Various posters have shared that they have suffered PTSD years and years after CEDU. Even posters who are "successful" in many areas say that CEDU has done serious harm to their relationships and has affected them in ways that still impact them today.
What I am trying to discern is how? How specifically has it affected you guys? How does the PTSD affect you and how do you trace it to CEDU?
I AM DEFINITELY NOT UNDERMINING ANYONE'S EXPERIENCE AT ALL. I have been very forthcoming about what I think of CEDU. I'm just trying to make sense of CEDU's impact on my life better and also other earlier events in my life. Sometimes people articulate exactly what I'm feeling but didn't know how to express.
I know that when I split CEDU I was totally unprepared for the real world because I still thought in terms of the black and white rules, bans, and lingo of CEDU. I was trying to "live in agreement" even though I split to get away from it. I had a hard time with friends expecting them to be totally honest and living in accordance to CEDU's arbitarary set of values. All of this was TOTALLY unconscious. Anyway, that is one example.
Really difficult question, but I'll attempt to give a reader's digest version here.
I have a major, 2 year long, life and personality altering experience in my background that I don't trust, and that produces serious cognitive dissonance. My self image, relationships, and outlook, have all been touched by the experience. Added to that, there aren't many people who can relate to my experience; I feel privilaged to have one in my life who I'm close to.
Im avoiding the term PTSD here because it obscures the very organic and intuitive mechanism. You and I were snapped into and out of an intense, frightening and alien culture with no warning, and we assimilated it into our outlook on life. Its only called "trauma" because it exagerrated our defensive and survival mechanisms to the point where we use them in our daily lives in ways others don't.
When I got out of NWA I watched my back like mad. I tried to stay in agreement. I flipped the first time I kissed a girl, and I had propheet flashbacks when I heard neil diamond. I was acting strongly on a survival mechanism that no longer applied.
The other side of this is that I made some behavoiral changes at cedu that helped me get along better with others. This was also part of my survival strategy as it helped me keep from getting chewed out in raps.
The necessity to use these survival strategies has dimmed with the stimuli that necessetated them in the first place, however, many of them remain to greater or lesser degrees.
