Identity Overwritten

[psy]

This was the ending to my life's story (a writing assignment at Benchmark)

Somehow I think my parents knew that Benchmark was not really that much of a school but that is in the past and I don't know if I really care anymore.  I'm here and I know that I need this place.  I'm not entirely sure if for any ?one? reason alone but I do now that the way I have been living my life hasn't been working and I need to be shown a better way.

I have been typing up my journals from benchmark, which I have not read since written.  No emphasis added.  The underlines were there in the original.

Now can anybody say "mind fuck"!

This was written just after they first broke me.

I truly believed that shit when i wrote it....  ::bangin::  :silly:  ::puke::

[psy]

This is part of an assignment entitled "Five year letter" in which i am supposed to write to myself as if i am writing from five years in the future:

In the best of circumstances I'm living on my own, have a job that pays decently, and have some type of companionship.  I graduated Benchmark and got a job working for a software company.  I really can't be writing all this.  I feel like I'm blowing optimism out my ass.  In a more realistic future I'm even more screwed than now.  I'm probably in Jail for something really stupid or at best working at McDonalds for ninimum wage, living in low-income housing and having terrible trouble with crack-houses for neighbors.

From the assignment "Who Am I" from the same date:

I don't even know anymore what I am really like Inside.  From as far as I can remember, everything has been a complete act
...
I am nobody and everybody.  I am nobody.  I am Unknown even to myself.

[psy]

I was asked to write about a picture on the wall.  You know those corporate motivational posters with "teamwork" and "excellence"  etc.  I chose excellence.

I strive for what in my mind is excellence and it has gotten me nowhere.  Perfecting my talents in manipulation.  I've tried so hard all these years to fool others that I've forgotton who I really am inside.

When they tell you you're lying and you just don't even know it... eventually you believe it after enough coersion.  The truth becomes a lie, and only the staff can help you find out who you really are.

I was asked to write about "What Identity Do I present to myself + others"

I hide everything true if there is any of my true self left.
...
Right now I am trying to jam an emotional crowbar into my head in an attempt to recover what little actual self/individuality I have left.

journal entry

I think I am starting to discover myself through this writing but I don't know what I am discovering or If I want to discover whatever I am.  In any case i think I've just scratched the surface of "nobody"

Yes.  I was referring to myself as "nobody" a blank identity the staff could help me figure out.

[psy]

You worry to much. As staff I order you to get laid.

But mister staff sir?!?  That's against the no-sex aggreement...

[blownawaytheidahoway]

It seems like Benchmark (isn't that where you are watching your team play but have rumbleseat and it gets a little out of hand before you get to stand up?)
is similar to my experience at CEDU. hang in there, it takes a little time. When I first found this forum I didn't fuck my girlfriend for weeks. I was really really shaken thinking about this shit again. I got some of the same advice that TSW gave...what's hard to keep in mind is how much touch and lack of touch or forced touch, or even the level of intimicy are all ingredients in creating wierdness afterwards. I could and probably do on other threads or in that fucking book, go on for volumes about the fallout from forced intimicy, and in my case having to SMOOSH with people who had been blowing me away in raps. I fucking wanted their hair balled up in my palm as I present the trophy to the house at morning light- the head of the last person that said some stupid out of touch shit to me in a rap.
In a dream of what reality should have been...that's NORMAL feelings...but then having to actually smoosh and hug them and tell them I love them...shit i hardly say to the people for whom I feel that- and then smooshing with them for over two years? Now that is the CEDU way?
 Did you have a lot of hugs and tears at benchmark?
-blownaway

[blownawaytheidahoway]

hell no, dude. did you read this?

