remebering myself

[psy]

i went to CEDU and i totally agree of 12 group member we have only 5 left the rest killed themselves after graduationg CEDU. CEDU is hell

CEDU (and it's clones) have a special talent for that.  Without the mind, the body dies...  Every day, attacked...  Told you weren't being real until you believed it...  If you wanted to succeed in program, you had to pretend...  After a while, it wasn't pretend anymore.  You couldn't confide in anybody... You didn't know who was pretending and who really believed program was god.  That is what makes it a cult.  Program is established as the saviour:  "[generic saviour figure] saved my life...  without [generic saviour figure] i would be dead.  I was headed down the wrong path...  [generic saviour figure] helped me find out who I really am"

When you realize what was done...  How do you feel...  Somebody raped your mind.  Alternating rage, pain, and weakness.  Self doubt (were they really right)... because once you believed something 100%, it's always in the back of your mind, making you question... You question reality, who you were, what is love, what is friendship... because it was all redefined.  Somewhere, you believe you can't make it without program...  You are programmed to fulfill that prophecy (and you will) unless you realize what was done.  These feeling, these thoughts, these memories, this torment... it's permanent.  Is there any hope to feel better?  For me, it involves facing the past, rather than "moving on" and ignoring it.  I feel better after speaking about what happened to me...  I found release in the form of helping others, introspection, and research.  I knew who I was before program, they made me forget, I waited too long to think about it, I didn't want to, and now I can't remember... but i'm trying... and as I try, the more I remember, the more I feel alive once again.  Others would rather forget (who wants to remember...  it's easier to "move on").  Others find release in anything from heroin to suicide.  It helps to forget.  I can understand that... When you have nothing to lose, when there is no hope, when you feel it can't get any worse...

How many others feel like this?

[nimdA]

Believe it or not I do.

Though I found my redemption through helping others. Same process different direction. Hard to explain.

[Anonymous]

i went to CEDU and i totally agree of 12 group member we have only 5 left the rest killed themselves after graduationg CEDU. CEDU is hell

CEDU (and it's clones) have a special talent for that.  Without the mind, the body dies...  Every day, attacked...  Told you weren't being real until you believed it...  If you wanted to succeed in program, you had to pretend...  After a while, it wasn't pretend anymore.  You couldn't confide in anybody... You didn't know who was pretending and who really believed program was god.  That is what makes it a cult.  Program is established as the saviour:  "[generic saviour figure] saved my life...  without [generic saviour figure] i would be dead.  I was headed down the wrong path...  [generic saviour figure] helped me find out who I really am"

When you realize what was done...  How do you feel...  Somebody raped your mind.  Alternating rage, pain, and weakness.  Self doubt (were they really right)... because once you believed something 100%, it's always in the back of your mind, making you question... You question reality, who you were, what is love, what is friendship... because it was all redefined.  Somewhere, you believe you can't make it without program...  You are programmed to fulfill that prophecy (and you will) unless you realize what was done.  These feeling, these thoughts, these memories, this torment... it's permanent.  Is there any hope to feel better?  For me, it involves facing the past, rather than "moving on" and ignoring it.  I feel better after speaking about what happened to me...  I found release in the form of helping others, introspection, and research.  I knew who I was before program, they made me forget, I waited too long to think about it, I didn't want to, and now I can't remember... but i'm trying... and as I try, the more I remember, the more I feel alive once again.  Others would rather forget (who wants to remember...  it's easier to "move on").  Others find release in anything from heroin to suicide.  It helps to forget.  I can understand that... When you have nothing to lose, when there is no hope, when you feel it can't get any worse...

How many others feel like this?

