PTSD : POST TRAUMATIC SEED DISORDER

[GregFL]

Thanks for the belated reply anon, and Ginger is absolutely correct, no one here cares about your spelling.

I find your responses very interesting. When I have some time I will respond in more depth. Kind of busy at work right now.

Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
--  ALAN BARTH, The Loyalty of Free Men, 1951.

[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2003-11-11 06:04 ]

[LeighBright]

Pro or con - I'm looking for people who are willing to discuss their Seed experiences with me! I use first names only - and have fun creating new names for those of you who are unwilling to give your real names. Shoot, you don't even have to tell me your real name!!

And for that particular someone who told me to "call when you tell me to" - I did call, when you said - repeatedly, in fact, and I left my number. Any time you want to try and coordinate with me, I'm still wanting to interview you! (You know who you are and you better get in touch with me!). [Please!]. :roll:  

And for the really paranoid: PO Box 534, Bristow, VA 20136. You can be as anonymous as you want and say what you want!

But I still need more Seed people!! PLEASE people! You chat on these boards - why not chat with me? I WON'T expose you. I only want to tell your story - pro or con - life saved or life destroyed - I ask the questions and you answer. No hassle, no argument, no judgement, no fight. I ask, you give your opinion, your feelings, your thoughts and I listen. C'mon! What's so hard about that? Give me a chance. If you don't like it, you can always hang up!

[Anonymous]

I can,t imagine that you would find many people who truly feel in their hearts what art and his thugs have done was right.  I truly feel that they did nothing but distroy families and many lives.  art and his followers thought he was God.  truth is just the complete opposite.  They have destroyed so many futures.  I feel so sad for anyone who experienced the brain washing and manipulation that has gone on and still probaly continues to this day.  many seedling have sacraficed getting married and having children for this perverted power king.  this is so sad.  many will never know what they have missed.  art is a criminal.  i was in the seed for a short period and met my husband there.  we had a son and moved to florida so my husband could return to the seed.  art controlled every bit of our lives even after my husband graduated the program.  i was not in the program but aloud them to manipulate us.  we needed to ask permission to visit home.  it finally ended after five years of torture when i got pregnat with my second child.  art and libby wanted me to abort.  there was no way.  they tried everything to get me to abort.  
we moved back to cleveland.  i became a nurse and ended up having four great children.  my oldest 21.  and my child to be aborted is now a beautiful 16 yr old honor roll student, cheerleader, socker player, in nursing vocation with many goals set ahead of her.  libby she just wasnt a little piece of jelly that should have been aborted.  you and art should have been aborted and it would have saved a lot of pain in peoples live.  i cant believe art is still living.  he should have gotten the electric chair a long time ago.

[GregFL]

unbelievable story, and welcome to our site. Many people who were in the Seed do not realize the huge cultic pressures that the "inner circle" people were under. Many people went in, graduated and promptly never thought about what was really going on. Those like you that had Art and his croonies controlling your day to day lives really understand that the Seed was a viscious cult, and little more.

Any Irishman who doubts the reality of selective enforcement ought to take just a moment to comtemplate the etymology of the term "paddy waggon".
--Antigen

[Anonymous]

i always had arts number.  it is very difficult to fight off your family when your under age.  When the jim jone massacre happened i thought of art immediately.  you know we always drank the koolaid.  waco texas, the seed,  all the same.  art indirectly took a lot of our lives.  im pretty much recovered from the damage that they caused. ive gone on.  my heart goes out to those who are still being victimized, the families that have vanished due to art and massive ego.  powerless we all were made to make him think in his head he was so powerful.  he can fool some of the people sometimes but he cant fool everyone.

[Anonymous]

I was in SR84 in the early 80's. I remember, a guy coming back into the program. He had a wife and a small child [son] maybe one yr. His wife was not a seedling, I am a bit foggy on this. But I remeber, feeling very sorry for her being an outsider of sorts. The baby was blonde and would come over and swim in our pool. The wife would struggle to play football on the beach in Dania, I remember she hurt her leg. Are you her?

