#tw troubled teen industry

[adragonstears]

Well

According to Amnesty International's Report on Torture from 1973 (I think that's the name/year but I'm very very tired and may have mistyped, but the pdf of it is on their website) pages 45-51ish, Biderman's Chart of Coercion was a thing that that person made to talk about the torture the Korean war POW's went through that got them to confess things even without using excessively brutal physical torture tactics. It is not a full exhaustive list of all possible non-extremely-brutal-physical methods of torture - it only has 8 things... (And you don't have to have all 8 for it to "count", I believe it said it would still be effective with fewer than that as well, though like I said I'm tired and I do not have the energy to look it up again right now)

The wilderness program I was sent to used all 8 of them... (I made a list of examples for all of them just to see if I could come up with any because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to, and I came up with multiple examples for each one

And the aftercare I was sent to start used quite a few as well

So it seems maybe fair that it would make sense to call that wilderness program psychological torture, since they used those same tactics to break us as are/were used on literal prisoners of war.

And I have all the discharge paperwork from that so I have proof that that happened even when my brain tries to say nothing ever was real...

Idk I'm still struggling with the brainwashing from that. I still feel like it was all my fault and I deserved that because I was misbehaving. That's the thing everyone, every single person, has been in agreement on my whole entire life.

[compassionatereminders]

And to those who don't know, Paris Hilton was a victim of the Troubled Teen Industry in her late teens and spent literal years in horribly abusive institutions based on hard labor where the conditions LITERALLY killed people. So when she did her "lol I don't need to know what work is because I'm pretty" or whatever later on as a young adult, that was mainly because she wasn't ready to face that trauma publicly because she was literally forced to work her fucking ass off in the most literal physical sense of the word for years

[kimberlyborelli]

My Story:

As a child I experienced already a lot.

September 2014: I started to visit a different school. I struggled with learning, my chronical sickness and bullying.

Winter 2014: I started to visit the social worker & counsler at school because my problems turned out worse. But sadly these counseling sessions weren't helpful at all. I had to visit a psychiatrist for further treatment. It was tried to fix my problems but sadly it wasn't helpful. I developed suicidal thoughts because I was that frustrated. The psychiatrist decided to try some medications. The psychiatrist explained. The first two weeks it could show some side effects. But two weeks after I took the first pill: I developed a serious rare side effect. My parents asked the psychiatrist but she just said: It will pass by soon. But the issue didn't passed by...It got worse.

Autumn 2015: I had a mental breakdown on my way to school. I was sent to a hospital by the ambulance and received tranquelizers to be more compliant. In the hospital I was in a strong delirium. A psychiatrist was talking to me and said: I should be sent to a therapeutic facility.

At the facility (third floor, the secluded ward): The bathrooms were locked. Everytime when someone had to use the bathroom we had to ask for permission and wait til it's unlocked. But often there were times where the staff refused to unlock the door. No makeup was allowed. Also there were some patients who were treated better. I wasn't allowed to have hair ties in my room. In both floors where I was spent my time there was the rule of Silence Time (stay in your room and remain silent). Also books were controlled. I spent the first days in solitary confinement (I was allowed to leave my room and talk to others after the isolation. But it was monitored about topics. When you critized the staff you got punished.) Shaving wasn't allowed. Deodorants weren't allowed. Questions/Suggestions were ignored by the staff. Once I had a short anxiety episode some of the staff made fun of me. The only right ting what they did: To stop my medications. At the third floor I didn't received any therapy (They told my parents I'm attending a program). The only situation where I had something therapy-related I'd got a questionaire. I also was told being too fat for having an ED. Well, I was underweight. I was once allowed to attend a group activity at the third floor. It was about crafting. After I left the room, one of the staff teared my crafting work apart and threw it away.

