Delving into the mind of a brainwashed program parent.

[Anonymous]

The program woke us up

As I look at my son?s picture I see his I AM statement: “I am a happy, loving, beautiful, and honest young man.” And I can feel its truth.

I used to try and measure his time in the Program: 1 year, 4 months, 2 weeks and a day. His way was much easier. He said, “Dad, I was in the Program 500 days.” Duh.

He graduated high school but not the Program. He chose to take his exit plan at 18 and then changed his mind and decided to try a home contract - an option we discussed with the Facilitator at PC18.

He began his Program in Tranquility Bay mostly because it was our only viable option because we knew it would be a long-term commitment; no 30-day intake or wilderness program was going to reach him. When we?d reached “the straw that broke the camel?s back” we made all the arrangements within 36 hours. My brother drove up from North Carolina and we greeted David at 7:30 am with, “Hop in the car, we?re going to take a trip.”

We drove from Richmond to Miami. The trip was hard. Especially when we stopped for lunch and he asked if he could get a tape by the “Sex Pistols” assuring me it was almost a classic and not as bad as I was thinking. The thought running through my head was, “You just have no idea of what is about to happen.” Of course I had no idea of the journey that my wife and I would be taking either!

The next morning we transferred him into the hands of the escorts for the last stage of his journey to Jamaica. It took a toll on me. I bawled and I howled and I shook for an hour as my brother drove. I have NEVER felt lower. We were trusting strangers to do what we couldn?t do ourselves . . . get him to just stop, hold still, and realize life is full of exciting, working possibilities.

The Program is not a quick-fix. After Discovery he wrote a confession letter and I said, “Right. He?s not telling us anything we didn?t know and I don?t buy it.” Then we attended Discovery and I quit smoking; unfortunately, I must do it again.

 He attended Focus and wrote us another confession letter and it took my breath away. We didn?t have a clue as to the amount and variety of drugs he took. I am agog that he had a mind left, let alone the incredible one he started with. I have met only a few people in my life who come close to being as smart and as perceptive as our son.

We attended Focus and I learned to dance.

He was on the cusp of reaching Level 4 when another student confessed that David had shared some of his meds with him a month after David entered the Program. David admitted it, but he had never previously owned up to it so he got to start over at Level I, as he should have. Nevertheless, it was an incredibly bitter pill and he found himself unable to swallow it for months.

We graduated Visions in Seattle and my wife and I almost grasped the brass ring, but doing 100% all of the time hasn?t been quite possible for us on a sustained basis.

At 18, my son left the Program still on Level 1; there had been two more run attempts. One of them was going to be at the airport on the way to PC 18 but the escort service kept an eye on him until the plane taxied.

David worked at his home contract. I suspect David didn?t feel a large enough change in the family dynamic and he left. He traveled about the country but he always returned home. He brought back a girl from California, whom he found amazing. And for him this was extreme praise. He had a part-time job at a synagogue which he really enjoyed. He sensed a deepening change in us and seemed pleased to share fairly regular dinners with us. On his own initiative he had just completed, and submitted, an application for the local university; he wanted to become a librarian, possibly at the Library of Virginia. (Yes. It does take a degree.) He was growing, changing, and looking forward. He was happy.

One night in January he went out drinking with his girlfriend. They had a spat. When they returned to an acquaintance?s apartment, he picked up a gun off a table. He put it to his head, and he said, “I could just shoot myself.” And he did. It had been just three months since his 20th birthday.

In the hospital, the bandage that wrapped his head was blood-soaked. The 38 caliber bullet did not exit. Instead it had ricocheted around in his head destroying his brain. His brain had been such a magnificent creation. He was a thinker who could marshal data and formulate arguments that would have you looking at any question in a new light and seeing new connections, and more likely than not agreeing with him.

Five hours later, David died in the trauma center at the Medical College of Virginia without ever regaining consciousness. He breathed his last breath while I watched.

We buried him Saturday, the first of February. My wife and I both have gaping voids in our hearts. It will hurt until the day we die.

We also know we gave him the gift of four more years of life by choosing to place him in the Program, for he had been in a self-destructive death spiral when we enrolled him. We also know we have been strong for him, not 100%, but damn close. So the gift the Program has given us, by our running the parallel program for parents, is that we have little guilt and aren?t holding pity parties. Grieving - yes. Wracked with self-doubts and guilt - no. I know my wife and I could not have handled this if we had not been working the Program as hard as we have.

