Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Benchmark Young Adult School / Benchmark Transitions

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psy:

--- Quote from: ""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.
--- End quote ---

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."


--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---


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:

--- Quote from: ""exhausted"" ---
--- Quote from: ""blownawaytheidahoway"" ---

?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?.

--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---


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:

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