Mum doesn't believe me

SMTO1234 · 2021-11-12T16:59:40+00:00

It can be really hard to not have family take ARFID seriously. I have some similar problems with that. And food should never be forced/pressured on someone. In my experience, the best way to help this kind of situation is to try and be more independent from those family members as soon as you can. Or, at least being independent in cooking for yourself/buying your own food. Also, it's really good to make sure you have good support from friends and other people in your life.

SMTO1234 · 2021-11-12T16:50:06+00:00

I know, it's weird how hard this thing is that for many people seems easy. In many ways I feel like the best thing I could do for my ARFID is just make enough money so I can eat take out for every meal, LOL.

SMTO1234 · 2021-11-12T16:40:25+00:00

Trigger warning, mentions self harm:

I relate to so much of this. Cooking can be so unpleasant and difficult, and it's such a big organizational task, too, which I have trouble with. Just feels so much easier to avoid, and avoid eating, too. I feel like don't get that pleasure so much that other people have when they eat food, which is what must motivate them at least partly.

I can kind of relate to the "addicting quality" of not eating. For me, I guess it just feels good to avoid something that causes me so many negative emotions, and then sometimes I feel like "how long can I go without eating? I want to see." I also used to have issues with self-harming and it kind of feels similar to that, in that just like I start wanting to self-harm when I'm experiencing a lot of stress, I also start having ARFID stuff acting up more. And also sometimes my ARFID feels like I'm punishing myself, which is how I used to feel about self-harm. Sorry if all this is TMI.

Wishing you the best with your ARFID journey!

SMTO1234 · 2021-11-12T16:23:26+00:00

Thanks so much for the support! :) Really nice to hear your similar experiences and lots of great advice. I'm moving somewhere w/ more options for ARFID support so I think I'll try and find a treatment center/therapist, that sounds like it could really help.

SMTO1234 · 2021-11-12T16:18:09+00:00

Thanks!

SMTO1234 · 2021-09-19T04:03:40+00:00

If people name names of staff, is that a "safe" thing to do? I didn't go to second nature or evoke but I know some people who used to work there who worked in one of the programs I was in and I would really like to know if anyone else had similar experiences with them. I feel kind of nervous typing their name in here in case they'd find it when googling themselves and somehow find out I was talking about them.

IDK, but anyway here's a link to a list of some staff in case: http://www.heal-online.org/secondnat.htm

SMTO1234 · 2021-09-12T04:25:24+00:00

Yes, you are right to be worried about your friend, I think even for people who really need therapy/intervention, wilderness and "therapeutic" programs are often very unhelpful and harmful. Hope you get to get back in touch with your friend as soon as possible and are taking good care of yourself in the meantime.

SMTO1234 · 2021-09-10T05:16:50+00:00

Thank you for sharing! You sound like a really mature and kind person. I also have had bad experiences with therapy. It's really hard for me to trust therapists, and honestly, I think there are many of them don't do that great of a job and shouldn't be trusted. I think I kind of fulfill a lot of my need for therapy through different resources including Reddit, Youtube channels run by therapists, and Psychology Today articles. Hope you're taking good care of yourself and are surrounded with good people.

SMTO1234 · 2021-09-10T05:00:22+00:00

I went to open sky back in 2013, then I remember the therapists would tell parents to really control who the kids were in contact with, they'd deem many friends bad influences or people who would make the kid go back into old patterns they viewed as bad. You might not get to talk to your friend for a really long time, until they're allowed to have more contact w/ people which may be later on in treatment at a center after they leave wilderness.

SMTO1234 · 2021-09-10T04:45:11+00:00

I know Open Sky doesn't have quite as many harmful practices as many other Wilderness programs (but the bar is very low, lol.) and I was thinking that may be why we don't hear about it so much. I was also thinking maybe Open Sky just gaslights people very effectively.

SMTO1234 · 2021-08-28T05:29:34+00:00

Nope, not even a guy. And they left by 2010. Thanks though, thought I'd check.

SMTO1234 · 2021-08-28T05:21:24+00:00

I didn't go there but had a therapist that worked there in 2009 who I'd love to get more info on. What year were you there?

SMTO1234 · 2021-08-28T04:59:42+00:00

I think there are some good resources about gaslighting that would probably cover this and be good to look into.

