Episode 10: Wreckage

The long-term effects of treatment. Survivors share the struggles they experience even years later.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following episode contains disturbing and graphic accounts of survivor experiences.
It may not be suitable for younger audiences. Please listen
with care. Welcome back to Trapped In Treatment. Last week
we heard some pretty real stories of being released from
pro vocanian school. We did, and it was really powerful

(00:21):
to hear your story to Caroline. Thank you. I appreciate that.
I think the most challenging part for me was having
such high expectations of what life was going to be
like after and then experiencing the complete opposite. I mean,
we hear that from all the survivors that they come
out thinking they're going to feel so free, but then

(00:41):
the weight of the experience starts to bog down on
them through everything that they do. You slowly realize over
time something happened to me in that place, and I
am permanently different because of it. And that's a really
hard thing to cope with. So let's dive into that.
Because this episode is so important, because we're going to
explore the long term effects of this treatment, let's do it.

(01:24):
It would just be like this reoccurring nightmare every single night,
where it would start with me getting taken in the
middle of the night by the escort, just waking up
sweating and screaming because I was just it was so real,
And that was going on up until my documentary, and

(01:45):
now I don't have them anymore, which is a miracle.
When you are sent somewhere with adults that are supposed
to take care of you and they are abusing you
and manipulating you and treating you like dirt, it's hard
to ever really trust other people again. Um, just knowing
that there's people like that out in the world that exists,

(02:07):
that are that statistic, it just affected me in so
many ways where I feel like I would never be
like normal again, just of what I have been through.
From the moment you escape Provo, you're fighting, fighting for
a normal life, fighting to forget. It's a hard, long road,
and recovery is relative. People who go through significant trauma

(02:30):
often have effects that linger over months, years, and decades.
For survivors like Paris, who we just heard from, it
often looks like complex PTSD, nightmares, broken relationships, and an
inability to trust or feel safe in the world. