Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry

Profile of a WWASP Parent: Visitors, Please Read

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Antigen:
Thank God for good old fashioned, level headed grandparents like you, Spots. You're doing just exactly the right thing. Take lots of pictures. Record or buy songs that remind you of her. Clip newspapers or whatever sort of thing you and she enjoy.

No doubt, you will get back a granddaughter who is changed somehow and injured deeply. My daughter has just come home after 4 years of an almost unimaginably abusive romantic relationship. If you read up on battered wife syndrome, I think you'll find that it works very much the same way as a cult. At least I thought so watching, from a distance, what this psychotic son of a bitch did to my daughter and reflected bitterly that my being wise to the Program was not enough to protect her from just about the same mind fuck.

While she was away, not allowed to talk to us much and never about anything important, we did all of these things. We had to communicate in code. I'd mention to her the hymn of Demeter, for example--what a beautiful and moving poem it was--and mention what an unusually long winter it had been and how anxious the locals were to see Sprng. Not that she'd get that reference off the bat. But she might look it up or talk to a Greek neighbor and ask about it. We made a music CD for her; some songs about what was going on, some that just made us think of her and others that had come out since she left and that we liked and that I thought might give her a taste of the sound-track of home.

The down side is that we knew she'd get punished if he caught on. And we worried that she might take it the wrong way and think we were trying to guilt trip her or to intentionally get her punished or something. But none of that happened. She told us that those little things meant the world to her; they were like a life line.

Well, she's home now. She's a different kid. No, she's not even a kid, but a strong and wise young woman. She's still baudacious, bombastic and devistatingly beautiful, just as before. But changed.

Usually, the kids in these programs are nowhere near as brainwashed as the parents or for nearly so long. But it does have an effect. Brace yourself and just keep on being good grandparents.

Now, lest any of the pod people try and twist this around to look like an endorsement for the Program, I feel obliged to explain that, while my kid seems to have taken a bad experience and turned it to some advantage, I would no more recomend putting your errant daughter into a program or setting her up with a woman beating dope dealer as a path to personal growth than I would recomend throwing her in front of a bus just because some people grow some character in response to trauma.  



The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions.  The hypothalamus controls the "Four F's": 1. fighting;  2. fleeing;  3.feeding; and  4. mating.
-- Psychology professor in neuropsychology intro course

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_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
American P.O.W. 10/80 - 10/82
Straight South (Sarasota, FL)
Anonymity Anonymous

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