Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

I made note of Bingo's post on my site.

I blogged that corporate record link.

That to me, is the key record for a class action suit.

Sammie get us a lawyer!!!!!

If you can offer me a referal to Assholes Anonymous I would love to have that linked from my site-

I can so so so understand that feeling of shifting from foot to foot and hyperventilating etc....and no it is not easy even once I have identified the sources of my induced behaviors. It ain't easy no matter what, that much I have found out for sure.

LIFE82 is clearly in a great deal of pain, has some serious issues with socialization skills, and has made it abundantly clear that they have not found a way to escape the personality traits induced by the high demand group in their own past.

I can only offer my hope that whoever this person is, they can find some sense of peace and understanding of what was done to them, and how it informs their behavior today. It is painful to me to read what this person  writes, and if that gives them pleasure then I hope that I have helped them somehow.

This forum provides this person a safe outlet for their clear frustration with his/her own life and experience. Their expressions of anger, outrage and clear sense of loss are common in people who have been abused as children, it is not unexpected or shocking.

I for one take it as a clear reminder of how I behaved as little as two years ago, even earlier this year. It is not a pretty mirror, but it is one that is useful in measure.

There are postings here with links to resource material, educational guides, and therapuetic support for those of us who choose to avail ourselves of such help. Some people are simply not ready to heal, a process referred to as 'keeping the wound open', and as such, are enboldened by the safety and anonymity of this forum to spew their unfocused rage and resentment at anyone willing to take the bait.

Accusation, resentment, rage, scapegoating, tranference, acting out, a pervasive sense of loss, agression, hate, disgust, repulsion, denial, frustration and self-loathing are all a part of the healing process, but they represent only the very early steps, and can commonly be eliminated via taking the more difficult and time consuming step of forgiveness, both of ourselves and others.

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.

I have to point out that it is entirely possible, if not altogether likely, that there are people closely associated with the program and it's underlying foundation and offspring who would have no moral compuction about trying to post divisive, aggressive and subversive commentary to this survivors forum as a form of baiting, or with hopes of triggering our various Post Cult Stress Disorders.

Perhaps we should all keep this in mind the next time we read a confrontational post. Your mileage may vary.

Here is long list of good resource material for those truly interested in learning about the process of coercive thought reform.

http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.phtml4 ... &forum=7&0

My parents acknowledge that the program was abusive in many ways, and my father says that he was always suspicious of what was happening at the cult.

However they also remain firm that they had few other options, traditional treatment programs were few and far between & expensive, I had redily admitted to being addicted- I thought I was- and the cult offered a cost effective option.

I can tell that to come to full grips with what I have learned - with what most of us know- would be extremely painful for them.