First floor, ward with "less stricter" rules: After over one week where I tried to behave. I was shifted to the first floor. I shared my room with a girl (and we became friends). Also the staff noticed that and weren't happy about that. We both were in seperate classes in school. The classes were more like: Just do something school related and try to look busy. We both had seperate therapy programs. In the "silence time" we were in our room together. But we just talked and didn't cared about the rule. One hour before bedtime you have to be in your room and remain silent to get ready for bed. We both had different bedtimes. But mostly I went with her in our room and we still chatted together during she got ready for bed. During bedtime we weren't allowed to talk. But we still talked to each other and we got scolded and punished once. The bathroom got locked next time. I was shifted to another room and I was forced to sleep on the floor. She was shifted to a single room and was in solitary confinement. At the first floor I received some therapy. The group therapy was very strange. We received a behavior diagram and it was used for behavior modification.

The Ending: At the end my parents got me out finally. The staff tried to sent me to another facility. My therapist told me and my parents were too overwhelmed and want to send me away. And to my parents he told: I don't want to see my parents anymore.

[a-troubled-bird]

today being the 5 year anniversary of the worst april fools joke ever (me being sent to a residential treatment center for over a year) has got me thinking about how much that place, and other programs within the troubled teen industry, have fucked me up.

i’m just now seeing how rotten the entire system was and is. it’s hard to even confront that idea for me right now; that it was bad, actually. it’s like a knotted mess of trauma and shame and confusion i’m only just starting to untangle.

i’m learning how to rebuild myself after being systematically broken down by adults who were supposed to help me, who had absolute control over my life, who liked to punish kids for fun. i’m trying to catch up on the childhood i missed out on, and how to grow past the hurt. it’s hard as hell. but i’m trying.

anyway. wanted to start a blog to talk about it, since it’s so hard to find people who relate irl. don’t know how much i’ll use it. we shall see

[beastiesandsundries]

Late to the party- but idc. In my headcanon, Charon was a victim of the Troubled Teen Industry, shipped off at 13 to one of those bootcamps to get "sorted out". Well, only a year into his stay the bombs dropped and all the boys and their "Sergeant" started to ghoulify. I have a convoluted meta surrounding ghouls and aging and the mechanics of such but essentially, ghoulifying during a growth spurt is what made him so BIG (6'11" in my hc.) Charon's contract is, in fact, the paperwork from the camp where his parents signed over guardianship of him, which the Sergeant leveraged over Charon and his peers until they were convinced that the paperwork bound them to service. Hence, the Sergeant was his first Employer.

Fast forward to his longest-standing employment to Ahzrukhal, when my Lone Wanderer shows up and barters and trades until she can afford to buy the contract for assistance with the Museum of Technology for Three Dogs quest- afterwards she tries to free him as payment for the help, but he refused. As they travel, she pays him, refuses to give him orders and treats him as an equal. It gives him space to start unpacking his past and moving beyond the brainwashing. He still refuses to take back his contract, he doesn't think he's even close to ready to process that, but the fact that he's able to admit that is a huge step.

No surprise here- he starts to fall in love with the LW but keeps it quiet because it's impossible for her to feel the same...right? Of course that's silly, they end up getting together. Post Broken Steel, he's finally ready to burn the damn contract, and proposes in true cheesy fashion when it's reduced to ash. When the Prydwen heads to Boston, he and the LW follow it to Boston to yell at Arthur. They join the Railroad, meet my Sole Survivor, chaos ensues. They also had a baby in the years after Broken Steel- something supposed to be impossible, but that's neither here nor there.

Babes would you please reblog/comment with your Charon theories/lore you invented/headcanons/happy kind epilogues for him/anything? I feel like we’ve all come up with something and it varies a lot but I desperately want to hear it!

Charon’s writer said he likes to create space for others to write stories - so all of it is canon!i guess

[rosestraumablog]

So much grief and yet there is light, the cult we were a part of/ the treatment center we went to has been officially shut down. I don’t know exactly when it happened but it’s gone. It’s over no more kids are going to be hurt by this institution.