My two brothers and I are spread out geographically and chronologically. David?s funeral began the process of our renewing connections. I am still working on last year?s goal of becoming a private pilot. I was discerned onto the Parish Pastoral Council in November. (A Vision?s goal finally realized.) I am making a new goal of reaching out to over 30 wild and woolly young adults whom David touched and who came to his (Catholic) Resurrection Mass.

We sent our son into the Program to wake him up. The Program woke us up!

Our purpose in sharing our story is not just to wake up the teens, although they must learn that every decision is a choice, and every choice yields a result. No. Primarily we?re writing this for the parents of the teens who have NOT gotten it yet. And we met some at every seminar we attended. WAKE UP! Your key to having a whole and healthy family is to work your own program. Stop fighting the Program and the Facilitators. Embrace them! They want the same thing you do! You can?t dictate change for your child, but you can make changes for yourself. Open yourselves to the process so that when the results start coming in, you can live with the outcome . . . whether it is an outstanding reality you helped create or, God forbid, a tragedy such as ours.

by Richard Poprik
In loving memory of his son, David
Tranquility Bay/Carolina Springs Academy
October 2000
 
Source






That is a seriously brainwashed parent.

[psy]

Open yourselves to the process so that when the results start coming in, you can live with the outcome . . . whether it is an outstanding reality you helped create or, God forbid, a tragedy such as ours.

You want to hug and strangle this parent at the same time.  They confuse savior with murderer.

More blood on the hands of WWASP.

[69]

Program parents never get it.

[try another castle]

You want to hug and strangle this parent at the same time.

You read my mind. It almost reads like a sad parody.

As niles said "I gotta learn to detach." I cried for a full fucking ten minutes. I had to stop reading until I collected myself. Then, as I pulled my shit together and continued on to finish the post, I said "Wait, am I being fucked with, here?"

[exhausted]

We also know we gave him the gift of four more years of life by choosing to place him in the Program, for he had been in a self-destructive death spiral when we enrolled him.

I feel desperately sad for any parent who loses a child, it has to be the worst thing to happen ever.....

Am I missing something here? This young man had been in a self destructive death spiral when they enrolled him ... he was in one when he came out, he killed himself  :question:

I also question the fact they gave him four more years, of Tranquility Bay? I don't understand, why are they happy about that, 4 years of that place as opposed to 4 years at home when the outcome was going to be the same anyway??

What am I missing? Someone explain to me

[Nihilanthic]

Somehow this didn't effect me emotionally in the least.

I just wonder why they're saying "WORK WITH THE PROGRAM ZOMG" with a story of how it failed so miserably, and I wonder why some people might actually FALL FOR IT.

But, alas, their kid is dead yet they still say

WAKE UP! Your key to having a whole and healthy family is to work your own program. Stop fighting the Program and the Facilitators. Embrace them! They want the same thing you do! You can?t dictate change for your child, but you can make changes for yourself. Open yourselves to the process so that when the results start coming in, you can live with the outcome . . . whether it is an outstanding reality you helped create or, God forbid, a tragedy such as ours.

which besmirks me as just a big fat load of verbal bullshit. "You can't change the kid, but send them in the program anyway and do what they say becuase we say so without proof for it in a semi-religious attempt to make you believe in some strangers".

Or something.

Anyway, such a big fat load of bullshit is... well, just that. I'll show this to someone whose completely out of the loop with programs and see what they have to say. Personally I think its so ridiculous its unfathomable, but thats me.

[psy]

I cried

Well... At least I wasn't the only one.

@ Exhausted:  What are you missing?

The parents still believe that the program was their kid's best hope.  They see the kid's death as inevitable without program.  He might have been sent for smoking pot... Maybe he was gay.  I would think if it was a serious drug problem, they would have been more specific.  It doesn't matter.  Program doesn't care, and given enough time, they brainwash the parents (with the seminars and incessant fear-inducing propaganda), so thoroughly, that they can kill the kid, and the parents will thank them.

4 Years in TB... fucking concentration camp.

[Nihilanthic]

I realloy think printing that out and showing it to someone and insisting they read it thuroughly before asking questions would be a great way to show how fucked up and brainwashey programs are.

