Recently, a documentary called The Program came out on Netflix that’s about a boarding school / treatment center / hellhole. I watched it and had all kinds of memories flood back from the year in high school that I had been sent away to Utah. My experience wasn’t anything as extreme as the kids shown in the documentary, but it definitely sparked something inside me that had been shoved down for almost two decades. I also am in a Facebook group with people who were in the same program as me as kids and, especially since watching that show, I’ve paid more attention to some of the details that they write on there. There must be a big part of me that just wants to forget about that year because I honestly barely remember it at this point. I do remember some things though and I’ve recently realized how much more some of those things have affected me for the last couple decades.
It all started when I was 16 and I came out as a lesbian to my family. It went over great, not so great, and pretty awful with different family members. Although I had mostly positive responses, the negative responses broke me in ways that I didn’t fully understand at the time. I started to act out and lie to my family about where I was and what I was doing because I was hanging out with my girlfriend (who, I’ll admit wasn’t the best for my mental health either). The general gist of it all was that I started to spiral down a pretty awful path that included self harm, self hate, and a whole lot of drama. My parents decided that it was best to remove me from the ‘situation’ and send me to a wilderness program. My teenage self blamed them not approving of my ‘lifestyle’ as the only reason for sending me away, when in reality, they were overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do to help me. So, they found the best option they could think of. Was there a little bit of ‘I hope she comes back straight’… most likely, yes. At this point though, that’s water under the bridge – and clearly not what happened anyway.
I actually agreed to go to the first program that they sent me to. It was a wilderness program that I was in for about 7 weeks. Looking back on the experience – it was kind of awesome. Being in the experience at that time however – it was really fucking awful. In the first few days of the program, kids were supposed to write down their life stories, carve some utensils to eat with (if a knife was safe for them to have while being supervised of course), and sit in their feelings (or detox off of drugs if that was one of their problems). Basically, I cried for about three days straight and wrote down everything I could come up with. I wasn’t allowed to talk to a single person until my story was done. Once I got my whole story written down though, I was allowed to join the rest of the group around the fire at night. That first night I sat with about 15 strangers and read my life story out loud to them. I had never felt so vulnerable or so raw. Opening up about myself to another human, let alone 15 strangers, was hard for me back then. I talked about coming out, wanting to die, hating myself, hating my family, hating my life, missing my friends, the drama in my love life back home, how soccer was my life until I tore my acl, and anything else I could think of.. some typical teenager stuff and some not so typical teenager stuff.
Over the next 7 weeks I learned a little bit about how to open up emotionally to new people, how to listen to other people’s story with an open mind no matter where they had come from, how to “bust a fire” (aka start a fire basically from scratch), how to navigate through the woods, and so many other awesome things – even though I thoroughly hated it at the time. About 5 weeks into it, the staff members there started to think that I was bipolar. Almost every single day we hiked several miles. If you know me at all, you know that I love exercise and being outdoors. Whenever we were hiking I felt great, happy, excited to be there, but then whenever we got to our next campsite I crashed hard with the reality of my situation sinking in. Going from that high to that low almost every day got them thinking that I needed to be put on medication. So they suggested that I go to a treatment center in Salt Lake City for a year to be ‘put on medication in a controlled environment’ and to continue my therapy. A couple weeks later, I was pulled out of the woods and put into a house in Salt Lake City with about 25 other girls.
We all came from different backgrounds. Most of the girls struggled with meth, heroin, or other addictions, others struggled with self harm and/or had attempted suicide, others had been in gangs back home, and the list goes on. I honestly struggled so hard to accept the fact that I ‘needed’ to be there. And the reality of me ‘needing’ to be there was that I didn’t need to be there but I was convinced that I did based on what my therapist and the staff there were saying. Was I fairly typical teenager with fairly typical teenager feelings? Yes and no. I hadn’t learned how to regulate my emotions at all and also… most teenager suck at that – I was just a little extra. Was I actually bipolar? No – within a year of being back home after the program, I was off any medication related to that and have never been put on any since. But did I learn a lot while being there? Yes, definitely. Were there benefits to it? Yes, I wouldn’t have the relationship with my parents that I do today without that hell-ish year of my life and I’m actually super grateful for that. I learned how to communicate better than I had been able to previously and I learned how manage my feelings as much as a teenager can, so yes, there were benefits to it and I don’t hold it against my parents for sending me away to it. That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been some lasting negatives to my experience there though.
