remebering myself

[psy]

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!

9/10 ppl from Benchmark that I know understand it was a mindfuck.. most just don't have any hope left to put up a fight.  And then there's that one person... the one who had it roughest, the one who was the bottom of the social pile in program... the one that staff made the mascot... humiliated on a regular basis and convinced to like it...  Personal appearance was judged and censored according to the whim of the staff... You could wear black.. but only if it was with something else... if you wore black pants and a black shirt, it was back to State St for a change of outfit (and "work ethic" probably)...  Makeup?  verboten..  yes for both sexes...

And then this person ends up on the streets  yeah she runs.... with a boy of course.. and she failed like program told her to...  ended up on meth...  She said she had nothing to lose...  I gave them shelter as awols at my motel room for a night (actually got thrown out of that motel for that one)... They told my parents I was having drug dealers and all sorts of stuff at my motel rooom... yeah... for some reason they just found me a new motel (they rotate between motels in the redlans area since this sort of shit happens a lot, and they like to shuffle the kids so they can't locate each-other easily without asking around, which is risky).. the boys always find the girls though.. that is a given... though most get caught by staff with thier 3/day visits and surprises at night.

they stopped piss testing my in motel... they knew i didn't do drugs... (which is funny since they spent a shitload of effort earlier trying to convince me i did)...  I was more than a little belligerent in motel... remember I was exiled after i figured out they fucked with my mind and i started raising hell.  Then there was this one time some kid in the program gave me coffee in the motel... he put grains in a tupperware dish with water, microwaived it, and used a paper towel as a filter...  Since coffee was both verboten and a rarity in program... and boy do i love coffee...  yumm... but afterwards... he decided to play a little prank on me... he told me the coffee had weed in it... i was horrified.. horrified...  I didn't want to be caught with thc in my system... i would be sent to impatient (and then back) or to the streets...  So i was really pissed, and before he had a chance to tell me he was kidding i had already walked out... and went to find a Benchmark awol, who did smoke pot, but had found a place to stay with a compassionate family, to ask her advice...  I told her what happened... I told nobody else at all...  she was cute... but i was shy... i never was shy before program.. but now.. i'm shy...  I used to just "go for it" with confidence and suave and charm... but ... i don't know what they broke.. but they broke a lot...  anyway... So she tells me to chill and go back to the motel...  ... the next day.. the very next day... staff pays a surprise visit at around 7pm... for guess fucking what.  surprise drug test.  She had snitched.  She had no obligation to... but she did.. She felt she was helping another to follow program.  Unquestioning, illogical loyalty.  She was a benchmark operative on the outside reporting regularly to Deborah (ex-second in command) for... no reason other than she felt obligated to...  Or maybe staff had a reward out on me... very possible considering i threatened legal action and spoofed a lawyer's advice...  Long story...

So staff try to coerce a confession out of me before the drug test, but by this time, Brian told me about his little prank (he was the prankster i was talking about), so I just kept denying it... Now consider I hadn't had a
drug test in like 7 months after weekly ones in the real "program"...

So I got to go back to the state St apartments that once... otherwise i was forbidden (as were all motels studnts) from coming anywhere near regular students. (needed to maintain communications isolation).  I made a huge scene.  a huge scene.. they would make you piss with the door upen ... so instead of just turn around and hide it... it decided.  hey... what the helll.. You wanna see me piss... fine... fine fine...  here.  and gave the staff, and anybody within view, a nice "show" of appreciation.  hah.  fuckers.  They never drug tested me after that.  And duh.. i tested negative..

but where was i...  Oh yeah.  When somebody clings to the belief that program saved their life (even if they never used drugs before... and were shooting meth afterwards)...  Is it ethical to burst their bubble.  What if that invisible friend/safety blanket faith in the cult is what is keeping them off meth.  I... unlike most other survors... explicitly avoid bringing it up becauase I know what she went through...  and who wants to think about that anymore... and yet she keeps bringing program up... and it leads to a discussion... and i say something about "you know those workshops are based on est don't you"... and she says "i don't care"... they, and Joelle (counselor, daughter of Jayne...) gave me the tools.. and she can't define them...  It would be so easy to just ask her a few key questions and break the spell at this point.. but what if the lie is keeping her alive.. and she has a kid...  and what chills me to the bone.. chills me... is that she says if her daughter ever needed benchmark she would send her there....  I told her, flat out, that she would not have that opportunity...  but what Ifi burst that bubble... what will happen.  will she become so distrought, fragile i imagine already from what went on.. though she says she doesn't care.. and that she's moved on.. she's full of contradictions...  and there's a problem only CEDUites and derivatives might understand.. we were paired in the workshops.. she was my buddy...  "you are your brother's keeper".... you get my drift..  I have no romantic connection to her whatsoever...  But i feel like I trust her... and I know why... and there are times i would rather not know why...   What is a friend anymore.. after program.. after they pair you and toy with who you trust and who you hate and who you love and what are all those concepts..  See.. the workshops felt so good.. you felt like you were not only finding your real self, but a real friend, and a real group of people to identify with... a real parent/saviour figure in the facilitator... and it was all, a lie.... and when I mention est.. and she says "i dont' care"...  and she doesn't want to hear.. I don't have the heart to go further with it.  Explain what went on.. or leave her to believe what went on was real...