[queermoths]

under cut im vaguely working through some feelings about my experience with the troubled teen industry, no specific tw but still putting it under the cut cause tti in and of itself needs a tw

realizing more and more of what happened to me in the tti. its been just under four years since i left it and still processing it. putting more puzzle pieces together, still unlearning what they trained me to believe. might write about it, but i probably wont share anything i write (for now)

[luxestreisand]

Blogging about people’s influence of someone with an eating disorder(me)

My sister literally sat at the dinner table at the age of 12 like an ana person when that’s literally me and I still ate my whole plate of food, every dinner time she just stares at her place bc she has a natural tiny appetite and doesn’t eat any meals only small bites. I have anorexia like actually and she doesn’t so by her doing this sitting there not eating while I do and she’s a total skeleton and our parents don’t even care makes me feel like total sh1t.

I thought maybe we could go McDonald’s together and I wanted an Oreo McFlurry but she didn’t want one so I just didn’t get one I waited the whole week to go buy one and she just doesn’t get it with me so I can’t. Mf

I just want someone around me that eats properly to set a good example or send me to a clinic or psych ward to help me get over this bc no one knows or understands and can’t help. It gets worse everyday and she’s like the one who doesn’t have to eat and she doesn’t even have an ed and my parents always force me to eat bc they suspect me of an ed but I can never tell them they wouldn’t understand.

Please just send me to a psych ward

I can’t deal with being the only one eating i the whole family. My mum has a health condition where she can only have celery juice for few days a week and drops like a bunch of weight and my dad is keto so doesn’t eat any carbs and I all this diet culture around me makes me feel worse. I want to bake as it’s a hobby I enjoy but I’m the only one who eats it and ends up binging on whatever I bake so I can’t even do that anymore. My friend said to me should we get cake and then I was thinking about restricting and when she picked it up I ended up getting one and then she ate it super slow as soon as I finished she threw hers away just so I would eat it and she wouldn’t she doesn’t have an eating disorder she just has a small appetite.

God a need a fat diner guy in my life to take me to Perkins and f*ing eat with me to let me enjoy some pancakes or pie and let me not feel like comparing myself to all these dieting stick people who don’t even have eating disorders

LIKE IM THE ONE WITH THE EATING DISORDER NOW LET ME F****ING OWN IT. I SHOULD BE THE ONLY ONE NOT EATING AROUND HERE!

[gothams-forgotten-orphans]

I escaped my foster group home. That "Perfect white picket fence life" ain't for me - Michael

I was gonna be sent to Wilderness Therapy because of my 'clingy attitude'. Learned fast that grown-ups can't be trusted. - Cole

Orphanage wasn't treating me and Thomas right. So we left - Morgan

I left because the foster home said ' I was a smart aleck that needed to be taught a lesson - Edward

What Morgs said, they don't treat us kids right so we left - Thomas

If there's any orphans or foster kiddies who are looking for a way out of the system meet us in the underground

[angeldustanalog]

idk if this would be an emotional flashback or just like, a memory, because really what's the difference amirite fellow traumaqueers ha ha ha ha ha , but like sometimes when i smell weed, which i do in fact smoke all day every day with my 3 girlfriends who yes also smoke weed bunts so i am very used to the smell, it is very much a staple of my living space and has been my entire adulthood excluding when i was in treatment and couldn't smoke. but like sometimes i smell weed and my initial response is like oh my GOSH there are kids doing DRUGS this is absolutely BUCK FUCKING WILD im gonna get in TROUBLE and DIE which is the normal response and *then* i remember that i am 28 years old and i regularly do harder substances and then im like hmmmm. wtf was that shit. and then i frantically do anything i can to not think about it just nope not going there not today not now not ever ever again

[wasionlymadetocry]

The troubled teen industry isn't anything new. In fact, I think it's more well-known than it's ever been in the past. It seems like everyone I know has had their own experiences within it. Somehow their's seem worse than mine ever was. Does that make mine worth less? Or is that just another way of thinking that got me placed in psychiatric care in the first place?

The first time I was ever admitted to a mental health facility was when I was twelve. I was in sixth grade, and my birthday had only recently passed. When my family had come home from eating out that night, I found a razor. The type you use for construction. I remember staying up way later than I usually did, and I self-harmed for the first time.