The thing that I struggled with hearing the most on that Netflix documentary didn’t have to do with the reminders of the fact that we lost all control over our own bodies, minds, and actions, or the fact that I was isolated and wasn’t allowed to communicate with anyone back home for the most part, or the fact that a lot of the the rules that we all had to follow or deal with the consequences were extreme and probably not the healthiest place to learn how to regulate ourselves and learn how to actually navigate life. It wasn’t the fact that I stared out of any window I could, looking at those tormentingly beautiful, Salt Lake City mountains, and wishing that I could be literally anywhere else every single day, hour, or minute that I was there. No, the thing that I struggled with the most was hearing someone on the show explain how she just didn’t understand why she wasn’t good enough for her parents to take her out of the program and bring her home.
Being good enough or feeling like I’m good enough for anything or anyone has been one of my biggest struggles as an adult. I’m sure there are some core memory events in there with being sent away after coming out and then feeling like no matter what I did while I was gone, it wasn’t ever good enough to actually come home. The reality of those feelings at that place though was that there wasn’t a ‘good enough’ there to leave unless we did everything that they asked us to do for as long as they asked us to do it and the length of that was just however long they decided.
I did all of it, thinking that I’d get to go home afterwards. I didn’t put up a fight in just about any way while I was there. I went along with whatever the program asked of me because if I didn’t, like a lot of the girls did, then there would be consequences that were way worse than what I was experiencing. My experience wasn’t ‘bad’. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t as traumatic as a lot of the girls’ experiences there. Most of my trauma that I’ve had to process through the last couple decades from that place are from the stories that I heard from those kids. It was more like second hand traumas, which isn’t fun to deal with also.
After I spent about 9 months in the treatment center, I was then sent to a therapeutic boarding school. The idea that even after doing everything that was asked of me at that treatment center, I still didn’t get to go home was something that I remember really struggling with. I’m sure that fed into the not being good enough feeling that I’ve been trying unwind and rewire lately. I don’t blame my parents for doing what they were told they should do with me by ‘professionals’ though. The lawsuits that have come out recently from that place is why I put ‘professionals’ in quotes. Not everyone who worked there was bad though… I got very lucky with the therapist that I had. She was actually great but did have to stay within the regulations of the treatment center, which I think forced her to skew some of her sessions with me. There also were some staff members that I’m still friends with to this day because they genuinely cared and wanted to help us.
Anyway, luckily I was only at the therapeutic boarding school for less than a couple months because I convinced my mom to bring me home for my senior year. That boarding school would have been an absolute disaster for me had I stayed from the very few memories that I can actually remember from there. Once I was back home, it was hard as hell to readjust to normal life again though. I went from being in hyper-controlled environments to real life and everything seemed out of control, overwhelming, and just scary. I eventually adjusted back to life as best I could. I’ve struggle with anxiety my whole life but it definitely got worse after I got back from Utah. My body never really figured out how to handle all of that anxiety to be honest, I still struggle with that daily.
But without that year of my life going the way that it did, I’m not sure who I’d be today. I honestly think that I’d be an entirely different person and not necessarily in a good way. As shitty as the experience was, it was a major part of creating the person that I am today. I’m grateful for it and the person it’s shaped me into, but I’m also still having to work through a whole lot of the baggage that I picked up there along the way. I imagine we all have experiences like that though. Maybe its a relationship that had its good moments and taught us a lot about ourselves but was pretty shitty overall – I know I’ve had plenty of those – or maybe its a job that shaped us into who we are but we weren’t treated and/or paid how we should have been. Those kinds of things cause some damage to us as humans, throw us into a survival state, or throw us into emotional (or financial) instability and despite the good things we might have learned from them, we still have baggage and feelings to process through because of them.
Life is full of experiences that shape us into who we are. Some of those experiences are great, some are awful, and most are probably a mixed bag of both. All we can do is process through the bad as much as we can and soak in the good that happens along the way. We don’t always have a say in the things that happen to us, but we do have a say and choice in how we respond to and heal from those things. Whether we’re 16 years old or 61 years old, we get to choose if we are going to at least try to heal from the things that have affected us throughout our lives. I know I’m still working on a whole lot of those things and will be for the rest of my life, but its worth it to me because I think that it makes me a better and more-whole person along the way any time that I do. Healing is something that makes life worth living for me, which is why I will always advocate for people to do the damn work and heal as much as they can.
Until next time,
Chelsea
CKB Coaching, LLC 