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'.

[Ursus]

I would say that ratio is maybe 2/10 for Hyde (understand it was a mindfuck), at least within a reasonable frame of time post-program.  Maybe I'm being too pessimistic, maybe too optimistic.  I have no way of knowing.  When the place "condemned" you, people would scatter to the winds.  You never heard about them again.   The school would make up its own story about your attitude issues and what you weren't facing up to and worse.  We never questioned it.  Years later, sometimes, you found out that horrible libel had, indeed, taken place.  The real story was nothing like what the students had been told.  The place is more insidious than most, it takes most people quite some time to come to the realization that they've been brainwashed.  By that time, they are long into their lives, and probably just write it off and try not to look back.

Hyde has Brother's Keeper too.  In my day, it was a talked about but unwritten "core value," now it is one of the "ten core principles" (in my day there were five).

"Is it ethical to burst their bubble?"  Good question.  But I don't think the lie is keeping her alive.  On some level, I think everyone knows the truth, and their not acknowledging it as such has more to do with their emotional and psychological needs at the time said denial is stated.  Not always, though.  Sometimes people do not have the mental arsenal to be able to sort through all the gibberish they've been filled with during a very impressionable time in their lives.  And they just need to hear the dots connected a few times for it to click.  That underlying nasty feeling that something is just not quite right...  the impression of inherent unfairness and cruelty that they just can't shake... and try not to think about too much... Well, dawn can break belatedly, in some cases.

At Hyde, people that cling most to the program usually end up marrying into the family (all the top administrative personnel are either related or married to one another) or end up in some other teaching or token capacity (e.g., Board of Directors, key alumni contact person, etc.).  It is an incestuous cabal ensuring its continuity.

[psy]

does anybody remember an exercise like this from a Brother's keeper (Friendship Workshop):

I am a rock game is when (while speed deprived) you are supposed to curl up into a ball on the floor.  Staff plays S&G's "I am a rock" (on repeat of course) as music and scream insults at you... tell you you're worthless etc.  Then you get out of that posture and lie down on your back, hands outstretched (in the most vulnerable position possible) and they make you remember traumatic experiences from childhood with hypnosis(i remember told to relax every limb with something about white light, then ... it's all blank for me... next thing i remember is i was weeping), and then when you are crying and weeping (and the room was filled with it by that time)... they would take your hands and place them on your chest over your heart, and whisper sweet things in your ear and tell you it's all right, and wipe your tears with tissues...  Then you felt peace and love...  and you felt like you could trust your counselor who healed your pain and wiped away your tears...

I don't remember what song they played during the second portion.. anybody remember?

The symbolism they use is heavy heavy heavy... (postures, poses, music, etc etc etc...)

They create pain to comfort it... to build artificial trust...

[psy]

They had a variant of this at seminars in WWASPS. It involved program parents who were staffing the seminar, the family reps, and upper level staffers doing the same thing basically. I could go into details but I would throw up. Let me reiterate my point that this is a bottom up phenomenon, which when remembering details of seminars comes to my mind VIVIDLY.

That's rare.. very rare.  I remember a little bit of the first workshop but after that it's just little flashes of images and emotions.  The first workshop i faked it... did what everybody else was doing, cried on cue etc... that's why i remember more.. Others i've talked to..  some remember a bit her and a bit there...  

It's a disgusting cult just like the other one's and they are all horribly similar. People love this shit, they get intoxicated by it and it becomes their fucking religion. Fuck 'em.

You are broken now ,
But faith can heal you.
Just do everything I tell you to do.
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow.
Let me lay my holy hand upon you.

My gods will
Becomes me.
When he speaks out,
He speaks through me.
He has needs
Like I do.
We both want
To rape you.

[Ursus]

I believe the inherent theory is that they break you down before they build you up.  Of course, the corollary that you are so malformed and hence not worth the time to "fine-tune" or just "repair," is inescapable.

[exhausted]

My belief Ursus is, that you can break anyone, in some small way, but you cannot build them up, once a person is broken, they are unfixable, it's not like gluing a china pot back together.

