"Troubled Teen" Programs Experiences | People Stories #1

serious former teens who went to wilderness camps therapeutic boarding schools and other troubled teen programs what were your experiences my father lost custody of me for domestic violence and i got scooped up by cps and put into the group home system he got custody back a couple of months later and i ended up running away they sent me to a place called vision quest which was a place with troublemakers but not that bad the thing that was bad was that there wasn't any food i was eating little single serving cups of cream cheese ended up running from there with another dude and when we got picked up i ended up in a residential treatment facility mostly because they didn't know what to do with me since i didn't earn any jail time along the way that place was full of mostly native american kids some of them were from rival gangs the violence was pretty bad midnight beat downs gang fights racial violence physical shaming and abuse etc the people running it really seemed to mean well and were actually pretty fair about seeing what really happened versus everyone gets punished no matter what despite what the other kids were like it was the first time anyone really told me that it was my family that was wrong and to just focus on the program and work towards an independent living program which i did i was sent to the infamous pcs provo canyon school from 1994 to 1996 at the crescendo of the standing ips era i witnessed a lot of beatings and debaucheries but thankfully i was never party to either one of those things i kept to myself enough and got along with everyone the worst thing was during a stint in investment i noticed a few other kids working on loosening a pipe from a drain trap or a sink i thought that crap was funny at the time because hey petty vandalism right well our group goes to the gym and these thugs hit the detached pipe in a towel i didn't know until i see our big dopey counselor get whacked hard as frick in the head i was the only one that stayed behind while the rest took his keys and escaped they didn't get far and when they were caught they were all beaten mercilessly and restrained for days before being hauled off to juvie or real jail or the hospital morgue or whatever what was fricked is that the counselor was one of the few good ones i used to stay up and play chess with him when he worked night shift worse yet he had two brothers working there who went from kind of buttholes to violent psychopaths after all that and i got singled out because i was the only one left who was there when it happened when the dusk settled i still did another few months an investment stood over 1 000 ips didn't see the sun for over three months plus i took a lot of blame for not preventing that whole thing still no regrets because i would have also taken a pipe to the head if i tried to do anything i was definitely a troubled teen a lot of running away drugs alcohol etc my parents sent me to elon school in maine when i arrived i was strip searched and showered by a girl not staff it was pretty hellish abuse was the norm it was a couple hundred kids and a very small handful of staff essentially if you won privileges you got to run things until you messed up and had to begging the status climb all over again we weren't allowed to make friends that was called a contract and other kids would report you our days were spent watching each other waiting for a chance to tell on someone because that helped elevate your status if you mess a cup enough you'll get shot down sometimes it meant a costume meant to provoke ridicule sometimes being put in the corner literally unable to speak not allowed to move around guarded for however long by another kid if the corner person wasn't cooperative then both got in trouble there was also the boxing ring one house or multi-house general meetings where you'd stand while everyone rushed you screaming as loud as they could about what a terrible person you are i can't type anymore tonight because i'll have bad dreams almost 40 years later i still see certain faces if anyone is actually interested i can add more tomorrow without touchpad typos lol i did outward bound when i was 18. the group consisted of about 14 of us all between the ages of 16 and 20 one girl was sent by her parents i assumed to straighten her up on the first night we camped she fled she took a nap a compass and i think some matches and was gone when we woke up we were told later she had made it to her road and hitchhiked to somewhere i think she eventually made it home if there are camps specifically for kids in trouble her parents should have sent her to one of those i think i see why her parents didn't send her to her place for trouble kids jfc i did the northwest youth conservation corporation it is not exactly a troubled teens program but i was put in an interesting situation i joined because it seemed like a fun way to spend a summer outdoors doing some hard but worthwhile work in the wilderness and make some money to buy a homebuilt pc gaming rig i knew another person joining for the six weeks and it just seemed like a normal teenager summer thing for the most part it was see usually the crews are five guys and five girls they did not have enough girls so i got put on the all guys crew the all guys crew had what seemed like mostly troubled kids and a few outright dangerous kids we also got all the hardest projects and worked our asses off still loved every minute of it and reflect upon it fondly if you are ever walking the trail along the coast to cannon beach in oregon i helped build some of it i know someone who did that in the late 80s had a great time and learned a trade that supports him and his family to this day got the crap repeatedly beat out of me at a mormon boarding school in provo utah almost everyone there was kept on incredibly high doses of antipsychotics to keep us in line and so we couldn't fight back when we did there was getting beat strapped to a table injected with drugs like haldol and the tossed naked into a concrete cell school was a joke there and didn't actually