shennong posted:
its fucking mind boggling that people do this to kids. you were talking about people not really wanting to deal with your accounts of what happened, to what extent to they actually accept that what you're describing exists? or are they just totally in denial about it?
what makes you think you shouldn't have gone to one of these places? lots of kids still say that they "didn't belong there" after they left. this is because they don't understand that these places literally have no purpose.
i met a fifteen year old girl who had been brought in off the street where she had been getting raped for meth. this was not what she needed, it's just where she was sort of dumped off because nobody cared about her. there were lots and lots of sad stories, but those might attract sympathy, so you create an image to conceal it.
that random article i linked in the OP: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/06/rick-santorum-uhs_n_1186443.html
UHS issued a statement to The Huffington Post concerning the Marion Youth Center.
"There are hundreds of adolescents who have received high quality, successful care and treatment at Marion Youth Center," the company wrote in an email, "and have had their lives dramatically improved as a result of the efforts of the dedicated individuals that work at Marion."
The hospital chain responded directly to the exorcism charge, calling the allegations "absolutely false, libelous and knowingly untruthful."
"liar, drug addict, slut, brat, criminal, bad student"
dm posted:
what makes you think you shouldn't have gone to one of these places? lots of kids still say that they "didn't belong there" after they left. this is because they don't understand that these places literally have no purpose.
hmm, i understand that just about anyone could end up at a facility like this. i think you may have misread me though, i mean do people think that CEDU documentary etc are just some kind of conspiracy against a legitimate business and that you and others who are talking about this are promulgating lies or do they just not want to deal with the reality that this is happening to people
i guess im trying to draw an analogy in my head w/ the institutional/systemic abuse of kids i observed in the catholic church, residential schools, juvi facilities etc where i grew up. the thing was that everyone knew that this stuff was going on, on some level, and many did their best to keep their kids out of those situations, which seems different from the response to revelations of abuse in these institutions, i wonder if its just a function of how recent it is?
Edited by shennong ()
A newborn infant is totally dependent on others for its survival. Each time infants have a need, they become uncomfortable and express this by crying and increased motor movements. With each need filling response from a care giver, the child builds an increasing trust of care.
In addition to meeting the child’s physical needs, care givers also provide a great deal of nurture or social interaction such as touch, speech, eye contact, and rocking. These nurturing behaviors are as crucial as meeting the child’s physical needs, and without them children can be emotionally, physically, and intellectually delayed or even fail to survive.
As children grow and develop, they have an ever increasing mobility that allows them to interact independently within their environment. Dangers to the child, as well as social expectations, require a limiting and redirecting of the child’s actions. The child’s first response to such restrictions is a rage (the classical two-year-old tantrum). Gradually the child recognizes the benefit to both self and others when cooperating. A healthy independence develops, and the child begins making choices within responsible limits set by others. The child has a trust of control by others.
The primary disciplinary tool that is used during the child’s growing independence is variations in nurture. When we are pleased, we smile, praise, caress, and cuddle the child. When we are displeased, we use negative variations of nurture such as a frown and a rough voice. As children grow older, they begin to have the values of the care giver within themselves. They are now telling themselves, “yes” or “no”. In addition, the child has internal feelings in response to doing right and wrong. Doing good feels good; doing bad feels bad. The child has the beginnings of a conscience, a trust of self.
These three levels of trust: trust of care, trust of control, and trust of self are the basic elements of emotional attachment. The child has a life-long bond to other human beings. This bond becomes the basic building block of human relationships and is essential to friendship, marriage, parenting, work relationships and a meaningful, moral participation in society.
There are many things that can occur in a child’s life that may disrupt the development of a normal relationship. The following list summarizes some, but not all, of the possibilities.
Pre-birth and Birth Factors: The child enters the world with conditions preventing him/her from experiencing care giving in a manner which promotes healthy attachment. Some children are born with sensory of stimulation difficulties which result in normal care being unpleasant or even painful to the child. Thus, the child recoils from care.
Learning and Perception Disabilities: Because of learning and perception disabilities, some children do not experience or understand the world like most children. The anxiety and confusion about this world, and more importantly, their misperception of care given to them, can result in a failure to develop the crucial levels of trust.