Also, why the hell didnt this effect me? I guess I finally let go.

[69]

crazy

[psy]

The program woke us up

As I look at my son?s picture I see his I AM statement: “I am a happy, loving, beautiful, and honest young man.” And I can feel its truth.

This is part of the first seminar called Discovery. At the end after the tearing down process is done there is half a day of celebration in a way. Part of that is to write a self describing statement very similar to the one above on a poster. You run in front of the entire crowd, you exclaim with all your emotion your statement.

Another part of this celebration process or whatever you want to call it is that you are put in a small group of half kids from the seminar. Half parents and staff and upper level staffer kids surround you as you lay on the floor. The lights go dim and a song starts playing. It might have been desperado, or one of the other cliche WWASPS seminar songs. There is a list here somewhere. I forget mine exactly. Until I hear the songs, I recognize them immediately then. Each kid takes a turn being the one laying down. The song changes for each kid until all the kids have done it.

Anyways, back to the process. They comfort you by touching you all over and telling you things in your ear, different people come by and say wonderful and sweet things about you. I found the experience EXTREMELY creepy, even though it was comforting than the previous two days which was humiliation basically. But then they lift you up off the ground and "float" you around the room with your eyes closed to the song. Then you write the name of the song on the back of your poster with your statement. So the song and statement go together and represent a very emotional climax and very positive emotions and so people keep these posters for long time and cherish it.

It's hard to explain exactly, but this person's choice of words tells more of a story than the he intended.  

I used to try and measure his time in the Program: 1 year, 4 months, 2 weeks and a day. His way was much easier. He said, “Dad, I was in the Program 500 days.” Duh.

I don't think he was in for 4 years like some of you are saying. Here he says he was in for 1 year 4 months.

He graduated high school but not the Program. He chose to take his exit plan at 18 and then changed his mind and decided to try a home contract - an option we discussed with the Facilitator at PC18.

It's not like they give you two choices, exit plan and home contract. More than likely the kid called their bluff and they weren't willing to fully kick him out on the streets yet? I know some parents can't actually go through with the exit plan and end up taking their kid home, after all, it's a brutally fucked up process. Stay in an abusive facility, or be a bum? After I took my exit plan it took 3 and a half weeks to negotiate a contract with my dad for a home contract. This all sounds too familiar...

He began his Program in Tranquility Bay mostly because it was our only viable option because we knew it would be a long-term commitment; no 30-day intake or wilderness program was going to reach him.

This is the most retarded thing I've ever heard. Any parent who thinks Tranquility Bay offers anything other than torture, confinement, humiliation and substandard living conditions are fooling themselves. Yes there is "real" help available, this dad for some reason went the concentration camp route.

When we?d reached “the straw that broke the camel?s back” we made all the arrangements within 36 hours. My brother drove up from North Carolina and we greeted David at 7:30 am with, “Hop in the car, we?re going to take a trip.”

Deception, how familiar. I'm sure all program kids appreciate the irony of being lied to and then told one of the reasons they are locked up is for lying too much.

We drove from Richmond to Miami. The trip was hard. Especially when we stopped for lunch and he asked if he could get a tape by the “Sex Pistols” assuring me it was almost a classic and not as bad as I was thinking. The thought running through my head was, “You just have no idea of what is about to happen.” Of course I had no idea of the journey that my wife and I would be taking either!

The WWASPS program is designed to make parents happy, and kids miserable, that really is all there is too it. The parents seminar is a lighter version, they can walk out at any time, and it's their choice. Obviously some parents like these one's indulge them and become fanatical. I met them face to face because they are the one's who come to the facilities to help staff them. They are the ones who aspire to become seminar facilitators themselves. It very much is a cult.

The next morning we transferred him into the hands of the escorts for the last stage of his journey to Jamaica. It took a toll on me. I bawled and I howled and I shook for an hour as my brother drove. I have NEVER felt lower. We were trusting strangers to do what we couldn't do ourselves . . . get him to just stop, hold still, and realize life is full of exciting, working possibilities.

