#tw tti

[plaguedghosts]

For the parents who say they “didn’t know” what those troubled teen industry wilderness camps are like, they 100% know, they just don’t want to acknowledge that they knowingly sent their child off with strangers to go through abuse. My mother would threaten to send me to these when I was a teenager multiple times, as well as threaten me to send me to the psychiatric hospital, she knew what they do, and believed that it would be the right thing to do when she couldn’t “control” me.

[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.

[temilyrights]

1 & 19 for the fanfic asks?

tysm for the ask!!

1. the last sentence you wrote

The May air is crisper than normal, but Alex feels nothing but content as she breathes in the sea breeze. - from an untitled alex blake x reader fic i’ve just started on.

19. the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

the troubled teen industry/wilderness programs. did a deep dive for a multichap fic i’m working on! hoping i’ll finish it one day.

[angeldustanalog]

hey!! :D i see you just found out about a decades old form of institutional abuse. would you like to singlehandedly take down the industry with your <500 follower tumblr following?? should we post on reddit? host a parade? maybe make an angry facebook status if you’re feeling real saucy??

[2wn]

who eats at arby's? i'll tell you. the people that were hired to pick me up from the las vegas airport while i was being trafficked took me thru the arby's drive thru and asked me if i wanted anything and when i said no, they said "are you sure? this will be your last chance to east real food for a long time." is arby's real food? debatable. is arby's patronized by evildoers? yes. QED

[boytoygirlfriend]

Obviously this isn’t the vibe but kids are dying. 14 year olds with personality disorders are getting put in holds and getting killed

Don’t get me drunk and rambling about the troubled teen industry bc ill do it and it will get dark

[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

[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)

[real-total-drama-takes]

https://www.tumblr.com/real-total-drama-takes/726385721087311872/omg-tti-fans-are-so-annoying-nobody-cares-about?source=share

I THOUGHT WE PUT YOU DOWN?!

.

[limetimo]

Saw a post about this and went looking. Never heard of Trails Carolina camp before. hey what the fuck

[cas-backwards-tie]

A Glimpse Into Reality

The way you can go from working the fields in any weather condition, living in the woods and surviving without proper amenities for months, to living in one of the most popular cities in the world, trudging to and from work daily within only a few years is... astounding.

Sometimes life honestly doesn't feel real. Overwhelming anger and resentment toward the universe will shine through on days you least expect it. Memories effervescing and bubbling forth to the forefront of the mind, curses, somber and sweet, low and lit in their accuracy, their vividness. All it takes is that flash of story and suddenly I'm there... back in the haunted place that cursed so many of us, the little that remain.

It's hard being one of the last of us alive. I never thought that'd be the case; I came here excited and intent on making more memories with some of you. That joy instantly crumbled into devastation upon finding out what'd happened just days before. It wasn't fair, and I'm still longing. Hoping, praying that you're all in a better place, watching, waiting for the rest of us. Finally, a soul at rest, at the peace it deserves. There was so much brightness, so much future in your presence... it was the cold cruel world that took it too soon. Far too soon.

- - - - - - - -

p.s. I hate that the thoughts consume me from time to time, the feeling, the urge to join the rest of you... yet, I simultaneously feel guilty, like I have to live on in your names, make us known. Never let anyone go until I make them aware of what they did to us. I feel like I need to live my life until I'm 110% happy, achieving all my goals, plus more that maybe you all would've had, too. I wish you were here. I know you are. I know you'd be hugging me and cheering me on if only you were right by my side, which I know you are. I just hate that we're not on the same plane anymore... you can't talk to me, yet I see your signs everywhere. With love,

your friend.

[angeldustanalog]

when i was like 11 or 12 keshas second album came out and i had just been forcibly separated from my best friend and gf because of our slutacious twilight RP texts and i just kinda would go on the swingset from when i was little but was still in the back yard. and since i got like sent away *away* every time i would go out to swing like when i was home from grove even if it was raining or snowing i would just put on snow gear and put my ipod in a ziploc bag and i would just swing for like. hours. like 4-10 hours at a time. and the last couple years she kept being like oh its gonna collapse on you. and it never collapsed. so that’s cool. oh right kesha nayway the harold song. forever it never really went away bc like that person doesnt exist anymore really and also she stopped existing while we weren’t allowed to talk so i kind of have this unfinished business ghost of a werewolf therian haunting me like yes i know your body is inhospitable to freaks now and you have nowhere to go im sorry it really was not my decision i actively tried to circumvent that shi

[sazabi-rot]

I'm going to be 22 next year. I dropped out of highschool in tenth grade and was sent to rehab after going into a catatonic state. I spent two horrible years in Utah, and for seven years before that and three years after I spent my time strolling through every street in Hell. My parents sent me almost all the way across the country at the age of seventeen because they didn't know what else to do and were lulled in by false promises of a fixed son. I came out of the trouble teen industry at 19 with brain damage from numerous concussions, a faulty wisdom tooth operation that had to be redone because the institution didn't believe me when I kept telling them that my pain wasn't normal (it wasn't. My parents had to phone in to the facility and tell them to take me back to the orthosurgeon. Turns out he left around half a jagged wisdom tooth in that constantly snagged against my tongue and healing gums. They got it out the second time around.). I left with the knowledge that if you did anything deemed slightly out of the status quo you would be punished. No concept of positive reinforcement. For more severe infractions you would go on "reflection" a penalty where for weeks on end you were not allowed free time, couldn't watch TV or partake in snack time, and had humiliating public punishments that sometimes didn't even align with the crime. Two people had a relationship that was off limit. The punishment for one of them aside from the normal reflection? Had to give a presentation on their scoliosis. Their private medical history. A sideshow they prepared and showed us pictures of their curved spine and them in thick back braces. They cried. No one comforted them.