Yeah, I feel ya. There was some people who might have helped me before, a long time ago, early after I got out. But all the ways the program ingrained in me to doubt anything I said, anything at all, and the effects of the kind of emotional abuse that was huge and constant in the cult: that anything you said WAS used against you, it made it hard to even get comfort and counseling. I couldn't stand to be misinterpreted and defined anymore, I was just really sensitive to that, and I didn't trust people, and I didn't have the skills to simply stand up for myself and my own truth. If someone abused me they were only echoing the self-abusive voices in my own head. I couldn't get through to people, or the other way around. It DOES hurt that much to be destroyed like we were destroyed. It's really real, like Van Morrison says. So are you. If you suffer, suffer well, don't leave your soul in hell.

[Oz girl]

Perhaps there needs to be a specialist counselling service for those who have come out of this system

[Antigen]

http://wellspringretreat.org/

[psy]

Perhaps there needs to be a specialist counselling service for those who have come out of this system

First off... At least for me, I don't feel that confortable with counseling of any sort anymore.  Furthermore anybody every tried to explain this shit to a shrink?  Maybe one that specialized in cult-recovery could understand...  I don't know.  What I do know is that other survivors understand, and they actually believe me (because they have seen these things with their own eyes).  Sure you might get the occasional troll who comes on and says "oh get over it, it wasn't that bad"... but by and large, they get royally blasted to pieces on Fornits.  What is needed, in my opinion, is not counseling, but rather a support group with a very strict set of guidelines (to avoid a re-creation of raps)...

That being said.  I feel better merely by posting on Fornits and hearing from others who have had similar experiences.

[Antigen]

If you wanted to succeed in program, you had to pretend... After a while, it wasn't pretend anymore.

Old wisdom says that if you tell a lie often enough you start to believe it. This is so much more powerful than most people think. When I was in the program, they called me by my given name, saying my familiar name was a druggie tie. Logically, of course, I knew better.

10 years out, I find some old stuff my dad had kept, including a school art project I had done in like 4th grade. For some reason, that came back to me about my name. I cried when I turned it over. I really half expected to see proof that I was crazy instead of exoneration on the back of the thing.

[psy]

If you wanted to succeed in program, you had to pretend... After a while, it wasn't pretend anymore.

Old wisdom says that if you tell a lie often enough you start to believe it.

"Fake it til you make it!"...  Whatever legitimate meaning that phrase might have had program totally bastardized.

This is so much more powerful than most people think. When I was in the program, they called me by my given name, saying my familiar name was a druggie tie. Logically, of course, I knew better.

As was my girlfriend at the time, as were any of my friends.  As was any clothing or objects I was attached to... they wanted to take me "out of my comfort zone" (euphemism for: "make him miserable and take away any tie to identity")  Millions of small, seemingly benign symbolic details add up after a while.  Sometimes I wonder if the staff are smart enough to realize the psychological significance of the elements of program they run.  Perhaps only the "designers" knew (Dederich, Wasserman, et al.)  A good deal of the staff at Benchmark didn't even have high school diplomas ("real world experience" was Jayne's selling point on this)

[nimdA]

I thought you had to be an ex-con also to work at Benchmark.

[nimdA]

Perhaps there needs to be a specialist counselling service for those who have come out of this system

First off... At least for me, I don't feel that confortable with counseling of any sort anymore.  Furthermore anybody every tried to explain this shit to a shrink?  Maybe one that specialized in cult-recovery could understand...  I don't know.  What I do know is that other survivors understand, and they actually believe me (because they have seen these things with their own eyes).  Sure you might get the occasional troll who comes on and says "oh get over it, it wasn't that bad"... but by and large, they get royally blasted to pieces on Fornits.  What is needed, in my opinion, is not counseling, but rather a support group with a very strict set of guidelines (to avoid a re-creation of raps)...

That being said.  I feel better merely by posting on Fornits and hearing from others who have had similar experiences.

Try explaining it to a Korean shrink.

Korean Shrink: In Korea we hit out children all the time. Its good for them.

Me: Errrrr... ummmm...

Korean Shrink: You need pills?

Me: Sure I'll take another handful of the purple ones again.