Physical Limitations and Handicaps: Physical limitations and handicaps can cause a child to experience care in a distorted manner. For example, these children need alternative kinds of care to compensate for part of the caring experience that is lost through their handicap. Many times months go by before the limitation or handicap is discovered or when it is discovered, there is limited understanding of the kinds of compensatory care necessary to facilitate a normal emotional connection.
Parent Factors: Before discussing parenting, it is important to note that there are many circumstances in the life of a child over which no family has control. Furthermore, none of us came fully prepared for the task of parenting, and blaming is not helpful. Anxious, uncomfortable care givers cause the child to experience a world that appears unsafe and harder to trust. Parents who came to the task unprepared or who are under many other forms of stress, can be very anxious in their attempts to do what is best for the child. Care by parents who are attempting to structure carefully what they do for their child can be overly rigid. If care is more by schedule than by the interactions of demand and response, the child has greater difficulty trusting that his/her needs will be met by the care giver. Unpredictable care means that the child does not experience a consistency that allows him/her to develop a high level of trust that his/her needs will be met. Family crisis or illness, such as a series of moves or frequent changes in baby sitters, can disrupt a consistent pattern of care and the type of care received.
Trauma: A harmful incident or series of incidents can occur in the life of a child. Illness or accidents which are experienced by the child as painful and through which he perceives the parents as failing to protect him (no matter what the parents may have done) can result in the child’s losing trust. For a child, a hospitalization can feel like abandonment. Family problems can disrupt a comfortable parent-child relationship. Frequent moves, unemployment, financial hardships, illness, death of a family member, or divorce can dramatically change the previously healthy self-worth and attachment patterns. Often parents are unaware of what the child is experiencing, or they do not know how to help the child through the experience.
Other Factors: Occurrences outside the home, such as those with peers and community, can also disrupt relationship development. For some children, entry into school can be a trauma that affects trust. For example, the child’s learning disability suddenly becomes obvious and puts him/her in a position of being unable to compete or hold his/her own.
When a young person fails to develop an attachment, a number of characteristics emerge. All or some of these characteristics can be present in varying degrees or intensity, depending on the severity of the circumstances that led to disruption of the attachment. Depending on the adolescent’s personality, these characteristics can also be decreased or intensified by the response of the family and others to the adolescent who is distant.
Fear/Rage Reaction: When an adolescent perceives in his mind that his/her needs will not be met, his/her response is one of fear, an intense fear that he/she will not survive. Blended into fear is also a rage response to the feelings that a trust has been betrayed. Both the fear and the rage are primitive or infantile in their intensity. The adolescent may cover over the fear and rage, feeling that if the feelings were acted out, he/she would either be harmed or harm others. These feelings then become viewed as another potential threat to survive. At other times, the fear and rage may be acted out in temper-tantrum-type episodes.
Loss of Trust: Having assumed that others will not meet his/her needs, the adolescent takes responsibility for himself /herself and in essence becomes self-parenting. To protect himself, a resistance to closeness and control develops. The adolescent uses manipulation of others and the environment in an attempt to meet his/her own needs.
Reversal of Learning: The adolescent’s resistance to closeness means the nurturing responses that we use to shape children’s behavior lose their value with this adolescent. We cannot depend on the meaningfulness of our relationship to pull the young person toward desirable behavior. In fact, the opposite occurs. Behaviors which drive people away or lessen their demands are reinforced while behaviors that draw others close are decreased. This reversal in learning leads to a learned pathology. Parents, unaware of the self-worth and attachment difficulties, are parenting their child much like other parents, while neighbors, relatives, and even professionals are encouraging setting limits and giving attention. When this does not work, they are judged by others (or even judge themselves) as being at fault. They begin to feel guilty, and guilt is a very powerful, manipulative tool in the hands of this adolescent.
Sadness: While frightened and evading closeness, the adolescent continues to have the basic human need for closeness. The adolescent presents an approach to, then avoidance of, closeness that confuses and frustrates care givers. The inability to find a way to meet this need leaves the adolescent feeling a deep sadness, a loss of a sense of self-worth, that he is not worthwhile enough to be cared for or deserving of affection. Often these adolescents present other feelings, either to cover over the sadness or to act out their fury over the emptiness that they feel. Those feelings also confuse and push others away, intensifying the sense of being alone.