Another person had the ability to work. Had gotten to that point in the program. They relapsed. Bought a vape. The price to pay for that was no contact with anyone other than staff for two weeks straight. We had to play a part in it. Couldn't look at him. Couldn't talk. Wave. Gesture. He broke. Quickly.

I remember treatment team. A thing everyone had to go to once a month or so. Check on your progress. I always felt I wasn't being moved along the programs 4-step rank as fast as I should be. I never got in any fights. Didn't talk back after the first month. I forget the exact motto of the place, but it was rooted in blind compliance. Accepting what the staff says without asking questions (Though I've read accounts from former staff who admit they themselves weren't quite aware what the rules were at times either. The requirement was to be a high school graduate as a "family teacher" position, the staff we interacted with most. No training in how to deal with severely emotionally and behaviorally unstable 13-20 year olds. According to the former teachers, they had one days of shadowing an already established family teacher and then were set loose. Some were better than others, naturally. Some were monsters. One man ended up being convicted of sodomy of a minor. I hope he rots in jail. I hope the child he hurt will heal.). Back to treatment team. I went up with the question: "I've been here almost 7 months. Why am I only in the second rank? Your own website says people graduate 12 months normally (it almost never was.). What am I doing wrong. People who got here months after me are leaping through the ranks and I'm sorry but I want to know what I can do." I was crying by that time. I will never forget when one of the therapists looked me in the eye and told me in no uncertain terms. "You see what you're doing? This is why you're not progressing through the program.

My crying. She was talking about my crying.

What else is there to expect really though from this place. The place where sometimes my therapist would go weeks without seeing me without offering a reason why. The place where I confessed to my therapist that another student was bullying me and instead of doing something about it or comforting me or giving me ways I could deal with it myself, she told me "sometimes people have reasons for bullying other people". The place where one of my friends broke a leg playing soccer and despite the screams they wouldn't take her to the urgent care until the next morning. I can only imagine the horror on their faces as they were told she needed surgery. The place that covered up the sexual assault of another student while we were on an outing, making her be complicit in the cover up, unable to tell anyone, even her parents in a letter. The place that left knifes out around the mentally unwell. The place that enforced group punishments. I'll save the most unhinged example for another post. The place that makes students help staff restrain other students. The place that was supposed to fix me, only to leave me as even more of a shell than what I was.

So I flew back across the country two years later on a rare home visit, just barely having achieved the third rank, when my head injuries were made worse by the concussion I received from a sharp edged table. I had to go to the hospital. I started getting migraines, ones that wouldn't stop. I suffered through two months of constant migraines before I was admitted to the hospital for a course of intravenous DHE, a last resort migraine treatment that leaves you hooked up to a near constant stream of the DHE, a miracle medicine that stops migraines in around 5 days time. They had to keep switching veins. Mine ended up so shot that pretty soon they needed an ultrasound team to come up and search for a vein that wasn't completely blown out every time they needed a new hole. But they saved me. Not the DHE, the migraines themselves saved me. My parents agreed to not send me back. After two years I was free.

I didn't know about the shackles of PTSD yet in the blissful honeymoon period, or that at the age of 21, 3 years after I got out at 19, I'd still be having flashback nightmares about the place. I didn't know that the previous "family teacher" I mentioned above would get arrested for being a pedophile, one who had unlimited access to young teens, one who was allowed to watch over them as they sleeped, one who I had conversations with. I didn't know my friend, the one who broke her leg, would take her own life after she graduated. After she was supposedly "fixed". I didn't know my closest brush with death would be after the program that was meant to save me, after I kicked back a bottle of pills and ended up in an ambulance hurtling through red lights to get me to the ICU. I didn't know what dying really felt like until after.

I didn't know.

No one knows the horrors and effects of the troubled teen industry, until you're a survivor of one.

[thatbitch151]

It’s really hard for me whenever I see any posts about people missing 2020 and the trends or whatever media was popular at the time because that was the year I got sent to that god awful residential facility where I was horrifically abused for 17 months.

And every time I see those types of posts I can’t help but think about the fact that I missed out on that and ALL of 2021 and I’m never getting that time back and will never have those experiences.

[thewordsibleed4]

Solitary

Five white brick walls

Stuck in a stark white hexagon

Facing a steel door

No window nor door handle

Sitting on the cold tile floor

A bright white light beams down on me

‘Why am I here?’

‘What did I do wrong?’

Oh yeah

I cried

I learned my father died

Took his life in 96

And that we’d never get to meet

How do you not cry?

About losing someone

So important and

Never getting to know them

At all?

Do I really deserve this?

To be stripped of my belongings I wore?

To be scolded and mocked?

Dragged down a hall?

Tossed into this concrete hole?

For who knows how long?

From outside the door I’m still scolded for sobs

I try, oh how I try to silence my tears

I try to regain my composure

In order to regain freedom

I hear whispers beyond the door

Mumbles mostly

I know they’re mocking me

Thriving off my misery

Drinking in every tear with sick, twisted, psychopathic delight

These people are not here to help

Only to hurt me

They are here to tear me down

They are here to destroy me

They don’t want to see me live

They want to break me down

Until I am no longer me

Until I am nothing

Until I am not even the shell of who I used to be

This is not help

These five white walls are a dungeon

This is not a place of healing

This is a place of suffering

Insanity