It must be noted that for some kids (maybe alot) the attention they get (however negative or unhealthy) from staff is something they crave from their parents but didn't get for a variety of reasons.
Yeah. It's called transference. The program replaces the role of the family. It's designed to do that. The program becomes the surrogate family. They turn the parents against the kids and vice versa. It's not designed to bring them closer together, but to take a crack in a relationship and make it an impassable chasm. Why? In my opinion it's to make sure that there is never a reunion through which the kids and parents could potentially pose a legal threat.
Benchmark... Systematically... and i mean systematically, destroyed people's lives. There were three... three graduations during the entire year I was there. The rest... usually ended up on the streets. By the time the parents were running out of money they had by that point been totally convinced that if they were to provide support for their kids it would do them more harm than good, that they needed to hit "rock bottom" etc... that they had "ruined every chance" etc... They never realized that it was the program that was engineering this. Program tried to convince my parents to abandon me. They didn't. My feeling is a lot of it had to do with the fact that:
A: I was never sent there for any dire reason in my parent's minds (well.. I don't really know what they were thinking). Yes, there were circumstances that lead to a situation where we both decided to part ways, but as far as we were both concerned, and the way it was represented to us, the place was simply a boarding school. On my admissions sheet, I wrote my purpose of being there was to finish high school. When I went in on the first day into group and introduced myself, saying I was there to finish high school, it simply wasn't accepted, and I was told that I would have to find some issue to work on. I said I didn't feel like I wanted to change anything, that I was fine the way I was... I was accused of being in denial bla bla bla and a few months later I was convinced I was an alcoholic (revision of past history is something I understand very well).
B: They never participated in the program. They may have wanted me to get some therapy, or grow emotionally, but they were not exactly the most compliant with the program's implication that there was something wrong with them. They reacted in a very hostile manner, refused to go to any parent seminars. As a result, I feel they were far less affected than the average parent. What I was told, however, was that they didn't really care about me enough to participate in my recovery. I felt abandoned. I was encouraged to coach them into going to the seminars. I was also told that they knew that Benchmark was not a boarding school (they only claim to be to the outside world) and that I was tricked. Mike Martin, a resident counselor, told the students that our parents didn't care about us and knew full well what the place was about.
C: They weren't financially invested in it. My dad's work was footing the bill for education. It wasn't a big deal, where otherwise it might have been. It was supposed to be a boarding school...
My parents, and the situation
Kids that end up working for a program often do so because they have psychologically bonded with the program
And they foster this bond through the workshops and the exercises and the methods of "counseling" and the disclosures, etc... It wasn't an accident. Even after leaving program, it took me a long time to realize that the reason for the disclosures, for example, or the hypnotic regression and guided imagery, was not to deal with some trauma or to help us to feel again, but to make us miserable for the express purpose of comforting us and building up a bond... almost as if you had a friend beat your dog so you could nurse it back to health. I thought it was to help me... I thought I was discovering the "real me". Even after i realized the program was a total bullshit scam I truly believed that I was wearing a mask and didn't know who I was. It was great for the confessions, though, since I believed at the time that I was simply a master manipulator who had lied for so long he had forgotten his identity. They convince you that you were lying when you were telling the truth (you were just in denial). I confessed to anything and everything under the sun and believed it. I thought I was everything they told me. How long...
OR their critical skills are so impaired, they can't function in the "real world". Others just need a job after returning home and finding out their parents don't want them around and they can't afford to support themselves on $6-7 bucks an hour.
Not to mention they're convinced of inevitable failure since they didn't complete the program (which was systematic, as i've said). It's hard to believe somebody could operate such a system, but it existed then, and still exists now. They are just very very successful at completely and utterly demolishing a person, from their beliefs to identity, to what they believe their sickness is. Who doubts you when you tell them you're an alcoholic... who doubts you? What was even messier was the delusion of grandieur they gave me, the belief that I could identify others who were sick as well, and "help" them... LOL... so I came out totally overconfident. I believed I was a god, almost. I dated this girl when I first came out, told her that she didn't know who she was, and what's really messed is that I think I convinced her. Soon afterward, however, I realized that these pseudo-supernatural insights I thought I had were just snap judgements. I realized how ... totally socially fucked up I was... Since then... nope... no more overconfidence in social situations.. Not even close. Where I had been mostly extroverted before program, now... hah.. things are a bit different.
It's like realizing all those things you thought you learned... Those good things you thought you might have taken away from a bad experience, did you far, far more harm than good. What is real after that? what is normal after that? What is me and what is the program, and what the hell did they do to my head? Figuring that out is half of why I do a lot of the work and research I do. Nobody knows for certain but the program and even then i'm not even sure if they fully realize what they are doing. They've borrowed, cut and pasted so much cult nonsense from here and there that I've had to basically reverse engineer the program to figure out what was done... I want to know the philosophy behind it, that drives, it, the lynchpin to destroy it... Why just me, though? Why aren't so many others trying to do the same? Granted it's a small program, but were the streets that traumatic that they'd rather forget? Do they not realize what they forgot? Maybe i'm just too naturally curious. I'd rather remember to disassemble the past, and re-assemble myself, regardless of how painful.
Well... blah...
Back to work on the documentary