Feeling Confusion: Believing that his needs will not be met, the adolescent tries to block out needs and feelings. In addition, he tries to cover over the sadness, the fear, and the rage. Failing to contain them, sporadic outbursts of feelings occur that are inappropriate to the circumstances. The adolescent may present anger, when in fact he is feeling sadness or fear. He may have a generalized anxiety or appear to have no feelings at all. The unusual blending of feelings puts parents in the position of guessing what the adolescent needs or wants and limits their ability to respond appropriately to the adolescent. This further reinforces the adolescent’s perception that care givers will not meet his needs.
Looking beyond general characteristics of the emotionally distant adolescent, we can also identify, more specifically, symptoms or behaviors that are indicators of a lack of attachment and low self-esteem. Among these are:
Poor Eye contact: Having failed in the early relationship development processes, the adolescent does not relate on a face-to-face basis. Eye contact is a key ingredient of close human relationships. Poor eye contact reflects discomfort with trust and closeness.
Lack of Conscience Development: Having failed to develop closeness, the adolescent also fails to identify with the values of the family. In addition to a poor sense of right and wrong, or none, the adolescent also has little emotional response around right and wrong issues. There is limited guilt around doing “bad” things, but also little joy from doing “good” things.
Behaviors That Distance Others: A number of different behaviors are learned that effectively keep others distant or function to manipulate others. Among these are:Withdrawal: This adolescent is always somewhere else when there are social interactions. He withdraws either physically or emotionally. The emotional withdrawal can be represented by the adolescent who is depressed or the adolescent who creates a world away of daydream and fantasy.
Aggression: No one likes to be hurt physically or emotionally. Aggressive behavior is a powerful means of either keeping others distant or giving in, in order to “keep the peace”.
Promiscuous Behavior: This adolescent “loves” everybody, but an adolescent who loves everybody loves no one. The issue is an affection that is to such an extreme that it causes discomfort and actually pushes people away. The affection can be so indiscriminate that it appears that the adolescent has no “special relationships”. Special relationships are what make attachments and parent-child relationships of value.
Over-Competence: The more one can do for himself, the less he needs to depend on others. The adolescent who is managing his own care is also avoiding needing or interacting with others.
Bizarre Behavior: Most people are frightened or at least avoidant of behavior that is bizarre and different. Threats of suicide can push people away, as well as greatly decrease their expectations and demands on an adolescent.
Substance Abuse: Alcohol and drugs alter the mind of a young person while allowing him/her to escape pain and closeness. Though this is an artificial way of trying to “feel good”, it successfully works at keeping others at a distance.
Defiance: Defiance keeps others at bay by escalating power struggles and instigating incidents. Care givers who try desperately over and over to win cooperation, often burn out in the process.
Association With “Undesirable Friends”: Peers that are supportive of weakening behaviors only add to the care giver’s frustration and feelings of helplessness.
Edited by dm ()
To say "Hell is other people" does not mean ''Heaven is me." If other people are the instruments of our torture, it is first and foremost because they are indispensable to our salvation. We are so intermingled with them that we must make what order we can out of this chaos. Sartre put Garcin in Hell not for being a coward but for having made his wife suffer.
We had school there that was also not co-ed. They used the same building and scheduled us to be in at different times. My English teacher there was actually reasonably cool and gave us "existentialist" stuff to read like Camus, Sartre (I did in fact read No Exit there), and Kafka (The Hunger Artist and The Metamorphosis, but not The Trial). This was not an act of kindness and earning bad grades would get you more punishment, it just happened to be one of the few things there that made much sense.
Specifically, what was each day like when you weren't "in trouble"?
Was there day-day variation? Access to external media? Outlets for creativity?
What was the "clinical" approach to treatment in your experience? or was it really just punitive and ego-shattering?
noavbazzer posted:
How did making phone calls home work?
Good question.
That's hard to explain without the context of the rest of the system, but they're regularly scheduled and play an important role in "how you are doing" within the program. At the place I went to (and many others), there's a level system that plays an important role in shaping how you see the world and yourself. They pretend like it's a reward for good behavior but it's really just like a buffer against punishment, humiliation, degradation, etc. Your level can be dropped for all kinds of reasons that make no sense whatsoever outside of the sort of belief system that they create.
Having a "bad phone call" with your parents is one thing that is pretty sure to get your level dropped. What you have to do is take the blame for everything that ever went wrong when you were growing up under the guise of "therapy". The place I was at was exactly like this one article in terms of the "therapy" they provided:
As for treatment, the head psychiatrist rarely made appearances. Therapy was sometimes conducted in hallways. "It was called 'drive-by therapy,'" Jones says. "They would walk with the kid to the cafeteria and the kid would get their food. It would be written up that therapist had seen the kid."
