programmies vs. survivors

[Anonymous]

Hola Blown. Glad to see you used my post (it's Helen)... Hope all is well, and thank you for addressing Mad's response.  I haven't met a therapist yet (outside the program) who thinks this stuff is half-Kosher.

[try another castle]

have a trauma history that predates being at RMA and I can?t compare those experiences with what I experienced at the school. One set of experiences was life and soul threatening to me; the other set didn?t come close.

and

1) The program did jive with some existing internal representation that I had had; 2) I went to RMA with a trauma history. While some experiences at RMA exacerbated my history, the program certainly didn?t rise to the level of being a trauma experience in and of itself. 3) I had way more people at RMA who treated me lovingly than who were cruel to me.

This says it all. You go with what  you know.

What I said in my original post:

One man's repression is another one's emancipation. It's still abuse, for all of us. It's just that some people identify with abuse more than others.

Come on mad, I mean, seriously. "It was abusive, but it wasn't like what I had experienced before."

ABUSE IS ABUSE. Jesus fucking christ, do I have to get this tattooed on my fucking head? How many fucking times do I have to say this shit? :flame:

I don't know what kind of shit you went through before, and it's none of my business, but to go from whatever abusive situation you were in to an environment that love-bombs the fuck out of you with forced intimacy and cornholes your brain so fucking much that you love your abusers. Jeez, the affection and forced closeness and constant venting of emotions must have been a welcome relief. (You might have even thought you wanted it.) It was such a different color of mindfuckery and abuse than what you were used to, it's no wonder you still don't see it for what it was.

This is why a lot of people get into cults. They may be abused, lonely, on the streets. The cult offers love, inclusion, an illusion of acceptance. People may be craving a parental figure, someone to guide them. The leader and members can provide that, at a price.

Do you not see that your history of abuse made you the perfect target for programming, mad?

(This isn't to say that everyone who has a history of prior abuse defends the program.)

All I know is, whatever baggage you gotta deal with, godspeed and good luck, and I sincerely mean that,  but you'd better not be fucking referring people to programs in the position of authority you are in. Face it, as a therapist, you are potentially dangerous, thinking the way you do. This is why I'm leaning into you like this. Normally, I'm pretty easy going with whatever people take out of the program, unless they are just so stupid, judgmental and obnoxious in the forums it's ridiculous. But you have the potential to do some damage, ESPECIALLY because of your skewed understanding of what is abuse and what is not. Can someone say conflict of interest??

You are smart
You are a licensed therapist
You justify the program

Dangerous combination. Period.

[Anonymous]

Castle: Maybe I am missing something, but I didn't read where Mad justified the program.

I do think that both of you are ultimately saying the same thing. Mad agrees that the CEDU programs were abusinve, but I think the way he has dealt with that abuse or his interpretation is just different from yours. I think he is coming from a different place, trying to engage in the discussion you started and try to answer some of the questions you presented.

I have friends from those days that won't even discuss RMA. They will listen to any "news" I may have heard, such as the death of a peer or staff member, but they don't dare engage in conversation about it. I have other friends that can not mention their time in Idaho without exposing a deep hidden rage.... others will talk about some good memories and not mention anything else, while some friends are willing to have deep discussions about what was good and what wasn't.

Who's right? What is the best way to deal with that time in our lives? Who is the programmie? The survivor?

[blownawaytheidahoway]

Hola Blown. Glad to see you used my post (it's Helen)... Hope all is well, and thank you for addressing Mad's response.  I haven't met a therapist yet (outside the program) who thinks this stuff is half-Kosher.

Helen ahandbasket, Helen of Troy, or Helen Keller?
I recognize brilliance when I read it. In touch. Very.

[Antigen]

wow, you're good. that hit the nail right on the head. I'm really only here because I'm looking for some old friends I haven't heard from in over 10 years. I have some fucked up memories and runaway stories I could share, but I'm sure it is nothing compared to the people who spent years there. Though I do understand the whole brainwashing thing because i was beginning to get brainwashed while there, my family noticed this and swiftly yanked me out of that shithole.

No, Doc, please do tell! I can only tell you about my own perspective, having been inducted into the cult at the ripe old age of about 6 or 7. What did this all look like to someone unfamiliar w/ this brand of insanity?