[GregFL]

To both Anons above, welcome to this forum.  Please consider choosing a user name for future posts. You can still remain anon this way, but your posts can a cohesiveness and mean more when a user name is behind it.  Just for consideration...


I really appreciate having you two here. There are many people that went thru the seed that don't know the other story, the "inner circle" Seed experience, and you two can really shed some light on those experiences, those Jim Jonsey days, Art reigning over your personal lives, the days at the beach, at Art's house, asking permission to date even after you graduated, Art financing inner core members into business, etc.  

Please share these stories with us and thank you once again.

There's no biochemical test to distinguish the so-called manic-depressive person from the elated or despondent football fan. Nor is there any resan to assume the manic-depressive's inner experience is driven by twisted molecules while the football fan's is driven, at worst, by twisted values
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312113668/circlofmiamithem' target='_new'> Dr. Peter Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry

[Kathy]

I was wondering what kind of reason LIbby and Art gave you for their wanting you to abort.  MY GOD! The lengths these people went to.!  What was your husband's response at that time?

[Anonymous]

I was wrong. the couple I was remebering were from Kentucky, I know who you are . You had dark hair , you became very overheated during an endless baseball game behind SR84. I remember you and your husband had been thru the program before and moved to Cleveland. Then he came back on the front row....I have wondered about several people who 'vanished' Roger, K.P. they were both from the Cleveland area. I hope you are well, happily away from the control of the Seed.

[GregFL]

I too hope you are well. When I was 15, there was this beautiful intelligent girl had gone thru the seed...never really used drugs before the Seed. Her and I used to Go Bowling and hang a little. Truth be told I kind of had a crush on her, but she incessently talked about the seed and Art Barker and eventually we drifted away from our friendship, Then she left St Pete.  A few years later, after my ordeal with the Seed, my father and the St pete police, I went into the lauderhill mall and there she was. I was excited to see her and tried to talk to her, but all she would say to me is "you need to get straight." and that she was working for the Seed in Lauderdale.

Anyone remember Maggie Canfield  and know where she is today? Maggie, if you are reading this, HELLO and pleaes post.  You were a great kid when I knew you.

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

--Benjamin Franklin, (1773)

[Anonymous]

reply to the abortion that libbi wanted me to have.  she stated that if i had the baby my husband would go back to using drugs.  my thoughts are that they wanted complete control.  why haven't other married seedling had kids?  another reason was my father-in-law was well to do and every time my husband would get laid off from work  he was told to sit in the group and to call his dad for money instead of looking for another job.  my in-laws recieved many letters for donations from the seed.  lord only knows how much my in-laws donated till i put a halt to it.  my husband wasn't even on the program anymore.  they wanted to hook us but i wasnt going for it.  we were told that we would never amount to anything.  well art barker if you are read this you can kiss my ...  i really don't waste my time thinking about all the negative things.  i do think about all the people that have been victimized like us and where are they?  what happened to them?  so many where there one day and gone the next without an explaination except the f..... up.  my son was a little blonde.  he was expected at the age of 2 to act like a seedling.  many of attempts of molding him were made.  he is now 21. healthy .  he does not recall much of the seed or their ways thank God!  i do have brown hair.  the other couple that you were think of had a little boy with brown hair and the wife was a seedling.  the husband was not in the seed till after his wife was in the program for a while.  they were in the military.  my husband is originally from ontario.  im from cleveland.  we have been married for 23 yrs.  we have the four children and live a very normal life.  we make our own dissions in life and have for a long time.  we dont see many people from the seed anymore.  when we got married most of our wedding party were people from the seed.  a couple from columbus area and some from cleveland.  two from the cleveland area who i just found out has passed.  there are many who i cared so much about that are no longer in our lives.  i miss some friendships.  i always wondered if there were others who have felt the way i did.  no one would ever discuss their true feelings.  seedling have lived the biggest lies.  bye for now.

