PTSD

[psy]

ok whose the smart ass mod who gave the thread the funny name...  fixed anyhoo.

[Nihilanthic]

Some days I wonder who on fornits DOESN'T have PTSD to some degree or another.

[69]

Probably would have been better off using shock therapy, as in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" style shock therapy. Not the pussy crap they have today.

I dunno, it's still pretty disturbing to be see it, or be around people who have it done on a regular basis. Sometime after scl I ended up in this day treatment place for dual diagnosis adults who are people with drug or alcohol problems and mental problems. I was the youngest one and the people were pretty nice, crazy as fuck, but a nice group of people. Out of about maybe ieght or nine of us there were two that were etting shock therapy. I even got to lay down on the machince once when they took my EKG because it was in the same room and I asked a bunch of questions. They said when people have seizures after they regain consiousness they feel a little bit better, less depressed. I figured smoking a bowl is a hell of a lot easier to get the same effect, but these people were in the NA mindset so whatever floats your boat I guess. When they come out of it they stumble around in a haze, like a completely drunk person, with a weird smirk on their face and unfocused eyes, competely out of it. That was the funny part, when they would come wandering out into the smokikng/lunch area and the nurse attendant would come running after them and shuffle them back inside.  

[mbnh31782]

When I was searching for a job in college and came upon Three Springs as a place to work and obtained an interview, I was extactic.  When I got offered the job in short order, I was even more excited.  Here I was, ideallistic college student out to save the fucking world.  I mentioned to a few people at my college about my new job that I would have once I graduated.  One of them warned me about Three Springs, but I didnt listen.  He said: "That place is really primitive and I'm not sure if its a good place to go."  But me being the happy go lucky person that I was, wanted to give Three Springs a chance.

I regret it from the moment I got there.

I didnt realize how much of an effect Three Springs had on my mental and emotional psyche.  What was termed as "treatment" was nothing more than emotional and mental abuse on the children.  What we did as counselors to "force" the children to comply was nothing short of inhumane.  It surprises me they didnt give us cattle prods and shock collars to make them comply.  I can see how the environment breeds breakdowns, hysterics, and anguish over the thought of having to stay there for longer periods of time.

I was in a very interesting part of the facility.  I wasnt in the main program at all.  They placed me in the "shelter" which was the "short term" program.  The kids were placed there up to 90 days.  Some of them were sentenced directly to the program (for example, they only had 90 days or less to "serve"), others were sentenced to long term programs, but they needed somewhere to put them, so they placed them in the short term program temporarily.  I got to witness how some kids reacted when they got sent down the hill to the main program.  Many were devastated because the short term program was run the same way as the long term program.  The only difference was that the girls in the short term earned points to obtain "levels" or "stages" and the main program is more subjective to the girls attitudes and such.

Because the program they were initially in was a short term program, many of them would just suck it up and deal.  Some complained to their probation officers and I found myself defending the heinous ways of the program as therapy and that the girl was just being manipulative.  I was required to monitor phonecalls and keep an eye on the girls at all times.  Therapeutic? no... Heinous and horrible?  yes!

Luckily I snapped out of it and refused to take part in Three Springs manipulations.

They took a sweet and caring person and turned me into a monster.

[Anonymous]

It surprises me they didnt give us cattle prods and shock collars to make them comply.

Don't go there.

[Anonymous]

Hey, I'm just in this business for the grateful teenage girls.

[Antigen]

Ya know, I really wonder if that lack of trust thing is really a disorder or if it's just that we learned enough about human nature to know better? Personally, the best way I've found to deal with it is to just not expect that much from people.

[Oz girl]

Ya know, I really wonder if that lack of trust thing is really a disorder or if it's just that we learned enough about human nature to know better? Personally, the best way I've found to deal with it is to just not expect that much from people.

Without sounding like Ned Flanders, I would like to think it is a disorder, or at least a learned behaviour. I guess there is a fine line between being savvy and paranoid. Sure people can be shitheads but they can also be downright decent.

[Antigen]

Thing is, though, everybody has their breaking point and it's nowhere near as far from where you are as you'd like to think. And then there's the really harrowing reality that people can justify doing anything, and I do mean ANY kind of behavior at all, if it's something you have to do.

Case in point; look at the Aspen restraint video recently posted or the Bay County Boot Camp snuff flick that came out on US and international news affiliates around this time last year. In both cases, the perpetrators knew full well that they were being filmed. Look at their demeanor. Clearly, these people, all of them, believed that what they were doing was The Right Thing®

And you don't have to go into the Twilight Zone realm of fucked up programs for an example. Here's another glaringly obvious one. Most Americans don't think they're racist, do they? Of course not. Check out these two photos and their captions:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/01/191113.php

When the 'news' broke about the rampant rioting, baby raping, murder and mayhem going down in the Super Dome in the aftermath of that storm, the media and public ate it up and swallowed it down and asked for more. I was watching a couple of local blogs from inside the area at the time. Fact is It Simply Didn't Go Down That Way At All! There was one murder and one death due to dehydration and one joker had been shooting at the heliocopters as they flew over. But that happens when the blimp overflies Overtown during Orange Bowl events. No baby rapers, no rampant mass murder. But no one ever questioned the story. It was so easily accepted by all that, when the coroner finally showed up at the super dome, he came with a full staff and 400 body bags. I think there may have been one or two other deaths due to all that duress among all those people. So 2 to 4 bodies, not 4 fucking hundred!

That's what scares me about people the most. Not that they usually or even very frequently intentionally do wrong, but the mighty awesome power of self delusion. Hitler was pretty good at plying just that quirk of human nature, and we all know how that story ended. I wonder how this one will end. I really do...

[try another castle]

Ya know, I really wonder if that lack of trust thing is really a disorder or if it's just that we learned enough about human nature to know better? Personally, the best way I've found to deal with it is to just not expect that much from people.

Without sounding like Ned Flanders, I would like to think it is a disorder, or at least a learned behaviour. I guess there is a fine line between being savvy and paranoid. Sure people can be shitheads but they can also be downright decent.

As far as I'm concerned, trust has to be EARNED, not expected. Makes me think of that stupid Summit/Lifespring exercise: "I trust you, I don't trust  you, or I don't know if I trust you." We are then made to feel bad if either a lot of people told us they couldn't or didn't know if they could trust us, or if we said that often to others. (As if it was pathological.) We were supposed to trust everyone.

Doesn't mean I am going to assume the worst of everyone, nor do I feel it's a valid justification to micromanage an employee or a child, it just means, like Ginger said, that I'm not going to have huge expectations. It's a boundary issue.

[Nihilanthic]

I agree. Trust, just like respect, has to be earned, on an individual basis, regardless of what you say or think you are, what anyone else says or thinks you are, what you have accomplished or what a sheet of paper decrees you to be.

[Antigen]

If you ain't skeert-n-pissed off ye just ain't been payin' attention.

[Nihilanthic]

You'd be proud to know people here are pissed about that guy getting shot on his lawn down the road from where I work.

Damn proud.

:nworthy:

Florida's got some hope just yet, it'll just take the govt going away.

SADLY, that will not be easy, who the hell is gonna run against them?