It takes a thousand voices to tell just one story.

[try another castle]

Castle: Maybe I am missing something, but I didn't read where Mad justified the program.

I do think that both of you are ultimately saying the same thing. Mad agrees that the CEDU programs were abusinve, but I think the way he has dealt with that abuse or his interpretation is just different from yours. I think he is coming from a different place, trying to engage in the discussion you started and try to answer some of the questions you presented.

I have friends from those days that won't even discuss RMA. They will listen to any "news" I may have heard, such as the death of a peer or staff member, but they don't dare engage in conversation about it. I have other friends that can not mention their time in Idaho without exposing a deep hidden rage.... others will talk about some good memories and not mention anything else, while some friends are willing to have deep discussions about what was good and what wasn't.

Who's right? What is the best way to deal with that time in our lives? Who is the programmie? The survivor?

Maybe I used the wrong choice of words, re: embrace the program. He certainly doesn't think the program was hunky dory, but he refuses to look at it as a systemic issue. It was just a few bad apples, (bad staff) as opposed to the underlying ideology. I'll post this again:

In thinking about your question, I think that there are probably three factors that influence how I understand my RMA experience and why I don?t see myself as a survivor where it is concerned. 1) The program did jive with some existing internal representation that I had had; 2) I went to RMA with a trauma history. While some experiences at RMA exacerbated my history, the program certainly didn?t rise to the level of being a trauma experience in and of itself. 3) I had way more people at RMA who treated me lovingly than who were cruel to me.

1. He feels an identification with the program
2. He has a prior history of abuse, which RMA exacerbated, yet he justifies it as being a question of degrees, so it's ok.
3. He identifies with his abusers and doesn't acknowledge the conditions under which the affection was given. Let alone the boundary issues.

Some of the staff I was the closest with were some of the most brutal in the school. Stacy and Sharon. I believe they loved me. I'm sure they believed they loved me. Stacy presented at my graduation. Yet they were anything but nurturing. What "nurturing" I got, was conditional.

Who knows, maybe mad ran into some good folks, but I question it.

And I agree with you, that it's best, for the most part, to at least kick back about each others' experience. (Doesn't mean I won't ask questions, though, if they say something that interests me.) The reason I'm getting on mad's case is because he is a therapist.

But at this point, I should probably just let it go.

[Anonymous]

I get it, Castle.

I don't think you can "let it go". Personally, I think this is one of the most interesting discussions on the board. A battle I have often thought about over the last 20 years - but have had difficulty articulating as well as you have on here.

Don't stop asking questions!

[Deprogrammed]

Try another Castle:
It could be as simple as some people are more "gullible" than others. We know this to be true  by this simple test: Ever try playing a practical joke on two different friends , and part of that practical joke is to try to trick them into believing something? While one friend is quick to believe you, meanwhile the other friend is giving you the eye like your full of shit. Yet the first friend goes looking for the item that was there that ye tried to trick him/her about.
In saying that.what defines the friend that believes you quickly is "who they are" or their "identity", of course their are other factors involved such as: how long they have known ye as a friend, what the state of your current relationship is etc.....

In cases of abuse: Somtimes the abused choose to "identify" with the abusers for a few different reason: safety, meaning in hopes they will stopped being abused, fear, abusive themselves

this is a great discussion...thanks for bringing this discussion to see the light of day from your dark corner TAC, I appreciate it very much, as there are lots of points to take into consideration on this matter.

In my humble opinion I do not feel that ye should drink this thought away, b/c it is obviously an important part of your deprogramming , otherwise it would not be burning inside of you.

I have found in my personal deprogramming it has been extrememly
important to pay attention to my body, because my body seems to tell me what to do. So, when questions burned inside me and when they still do, I seek the answers for them, so that I may answer them and then put them to rest, but not forget them.

warm regards,
_DP 8-)

[try another castle]

Try another Castle:
It could be as simple as some people are more "gullible" than others. We know this to be true  by this simple test: Ever try playing a practical joke on two different friends , and part of that practical joke is to try to trick them into believing something? While one friend is quick to believe you, meanwhile the other friend is giving you the eye like your full of shit. Yet the first friend goes looking for the item that was there that ye tried to trick him/her about.
In saying that.what defines the friend that believes you quickly is "who they are" or their "identity", of course their are other factors involved such as: how long they have known ye as a friend, what the state of your current relationship is etc.....

