Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Mission Mountain School
Where would you be without MMS?
hannah:
I agree with that your experience needs to be supported, I support who ever you are. Its hard to support an anonymous bag with eyes on a computer. What I want to support for all of the girls that are hurting is your feelings. I have read things on here about abuse I thouroghly don't agree with that, and having been there I have a say, because I experienced the same things.
I was resentful at one point because I didn't see my Mom for 9 months and when I did she was a completely different person, she progressed in her disease, I was called into the office and told that I was leaving @ 4 am to go to Kalispel and then San Diego, because she was in the ICU (my parents live in NM at the time). This happened about 2 months before my first home visit was supposed to happen. I found myself in a familar world a changed person and my Mother changed as well. She couldn't talk, could,t eat through her mouth anymore, she looked liked she belonged in the ICU in San Diego. I was resentful towards the school because this happened in my life. My truth is that the reason I was in MMS had everything to do with my actions, it wasn't a mistake. I was present and sober for my family the first time in my life. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done walking around the corner of the ICU and seeing her there, with my Father. and ever since then I have been stepping up to bat, with my family, and my Mother. Being resilient is a virtue I have always had but only tapped into @ MMS. I have been a good daughter, I have no regrets from the past anymore about how I wasn't a good anything for so long. Because before I went to MMS, I thought I had real friends, I didn't as soon as I was out of money, drugs are alcohol, they didn't need me anymore. I had lost how to be a daughter, a friend, and I had lost myself. If I hadn't been at the school when this had happened or had this place to go back to, I really don't think I would be sober anymore, I know I woudln't have relationships with my Dad.
I don't think I am engageing in a tug of war and I am not trying to be preachy I am telling you my experience and my observations of what is going on here and what happened @ MMS. It has been almost 5 years since I went there, The two years that I spent there was so important. I was of no use to my family and to tell you the truth I could hardly make my bed, and take care of a bunny my first year there.
What I see here is a bunch of hurt feelings, not concrete allogations of abuse. I especially don't see any harm I see hurt. I hope that makes sense.
This is not black or White for me at all! I don't think I have been filled with all good experience or all bad What I am trying to advocate is Where would you be without MMS? Ponder this please....
Your feelings are very important to me, please believe me. I am doing my best through the screen, and the fact that I don't know who I am responding to 75% of the time is frustrating to me.I don't understand what we have to hide and who we are hiding form.
I love everyone....You are all important and irraplaceble to me.
I hope that we can come together and be together @ MMS this Summer! Because it wouldn't be worth it without my sisiters.
as much love and support and good thought being sent your way.-Hannah
Anonymous:
Hannah-
The abuse that we are talking about is:
1. Verbal abuse by staff i.e. in group, on physical challenges. (I personally remember a staff member "mooing" at a heavier girl who could not ride her bike up a hill and making her cry and even then not stopping. Is that not an abuse of power? Girls being forced to drink quarts of water at every meal and then not being able to go to the restroom, sometimes wetting thier pants because they were told they were lying they didn't really have to go.) Lots more specific examples where that came from.
2. Using their power to manipulate young girls into believing that they have multiple addictions when in fact they do not have anything of the sort. Is that not abuse? When I left, and I know a lot of others can attest to this, I thought I was and alcoholic, drug addict, eating disordered, sex addict, kleptomaniac. None of which I remotely struggle with today. Do you realize how many years it took to sort myself out after that? Don't you think a qualified therapist should have diagnosed me rather then a recovering alcoholic? Is that not abuse/mal-practice?
3. Living in fear everyday that you are there of what might happen to you that day. You are at the mercy of a staff thats having a bad day, or a girl that is out to get you or "call you out." That a staff member might decide to scream at you, or you end up on intervention sleeping in the snow in a tent. Most good programs have clearly defined levels you do this, you get this, no questions about it. It was like living with an alcoholic parent. No predictability on how you would be treated that day ever.
Now those are three major points that everyone in this forum can relate to, can we not? We could go on and on. Are these not some examples of abuse?
