How you couldn't really "fake it"

[starry-eyed pirate]

...The second you pretended to go along with the program; the minute you decided to "fake it" until you could run, you made yourself open and vulnerable to brainwash.  As soon as you began to just pretend you took the fatal sip.

[Froderik]

...The second you pretended to go along with the program; the minute you decided to "fake it" until you could run, you made yourself open and vulnerable to brainwash. As soon as you began to just pretend you took the fatal sip.

Like a crack in a dam that only gets bigger?

[psy]

...The second you pretended to go along with the program; the minute you decided to "fake it" until you could run, you made yourself open and vulnerable to brainwash.  As soon as you began to just pretend you took the fatal sip.

Yup.  Once you start to compromise your values via your actions, it really is a slippery slope from there.

[Anonymous]

yeah, like this tune by STYX?

Written by tommy shaw
Lead vocals by tommy shaw

You see the world through your cynical eyes
You're a troubled young man i can tell
You've got it all in the palm of your hand
But your hand's wet with sweat and your head needs a rest

And you're fooling yourself if you don't believe it
You're kidding yourself if you don't believe it
How can you be such an angry young man
When your future looks quite bright to me
How can there be such a sinister plan
That could hide such a lamb, such a caring young man

You're fooling yourself if you don't believe it
You're kidding yourself if you don't believe it
Get up, get back on your feet
You're the one they can't beat and you know it
Come on, let's see what you've got
Just take your best shot and don't blow it

You're fooling yourself if you don't believe it
You're killing yourself if you don't believe it
Get up, get back on your feet
You're the one they can't beat and you know it
Come on, let's see what you've got
Just take your best shot and don't blow it

 :jamin:  :peace:  :rasta:

[Anonymous]

...The second you pretended to go along with the program; the minute you decided to "fake it" until you could run, you made yourself open and vulnerable to brainwash. As soon as you began to just pretend you took the fatal sip.

Like a crack in a dam that only gets bigger?

Yeah, what a fucking ordeal. I thought I had it licked and everyone was treating me like a hero. But then the fanfare died down and no one was looking, that's when I got my ass kicked!

[Froderik]

...The second you pretended to go along with the program; the minute you decided to "fake it" until you could run, you made yourself open and vulnerable to brainwash. As soon as you began to just pretend you took the fatal sip.

Like a crack in a dam that only gets bigger?

Yeah, what a fucking ordeal. I thought I had it licked and everyone was treating me like a hero. But then the fanfare died down and no one was looking, that's when I got my ass kicked!

[Anonymous]

...The second you pretended to go along with the program; the minute you decided to "fake it" until you could run, you made yourself open and vulnerable to brainwash.  As soon as you began to just pretend you took the fatal sip.

this is truth. very important point, especially if you're trying to figure out where you went wrong. fake it until you can run, def rememnber that.

[Anonymous]

yeah, like this tune by STYX?

Written by tommy shaw
Lead vocals by tommy shaw

You see the world through your cynical eyes
You're a troubled young man i can tell
You've got it all in the palm of your hand..........(time to smash the stereo)

 :jamin:  :peace:  :rasta:

Personally, I found it doable, but extremely hard to pull off.  The whole time I was on fourth phse, I knew I was going to leave from school, but as I was biding my time, I would get nervous or find myself starting to lose the facade I was putting on in the building and at the foster home.  Once I actually left was when I began to realize what a number Straight had done on my head.

On a side note,  anyone who thinks that Styx lyrics are some kind of profound illustration of anything other than a desire by cheesy record execs and talentless songwriters to make a pile of $$$ off of masses of idiots is indeed, a massive idiot themself.

[Withdraw]

You all had me convinced! I was always like, how can they just go along?! I never got it. Then staff would say to me... If you really were normal w/o a drug problem, you would just go through the program easily and accept it as a great learning experience... And since you can't conform, you must really need to be here...


LOL, You all fooled me =( And I thought I must be a complete failure since I couldn't just conform like all the "normal" people in there.

ps: I admit though, I was secretly glad to see the people who did run get put back into group.. Because... I knew there were people out there in those blue chairs who knew what I knew. It was like finally a validation.. and there were people "on my side" who were in there with me.