[Anonymous]

seedlings have lived big lies, anon, but so have other cult members. The Seed was actually two cults in one, and you were in the most damaging aspect of the Seed, the inner core close to Art. This society is chock full of ex moonies, ex seedlings, straightlings,hare krisna, EST and other cults. Many don't even realize they were in a dangerous group, that was always the other group.  We all live a lie to some extent.

You sound like you have come thru the other side, and I am happy and proud of you for overcoming what some never do.

GregFL


BTW, did you ever here my story about Art by the Pool and Me some 25 years ago? I am dying for some one else to step up and tell what they know about this event. It was a big deal for me and I am sure it had to be a big deal at the Seed.

[pigeon]

Just read this entire subject heading for the first time.  Amazed by the postings about the seed as something positive.  I do not think of the seed as a positive experience in my life! They
stole my mind, seperated me from my family and kept me living in constant fear long after I had graduated.  I was twelve when my parents put me in there so when the staff and my oldcomers said they could read my mind--see right through me-- I believed it.  Unlike some other people, who  said they eventually hit a point where they realized they were just faking it I never cam to that realization.  I wish I had. Instead I struggled to control my mind, secretly fearing that I would be discovered and put back on the front row for nothing worse then then thinking some guy was cute or not making my bed.  I've always said it was brainwashing I've always said it was more like a cult then a treatment center.  This site has helped me pinpoint more clearly why that is true.
I have chronic muscle pain and a therapist once suggested to me it may have been caused by the constant stress and tension I experienced at the seed.  
I was in group therapy for survivors of sexual abuse and kept wondering why everyone else said they felt safer together talking about those things  but I did not.  Finally I realized that because of the seed a group is not a safe place for me, I was abused by a group.

Now to my mixed feelings.  Unlike many of you I do not think of my pre-seed friends fondly either.  They were mostly high school boys who molested me,  girls who regularly turned on me, boys my age, who I once saw dislocated a girl's hip while trying to gang rape her in a boy scout fun house at a school fair(yes, they were boy scouts.) I remember when I went back to school I was happy that I couldn't talk to them.  I remember that it was suddenly easy to have no friends where previosly it had been so important that I ended up with the worst friends imaginable. In my less guarded moments, I wished I had just done it myself and avoided the seed but I am pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to.  I feared the seed more than I feared my old friends and because of that I learned that my old gang couldn't hurt me if I didn't have anything to do with them.   Sometimes it feels like six of one half dozen of another abuse by my friends or abuse in the seed.  The seed at least had an end although I realize the damage is endless.  It took me about five years to admit to myself that I hated it there and about ten to admit that it was an abusive cult.  
Does anyone else have these sort of mixed feelings?

[GregFL]

I never really was conflicted because I was so angry about the seed and the lack of understanding and rejection I got for fighting the conformity, but I understand those that do.

I feel bad that you had to choose one abusive situation over another that on the surface appeared more abusive. It is tragic that we all share a lost childhood, but nice that we can talk about it among people who understand.

As for not feeling safe in Groups, After the Seed I spent considerable effort not allowing myself to think about what I went thru, but I never resloved  why after leaving the Seed I always felt panic whelling up in me whenever I got in any group, especially groups seperated in two with a speaker.  Be it church, rotary club meetings, whatever, I still to this day, 30 years later, usually excuse myself and go outside until the meeting is over. The experience was that powerfull to my young pysche that I carry forward to this day remnants, scars, that were put there so many years ago. These church and other groups somehow now enable my flight mechanism and represent danger to me emotionally, even tho intellectually I know better.

Thanks for your post Pigeon.

[pigeon]

Yeah, groups really make me contrary, argumenative.  I think it's the flight or fight response.  I couldn't fight before, so I fight now.
When I was in group therapy I was always "the truth teller," which was fine but it's sort of isolating to always be confrontational.
When I first realized what I had really gone thru in the seed I had this fantasy that I would go back(graduates always welcomed, right?)put up my hand and tell them off.  Never actually tried to do it, way to scarey.