Anonymous:
i agree with everything u just said
aileen:
Before I was sent away, I did volunteer work. I also did many drugs and had lots of sex which hurt me and I knew it and I did a lot of stupid shit. I saw a therapist, but she was crap and it was hard to find a good one. The one I am seeing now is great, but if I had gone to her at that point in my life (before MMS), I would never have gotten anywhere.
I was taken to the local hospital where they had a mental hospital and a drug rehab. They evaluated me and asked me to join a program there. I said no, because I didn't want to waste my time when I could be out getting high.
Some of my friends were offered either a hospital stay or an arrest so they chose the former. Others were forced to go to Linden Oaks. These kids told me they all came out more messed up. They were just kept on drugs the entire time and didn't do much besides meet other druggies and make potential drug deals.
Maybe if the trauma had occurred sooner to when my parents finally started trying therapy, it would have helped. But everything had been kept so pent up inside me I didn't even know how to begin to open up to facing it. I was angry, and people who tried to help me were enemies. Even my druggie friends told me I needed help and was on the way to burnout and they were worried. I got so pissed and scared the crap out of them they apologized profusely and felt as if they did something wrong. And I listened to my friends more than anybody else... and least of all my parents or anybody in authority who tried to help.
I'm not saying I condone the hurt some people believe they were caused by MMS. I know I needed a drastic intervention of the sort, being sent far away, etc. And even then I tried to run away and get back to my friends so I could use. I was so desperate to escape feeling that anything short of that type of intervention would have been useless. I was very good at getting my own way and I would have outlasted the treatment at the hospital which has not helped any of the many people I knew who went there, and I would have figured out how to run away from any place closer especially with contact with the outside world, besides my parents.
I needed wilderness, being sent to some godforsaken place in Texas... it helped because I knew there was no way out (not to mention the weird African wildlife)... but even afterwards, when I had begun to change, it was not long enough or tough enough and I could have easily gone back to my old ways.
I may have lost my point somewhere in there. Maybe not all of the girls needed to be there. And those girls should have been weeded out when their parents applied. But I know I needed that type of intervention (out in the middle of nowhere, no outside contact, etc.) in order to even BEGIN to get my attention.
aileen:
Oh I also did agree with some of the things you said, anon.
I don't agree that taking a kid out of what they know for a couple years to help them is bad, but my parents moved while I was away and now it is very hard for me to find a footing, especially coming back so raw (partially my fault because I left without graduating). I agree that it is hard for children to be removed from their lives... but I also think you need to look at what kind of life you're removing them from. I even think if I had gone back home to Chicago after I had left, I would be smoking pot if not more by now. So I don't know... it's debatable... and it all depends on the individual and their situation.
I gained a lot from the therapy at MMS, and I haven't been able to find a therapist as helpful as some of the ones we had there (I specifically had Jim Rogers, but Gary and John helped me too ... I had a couple groups with John because I wasn't doing well).
I think what helped me a lot was that I was pretty forthcoming. I have never liked to keep things back, so it was not hard for me. I know that when you have been sexually abused, you need to talk about it, all the details no matter how disgusting. And it is not a shameful thing, or it should not be, and if the person felt shamed, either it came from inner beliefs or the environment (the group, or the therapist which I doubt).
And secrets are rarely good. There is shame or, worse, manipulation/control involved with secrecy, and that is a lot of what fucked up my family and myself. I can understand if they made them talk about random secrets that were not relevant, but I never saw that when I was there.
I went to MMS around 2002-2004. Maybe the school had changed for the better since you'd left, and it is always and still changing. I know I still had problems with wanting approval, but that is in many ways a part of life, and it is healthy in some ways because adolescent morality is based on approval from peers.
I can understand how people would feel hurt by things that happened to them and I read some accounts that left me saddened because a girl was harmed. I understand your points, and I may sound like I am championing the school (I am in part because they helped me) but I am just looking at the other side of what you were talking about. I do that, sometimes too much... I look at the other side of what I'm talking about even and can never form an opinion because I do that too much.
And sorry if I sound argumentative, I don't know if I do... I just lapse into that sometimes because I like to argue too much.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version