I particularly remember one of the girls getting yelled at and it seemed quite cruel the things they were saying.
?Umm, listen?. I began. ?I know y?all will get mad at me for this but can we let her ?sit in her shit? and move on? I think she?s upset?. I never would have said anything?I mean I really had learned my lesson, and I NEVER would have tried something like this in Caroline?s raps, I didn?t know the facilitator at all. I had seen him with his sinister looking mustache and nice blue eyes, and he sounded even more bumbling than Richard Armstrong had my first day. XXXX?s voice had such a twang I was immediately alerted to a possible affectation.
?What?s your name, XXXX Is that right?? I nodded and we locked eyes. This girl has sucked cock for cocaine?What?dya think about that??
?I heard that already?.
?Well, here in this school, you?ll learn that the work that XXXXXXXhere is doing is important, but I suppose a little druggie like you wouldn?t know that. You like cocaine, son??
I hadn?t realized that this was one of those rhetorical questions and I started to reject his claims and defend myself but before I had a chance, XXXX raised his voice a few notches and cut me off.
?Come on XXXXXXX, he?s right here in this room just tell him. I was with you in the "I Want To Live" and I know the work you did! You want to be a whore the rest of your life? He?s sitting right across from you!?
The girl lifted herself a little and locked a shaky finger in my direction, when her head raised up so I could see her face. She screamed for like ten or fifteen seconds and tears squirted off of her cheeks. ?YOU MADE ME SUCK YOUR COCK! I HATE YOU, DUMB COKEHEAD MOTHER FUCKERRRRRRRRR!?
I was terrified for the girl at first, and; as they reamed her for another twenty or thirty minutes, I began to think poorly of her too. I didn?t necessarily believe everything the four or six people were saying but if they insisted for an hour, it must have some merit.

After a while the tone stopped bothering me but the words didn't. I never saw XXXXXXXX the way I saw her when we walked into that rap that day.

?and by the time this rap was over, I had NO respect or desire left for this girl. Some part of me hated her for having to watch her be treated like that. There was ?something? she could do to make it stop. She had said as much, and even though I didn?t know what that ?something? was, I hated her for making me witness that series of ?indictments?.

also I remember some staff (caroline wolfe, in particular) asking girls and boys in her raps who they wanted to fuck and particulary when the question was "who do you wanna fuck in THIS rap". that was a nast game, with a nasty result, not the type of nasty you're thinking. Raps actually ruin normal sexual relations and CEDU created an aura of shame around sex, homosexuality in particular in the upper schools where the pull the rug out from under you after all that "love bombing" smoosh cirles.
 
ergo:   RAPS= UN- FUCK YOU!

[try another castle]

Hmmm...... raps blows.

There you go, talking about raps and sex again.



Hey, blownaway, was that one of Bruce's raps? (I wasn't there, I'm just guessing based on your description of the facilitator.)

[psy]

It seems like Benchmark (isn't that where you are watching your team play but have rumbleseat and it gets a little out of hand before you get to stand up?)
is similar to my experience at CEDU.

It's a CEDU clone started by an ex director of CEDU: Hilltop in Running Springs, CA.  It's every bit as CEDU as CEDU ever was.

hang in there, it takes a little time. When I first found this forum I didn't fuck my girlfriend for weeks. I was really really shaken thinking about this shit again.

it's been really nasty for me too.  I tried to ignore it for the past five years really...  If you read my Intro on my website it explains what "sparked" this.
I'm quite determined now to annihilate the place (no that was not a threat of violence Jayne.  go put your lawyer away)

I got some of the same advice that TSW gave...what's hard to keep in mind is how much touch and lack of touch or forced touch, or even the level of intimicy are all ingredients in creating wierdness afterwards. I could and probably do on other threads or in that fucking book, go on for volumes about the fallout from forced intimicy, and in my case having to SMOOSH with people who had been blowing me away in raps. I fucking wanted their hair balled up in my palm as I present the trophy to the house at morning light- the head of the last person that said some stupid out of touch shit to me in a rap.

When benchmark was first started they used to call raps "raps"... after CEDU started getting bad press they started calling em "groups".  A piece of shit by any other name...  I refer to them as raps on fornits becuase that's what they really are.  They never changed the name "rap sheet" though.  I don't think they're creative enough to figure out a euphemism for that.

In a dream of what reality should have been...that's NORMAL feelings...but then having to actually smoosh and hug them and tell them I love them...shit i hardly say to the people for whom I feel that- and then smooshing with them for over two years? Now that is the CEDU way?
 Did you have a lot of hugs and tears at benchmark?
-blownaway

Hugs and tears and pile-ups.  The first Friendship Workshop (propheets) i went through was named the "pilky pilers" after this pileup.  It had the same exercises as propheets, most of the same music even.  Some songs i just really can't listen to anymore...  Good think i never liked most of the shit...  "tell it all brother" creeps me out so so much... (disclosure circle song)
Friendship workshop was the biggest mind-fuck of the whole bmark experience.  I remember very little of the details, and i don't think it was because of the sleep deprivation.  The things i remember...  I'd rather not really.

[exhausted]

?and by the time this rap was over, I had NO respect or desire left for this girl. Some part of me hated her for having to watch her be treated like that. There was ?something? she could do to make it stop. She had said as much, and even though I didn?t know what that ?something? was, I hated her for making me witness that series of ?indictments?.

This particular part stood out for me, i haven't been in a program btw, but I'm wondering why you hated her for the way she was being abused.....did you not hate her abusers for bringing her to that point where she'd say anything? This is not an attack on you as I can't possibly understand how it was for either of you at that moment, it is out of interest I am asking

If this is how therapy 'works' I hate to think what they did when they were into abuse - how did they think that turning you all against each other was going to help any of you 'heal'? You would have thought getting kids to help each other through their struggles would be far more productive as each one is in the same boat and feeling the same way about being sent away.

[try another castle]

exhausted: you basically answered your own question. They turned us against each other. Kids enforced the rules with other kids. They could be just as cruel in raps as the faculty, even if they were your supposed friend. We judged others because of their weaknesses, and disclosures, and past. (or fictitious past.) and especially, if they didn't "get with the program." Granted, in any social gang, especially with teens, there is a pecking order, and there will always be omega dogs, and there were pecking orders in the peer groups for certain, but the program exploits this. Peer group raps were some of the worst for me, since I was the omega. I was terrified of them. Raps and the program exploit and nurture peer cruelty.

Ironically, the Brothers Keeper (Benchmark's Friendship propheet) exploits this the worst. We were literally turned on each other. Shoving exercises, the dreaded exclusion circle, humiliating "lugs" where we have to perform an embarrassing act that mocks our personal flaws, and do it repeatedly, while the rest of our peer group laughs at us. It was about anything BUT friendship.

I'm still amazed when I hear survivors say "Yeah, that place was fucked up, but I made some of the best friends of my life there." Are you fucking kidding me? What planet are you from? I would HOPE that your adult relationships are FAR more functional and fulfilling than the ones you had there.

[psy]

exhausted: you basically answered your own question. They turned us against each other. Kids enforced the rules with other kids. They could be just as cruel in raps as the faculty, even if they were your supposed friend.

they used to tell us at benchmark: "The harder the truth to tell, the truer the friend that tells it".  That was a bastardization of shakespeare that Benchmark basically meant to mean: "The more you love your friend, fuck him over with a verbal baseball bat and/or rat on him.  it means you love him/her, and you can all cry about it later."

We judged others because of their weaknesses, and disclosures, and past. (or fictitious past.) and especially, if they didn't "get with the program." Granted, in any social gang, especially with teens, there is a pecking order, and there will always be omega dogs, and there were pecking orders in the peer groups for certain, but the program exploits this. Peer group raps were some of the worst for me, since I was the omega.  I was terrified of them. Raps and the program exploit and nurture peer cruelty.

Ironically, the Brothers Keeper (Benchmark's Friendship propheet) exploits this the worst. We were literally turned on each other. Shoving exercises, the dreaded exclusion circle, humiliating "lugs" where we have to perform an embarrassing act that mocks our personal flaws, I was made to and do it repeatedly, while the rest of our peer group laughs at us. It was about anything BUT friendship.

I'm still amazed when I hear survivors say "Yeah, that place was fucked up, but I made some of the best friends of my life there." Are you fucking kidding me? What planet are you from? I would HOPE that your adult relationships are FAR more functional and fulfilling than the ones you had there.

Dude.  Whether we were faking it or not, in order to make it in program you had to learn to attack just as well as defend.  We all had to do it at some point.  We were all secret police...  "securitate"...  Compassion didn't get you far in program, and you didn't feel like being very compassionate anyway towards people who were constantly attacking you.  At the time, I didn't feel very bad about annihilating people in group.  I tried to defend people at first, but after a while they convinced you you were hurting them by doing that.  They made you believe that the harsher you were, the more you were helping them to see the truth.  It's a sick belief.

But as far as i'm concerned, everybody was guilty... Except maybe one:  There was one person who i know of who never participated in it, and he was eventually fucked over for it, ironically, for defending me in the end.  His testimonial is on my website.  He lost his level and was isolated, like me.