So your therapy is taking blame for everything that happened to you while you were growing up. Creepy shit from the application I posted above:
Before discussing parenting, it is important to note that there are many circumstances in the life of a child over which no family has control. Furthermore, none of us came fully prepared for the task of parenting, and blaming is not helpful. Anxious, uncomfortable care givers cause the child to experience a world that appears unsafe and harder to trust. Parents who came to the task unprepared or who are under many other forms of stress, can be very anxious in their attempts to do what is best for the child.
A harmful incident or series of incidents can occur in the life of a child. Illness or accidents which are experienced by the child as painful and through which he perceives the parents as failing to protect him (no matter what the parents may have done) can result in the child’s losing trust. For a child, a hospitalization can feel like abandonment. Family problems can disrupt a comfortable parent-child relationship. Frequent moves, unemployment, financial hardships, illness, death of a family member, or divorce can dramatically change the previously healthy self-worth and attachment patterns. Often parents are unaware of what the child is experiencing, or they do not know how to help the child through the experience.
So any of this that might have happened is your fault and not getting put in a fucking box depends on producing a convincing rationale for it. The way this plays out for the parents:
Parents, unaware of the self-worth and attachment difficulties, are parenting their child much like other parents, while neighbors, relatives, and even professionals are encouraging setting limits and giving attention. When this does not work, they are judged by others (or even judge themselves) as being at fault. They begin to feel guilty, and guilt is a very powerful, manipulative tool in the hands of this adolescent.
They will literally say you are being manipulative if you do not produce these sort of false confessions. I wish I was kidding or exaggerating but no they called that "manipulation". You have to sort of degrade yourself before them and the "therapist" so the parents can feel better about however they might have treated you in the past. This extends to neglect and every form of child abuse imaginable. You had it coming.
Edited by dm ()
made me think that maybe the whole thing is about giving dissatisfied parents a satisfactory child
like a consumer rebate sort of thing
I think that is very much part of the ideology. I don't know what it looks like from the outside, so this helps to create a different image than the one they have PR people and whatnot for. It's also very helpful for me to confirm my beliefs about the place and know that other people are thinking about it in the same way I am. It helps me put things in context and all of that. It's kinda like the reverse side of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#The_Belief_Disconfirmation_Paradigm
noavbazzer posted:
Also do you have any thoughts on the function these places serve within the system since they're widespread enough to definitely not be an abberation
Very good question. Nobody knows yet but it would be a pretty cool thing to understand. Maybe we'll figure some of it out here. This is what I mean when I say I'm just as confused as you guys are and don't want to make it about my experience any more than necessary.
guidoanselmi posted:
Thanks for the thread, dm. My now recent ex was 5150'd as a 13 yo for anger issues/threatening to kill her younger brother (she wasn't going to) and ended up in being held in juvie for a week till she was put into a group home. Her experience wasn't bad considering the circumstances and met people she's stay in occasional contact with. I'm guessing that these environments are very different from what you personally experienced? I don't know the diversity of options for youth that are deemed a risk/threat/unstable/whatever?
Specifically, what was each day like when you weren't "in trouble"?
Was there day-day variation? Access to external media? Outlets for creativity?
What was the "clinical" approach to treatment in your experience? or was it really just punitive and ego-shattering?
No problem, good questions. I think that what your ex went through is kind of closely related. I met people there who had been in similar circumstances. One of the friends I made there ended up going to a group home after she left and I sort of tried to maintain contact but she seemed pretty unhappy and I have no idea what happened to her.
First question is hard to give a straightforward answer to yet. It's something that has to be developed. The most striking feature is that everything you do is scheduled ahead of time so you never have much of an opportunity to "think for yourself" or engage in any self-directed activity (or group activity not directed by staff).
Second question is just a straight no. All independent sources of information are blocked out to the greatest degree possible. They screen/control what you read, what music you listen to, what you wear, who you can contact, etc. There isn't even time to invent your own creative activities.
Third question I answered generally in my last post. It is all about the latter. It's also important to emphasize both that it is false therapy AND that they provide no real therapy. It's very difficult to remember/express things if you have to talk as if there was only one sort of universal therapy because it enables them to sound like they are at least trying to fulfill a real need.
gyrofry posted:
did you have individual or shared sleeping quarters when not in isolation
Good question. Shared. Four kids to a room, the door is kept open with a light on in the hallway and staff in the hall to prevent you from escaping.
