Yes, the Troubled Teen industry does tend to incite extreme degrees or anger, sadness, disappointment, bitterness, and one other thing that we tend to mask: hurt. And pain for others who will suffer the same psychic scars we did.
It is a shame that there are those blind pro-program contingency continue to throw salt on indelible wounds of abuse, and call us "extreme hate mongers." Certainly, there is a faction who are extreme. And while I don't condone threats and maps to dissidents' homes and families (on either side), I continue to marvel at the extreme insensitivity exhibited by those who support these programs. Insensitivity at the obvious pain and abuse suffered by thousands. I think I prefer the extremism of those that are hot blooded over those that are cold hearted.
Maybe part of the problem is that it is easy for you to disregard us when we are "angry." To you, it shows an imbalance. Something easy for you to cast aside.
But really, isn't outrage appropriate? After all, we have all attended programs that:
1. Use bullying, badgering, spying, isolation, and coercion to exploit true, half true, and false stories of ourselves.
2. Use demeaning verbal and psychological abuse repeatedly to break us down.
3. Fail to individuate treatment or treat the individual with integrity.
4. Fail to use proper therapeutic boundaries in treatment. How do we trust staff members who regale us with war stories of committing rape, manslaughter, molestation, and other deviancies while we work out our own issues? Should we have to tell a GROUP of peers our most painful stories, only to be heckled and badgered and demeaned, while possibly a staff member committed the same trauma inflicted on us in his "other life." It is not uncommon for staff to join these programs to work out, in effect projecting, their own shit on us. Like the staff member who insisted on me being a drug addict, even though I never was, and had in fact, not even seen drugs in six months prior to the program. Its hardly news that he himself was a hard core coke head who lost everything prior to CEDU. I can't tell you the number of staff who projected their eating disorders, their sexual histories, their drug addictions onto us, and basically hammered us until we accepted our newly revised histories and had to work on issues that didn't exist until we believed it ourselves.
5. Did I say there was little individuated treatment?
In addition:
6. What kind of place puts the upper level TEENAGERS in control of the psychological development (or should I say, devolution) of newcomers? It was like Lord of The Flies. Whoever bullies, castigates, puts down the best, wins.
7. How does a daily onslaught of speaking to people in a demeaning, insulting fashion (slut, nigger, etc.) build them up? How is it elevating for an individual to talk about themselves in a desultory way, daily and repeatedly? You are actually rewarded the more you put yourself down, with the greatest histrionics.
8. How can you argue that keeping students insulated from their families to the degree many programs operate is beneficial when this insularity has been so GROSSLY misused to manipulate families, students, and keep the program in the control pit? If families can't talk to us, and we learn quickly the ramifications of speaking up, the school can and will say anything to keep the student under their thumbs. This was systemic. And there is no checks and balances.
9. How can you subject young developing minds to confrontational style experientials, ranging from the four hour thrice weekly raps to the week long summits, where sleep and emotions are deftly manipulated to achieve a contrived dependence on program values and ideology, and an unnatural expectation of intensity in personal relationships? These experentials were conceived for adults in serious mind control, money schemes such as Life Spring, EST, and synanon. They are not meant for kids. I would say they aren't meant for adults either, but hey, if you want to be psychically manipulated at the age of consent... whatever.
10. Parents do NOT know what really happens in raps and profeets. The demos they do are baby versions. Bullshit demos. In programs like Straight, you don't see the crazy arm flaps--the motivating-- in open meetings that parents attend. Hell, no.... those are for show. Everyone knows to pile on the bullshit and act according to discretion in front of the parents or there will be hell to pay. In my program, everyone freely admits to, years later, the snow job they had to deliver during parent tours, OR ELSE!! There was always that underlying tension of knowing you are required to play a part in order to survive a brutal onslaught later.
11. How many programs really prepare you for life outside? With REAL WORLD skills, relationships, and expectations? Because if there is one criticism amongst many ex programmees is that they left the program and were at a complete and total loss for how to function in the real world.
Now, of course, there are some transition programs, but they don't transition, they extend social ineptitude. (Why? Because social boundaries, expectations, and dynamics that we learn at these programs are contrived, unrealistic, and ideological... Not to mention they rest on the premise of coerced intimacy and exploitation.
12. The fall out, after years of isolation, insulation, psychological manipulation, daily, repeated verbal abuse en masse, and forced ingestion of rigid cult-like ideology at a critical stage of development takes decades to unravel. You totally lose yourself and adopt some Stepford version of reality that doesn't exist.... or you go the other way, perhaps, and become the addict, prostitute, porn star, and bully you never were pre-program to live out the cult's depiction of you.
In any event, you can't build someone up by treating them as a criminal class. You can't build them up by promoting coercion and forcing ideology of ONE way of thinking and acting. You can't build people up when you teach a blatant disregard for self respect by continually forcing minors to verbally degrade and humiliate themselves in a group in order to be promoted through levels. You can't build someone up when your whole program undermines the individual and operates on fraudulent psychodynamics.
You might dismiss some people on Fornits for being too radical or angry... but personal experience is the driving force. Many of us, in spite of our pains, have crafted a successful life for ourselves. Others struggle more. But we all have scars.
If your daughter gets raped, should I say, "get over it" ? Some of us, in fact, have been raped, and find the psychic rape of these programs infinitely more scarring.
You know, it really upsets me to know that names and addresses are relayed in a manner that compromises any family's sense of safety. (And that is a problem experienced by BOTH sides.)
But I am also pained by the knowledge that program advocates want to take away the cathartic outlet of those who were hurt in these programs. I also feel that prospective parents should hear the flip side of the coin before warehousing their children in dubious hands. For this purpose, splayed anger is not as constructive as surgically directed anger, BUT
I would rather spend a lifetime in box with the angriest, most imbalanced poster here, then one day in luxury with someone who condones and rationalizes the insidious abuses that occur at these programs.