Exciting working possibilities. Working and non-working are program terms. Working means behavior that is in line with program ideology. Non working is behavior that is out of line with program ideology. Having "B" friends (yes the program gives you a list with which to judge, categorize and define your friendships), is non working behavior. Smoking pot is non working behavior. Helping tear down other kids with no sense of boundaries, that is working behavior.

The Program is not a quick-fix. After Discovery he wrote a confession letter and I said, “Right. He?s not telling us anything we didn?t know and I don?t buy it.”

This dad really is crazy. He wasn't satisfied with his kids confession letter? There isn't much to say about this other than what he is basically saying is, you have to keep a kid locked up for a long time to make them so uncomfortable physically, emotionally and psychologically that they *crack* break, like a dried out twig under the boot of an overweight hiker on his first camping trip in fifteen years.

Then we attended Discovery and I quit smoking; unfortunately, I must do it again.

A lot of letters coming back to other kids and myself were of our parents saying how much they love the seminars; and don't understand why we aren't progressing in the seminars as fast as they are? Or why we don't embrace the program ideology like they have, because it's changed their life.

Imagine being lied to and being told you are going to a boarding school. When you arrive you are surprised to find out it's a brainwashing gulag. Now imagine your one and only lifeline to the real world, starts sending you letters that sound a lot like this one. Letters that sound like someone other than your parent wrote it. Sounds as if someone from the program actually wrote it. That's when you realize, you are shit out of luck, for real.


 

He attended Focus and wrote us another confession letter and it took my breath away. We didn?t have a clue as to the amount and variety of drugs he took.

I know a lot of kids just make shit up in focus. As the seminars progress, they get more difficult. You have to prove yourself more and more and more, until there gets a point where it's almost impossible to fake it through. It's kind of like joining a gang. They will make you shoot someone, or kill someone, to prove that you are not an LEO.. they assume you would be unwilling to hurt an innocent if you are undercover. Well it's a lot like that in the program. Only the ammunition is not bullets, it's information, emotions, friendships, and the complete dissolution of privacy andn emotional and physical boundaries.

So this father was pleased with his confession letter. What's the point? Did he really need to know all that? Or was the point all long just humiliation? I would go with the latter reason. I know because I've experienced it. To a kid it feels like you are being held hostage. Your only contact with the outside world is written letters, which are read, to your parents. You don't have stamps or envelopes, you give the sheet of paper to the family rep. The only time we went into the woods, was to be photographed so they could send our parents a picture of us like, well, hostages. Emotionally berated and torn down using every psychological technique, no holds bar, boundaries destroyed to obtain a page full of confessions and sob filled apologies for parents from their kids.

This is what WWASPS programs are about. This is what occurs.

I am agog that he had a mind left, let alone the incredible one he started with. I have met only a few people in my life who come close to being as smart and as perceptive as our son.

He must then have realize exactly what his parents had done to him. He must of realized when he came home, they were fantasized and programmed themselves.

We attended Focus and I learned to dance.

No comment.

He was on the cusp of reaching Level 4 when another student confessed that David had shared some of his meds with him a month after David entered the Program.

Can't gloss over this one, because it's fucked up. They actually manipulate the kids in seminars to start ratting each other out. Again think a group of crazy people, with zero physical or emotional boundaries or social rules and think what could they do to illicit this kind of information from a large group of nervous kids? If you have an active imagination you might be starting to get a picture of what a seminar is actually like.

David admitted it, but he had never previously owned up to it so he got to start over at Level I, as he should have.

As he should have? This is so common, dropping kids. I read a staff's account that explained that they would drop kids for no reason, especially if they were progressing too fast because their job was to keep them at the facility for as long as possible. It all comes down to money in the end. I read this staff talk about a girl at CCM who was doing very well, never did anything wrong. So then they drop her to level 1 just to fuck with her. Yes, they do this kind of thing! Sometimes they will do it for two weeks, and not tell them it's temporary , "just to see how they react".

Again you have to think, a group of people in a place where social boundaries are non existent, everything goes. The place is designed to fuck with kids heads, that's it. It's designed to put kids in a place that throws them SO off kilter from reality, that they can "Reprogrammed" with new behaviors because they are so frightened of the alternative. It's a very fucked up process.