Psy I often wonder why you dont train to be a therapist and specialise in this field? Maybe it's too close to home for you - I don't know, perhaps you'd end up murdering the parents involve, however you seem to have such a grip on the whole thing and this experience cannot be learnt, read, paid for, you have to live it, feel it breathe it to be able to really know.
FWIW I think you're doing the right thing not teling this girl how it really was for her, it sounds like she knows anyhows, but by convincing herself that it was right for her .... well it's the only thing that stops her from faling apart completely, she has enough problems if she's on meths anyway - let her live confortably in her blissful ignorance, it'll harm her far more to be forced to face what deep down she already knows

[psy]

That's rare.. very rare. I remember a little bit of the first workshop but after that it's just little flashes of images and emotions. The first workshop i faked it... did what everybody else was doing, cried on cue etc... that's why i remember more.. Others i've talked to.. some remember a bit her and a bit there...

Yeah when you got at SCL you heard rumors of seminars. Other kids would make a big deal of it. Be like, "Oh man, remember how mindblowing discovery was, I am never the same!" and they meant it. There was an aura of secrecy, like a secret association or club or something to it. But besides these vague rumors and emotions surrounding them, there wasn't any idea what exactly what they were or consisted of.

Ditto.  Everybody loved it.

My first one I got kicked out of on the first day, or as they call it , "chosen out". The guy was David Gilcrease, that dude is fucking insane. I didn't get it, I didn't catch on how to act in the group to make it look like I was being 'born again' and going all emotionally crazy like the 'true believers' were. He stood me up and did his tear down thing with me, and it worked, I was totally mentally confused, on the spot in front of a hundred people... he made me feel horrible like he was suposed to? But I was so confused and shit, I couldn't respond with the bullshit response he wanted and kicked me out and sent to isolation until the end of the day.

NLP and nonsensical responses is what he did.  Look up Werner Erhard (est founder).  He was a master of that shit.

The second one I had two months to prepare for and how to plan and understand the cult like mentality going on. How to bullshit them, and make them think you are all shameful of your past and want to repent, and become part of their sick cult that hurts the new kids who come in in the same way. Well of course I wanted no part of that bullshit, so I faked it too. The only reason it worked was because it was Jan or someone, a woman who basically passed everyone. I got lucky and got an easy one on Focus too and barely squeaked by in that one. I bet we could all be great actors, we've had good training.

I had acting classes before program...  But you're right.

I can remember pretty much all of it now . I sat down a few years ago and wrote everything I could remember and alot came pooring out.

I get stuck when trying to ...  Maybe it's some cult of secrecy "lock" in my mind i haven't found out... or maybe it was just too bad.

I read other people's accounts of the seminars and that helped bring back memories. But the most memory inducing thing I found was music. They used very specific pieces of music in the seminar. I found several of these and played them over and over and shit, that brought back memories I didn't know existed.

Hence the reason i was asking for the song.   Music does the same for me.

Thats why I am always talking about mental constructs and what not. I feel it's possible to really create whatever end result that is needed and or wanted.
Even factual details can be reinterpreted in any way necessary to a particular mood or emotion potential basing on missing memories that really aren't missing. So I am not really too keen on sharing these details much because truth being so subjective these days my vote of truth gets shouted down in the democracy of ideas that seems to be the marketplace available to the mass, unfortunately giving credibility where none exists, to the side of programs. It can get really confusing for the average bystander, per much.

[psy]

My belief Ursus is, that you can break anyone, in some small way, but you cannot build them up, once a person is broken, they are unfixable, it's not like gluing a china pot back together.

Psy I often wonder why you dont train to be a therapist and specialise in this field? Maybe it's too close to home for you - I don't know, perhaps you'd end up murdering the parents involve, however you seem to have such a grip on the whole thing and this experience cannot be learnt, read, paid for, you have to live it, feel it breathe it to be able to really know.
FWIW I think you're doing the right thing not teling this girl how it really was for her, it sounds like she knows anyhows, but by convincing herself that it was right for her .... well it's the only thing that stops her from faling apart completely, she has enough problems if she's on meths anyway - let her live confortably in her blissful ignorance, it'll harm her far more to be forced to face what deep down she already knows

No she's off meth now.  That's why i hesitate.

[exhausted]

Ah right - with ya, either way, I still stand by the decision to let her live in her comfort zone - its probably best for her own sanity.

[Ursus]

Probably best to say, in the end, just "listen to your gut."  I don't think there are hard and fast rules here, just general truths tempered by the actual dynamics of the time and people involved...

[nimdA]

Or a rolling pin to the side of the head works well.

[Ursus]

Or a rolling pin to the side of the head works well.

Never on Sunday!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_on_Sunday