bother to teach anyone anything and the therapists well what they and the other employees deserve probably isn't allowed to be said on here those that have been know what i'm talking about basically the whole experience was rather quite unpleasant went to dundee ranch academy when i was 15 i am 32 now it was shut down by the embassy for child abuse and living conditions among other things i was there for a year and i still have nightmares of being trapped or jailed and other triggers that sucks i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy my first gold thank you anonymous redditer just got out of a year-long program for drug abuse behavioral therapy type stuff and it was religion based and it was definitely something that i was not prepared to get myself into i ended up getting an assault charge and sent to basically a prison for juveniles for a few days while i was there because a kid dumped two gallons of water on my bed and i whipped him with a guitar string not the best choice i've ever made now it is off my record but that was definitely a turning point in the way i treat myself and others i've got a lot of stories from there so if you wanna hear any i'm open give me a crazy story my experience with being forced to stay at a boarding school was horrible it was highly abusive and uncountable ways the staff were unprofessional and most certainly not there to comfort you in any way they actually did the opposite and called us names like liars and manipulators and overall tried to make you feel like a bad person they controlled every aspect of every moment of your waking life it was not therapeutic at all anyone who says otherwise who went to these places is either brainwashed and in denial or enjoyed the sadism of bullying other students the ones willing to snitch on and mistreat others did well and advanced in the program i was emotionally victimized by staff and students there was no such thing as personal space or privacy i was physically assaulted and abused by the staff i am appalled these schools are still around and operating frick parents that put their children through that heck they should not be legally allowed to continue to abuse children for profit there's too many examples of abuse to put in one post i am happy and relieved to say the school i was sent to was shut down for child abuse thank god was sent to a marine style boot camp for troubled teens i was sent there because i was in a hole towards my parents discovered upon a rival i was the only person sent there who was not in trouble with the law for assault robbery or drug possession and i was made platoon leader of a bunch of kids who would probably end up in juvie after the camp fun times would recommend for the amount of beatings but chewings and gayness that went on there by gayness i mean there was a large majority of closeted openly gay guys in the program some of the guys would secretly hook up in empty barracks some parents wanted to get help for them no i don't regret being sent there i enjoyed my time and got my crap together i learned to take charge and to be a leader despite not wanting to be one to begin with by butch ewings i mean verbal abuse punishment for not being squared away from the d i's i had a friend where that happened to him and his cousin all the time weird minor rule breaking got them pulled from normal school for a few days and into a weirdly authoritarian christian school ultimately did more harm than good since if your kid has underlying issues with you as a parent and person doing that to them anytime they talk back to you is only going to make things worse i was forced into partial impatient on the psych ward when i was 17 or 18 for about six weeks because i was considered to be an at-risk youth it was basically like a diversionary program ever watched girls incarcerated on netflix it was kind of like that total supervision walking in lines wreck hours community meetings the whole bit all possessions got locked away from us and we got randomly drug tested a lot most of it was the same as juvenile hall it wasn't too scary or even that depressing actually the other patients were great i became friends with a lot of them and we even still keep in touch in terms of the staff many were phenomenal while some were just not cut out to work in the field to put it mildly they could be super mean and harsh for no reason and would blow up faster than us patients most of our time was spent in groups dbt talk therapy relaxation recreation etc mostly we just learned about coping skills and had to address what had happened that resulted in our hospitalizations we also would get pulled out of group a lot to meet with therapists nps nurses psychiatrists etc to have one-on-one therapy or to adjust med levels we had these goal sheets we had to complete each day and on them they had this freaked up behavioral rating system some of the staff lived for docking points usually enough docked points meant an extended stay i spent like two weeks begging and pleading to leave and i swear they lengthened my admission every single time i asked food was given to us in labelled cardboard boxes everything served was vile there were a ton of rules x no physical contact no sharing food no touching your face no rocking back and forth in your chair a bunch of other weird butt rules about food no speaking out of turn the bathroom wasn't allowed a lock and they could basically walk in on you whenever absolutely everything needed permission i mean everything permission was needed to stand up and walk less than a foot away to get water from the cooler there were a ton more but i don't remember most of them kind of blocked out the ones that were worse more unreasonable it sucked but i know a lot of other facilities are way worse so i try to keep that in perspective i got sent to viewpoint center and elevations rtc in utah a few years back it was terrible and full of manipulative people was at spring creek lodge in montana 2004 to 2005. while i was there a girl hung herself i still remember her name the lower levels were divided into families and you could only talk to