I was scared. Scared of the blood, of consequences, of the relief it brought. I don't think I hid for very long before I broke down and told someone. My friends knew I was sad, but not depressed I don't think. I told our little group at the lunch table, and by the end of fifth period I was in the guidance counselor's office.

My counselor was kind, but the school officer legally required to be in the room was not. She acted like the whole ordeal was a waste of time. That it would have been easier to have called the cops and have me Baker Acted. My counselor wanted to call my parents. Have them pick me up, take me home, and have me voluntarily admitted. A supposedly far less traumatizing experience than the former. I suppose it was.

It was exceedingly difficult to get ahold of my parents that day, which just made the cop more and more irritated at me. My mother works from home and was in a meeting when I tried to call her. Even after being told it was an emergency, it was still more important that she finished her stupid work call. My father didn't answer the phone either. But he listened to my guidance counselor's voicemail and immediately called back. At least it seemed like one parent prioritized me over work.

All of my times in the system are so jumbled up I can't remember what details belong to which visit. I'm pretty sure for my first-ever visit I went almost right away. I was admitted to a psychiatric unit in a local hospital, and then I was trapped there for five days. Those visits never really help much. You spend more time in the emergency room going through the process of being admitted than talking to a therapist once you're on the unit.

All I ever did in that unit was sit around and wait for the doctor to say I was healthy enough to go home. It was a never-ending cycle of waking up, eating breakfast, doing fake school work, having lunch, going to our rooms for quiet hour, doing jack shit until dinner, having dinner, visitation hours, showering, then sleeping. And you do that every fucking day without change until you're not anywhere close to stable enough to go home but they don't want you any longer.

You sleep in a shitty bed, in a cold room, with no comfort other than the thought that maybe you're a little bit more sane than the kid in the bedroom across from yours. You have the endless discomfort of being on medications that fuck up your body, and that everyone will look at you like you're going to snap once you go back to your everyday life.

All of my friends decided they didn't want me to be around anymore. For the first time in my life, I had absolutely nobody. And it would remain that way for 10 more years. And my depression would only get more and more severe over that decade. There's so much more to it that takes so long to discuss, and takes even longer to put into eligible words.

maybe one day i will

[everlocked]

so sad about the way that autistic girls often get treated by the mental healthcare system 😞 i was in and out of hospitals from the age of 12 and i mostly got told i was “just a brat” who didn’t really want help and just wanted attention, or that there was something wrong but they didn’t know what and i’d just get perpetually passed around to different psychiatrists. eventually ended up being sent to one of those abusive wilderness camps for 7 months

the lady doing my assessment has shown me so much kindness and it’s just absolutely crazy that my meltdown behaviour as a teen was completely dismissed and not seen for what it was. the system abuses autistic kids so badly, if someone had just helped me like i was begging all the professionals to, maybe i wouldn’t have ended up in a camp being abused

[hop3wrlds]

growing up a "troubled kid" is so damaging but every time i try to let it go it comes spiraling back full force & i want to rip the label off of me but it feels like it’s seeped into my skin & if i tear it out i tear out my flesh . i don’t know who i am without this label . & i have spent years trying to rip it off of me but it’s STUCK . & i wonder at a certain point , if it’s any good to keep trying , if the world is only ever going to see me as bad ? & i wonder if the rzn i can’t rip it off , is bc i AM bad …

[compassionatereminders]

Watching Paris Hilton in The Simple Life knowing that by then she was only a couple years out of the troubled teen industry where she was forced to do hard physical work in abusive labor camp conditions where people literally died, but that she chose to do the "haha I'm too rich I can't work" arch for the show because she wasn't ready to go public with what her parents put her through before like 2020 really makes you question reality TV

[kimberlyborelli]

Researches

On March 12, 2024: I started to do researches about the facility, where I was sent to several years ago.

The facility is still running and is still offering programs for children and teenagers.

In the first phase I started with researches.

I started to look at the website of this facility...

[mtndewbajablast]

realizing how badly “therapeutic” boarding school fucked me up I was just a kid dude oh my god. i tried to kill myself and they didn’t call anyone bc they didn’t want anyone coming onto campus