It's a cult. That's the only way to describe it. You don't progress for being good. You don't progress for doing your schoolwork. You progress if they "feel" that you are fitting in with them. It's a social test. They want to fuck with you in every way possible, and figure out if they can suck you into their cult and have you become one of them. If they think so, and you are willing, you might not get treated so badly once the tearing down process is complete. If you just don't seem right to them, or they don't like you, or you refuse to sign on to their sick game, you will be treated like shit, tortured with remorse and basically fucked with until they think you have cracked. Then they try again.

Nevertheless, it was an incredibly bitter pill and he found himself unable to swallow it for months.

Which means he gave up on working the program and said "fuck it". This is common reaction when being dropped. What do they expect?

We graduated Visions in Seattle and my wife and I almost grasped the brass ring, but doing 100% all of the time hasn?t been quite possible for us on a sustained basis.

So while their son was sitting on level 1 being treated like shit, they are enjoying their parent seminars obviously, they progressed in them quickly like the fanatical ones usually will. Their son can't talk to anybody else, has no privileges (not even condiments) who knows if he was in isolation and that shit, probably, since he was stuck on level one. I know what that is like.

At 18, my son left the Program still on Level 1; there had been two more run attempts. One of them was going to be at the airport on the way to PC 18 but the escort service kept an eye on him until the plane taxied.

I left at 18 too. I also tried to run. I was the only runner during my stay while I was at SCL. It should tell you a lot about these places that kids are willing to run into the unknown wilderness, even when only a few months away from turning 18 and knowing they can leave. I know they treat you like shit after you try and run. They locked me in the hobbit for just under a week straight and then I had to shovel snow off the entire facilities walkways (which I actually did smiling and willingly though to get the fuck out of that tiny room !) before they let me back to my  program "family".

David worked at his home contract. I suspect David didn?t feel a large enough change in the family dynamic and he left.

Coming home to a program family is no family.

He traveled about the country but he always returned home.

Maybe he was hoping that his parents would snap out of it.

He brought back a girl from California, whom he found amazing. And for him this was extreme praise. He had a part-time job at a synagogue which he really enjoyed. He sensed a deepening change in us and seemed pleased to share fairly regular dinners with us. On his own initiative he had just completed, and submitted, an application for the local university; he wanted to become a librarian, possibly at the Library of Virginia. (Yes. It does take a degree.) He was growing, changing, and looking forward. He was happy.

But I doubt he could forget the previous year and all he had been through. Perhaps he even had real issues that needed to be addressed prior to his placement. Depression? Sending a kid to Tranquility Bay that has depression is like handing a suicidal person a loaded gun. It helps the process of self destruction along. Even a normal kid with no issues going in, is going to come out with some seriously bad memories and sense of betrayal from his family.

One night in January he went out drinking with his girlfriend. They had a spat. When they returned to an acquaintance?s apartment, he picked up a gun off a table. He put it to his head, and he said, “I could just shoot myself.” And he did. It had been just three months since his 20th birthday.

That's so sad that he did that. I wish I could of told him to just hang on a few more years that it gets easier. I know what it's like to be completely alone in the world and then when you do meet someone it means so much and your universe can be jilted in such a way when that sole relationships seems to be coming to an end. I remember what it feels like to be in this place that this kid was and it's sad that his dad was actively working against him instead of for him. That's the really sad part.

In the hospital, the bandage that wrapped his head was blood-soaked. The 38 caliber bullet did not exit. Instead it had ricocheted around in his head destroying his brain. His brain had been such a magnificent creation. He was a thinker who could marshal data and formulate arguments that would have you looking at any question in a new light and seeing new connections, and more likely than not agreeing with him.

Five hours later, David died in the trauma center at the Medical College of Virginia without ever regaining consciousness. He breathed his last breath while I watched.

That is just really really sad. Too bad this kid didn't get the support he so obviously needed.

We buried him Saturday, the first of February. My wife and I both have gaping voids in our hearts. It will hurt until the day we die.

We also know we gave him the gift of four more years of life by choosing to place him in the Program, for he had been in a self-destructive death spiral when we enrolled him. We also know we have been strong for him, not 100%, but damn close.

This must be why people think he was in the program for four years? I've been trying to figure out what this statement meant. He said the kid was 20 y 3m when he died, so that's 2 y 3 m since he got out of program. Add on 1 y 4m and you get 3y 7m so I imagine what the dad was trying to say was he lived for just under 4 years since the day he placed his son. That is my guess anyways.