the other girls in your family everything was earned from the right to use condiments to getting a candy bar once a week you're on silence 22 hours a day talking to someone your own level takes away points talking on silence takes away points they had upper level girls in charge of lower level girls some of the family mothers were super sweet some were not this was in montana so we had a lot of xm heads on the staff who were awesome btw they made us go to these weird butt seminars that were super invasive and supposed to be life-changing discovery and focus were a couple of their names i could write a book on these seminars it was a lot of work on trauma and getting out of your comfort zone done by people who were not trained the goal was to graduate but most didn't this place was expensive if you weren't caught ordered so most parents took their kids home eventually oh yeah they would read and edit your letters home lol if you beg to go home you'll get demerits for manipulation a lot of sleep deprivation on the upper levels too and one time the heat went out so it was freezing montana winters are no joke i love sundays because we deep clean and get pb and js and a movie i did make some lifelong friends there and people i'll never forget first real connections it made in years i went in with a lot of trauma and drug issues i could go on and on but what a crazy 10 months i turned 18 in there and told my parents he'd walk to the homeless shelter if they didn't take me out so they did i couldn't sleep or shower alone for months i had been around people 24 stroke 7 for so long the worst was when people would disappear in the middle of the night to get sent to other programs i got my hs diploma by taking the same tests over and over in a trailer we went to for class okay that's enough from me i could go on and on thanks for letting me share i hated those seminars with every fiber of my being i got sent to a military school across the country for a year because i smelled funny one night now i was drunk and high on ether but that's besides the point i went in with a shallow knowledge of drugs and came out with a master's degree fortunately i found my feet after a few years of the lifestyle and am just an average drinker now that will occasionally indulge in some refer overall i would suggest that putting a bunch of people with similar problems together for an extended period of time isn't really a great idea i was definitely one of the fresh fish there most of those kids had way more serious issues just based on what they claimed hard to say i was in a very odd christian counseling for a week following my grandfather trying to kill me for being gay it was basically the counselor asking questions about my father then immediately saying you are not gay your father was never around and you are chasing that affection the thing was i had already experienced a lot of crap from my abusive childhood physical shaming physical abuse all of it so i brushed it off pretty easily it was so funny watching her smile when i would ask questions about the bible because some of those stories are fascinating it was like an on off switch to counsellor's brain about bible god good and anything else bad both my parents were addicts and having to learn to pick apart their expressions to what kind of mood they would end up on was easy by the time i was 15 unfortunately it also got me to bury my emotions and never process the trauma i was diagnosed ptsd in 2011 underwent therapy that changed my life i didn't want to believe it's ain't first but man had my life and myself changed so much thanks to ptsd therapy sorry for the long post stoned and kind of in a reflective mood at the moment tl dr christian councillor blames my father's negligence on why i'm gay i'm gay because i like dong and sometimes what they are attached to used her without direct reference to whom i was referring to which was the christian counselor that's terrible sorry to hear i'm straight but it really hits me in the gut when i hear people using religion and other nonsense to try and wash the gay away it's strange how being gay is treated almost the same as being possessed by a demon i went to a 13-month therapeutic boarding school aka residential treatment center till i turned 18. it was in utah and the worst experience of my life i have long term cptsd and issues 10 years later we are not coincidentally called survivors i watched a person having a seizure get pressure pointed till they died i watched a teenage girl held down by three adult men screamed like a wild animal i've never heard anything like it i watched therapists convince girls they lied about physical shaming assaults or abortions and tell their parents they were liars when they weren't they strip searched you made you squat and cough naked even if you just went off campus to the dentist and were with staff the entire time even in the bathroom when they intaked you the first time they kept your underwear in a plastic bag we were told this was for the dogs in case you run away the worst was just the long term systematic institutionalized breaking down of innocence creativity and independence that these kids might have otherwise been able to revel in had they been born in different families or households i didn't talk to my parents for years our relationship will be strained forever the school was finally shut down for child abuse three years after i left but reopen under a different name the group that owned it aspen education group owned by crc health owned by the boone group on which mit romney sits a board member has tried to keep me from getting my hipaa and legally entitled medical documents for a decade got sent to a christian boys ranch mostly because of rampant adhd i could tell stories for hours of all the crap that went down there there were good times like a weekend at tablerock lake and bad times i once was forced to spend a total of four days in a field spreading manure with a pitchfork in a field another boy was regularly locked in a blue bunny trailer as a consequence two more ended up running away which happened fairly regularly