Hi Trish,
Yes all of those things are common and normal for people who have been involved in high demand coercive thought reform environments.
On several occasions in my therapy over the past year I have discussed these very topics, including the obsession with speaking in the first person.
Perhaps the most intellectual and fact based information available is this
ReFocus They can offer referals to people with experience in helping people suffering or questioning the after effects of high demand groups.
The precept of addiction as our primary diagnosis was a ruse at best and sheer deception in my own opinion. I personally believe that the program was a function of the cultural backlash from the radicalism of the sixties. I think that many if not all of us were merely used as fodder for the cannons of the button down pre-boomer generation in their attempts to stop the natural evolution of our society to one based on more liberal and tolerant ideologies. Indeed, if you visit the DFAF.org website you may find that they continue to be obsessed with what they refer to as the 'druggie culture' and its sole responsiblity for all of this nations social ills. Simple answers to complex problems are their specialty.
When I entered therapy I remained in individual sessions for months, I was terribly uncomfortable with group environments, this fear even kept me out of school for 2 decades. When I finally entered a group session starting in the summer of this year, I began to listen to the experiences of people who had been a variety of high demand groups- Eckankar, International Churches of Christ and other various martial arts, religious and spiritual groups. I was stunned at the familiarity of their stories, at just how precisely their own after effects matched many of mine.
My point is that Straight Inc. was no different than any other high demand coercive group, they had ulterior motives that were unrelated to our individual needs.
Dr. Robert J Lifton best describes the criteria for a thought reform environment, and I think that his
Dr. Margaret Singer who herself helped shut down the Cinci program.
My own
here, if that is of interest to you, it proved to be a fine release for me to go through it bit by bit and debunk the nonsense.
There is a list of
suggested reading on thought reform, and addiction theory here, if that might be helpful. This list duplicates some of the links on my page and here, but includes links to Amazon.com for a number of books on the issue that I found helpful in making my own determinations about the validity or lack of such in the practices of the group.
I hope this is helpful to you, and glad to see you starting to question some of the less attractive after effects. It is possible to escape these effcts, and it is possible to heal, but be patient, it takes time and can involve dredging up some really uncomfortable stuff.
Everyone has to take their own path, and that in itself is a vaild and healthy departure from the dogma and doctrine of the group- that we all suffered from a silly made up disease and required exactly the same treatment and abuse.