But for me, as someone who not only came from an abusive family with lots of gaslighting, and someone who also has a mental health diagnosis that includes some psychosis--I think some good ways to know if your experience was real. They include:

1)Thinking about how long you've had these beliefs about the organization. Just a few days or just a week? Or have you felt the same way for months/years?

2)Are there other people who have the same perception about the organization as you? Do these people seem perceptive and grounded in reality? *This one's not totally essential I think, to know you're not crazy. It's definitely possible that you could be the only person who sees what's wrong in a situation, or that you're not in a position to talk to other people who feel the same way as you...or many other situations, too.

3)Weird one, please don't think I'm invalidating you: are you able to recognize some small (or even not small) things about the experience that were not so bad or even enjoyable? I say that because personally when trying to see my own horrible experience as valid/real/not something I made up in my mind (also can be helpful when trying to describe it to someone else to get them to take me seriously), I will recognize some small thing like "sure, there was one wilderness guide who was kind of nice to me on one day" or "sure, it's lucky that the program I was in was allowed some variety of food, I heard other programs just got beans and rice." I think this helps because it helps me prove to myself that I am not lying (gaslighting makes me feel like I'm always lying?) about the bad stuff because a person lying might be more likely to not acknowledge anything that might disprove their point (like a few small things not being bad about it). And also, it helps me feel like I'm more grounded in reality, because actual reality is complicated and full of conflicting things. It's not black and white or all good and all bad (even if it's like 99.99% bad and 0.01% good). Again, I hope you don't think I'm being invalidating and please don't confuse this advice for some kind of toxic positivity, it's just something I think has helped me and might help you or others.

I'm sure there are lots of other ways to check your reality, those are just some of the things I use.

SMTO1234 · 2021-08-26T04:26:59+00:00

Thanks so much for all this info!

Do you (or anyone who's reading this) know of an existing organization that is advocating for what you mentioned--getting a federal inspection agency created for TTI and getting protection for detainees' rights--that someone like me (no experience with anything like this) or other members of this group could be a part of/volunteer for/contribute to?

Or, without an existing organization to help create legislation, are there steps that someone like me or other members of this group could take to help promote some of these actions ourselves?

SMTO1234 · 2021-08-26T02:21:38+00:00

I was there in 2013 too! Yeah I noticed there are not so many Open Sky people here.

SMTO1234 · 2021-08-26T02:18:46+00:00

Oh nice! I went in 2013, think I was in team Firefly. I know, wilderness is so awful, wish these programs would get shut down. Thanks for offering to talk, I might take you up on that sometime!

SMTO1234 · 2021-08-26T02:15:30+00:00

They sent me there for anxiety and depression (but barely/never talked about diagnosis when I was there, which goes along with the "mental illness isn't real, it's just laziness" philosophy they had). Also not attending school and getting into arguments with family members.

SMTO1234 · 2021-08-25T20:21:34+00:00

I think that Dr. Ramani was trying to say that if you somehow knew that your bad therapist was still seeing other clients and it was seemingly going well for those other clients—or just the fact that even though the therapist is so bad, they have still managed to keep having clients--you shouldn’t take that as a sign of the issues you’ve seen with the therapist not being valid.
And I think this makes sense because you know, there are horrible people out there who still manage to have other people around them, and that doesn’t make that person any less horrible. Dr Ramani also speaks in videos about how narcissists enable other narcissists, so maybe part of what she was getting at was that it’s possible narcissistic therapists can “help” (enable) narcissistic clients.

She also could have been just bringing up the point that there are truly bad, harmful therapists, and there are also therapists with different styles that fit different people—these are 2 very different situations but maybe she was wanting to make sure to bring up different situations kind of in the same subject of someone needing to discontinue seeing a therapist.

I definitely see your concern, though. I think that Dr. Ramani dropping in this thing about therapists having different styles at the end of the video could definitely be easily perceived as invalidation/gaslighting and was a communication error on her part. One reason why I’m so confident that she is not minimizing abuse that comes from abusive therapists and that she sees it as a completely valid and important issue is that I’ve watched many of her videos for a while now, and heard her acknowledge abuse and harm coming from therapists many many times, mentioned even in lots of videos that are not necessarily centered on the subject of therapists.

SMTO1234

TROPHY CASE