In cases of abuse: Somtimes the abused choose to "identify" with the abusers for a few different reason: safety, meaning in hopes they will stopped being abused, fear, abusive themselves

this is a great discussion...thanks for bringing this discussion to see the light of day from your dark corner TAC, I appreciate it very much, as there are lots of points to take into consideration on this matter.

In my humble opinion I do not feel that ye should drink this thought away, b/c it is obviously an important part of your deprogramming , otherwise it would not be burning inside of you.

I have found in my personal deprogramming it has been extrememly
important to pay attention to my body, because my body seems to tell me what to do. So, when questions burned inside me and when they still do, I seek the answers for them, so that I may answer them and then put them to rest, but not forget them.

warm regards,
_DP 8-)

Interesting thoughts DP. I'm not sure if it's gullibility, though. I was certainly gullible enough to believe in the program. Wholeheartedly. And I have a tendency to be highly suggestible. Yet I found my way out of it, although my first girlfriend was the first to verbalize the issue in such a way that I could make some sense out of the conflict I had been feeling for about two years. Yet there are others who, for whatever reason, will not grok the criticism of the program, no matter how many ways they are spoken to about it.

There are people who come around. I mean, I came around, and it took another person to point out how what I had went  through was fucked up, even though she had never gone through it herself. I could have been defensive and just not listened to her, but I didn't, because there was so much conflict within me already about it. Right after I got out, I mentioned something about agreements to the first woman I slept with, and she said "That kinda sounds full of shit. That's a total euphemism for rules. They were still rules." and my response was "Well, you weren't there, you don't understand." There was that defensiveness. Yet, two years later, I'm discussing similar things with my girlfriend, and she says something along the same lines about the hypocrisy of the program, and THAT TIME, it resonated with me, and I thought "Wow, that makes sense." I am fully confident that if she had said that right when I got out, I would have had the defensive reaction I had to the prior conversation about agreements.

So... over a period of a few years, something happened to me. I may have still on the surface felt that the place was good, but my identity was in such conflict with the teachings of the program that there were lots of cracks in the armor. It got to the point where I started to think about things differently. That's when the conscious deprogramming began.

I wonder if there is that inner conflict for programmies? Even if it's denied and repressed? Is there an X factor, or a combination of X factors? Is the identify compromised, or has it assimilated the program and changed as a result?

I'm not an essentialist. I don't believe that identity is unchanging and non negotiable. Sure, there are things that are hard-wired, you are not born a blank slate. (Anyone who has had a kid can attest to that.) You are definitely NOT a chrome ball. Identity evolves. Maybe I'm stating the obvious. I'm wondering a.) was there something implicit in a programmie's identity going into the experience that made them predisposed to embracing it for decades? b.) Did the act of embracing the program cause an actual change in identity, as opposed to a repression of it? c.) If b. is yes, does a. have to be yes, too?

Of course, this addresses the question of identity as a whole. Is one person at one time the same person at another?

All I know is, when I read John Locke in college, he confused the hell out of me. I just read some passages again a few minutes ago and I'm still nonplussed. So maybe I don't really know what I'm talking about, since I kind of have a half-baked understanding about what identity is anyway. I know one thing, it is not what CEDU taught us. That whole "who you are as a person" summit contract. As if identity could be defined in two words with your signature at the bottom.

"Who are you?"
"Jerri Blank"
"No... whooooooo aaaaaaaarrreee yoooouuuu?"
"Jeeeeeeeeerrrrrriiiii Bbbbbllllaaaaaannnk!"

I guess what it boils down to for me is, if there IS a reason, is it a trait, (such as being gullible) a combination of traits, or something more deeply embedded in a person's personae?

I would hope a person wouldn't let go. How can people turn their back on something like CEDU and pretend it never happened?

I meant that I should "let it go" regarding badgering mad. (Jury's still out on that.) I would like to hear what he has to say about all that has been mentioned since his last post, though.