[Anonymous]

eliscu, its good to see someone from elan who comports themselves with dignity and decency

im sorry you had to spend time with such manipulative, underhanded, sadists

[exhausted]

Eliscu

I bet they made you pay for that (not abusing your peers)

What is wrong with these people? I won't even change the names of my animals for fear of mentally confusing them - but like Psy says, it has to be a build up of lots of little mind manipulations to make the whole thing work, you can only chip away at a person for so long before hitting the weak spot that makes them crumble into teeny pieces. So sad.

[psy]

Eliscu

I bet they made you pay for that (not abusing your peers)

What is wrong with these people? I won't even change the names of my animals for fear of mentally confusing them - but like Psy says, it has to be a build up of lots of little mind manipulations to make the whole thing work, you can only chip away at a person for so long before hitting the weak spot that makes them crumble into teeny pieces. So sad.

I like to think I mind manipulated them right back, I was hell and I never stop being a rebel, I never let them break what I knew was right and wrong. I got lots of Physical Abuse, but what killed me was watching all of the Brainwash around me. I mostly lived in a corner.
Only the people I like were allowed to watch me in the end because I was too "real" with anyone else. Vile disgusting just to entertain myself. I went nuts in my own way. :rofl:  :rofl:

that's actually one way to make it.. though it only works if you can suceed at making a complete farce out of everythign.  I know one kid who did that.. and only one... sounds a bit like you.  He never took anything seriously at all, he knew exactly what was going on, and he wouldn't give them anythign to work from, giving them blatant ... and i mean really really blatant bullshit for writing assignments (type of stuff like putting:  I used to have sex with thousands of women, and i feel so ashaimed on his dirt list).  Sure he was on bans most of the time, or isolated.  but he never followed bans, and when they isolated him, he always, always, found a way to amuse pretty much everybody else but the staff...  Kid was literally a super-genius.  He could take apart a car and put it back together.. crazy savant like intelligence.  We both figured out the program.. but i never realized the actual wisdom behind his blatant absurdity...  I thought it was easier to play it safe and try and fake it..  I guess he knew where that lead...  He lasted about 4 months before they exiled him permanantly to motel...  Well until his parents stopped paying that is.

But hey,, he can get a job in the motel right?  right.. and he has to put benchmark down on the address and phone number of the applicatoin, and let program take his interview phone calls "benchmark young adult school how may i help you ("oh shit.. it's one of those kids from that school for fuck-ups")"  And hey. if you manage to get a job...(and they know if you have one and dont' tell them since they check on you three times a day.) you gotta sign the check over to program... so you won't buy drugs.. roight... then when they yank you're level after a few months of work, and yo're back to level 1 (we heard some rumors... write a dirt list)... and they make you write and rewrite a dirtlist until you confess to somethign... they don't care what...  If you refuse?  You must leave....  without your money of course...  When you're knocked back to level 1 they can fine all your hard earned cash away for things like "breaking bans / isolating" while simultaniosly telling your parents how you "relapsed" into  bad bahavior.. mixing AA with CEDU, Synanon, and a large dose of BS...  But hey... when you run out of cash, they can always fuck your parent through the "revolving fund" which is supposed to be refilled by parents when it is empty according to the enrollment conract.

Oh it's a well thought out system folks... and that's a little more on how they can still fuck you with you even after you're 18...   shit..  Some of those kids spent their entire teenage life in program.  Robbed of perhaps the most influencial, precious part of their lives..  But hey... I had those years.. It's just college they borked for me...

[Rachael]

Eliscu

I bet they made you pay for that (not abusing your peers)

What is wrong with these people? I won't even change the names of my animals for fear of mentally confusing them - but like Psy says, it has to be a build up of lots of little mind manipulations to make the whole thing work, you can only chip away at a person for so long before hitting the weak spot that makes them crumble into teeny pieces. So sad.

