many people mimic them... and they are, perhaps not the best examples/role models, paticularly in this instance of...being able to take it in criticisms.

Although, S, after some thought on this issue (lol) I think that there would be legal implication to John and Colleen conceding to anything. Lack of education on their part, and in general the yelling and berratement... they are not kids, they are adults and the mistakes they made were really quite big- I would say so large that it probably cuased irreperable damage to some.  I'd be willing to bet my life that numerous girls have died because they did not ge the help they needed and the trauma at MMS pushed them over that edge... that was my experience- I was lucky I didn't die.  Despite being on a destructive path, this made life a lot more confusing and frightening for me. It's not joke, taking responsibility for harming so many teens struggling with mental health issues.

So in that sense, I'd like to think that perhaps they keep their internal fear/awareness that they've done something majorly wrong hidden.  Although, I have heard from recent alumni and it appears that, even if this is the case, this ideal- of John and Colleen having a silent revelation, has had no impact in the way John treats the group, so perhaps that hidden fear/awareness is too hidden!

It's just like... at this point you've got to just give it up already.  But, if they do change, even w/o acknowledging culpability, it means also aknowledging defeat, perhaps, in John's mind???  Like this is a battle of... wills?  who knows, that's kind of how i feel like John's mind works... I think we can agree on this, love him or hate him, John has a huge ego.

Anyway- thanks S!!!

Anonymous:
from kat- above, can't sign on for some reason!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page