So the gift the Program has given us, by our running the parallel program for parents, is that we have little guilt and aren?t holding pity parties.

Welcome to the sick side of the program. Letting parents believe that the "tools" they receive include the ability to shut off love and obligation like a light switch. They teach you in seminars to do this. They teach you to completely shut off your "reality" based mind and think with your cliche-driven programmed mind. That's why the say "holding pity parties", that's a program term that means they aren't feeling sorry for themselves.  This one among hundreds of thought-terminating cliches programmies absolutely depend on.

Grieving - yes. Wracked with self-doubts and guilt - no. I know my wife and I could not have handled this if we had not been working the Program as hard as we have.

They were both sucked into the cult. It, at the very least, helped contribute to the death of their son, and yet they embrace it to deal with this very real and tragic consequence. Absolutely insane.

My two brothers and I are spread out geographically and chronologically. David?s funeral began the process of our renewing connections.

Trying to find good out of this situation. There are no accidents. It must of happened for a reason. This is what seminars teach. They teach you to be completely selfish and destroys any sense of empathy you might once of had.

I am still working on last year?s goal of becoming a private pilot. I was discerned onto the Parish Pastoral Council in November. (A Vision?s goal finally realized.) I am making a new goal of reaching out to over 30 wild and woolly young adults whom David touched and who came to his (Catholic) Resurrection Mass.

It sounds like this father got more from the program than his son ever could have. Maybe they can just have WWASPS be a parent training seminar and leave out the part where they hold the kid incommunicado for years at a time in a network of gulags? :roll:

We sent our son into the Program to wake him up. The Program woke us up!

What a incredibly selfish thing to say. Yep, they are program fanatics alright.

Our purpose in sharing our story is not just to wake up the teens, although they must learn that every decision is a choice, and every choice yields a result.

More program jargon. Every decision is a choice, every choice yields a result. Another thought terminating cliche. What they are saying is that their son chose whatever behaviors it is that led his parents to search and find WWASPS. Their sons choices in the program also led him to be dropped to level 1. His choices to not work the program are what caused him to not recover and ultimately kill himself. This is what they are saying with this language and grammar. It is very subtle, and very insulting the way they use these terms, especially if you understand the full meaning behind the term and in the context they are normally used.

No. Primarily we?re writing this for the parents of the teens who have NOT gotten it yet. And we met some at every seminar we attended. WAKE UP!

These are the fanatical program parents I was talking about that come and staff seminars at the facilities. These are the parents who's ultimate goal in life is to become a full fledged seminar facilitator. They are evangelical programmies who will do anything to spread their misery to as many families as they possibly can.

Your key to having a whole and healthy family is to work your own program. Stop fighting the Program and the Facilitators. Embrace them! They want the same thing you do!

More code language for, work on yourself. Take the time that your problem kid is away to improve and enjoy your own life. Then send letters to your kid about the cruises you are going on, how you reinvented yourself, having such a blast! (yes they really do this)

You can?t dictate change for your child, but you can make changes for yourself. Open yourselves to the process so that when the results start coming in, you can live with the outcome . . . whether it is an outstanding reality you helped create or, God forbid, a tragedy such as ours.

WWASPS gets rid of your problem kid and locks them away and tells you everything is fine, they are dealing with the kid, just give us one more year and the kid will come out perfect. It's like a pizza, he is only half baked, if he comes out now, he will not be done and all this time is wasted. The parents seminar is an LGAT designed to get the parents sucked in and hooked on the program. They are obviously designed differently than the child one's which are done for different reasons.

The parent seminars are done to illicit the desired effect, which is exactly what we just read in this statement. They want fanatical program parents who tell everyone how great WWASPS is. They want parents who will come staff seminars for free at their own expense, for years after their kid has graduated. They want parents who fall in love with the lifestyle and start their own home based cult groups to suck in more and more and more parents. They fill up new gulags with these kids, and do what is necessary to put on a show and manipulate the kids to get as much money from the parents as possible.