I like to think I mind manipulated them right back, I was hell and I never stop being a rebel, I never let them break what I knew was right and wrong. I got lots of Physical Abuse, but what killed me was watching all of the Brainwash around me. I mostly lived in a corner.
Only the people I like were allowed to watch me in the end because I was too "real" with anyone else. Vile disgusting just to entertain myself. I went nuts in my own way. :rofl:  :rofl:

that's actually one way to make it.. though it only works if you can suceed at making a complete farce out of everythign.  I know one kid who did that.. and only one... sounds a bit like you.  He never took anything seriously at all, he knew exactly what was going on, and he wouldn't give them anythign to work from, giving them blatant ... and i mean really really blatant bullshit for writing assignments (type of stuff like putting:  I used to have sex with thousands of women, and i feel so ashaimed on his dirt list).  Sure he was on bans most of the time, or isolated.  but he never followed bans, and when they isolated him, he always, always, found a way to amuse pretty much everybody else but the staff...  Kid was literally a super-genius.  He could take apart a car and put it back together.. crazy savant like intelligence.  We both figured out the program.. but i never realized the actual wisdom behind his blatant absurdity...  I thought it was easier to play it safe and try and fake it..  I guess he knew where that lead...  He lasted about 4 months before they exiled him permanantly to motel...  Well until his parents stopped paying that is.

But hey,, he can get a job in the motel right?  right.. and he has to put benchmark down on the address and phone number of the applicatoin, and let program take his interview phone calls "benchmark young adult school how may i help you ("oh shit.. it's one of those kids from that school for fuck-ups")"  And hey. if you manage to get a job...(and they know if you have one and dont' tell them since they check on you three times a day.) you gotta sign the check over to program... so you won't buy drugs.. roight... then when they yank you're level after a few months of work, and yo're back to level 1 (we heard some rumors... write a dirt list)... and they make you write and rewrite a dirtlist until you confess to somethign... they don't care what...  If you refuse?  You must leave....  without your money of course...  When you're knocked back to level 1 they can fine all your hard earned cash away for things like "breaking bans / isolating" while simultaniosly telling your parents how you "relapsed" into  bad bahavior.. mixing AA with CEDU, Synanon, and a large dose of BS...  But hey... when you run out of cash, they can always fuck your parent through the "revolving fund" which is supposed to be refilled by parents when it is empty according to the enrollment conract.

Oh it's a well thought out system folks... and that's a little more on how they can still fuck you with you even after you're 18...   shit..  Some of those kids spent their entire teenage life in program.  Robbed of perhaps the most influencial, precious part of their lives..  But hey... I had those years.. It's just college they borked for me...

Yeah, in AARC there was this amazing guy who subtly mocked his way through the program. He pretended he was narcoleptic for months - falling asleep in the middle of telling an incident or standing in line for food. He also pretended to be on some permanent acid trip. He would talk about "the aliens" and how when you feel an itch "it's really the aliens touching you" and then he go on about how he could see the aliens right now.... "oh my god, there's one right behind you!" It was awesome, he lasted like that for a while, eventually cracked and "got the program". But out of everyone there, he was the only one who would talk to me about real things. He kept my mind working a little while longer; he'd come up to me and ask a question like "What's the closest star to earth".... funny but that was the nicest thing anyone did for me while I was there. Just giving me the chance to think about something.

Rachael

[Ursus]

This thread has actually brought me to tears.  I don't know what to say, but if you think about what people here have gone through these past few years and expand them to thirty-plus, that might just come close.

Basically most of my adult life has been spent suffering in silence and obscurity after the mind-fuck I was put through.  That's most of my life!  Wasted!

Psy, I share your distrust of the psychiatric establishment.  The bad ones are part of the program industry; the good ones... just can't understand.  Maybe if this industry is still around another 30 years, there will be folks schooled and aware of what this shit is.  But that will be too late for most of us here.

Eliscu, I've popped in Elan from time to time.  I have some inkling of what you are up against.  Keep up the faith.  It took Deborah years of lonely work posting in HLA before the tide turned.  Now that joint is hoppin'.