I don't know how to explain that easily, but it made me feel safer knowing people who ran were back in there with me. It made me feel protected somehow, it let me hold on to some of my sanity. Cop outs were so naughtily hawt ;p

Hah, Cop outs are still hawt <3

Man, I wanted to run.. I just never did. It that way, I had given up, and facts were.. I had no idea where I was or how to get near home.

[Awake]

...The second you pretended to go along with the program; the minute you decided to "fake it" until you could run, you made yourself open and vulnerable to brainwash.  As soon as you began to just pretend you took the fatal sip.

The reason this worked is bc the minute you went along, or lied about who you were, you were brainwashing each other. These programs are designed to prevent you from showing each other that you don't believe in what you are doing, therefore it makes it impossible to feel sure about your perceptions of the other person (people) in regards to their actions. Essentially they create a social situation in which the most crucial component is that those involved "act as if" (this phrase can be referenced to synanon and Daytop NY and co founder Dan Casriel), meaning just go with the program and trust the process. The thing is once you behave in a certain way people will respond to what you are communicating to them as being yourself. When each of us is introduced as a single addition to a social environment that has acheived a stable homeostasis (i.e. each has adopted  habitual interractive behavior patterns under certain social rules and environmental restrictions) it is very hard to resist or disarm the overall "game" the group has adopted. You realize quickly that your normal behaviors will not be tolerated, so you repress them, you are expected to abide by rules and you decide the best way to play along is to model the behavior of your peers to best hide amongst them, but this is the failing defense because first impressions are everything.

Once you act like someone else, especially when you're new, no one can communicate with you the way they do when they know you. Then you have to respond to them when they behave with you as though you are this person you are not. Add to that the strange bonding effect of being together in a survival situation where you need each other (or feel like it) to get through it and your faith in your relationships then becomes a validation of the other persons "fake" presentation of themselves, and since the relationship is self reflexive, you are validating your own fake self as real.

This is where the ambiguity you feel about the social context actually becomes ambiguity about yourself and what was an act can become real.

[Anonymous]

I have talked to a lot of people who have claimed that they faked their way through and didn't get brainwashed.....and then a few minutes of retrospection and these people who didn't get broken down start to cry as they realize that they had, in fact, slid down this slippery slope mentioned by the OP. They often will admit that they were damaged by this but didn't realize it after thinking about post-program incidences where program thinking hobbled parts of their lives.

And when you get out, there are certain things that actually can be useful in recovering from the trauma of the program. Unfortunately, these tools that could be of aid to us were made into tools of torment and torure so we naturally have an aversion to them. Psychotherapy, self-analysis, the steps, serenity prayer, god, church, discipline, responsibility etc. are all things that are useful to people who need some psychological guidance when problems arise. But we associated these tools with evils of the program and avoided them like the plague. Because these tools (and songs) had been made into implements of torture, we wanted nothing to do with them and self betterment subsequently fell by the wayside. Just another reason we couldn't seem to right ourselves when down on our luck. Try to be a carpenter in a world of carpenters after you have been tortured with a hammer; try driving nails with your shoe and see how well you do in life. That is life, post-program.

I don't think anyone gets out unscathed, whether they think so or not.

[Sam Kinison]

Facts can be twisted to create a reality different than what is TRULY real.Straight was a perfect example.
Fact 1---I was an extremely unhappy kid before I got there(a runaway)
Fact 2---I had experimented with drugs other than Marijuana
These became twisted to make Straight appear necessary.Now let's look at the other facts,ignored or Straight would have looked to be the farce it really was
Ignored fact 1---I stopped the other drugs only smoking pot to sleep
Ignored fact 2---I didn't runaway from home so I could use drugs,I left home to get away from the same person that my mother herself wanted to get away from
Ignored fact 3---I am not,nor never was a drug addict
ignored fact 4---my world was filled by creatures only related by marriage with their own personal agendas,where my constant presence only conflicted with those agendas.
Being the fact that supposedly anything was okay to discuss in group,mentioning these IGNORED facts would have turned me into a heretic in the warehouse.
While everybody was told to say I love you,the ignored fact was nobody really gave a damn about anyone.The true theme was about each ones individual survival.As bad as staying was,most of us who did stayed not because we wanted to.it was because we truly believed and bought into the lie that leaving with out the pass was far more detrimental than staying until we got it.The pass being graduating or Seven Stepping.Once we bought into that lie,we were ready to advance in our phases.I was faking being happy to be there.I wasn't.At the same time I was falling for the great lie that these were just dues being paid for some everlasting serenity awaiting me and somehow believed the program necessary.