Crow posted:
Do you think there's a link to the broader economy here? Maybe a dump for the informal economy, or a safety release valve for the tensions of informal economies (if that makes sense). I'm sure it definitely prepares you for the social relations in the broader economy
It does make sense and I really like where you're going with that, but I don't know quite yet. I mean there is a very real sense in which you are capital for the facility.
I mentioned this in another thread a while back, but at a certain point in the program you have to get jobs to "prove you are responsible" or w/e. They pay less than minimum wage and it's ridiculous on its face because cash is one of the last things they want you to have since you could use it to escape. It makes sense at the time though.
They supposedly keep what you earn in an account and then charge you for shit as you go, but you have no idea what's going on so that might have been bullshit. They cut you a little check when you leave to make the whole arrangement seem plausible.
The vast majority of the jobs there were literally shoveling horse shit. They had horses there that they gotten from some nearby ranch that didn't want them. They had like one or two staff members working five days a week to take care of them and had kids do the rest. They then turn around and say: "Look these spoiled little shits even have horses! Look at how nicely we treat them!"
There might have been immigrant labor for maintenance on the facility, but I never got more than a partial perspective, so idk.
So yes, it absolutely prepared me for life on the outside.
Edited by dm ()
aerdil posted:
What kind of literature and music could you read/listen to, if you can be somewhat specific? I assume of course it had a certain ideological and cultural slant, or was it even more arbitrary?
Good question.
If you think of sort of paradigmatic "boring Mormon stuff" that's probably about right. The point isn't what you can do, it's the way it's used to prevent any opposition. Like swearing was prohibited too, but the point isn't that it was "not fun" it was to overwhelm you with prohibitions on what is expressible/thinkable/communicable to others. If I told you "they don't let us swear" you would probably think ok, they're just being strict or whatever, but it has an entirely different function.
They invent all sorts of new things that make no fucking sense. They had this one thing they called "attention seeking behavior" which is exactly like it sounds. You behave in a way so as to attract attention for yourself. This is not something that you would normally think of as punishable. There was all kinds over other shit like that.
You can never turn over to someone and say "hey, this is crazy bullshit, isn't it?" That never occurs to you because you are already committed to doing more things than you can keep track of to avoid punishment and all of the rest of it 24/7. At that point they get you to actively anticipate how you should act so as to conform with the belief system they've established. This is where false confessions and stuff come in. You have to validate the expectations they impose on you and it maintains the coherence of the system.
Edited by dm ()
dm posted:
noavbazzer posted:
Also do you have any thoughts on the function these places serve within the system since they're widespread enough to definitely not be an abberation
Very good question. Nobody knows yet but it would be a pretty cool thing to understand. Maybe we'll figure some of it out here. This is what I mean when I say I'm just as confused as you guys are and don't want to make it about my experience any more than necessary.
I read about one function of them once; long ago, but it's definitely a secondary function of the legal space these places occupy. They were being used by one divorced parent to deny joint physical custody to the other. Since the rationales on those check sheets provide justification to have anyone rendered to one of these places they could send the kid there; and then the physical remoteness of the facility and the legal situation of custody transfer would keep the other parent from getting them out.
I read about these places first when I saw an article about the closure of Brightway Hospital. I was a naive teenager then and though the subsequent investigation would clear out the rest of them.
Surviving education is some kind of warped torture game show these days. Adults are obsolete children.
Authorities have thrown around words like "systemic failure" to describe the UHS treatment centers and have sued them for millions in court settlements.
it's like "shit, they found another one. everyone act shocked!"
dm posted:
i was apparently wrong about this and feel like an asshole. some people are really cool after all
nm, it's someone who thought i would make a good research subject or something without bothering to tell me.
dm posted:dm posted:
i was apparently wrong about this and feel like an asshole. some people are really cool after allnm, it's someone who thought i would make a good research subject or something without bothering to tell me.
lol
Okay, so, my basic understanding (based on what you've written in these threads and stuff I've read online other places) is that these residential treatment facilities exist on a spectrum. The majority of them are pretty strongly Christian. Some of them are pretty non-problematic, but that's definitely the minority. They're often characterized by excessive corporal punishment, poor nourishment (and food being withheld as punishment), heavily mediated contact with the outside world, pretty terrible education, and forced labor. Most of them are within the US, but some of them are outside.