[Deprogrammed]

Hey castle, Ginger found this somehwere, I think it may be related to what we have been discussing here. We should ask her where she found this article and possibly contact the researchers.
Lemme know what ye think.
-DP  8-)




Quote: Cassandra

Lab Experiment

Dr. Kassin and his student, Catherine L. Kiechel, designed a lab experiment demonstrating how innocent people can be led to a false confession, to the point that some may even become convinced they are guilty. (1,3) In the study, college students were asked to type letters on a keyboard as a researcher pronounced them. Some researchers read out the letters quickly (67 per minute), others slowly (47 per minute). The subjects were warned to not touch the ALT key, because a bug in the testing program would cause the computer to crash and lose all the data. One minute into the test, the computer was manually caused to crash. In half the tests, the researchers said they had actually seen the subject depressing the ALT key. At first, the subjects correctly denied hitting the key. The researcher then hand-wrote a confession and asked the subjects to sign it. The penalty would be an angry telephone call to the subject by Dr. Kassin. One hundred per cent of the subjects who had typed the letters quickly, and who were told by the researcher that they had been observed hitting the ALT key, signed the confession; 65% of the subjects believed they were guilty; 35% even confabulated non-existent details to fit their beliefs. Overall, 69% signed the note and 28% believed they were actually guilty.

[try another castle]

I'd be interested to know if the people who signed the confessions still believed they pressed the ALT key years later, even if they knew or found out about the nature of the project.

For the most part, most of us at CEDU believed we pressed the ALT key. What makes some of us still believe it decades later?

Forced confession was only one part of the program, though. There is so much other lovely muckety-muck to account for as well.

[Anonymous]

Interesting.

I believed that I "pressed the ALT key" for years! And then my first child became a teenager. Of course, by the time she was 11 and 12, I started to worry that she was going to be a "fuck up", a "rebel", etc. I read books. I talked to her. I learned what time of day was best to talk to her about what was going on ( at night, just before bed... if I hang out on HER bed while she is getting ready, she tells me all sorts of stuff). She is now 14, almost the age I was when I was sent to Idaho.

I have learned that, for the most part, I was a normal kid, trying to grow up under some pretty crappy circumstances. I tried things. I ran away. I did some horrible things as a kid -- BUT, not until after I was told over and over that I had hit that ALT key. By the time I got to Idaho, I had been convinced by parents, dentention center counselors, etc, that those in Idaho just exaggerated what I had done --- not only had I hit that ALT key, but I created the damn virus! Does that make sense?

[Anonymous]

Interesting.

I believed that I "pressed the ALT key" for years! And then my first child became a teenager. Of course, by the time she was 11 and 12, I started to worry that she was going to be a "fuck up", a "rebel", etc. I read books. I talked to her. I learned what time of day was best to talk to her about what was going on ( at night, just before bed... if I hang out on HER bed while she is getting ready, she tells me all sorts of stuff). She is now 14, almost the age I was when I was sent to Idaho.

I have learned that, for the most part, I was a normal kid, trying to grow up under some pretty crappy circumstances. I tried things. I ran away. I did some horrible things as a kid -- BUT, not until after I was told over and over that I had hit that ALT key. By the time I got to Idaho, I had been convinced by parents, dentention center counselors, etc, that those in Idaho just exaggerated what I had done --- not only had I hit that ALT key, but I created the damn virus! Does that make sense?

[Deprogrammed]

Forced confession was only one part of the program, though. There is so much other lovely muckety-muck to account for as well.

Not so much about Forced confession, as the much more muckety muck had to do with a life altering aspect, as well. What I mean by life altering is that they force ye to not only confess even if ye were innocent, they forced ye to also confess to being a defective(with their methods) , even if ye were not one, and most of us were truly not, innocent children, Mischevious, some of us? Yes, of course; aren't all children at one time or another?

[Deprogrammed]

Forced confession was only one part of the program, though. There is so much other lovely muckety-muck to account for as well.

Not so much about Forced confession, as the much more muckety muck had to do with a life altering aspect, as well. What I mean by life altering is that they force ye to not only confess even if ye were innocent, they forced ye to also confess to being a defective(with their methods) , even if ye were not one, and most of us were truly not, innocent children, Mischevious, some of us? Yes, of course; aren't all children at one time or another?