Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Daytop Village
DAYTOP Did Me Great Harm in the Long Run
SEKTO:
Oooops, I didn't catch the typo till just now. The above should have read "...was kind of like "DAYTOP lite" relative to the DAYTOP Richardson from the '89-90 era..." and I corrected it on the other thread too.
SEKTO:
--- Quote ---You’re damn right Daytop was intrinsically and insidiously harmful. There’s the rub. No pun intended.
I was not f*ing around when I wrote that Daytop was but one of my abused in treatment experiences. Daytop messed me up particularly badly because their punitive love was being inculcated within a thirteen year old girl. They had no business “treating me”,nor anyone else with such tactics .Not like that.
I found my voice in encounter groups it’s true, but those words I parroted were symptoms of what they were doing to all of us.
As for the tendency of some to compare programs it’s pointlessly divisive. I also suspect it’s more of their programming that needs purging.
Here’s the narrative comparison that I base my point on.Later in my teens, while at a Psych unit (non- affiliated with Daytop) I got in to a petty debate with a counselor. We had been discussing REN and Stimpy. He did not believe me when I informed him that “Yes. Discombobulated is a real word.” Eventually he returned to the day room and conceded that “yes, it is a real word”. He then stopped with the fun banter and began baiting me. I knew something was up and understood the situation I was in enough to try to avoid being drawn in. Minutes later as I had to walk past him to head to my room he swept my leg, dropped me to the floor, pinned my forearms with his knees and proceeded to allow a line of what he later laughed off as “frog spit” to emerge then slurp…you get the idea. When he got the hell off of me, I was supposed to be grateful he hadn’t actually spit on me. He tried to laugh it off and told me he had done this because I was “uptight and looked like I could use a good laugh.”
At this same place I was at one point restrained to a “papoose board”. Later,following another staffer's surprise that my being forced to wear a blindfold for a couple of hours (until I was crumpled on the floor "screaming/crying please get it off of me")…didn’t go well. I was given valium to control my outburst and sent to bed in the middle of the day. Never mind that I had fully regressed and had a breakdown from the “Learn to trust and ask for help” exercise that (untrained glorified orderly) of a counselor had administered. He did this because he’d read in my chart from a previous inpatient stay at a crisis centre that I had refused the trust portion of the ropes course. I had done the web/bell thingy and all of the other stuff very well. None of that mattered, I was going to learn to trust one way or another, they were determined.Even though I won't down play how messed up those moment were, I was at least able to recognize the lunacy.
These things I was able to recognize as abusive and feel outrage. I did not own these cruelties as if I deserved them. I was lucky for not having to absorb those particular harms within me.
Daytop calling me TOXIC and silencing me, that stayed with me. The reverberations of that and all they exacerbated with their punitive love play out to this day.
Daytop did me great harm in the long run.
Here is my truncated version of their philosophy “There is no refuge.” End of philosophy.
--- End quote ---
This is something I wrote last June 10. Why should I write the same thing all over again, but in a different way?
The thought-reform process begins with isolation of the individual (whether in a physical or psychological sense), then proceeds to a gradual manipulation of the physical environment in which that person is isolated. Then gradual control is exerted over the individual's behavior, the flow of information into and out of the environment restricts the individual's thinking, those very thoughts are retrained and controlled, and emotional range and repsonses are controlled as well.
Basically, what is commonly called "brainwashing" is a process that is mainly physically coercive in nature, and the conditioning usually reverses itself on itys own once one exits the physically coercive situation or environment. "Thought reform," "mind control," or "coercive persuation" is more subtle a process, it is psychologically coercive in nature, and the psychological conditioning is more lasting after the individual leaves the thought-reform environment.
I used to think that DAYTOP "wasn't all that bad" and that in my mind I was somehow exaggerating its coercive nature, as well as the conditioning's effects on my mentality. I used to think of DAYTOP, "Well, at least it's not Straight." But now I see that DAYTOPian coercion is n my opinion in many ways even more damaging to the individual than the blunt force applied in Straight, which is the most egregious and prominent example of an overtly abusive TC for youths in our times. The DAYTOP mind control is more subtly applied and more rigidly reinforced. Very sophisticated B-Mod stuff going down in DAYTOP. Very effective and very subtle mind-manipulation and encouragement of "right thinking" in DAYTOP. It's a thought-reform environment. You know?
If you're being forced to the ground and bound up in restraints, or if you are being subjected to food and sleep deprivation, then you KNOW that that's wrong; nobody has to tell you that it's abusive. But if you're getting screamed at during encounter group or a haircut as a part of a body of people that you are supposed to think of as "the family," and there's this groupthink going on, then there's this element of "it's for your own good" to it, and it's not so readily seen as abusive and coercive in or out of the immediate context in which it's taking place. Therefore, the conditioning is more lasting, more pervasive in a person's psyche, more personalized.
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=26260&start=270
SEKTO:
--- Quote ---Probably for the best. That WHO thread in particular reads like The ScrewTape Letters!
--- End quote ---
I know what you mean. Sometimes looking around and reading some of these fornits threads (especially the WHO thread) is to me like taking a peek into the Mos Eisely Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Too rich for my blood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YSF5Sfq ... re=related
Inculcated:
SEKTO (my accountabilibubby)
I have been sleeping as means to escape my concerns. I will later whine about my inability to sleep. This will result in me self administering a dose of ‘night ‘night (Klonopin). The Valium is for the really troubled waters.
When I wake in the morning groggy, I will feel badly for having slept so well.
In order to refresh myself I’ll wash down some Adderall with my Noni berry tea. Then I’ll hop in the shower and wonder about everything and everyone and both love and hate this place and all and then wonder why I bother.
By the time I’m sliding hangers in my closet back (looking for the right dress to wrap up in); I’ll wonder why I have such thoughts and why we're taught to bother with lip gloss. Then I’ll wonder if an Ativan might take the edge off and set a better tone for the day I’ll watch from afar.
This might be my anthem right now:
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LECSVlc6O1g :poison:
SEKTO:
You've got to be careful with that stuff, accountabilibuddy, the pills that is. Be good to yourself. Don't overmedicate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OYD5WCp ... re=related
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