lol - sorry your comment made me laugh. I was in Elan - anger issues - lol - triggering knee jerk reactions - quitting jobs - yeah when I was younger -Then again having a partner for 25 years and children has helped - focusing on learning an instrument for the past 34 years certainly helped me cope with it- especially in the early years after exposure to Elan's sadistic , brutal ,violent indoctrination and the insane tools used to make the Elan resident individual fit the "program's" one size fits all model.
I think part is that the "program" especially ours - just so darn violent- taught or ingrained us to being angry...... thinking albeit incorrectly -that an outwardly angry person wasn't a suicidal person. The adult untrained Elan employees didn't understand that there were reasons why children had rage and not anger issues - as they soon discovered as they pushed abused children to be angry.
- So coupled with the "program " and in our cases the insane mentality of the misguided staff - they didn't teach us constructive ways to deal with our anger - as for the rage that they encountered - they just beat us down until they felt we could control it - and I am sure many have used those skillz from the "program" itself, that were learned/taught or beaten into our sub consciousness's , seriously faulty anger coping skills every time since - and for some of us there is a triggering element or component .
- and then whoa
- yeah it is hard or it can be sometimes - maybe age has something to do with it - or simply having had to deal with issues like this (since friends told me in my early 20's that if I didn't chill I would be dead from a heart attack before I was 40 - that milestone passed almost 20 years ago - being aware something wasn't righ tand trying to self fix it with what ever tools one had )
It has not been easy though hindsight is truly 20 -20 and time helps us mellow a bit I believe - plus therapy- good competent therapy because most if not all have PTSD for just having been in one of these violent " program " rtc. Sadly I ran in to that rather late in life also curtsey of Elan -they also convinced us that Elan was it.There was no other form of therapy for us - no pills- no nothing - they were in fact " the last stop."
And that wasn't true at all about Elan- it certainly wasn't the last stop though it was very capable in it's ability in brainwashing us into believing that it fraudulently was -
And if we didn't make it after Elan - Elan had a really sick off hand way of promoting that there was always the option of suicide - . Anger issues - yeah sorry it kinda made me laugh .
Honestly I wish I hadn't believed Elan was the most fucked up- last stop on the planet- and had found competent mental assistance when I was much younger - maybe the guitar was my therapy - at least it helped with the depression -the acute post Elan depression - who knows.
peace
Matt