[psy]

I have talked to a lot of people who have claimed that they faked their way through and didn't get brainwashed.....and then a few minutes of retrospection and these people who didn't get broken down start to cry as they realize that they had, in fact, slid down this slippery slope mentioned by the OP.

Yup.  It's a transparent process.  Reminds me of myself when I first got out.

[starry-eyed pirate]

...The second you pretended to go along with the program; the minute you decided to "fake it" until you could run, you made yourself open and vulnerable to brainwash. As soon as you began to just pretend you took the fatal sip.

Like a crack in a dam that only gets bigger?

Well, yeah, but not quite the point I think.  What I mean to say is that as soon as you begin to motivate you have lost psychological ground and given the program it's entry point and from there it's like a crack in the dam.  I was tellin the story of my day 64 cop-out to some friends the other day, and when I got to the part about how when I was able to talk with my (druggie) girlfriend, for the first time since escaping, my vocabulary had already been altered to the point where using any kind of slang just came out awkward and forced and unnatural, leaving an uneasy silence in it's wake; like when Pinnochio tries to speak, but brays instead.  The minute you allowed them to modify your behavior even if not your thoughts at first, you began to lose yourself into the cult.

The weird thing was even if you knew you were bein manipulated and believed you were just fakin it, that didn't really prevent the brainwash from gettin in.  So you could be sitting there in group with your meta-cult(that's my own word, "meta-cult", meanin beyond the cult) awareness and a secret plan to escape once  you made 2nd phase, and yet with every day, every hour that passed you were ever more indoctrinated into the cult.  By using the accepted language of the cult and participating in group every day you would slowly but surely lose your meta-cult perspective.

Even Withdraw who didn't ever motivate says she was brainwashed to some degree too by the time she was terminated.  Hi Withdraw.

I might have more to consider on this subject later but that's all for now.

I thought it was a point worth posting.  Thanks for all the interesting responses.

[Froderik]

What I mean to say is that as soon as you begin to motivate you have lost psychological ground and given the program it's entry point and from there it's like a crack in the dam.  I was tellin the story of my day 64 cop-out to some friends the other day, and when I got to the part about how when I was able to talk with my (druggie) girlfriend, for the first time since escaping, my vocabulary had already been altered to the point where using any kind of slang just came out awkward and forced and unnatural, leaving an uneasy silence in it's wake; like when Pinnochio tries to speak, but brays instead.  The minute you allowed them to modify your behavior even if not your thoughts at first, you began to lose yourself into the cult.

The weird thing was even if you knew you were bein manipulated and believed you were just fakin it, that didn't really prevent the brainwash from gettin in.  So you could be sitting there in group with your meta-cult(that's my own word, "meta-cult", meanin beyond the cult) awareness and a secret plan to escape once  you made 2nd phase, and yet with every day, every hour that passed you were ever more indoctrinated into the cult.  By using the accepted language of the cult and participating in group every day you would slowly but surely lose your meta-cult perspective.

Even Withdraw who didn't ever motivate says she was brainwashed to some degree too by the time she was terminated.  Hi Withdraw.

I might have more to consider on this subject later but that's all for now.

I thought it was a point worth posting.  Thanks for all the interesting responses.

Definitely worth posting; the responses have been thought-provoking, to say the least...

"Meta-cult," I like that, too...

Also, I get (yes, all too well) the Pinocchio analogy, being familiar with the film/story... I had plenty of those awkward moments when i finally got out of there...