I can totally feel your pain, and it will get easier over time. When I think about how strongly the emotions we were made to feel that eventually had us unlearn what would have been the "norm" before the program, and then paint that as us "being saved", it pops my top. I've spent years remembering, reflecting, and writing about CEDU/RMA and its methodology. Your feelings are justified.
And the spinoff schools, ones that were started and run by CEDU/RMA/REDACTED
REDACTED
Group encounters shame kids if they are not sitting in them by choice. That's part of the method (just to spout a few): long length of the (rituals inside) programs, constant threat of worse places, (this idea of "choice" is very useful strategy in causing chaos inside the individual desiring autonomy) the use of all aspects of human sexuality as weapon of profound psychological impact for that age in social and mental development, punishments for free thought and usually limited speech "rights", and the interpersonal boundaries that defy ordinary therapeutic ones between staff and student, surely still exist. Feel free, anybody to prove me wrong. This "stuff" is necessary for the program staff to create a surrogate parent role, in order for the student to then feel justified in "sharing" the (normal) anger and shames that may be existent. Feelings of failure in scholastic achievement and/or deteriorating parental relationships are common for all (most or many) kids.
Don't forget that because the kid is there, this is "proof" of his need of saving by the institution! He or She may say this for the rest of their lives without ever using critical thinking to explore if this is true, or can be proven as fact.
Hang tough, Hammer, c'rook peeps are just starting to see the tactics and subtleties of social semiotics that shaped their bizarro experience
and profound waste of money.