and killing an old couple pretty sure it was in the news now living with one of the guys i was friends with there and his gf i went to a place that was for christian parents to bring their teens who were troubled every morning we were required to wake up 2.5 hours before school and do an hour of chores upon waking followed by an hour of mandatory bible study we then would go to school which was really just a building with two ladies that sat all day at their desks as you did christian homeschool workbooks from like the 1950s we weren't allowed to listen to secular non-christian music watch secular movies nor books we were allowed to communicate to two friends on an approved list once we leveled up which was achieved by memorizing 30 plus bible verses that sometimes were multiple pages long i had a friend who is from the middle east whom i had been best friends with since childhood and i got into huge trouble for trying to contact him as an approved friend even though my parents were completely okay with it because he was muslim if we did get into trouble which i did a lot we were required to sit for up to 24 hours in a room by ourselves with only a bible were not allowed to see our parents and had to do 30 40 hours worth of chores sometimes we weren't even allowed to eat we got all our food donated to us so most was way out of date i got kicked out after a year and a half being there because well you can take the gay out of someone i still have nightmares about that place i was a seriously troubled youth and while i wasn't sent away i was sent to a school for troubled youth and it saved my life i had a relatively traumatic upbringing in bad circumstances poor family violence who was in trouble from the day i set foot in school i got suspended in grade 1 for attacking another kid i got suspended in grade 5 for attacking a teacher and throughout my childhood i was used to having police at my house to break things up when me and my brother would fight with my dad my dad left when i was 12 and my mom's was working two jobs so the result was that i could run the streets without worry i did drugs i sold drugs i jumped and robbed strangers i stole cars i got into fights and got kicked out of school twice i had zero hope of finishing grade 10 never mind finishing high school i felt unloved and angry i was convinced i was going to join a gang and sell drugs for the rest of my life hopefully i would live to 30 i thought i went to the new school it was strange a hippie school where the focus was on learning in your own way but there was a focus on continuing to learn teachers were called by their first name if we didn't want to go all we had to do was call and tell them most of all they cared instead of being treated like the criminal i was they treated me like the troubled kid i was when i got high they looked the other way when i got upset they let me calm down they set expectations for me and told me that i'm at it when i missed school because i was in jail i didn't get marks taken off for missing exams instead they called and asked if i was okay and how i was doing i was an all-around [ __ ] kid i did really bad things and if i didn't go to that school i would have done worse things but for a few years in my life i had a stable place to go with people who cared and it made all the difference i graduated high school got stable emotionally and went to university i went to law school at a top school and am now a successful lawyer with an amazing family which i still don't feel i deserve my friends from back then are either dead in jail junkies or serious drug dealers gangsters i try not to think about them very often because it makes me want to cry thinking about the loss of life and sadness i still can't believe that i made it where i am and the deciding difference was at school the other path for me was leading only bad places there's not a day that goes by that i don't thank the universe for putting me in a place with people who cared i still get uncomfortable when people talk about kids overcoming hardship on the road to success and describe it to some sort of strength of character because it's really luck i got lucky to get placed in a good spot i'm not a stronger person than my old friends i was just in the right place at the right time anyhow that was my experience i was hospitalized for a week and then spent three months in wilderness therapy when i was 17. actually turned 18 put there and had to switch groups were iii different experience in the adult group than the team group being hospitalized was extremely traumatic and i still deal with ptsd symptoms from that experience wilderness was actually good for me i went to a program where we did yoga and meditation every day and ate organic in the whole nine still have to call my name when i peed and give up my shoes at night adult residential rehab fricked me up after i got out of the wilderness crazy people don't make great roommates obviously went to a camp after my brother died when i was nine i was completely lost beforehand because we were attached to the hip but this place significantly helped me process and understand death as well as life and gave me a lot of help as far as starting to move on mostly had a lot of outdoors activities that incorporated grief techniques considering the other participants had lost someone close to them too hope everyone else is doing okay if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video [Music] bye for now

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Keywords: troubled teens, troubled teenage boot camp, troubled teenager, troubled teenage girl boot camp, teens, parenting teenagers, #updootst, updoot, updoot reddit, updoot everything, reddit on tap, toadfilms, reddit, askreddit, funny reddit, reddit stories, top posts, reddit top posts, reddit cringe, comedy, reddit compilation, /r, r/, r/askreddit, top posts of r/, askreddit reading, best reddit posts, top posts of all time, people of reddit, askreddit question, ask reddit, subreddit, sub

Id: MN1q2SPViR8

Length: 25min 1sec (1501 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020