This all revolves around the parents and I think that this statement articulated this point incredibly well, just incredibly eye opening for me to hear it from a parent who has absolutely no shame in his programmy-hood.

by Richard Poprik
In loving memory of his son, David
Tranquility Bay/Carolina Springs Academy
October 2000

Somehow I doubt this is the memorial his son would want, but that is just my opinion. I might be completely off base on all of this, but I don't think so. It all just sounds all too familiar. The difference being that my dad never was quite so honest as this father who writes this letters is. He obviously believes in the program, quite fanatically, to say these things without an inkling of shame. Obviously when he and I read this statement we are seeing two completely different things I suppose.

just in case :wink:

That post is just far too good.  All programs do work alike really.  You hit a lot of nails right on the head.  And it sounds like you've been doing some good research.

[Truth Searcher]

OK.  I plead total and complete ignorance on this topic.  

We sent our son into the Program to wake him up. The Program woke us up!

I believe that one of the only real benefits in sending our daughter to a program was to be able to more clearly see the dysfunction in our home.  Yes she was the presenting individual.  But,the interpersonal dynamics in our home ... well  ... sucked.

Is this what these parents are referring to?  In a sense, our daughters program did wake us up.  I did come to have a much clearer perspective of the problems ... and decidedly they weren't really her problems at all.

What was awoken in these parents?  What exactly did they discover?

We graduated Visions in Seattle and my wife and I almost grasped the brass ring, but doing 100% all of the time hasn?t been quite possible for us on a sustained basis.

Are they sort of living vicariously through their son's program?  Are they celebrating that they continued to practice tough love?

I personally don't get it .....

[Anonymous]

Maybe nobody will ever know the real reasons that drove that young man to commit suicide. Could have even been the parents fault to begin with. Maybe the program's fault? One will probably never know. But suicide not only claims one victim, it leaves behind many others. I know first hand, my cousin shot himself in front of his elderly father at the age of 43. He left behind 3 children, the youngest being 4 and the oldest being 16. He had never been the same after brain surgery 6 yrs earlier to remove a tumor. And, I guess, he never really was truly himself after that. We still struggle, years later, to deal with the loss of such a smart, funny, big part of our family. And I don't suppose we will ever really heal completely. I guess thats why I feel more sorrow for these parents than disdain.

[psy]

OK.  I plead total and complete ignorance on this topic.  

We sent our son into the Program to wake him up. The Program woke us up!

I believe that one of the only real benefits in sending our daughter to a program was to be able to more clearly see the dysfunction in our home.  Yes she was the presenting individual.  But,the interpersonal dynamics in our home ... well  ... sucked.

Is this what these parents are referring to?  In a sense, our daughters program did wake us up.  I did come to have a much clearer perspective of the problems ... and decidedly they weren't really her problems at all.

What was awoken in these parents?  What exactly did they discover?

We graduated Visions in Seattle and my wife and I almost grasped the brass ring, but doing 100% all of the time hasn?t been quite possible for us on a sustained basis.

Are they sort of living vicariously through their son's program?  Are they celebrating that they continued to practice tough love?

I personally don't get it .....

And neither do the parents.  Ever hear of Werner Erhard's exploits with "getting it".  You can make people feel like they've come so some great realization, while at the same time, they don't even know what that realization is.  It's a mind-fuck.

[Anonymous]

What surprises me is why a grieving parent who doesn't want to admit his mistake would publish a letter like this and use his real name. His number's not even unpublished -- I looked him up, thought about writing him a letter, then thought nevermind. There are too many living kids to save to bother with the fucked up parents of the dead ones.

[exhausted]

I cried

Well... At least I wasn't the only one.

@ Exhausted:  What are you missing?

The parents still believe that the program was their kid's best hope.  They see the kid's death as inevitable without program.  He might have been sent for smoking pot... Maybe he was gay.  I would think if it was a serious drug problem, they would have been more specific.  It doesn't matter.  Program doesn't care, and given enough time, they brainwash the parents (with the seminars and incessant fear-inducing propaganda), so thoroughly, that they can kill the kid, and the parents will thank them.

4 Years in TB... fucking concentration camp.

What I am missing is that giving your kid 4 years in a concentration camp (and TB, oh God poor lad!) instead of being able to say they are happy they gave him 4 years within a loving home is not something to be happy about  :flame:

Also how can they believe they did the best thing for him because he was going to end up dead? he ended up dead anyways, after enduring hell, I don't see why they're doing a happy dance, twats.