The role of parents is... still not entirely clear. Some of them really have no idea what they're sending their kid to. Frequently, they're coerced by pastors. They're certainly misled by promotional materials for these places. They also don't necessarily know the full extent of what's being done to their kid while their child is there (mostly because they can't actually communicate with them). I guess my main question is to what extent the parents know before and during... obviously, that's different for everyone. I mean, regardless of how much the parents knew, this is going to fuck up their relationship with their kid even more than it was before. I don't think I'd be able to trust my parents after that. But... yeah. I guess that's the main thing I'm wondering at this point -- exactly what is the role of the parents, and to what extent are they knowing participants in subjecting their children to this abuse?
good question.
some of the kids were sexually abused by a parent before getting placed at the facility. thankfully, not me. look back to the admission form posted on the first page.
if nazis absolutely have to serve as a point of reference: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
Edited by dm ()
or was it retrospective after you had been out for awhile
noavbazzer posted:
was there a point you became aware that somewhere along the way when you were playing along with their rules the line between im just pretending and im not pretending was destroyed
or was it retrospective after you had been out for awhile
ok, this is what i've been after. i've had to get a bunch of stuff out of the way, some of it really uncomfortable, and then it's downhill from there.
there's a lot to go with there because not pretending is never really an option. it only looks like one temporarily as you're being integrated into a different system. "maybe this is just a dream" wouldn't be too far off. i also kinda remember feeling like i was going to die for no clear reason.
like imagine you started having a nightmare with any particular details you want. you wait for it to stop, but it just keeps going day in and day out. eventually what's happening in the nightmare is going to make a lot more sense than whatever you had thought previously. the nightmare is just the way things are now. however you would feel in that situation is pretty much exactly how i felt. your brain never just "shuts off" or anything
Edited by dm ()
that's why i've appreciated this thread. there's nothing particularly surprising about most people not wanting to think that these sort of things happen. it can be all to easy for some to act as though it were simply a personal problem i was going through day after day and week after week
Edited by dm ()
EmanuelaOrlandi posted:
I haven't read all of this thread, but are there major and fundamental differences, in your opinion, between the mormon type like the one you went to and, like, boot camp style ones or like the places they have in Texas which are some sort of Christian (probably baptist) places which are probably the same except not Mormon?
Good question.
I only attended the Mormon one, so that's all I can speak about. I don't really know about the others, but all religious influence was explicitly denied at the one I attended. To the extent that it was imposed on us, it was imposed really ambiguously through policies given a "clinical" rationale. This involved changes in clothing, hair, diet, etc. to conform to the proper Mormon image.
I just now realized the possible basis of an earlier misunderstanding we may have had, so I'd like to let you know that questions there are open as well and I will give completely sincere answers based on the best of my memory. On my unit, one member of the Mormon staff wanted a certain kind of friend to approve of his fashion sensibilities and the kid was obliged to comply in order to advance in the program.
dm posted:
Notice that you are tempted to wonder what I did to get put in a place like that. Stop it. That's not what it's about and you're going to have to get used to it. It simply exists.
I would just like to say that i know what you mean when you say that, and i don't think there's ANYTHING a kid can do to merit the kind of isolation you must have experienced. And i'm sorry that it happened to you.
commodiusvicus posted:dm posted:
Notice that you are tempted to wonder what I did to get put in a place like that. Stop it. That's not what it's about and you're going to have to get used to it. It simply exists.I would just like to say that i know what you mean when you say that, and i don't think there's ANYTHING a kid can do to merit the kind of isolation you must have experienced. And i'm sorry that it happened to you.
I don't think anyone should have to go through it either (including the people I went through it with), or any of its constituent parts for that matter! The fact is that we all do go through it to varying degrees and in varying ways. That's what I mean when I say that this thread isn't about me. It's what I was talking about on the first page about using it to understand other oppressive social structures that aren't immediately visible.
Any assistance I can give in that respect is the only claim to universality that I can genuinely make and it means a lot more to me than sympathy. What I went through is only unique in its particular details.
The confusing part for a lot of people is that I also insist that I shouldn't be viewed any differently based on it. This is because I would like it to change how we view ourselves and one another. Empathy, not sympathy.