I was so shocked to see him there.  I asked why...  Then he told me why.  I was disappointed in a way that he had ruined his chances at being a "success story" but for his actions, for his unrelenting concience, i was proud.  They probably would never have let him be a sucess story anyway...  he didn't have many problems to begin with, nothing that they could claim they "fixed".

Friendships there?  At Benchmark, awols or isolated kids, who were enemies in program, often found out that they got along fine outside the poisonous atmosphere of program's centre.  The place turned us all into monsters while we were there.  We were desperate.... We had to survive. We had to fuck others over to do it... and we were convinced all the while we were helping them....  I don't blame anybody for what they did in program.

[Antigen]

?and by the time this rap was over, I had NO respect or desire left for this girl. Some part of me hated her for having to watch her be treated like that. There was ?something? she could do to make it stop. She had said as much, and even though I didn?t know what that ?something? was, I hated her for making me witness that series of ?indictments?.

This particular part stood out for me, i haven't been in a program btw, but I'm wondering why you hated her for the way she was being abused.....did you not hate her abusers for bringing her to that point where she'd say anything? This is not an attack on you as I can't possibly understand how it was for either of you at that moment, it is out of interest I am asking

If this is how therapy 'works' I hate to think what they did when they were into abuse - how did they think that turning you all against each other was going to help any of you 'heal'? You would have thought getting kids to help each other through their struggles would be far more productive as each one is in the same boat and feeling the same way about being sent away.

Well, I can't speak for Blown, but I think I understand. And this is another example of just where the line lay between pro and anti program people. It's not really about healing. That's another word that's redefined in the closed lexicon. In program parlance, healing doesn't mean feeling better, being more independent and functional and overall better. Healing means coming to view yourself, the world and your place in it in the same way they do. If the program world view holds that a particular person is a piece of shit, then he/she and everyone present has to come along to that point of view in order to attain salvation.

It's a cult. Bear that in mind as you study the issue and it'll all make a lot more sense.

[blownawaytheidahoway]

The rest of the staff and Tessa acted incredibly perturbed with all of us. We were grilled on our attempts to disclose our secrets, and told they were exaggerated and to ?get real?. The staff who was in our group was grilled about his out of wedlock flings. I gulped a stench of acrid sulpher from the desire to hurt as I was again told not to be intellectual; the reason I was a LIAR was because I thought I was so honest. Tessa assured the group that I probably felt worse than everyone there. That was the reason I was being less emotional, she explained. I had a choice now. I could defend myself again and express my satisfaction with my life on the whole before attending RMA and this goddamn rap, or I could admit that I was a liar and that I had made up stuff to cover up WORSE things I had done. I sat there taking the indictments. Evidently, by not being as emotional as everyone else and I was being resistant. It was marvelous how they twisted words. Though the indictments stung, I wasn?t going to go into hysterics. I hadn?t really ever been grilled to the point of explosion yet. I threw an uncomfortable glance to the girl in my peer group with the label SELL OUT, and groaned loudly with dissatisfaction into the middle of the horseshoe.
It was hard to try to pretend to be upset when I really wasn?t. I mean I was upset because of the situation, not because of the things that I was supposed to be upset about. But I did give it my all in the Truth Propheet rap that night. I got nowhere with it, I think. As much as I yelled and ranted, I was still detached. My disclosures, including the things that hadn?t even happened, and the things I hadn?t ever thought about until this night were put in my face. The music dizzied me and a sickening feeling pervaded in my chest and stomach. I was stupendously embarrassed, confused, and tired by the end of the rap. I was angry at being called a liar endlessly and mad at myself for not breaking down the way half of the kids had done, thus commuting the amount of time they were yelled at by the group. I started blaming myself for the way I was feeling. I was upset at all the things the peer group said to me in the rap. How they didn?t like me, and agreed with WHATEVER Tessa or another counselor had put out there, not matter how needsy. So, there we were: all hungry, all upset, even the faculty in my peer group and the older students too. The sun was coming up when rap finally ended and Tessa again reminded us ;that what we put into it would be what we got out of it?. She read about joy and sorrow again and promised us that we were only feeling joy missing at that moment and that the misery we were all feeling was actually perfect. ?You are right where I want you to be.?

[Antigen]