OK, I shall now disclose for everybody's information where I am am who my therapists are, in order to assuage any real or potential concern about the veracity of what I have been describing to all of you, and to describe for all of you my present situation and circumstances.
I have been posting to this board from within Meadow Haven; we are in Lakeville MA and my therapists' names are Bob and Judy PARDON.
Meadow Haven is a residential program that helps survivors of cults of all kinds, and also survivors of certain abusive and overly controlling relationships that took place in some religious, psycho-therapeutic, or otherwise cult-like context.
They (Bob and Judy) work closely with Wellspring, and to compare Wellspring to Meadow Haven I'll use the following medical analogy. Wellspring is comparable to a cult-trauma emergency room, and Meadow Haven is a longer-term program, kind of like extended physical therapy that one would go through after being hit by a truck or something, but it's not physical therapy, it's
psychotherapy. Wellspring and Meadow Haven refer people to one another on a regular basis.
There are only two programs of this kind in the United States. Wellspring is one of them and Meadow Haven is the other. Wellspring is the ER, and is short-term; Meadow Haven is the longer-term therapeutic community program.
The Pardons are well familiar with CEDU clone programs and the like, and Bob just loaned me a copy of
Help At Any Cost to read. Amazingly, they'd never heard of DAYTOP until I told them about it.
BTW: I just started that book; I skipped the introduction and finished Chapter One last night. Tonight I'll read the introduction and probably start Chapter Two.
Read of Meadow Haven and the Pardons here:
http://www.meadowhaven.org/index.htmhttp://www.meadowhaven.org/the_people.htmThe Pardons are well known in cult-ed and cult recovery circles and the Meadow Haven program is nothing like a 12-step group environment, not at all, nothing whatsoever. I am definitely in a safe place and we are not controlled or coerced here in the least. I am in the driver's seat of my own treatment all the way.
The Pardons are committed Christians, but they are hardly preachy and never try and impose their beliefs on anybody at any time; not in any way, shape or, form.
Bob and Judy PARDON (my therapists) are without a doubt two of the most compassionate, encouraging, and positive people I have ever had the privilege to know, not to mention two of
the foremost experts on the subject of thought reform in this country, and it is a pure blessing to be here in and therapy with them, to sit under them as my mentors. I am 100% confident in their integrity, professional ethics, and capability, and am so very grateful to be here with them. I am very very fortunate, all of us here are. It is my incredible privilege to be here, and I cannot overstate that point.
These are very highly competent people that I am with, certainly not Puerto Rican hack armchair psychologists or anything like that.
They are absolute professionals and I am 100% confident about their competence and ethics.
I consider myself highly blessed to have them. The Pardons literally saved my life. That is no understatement and none of us here takes that fact lightly.
Furthermore, I am in about three hours of psychotherapy a week and am making real progress.
Check them out if you're not familiar with them, or have never heard of Meadow Haven.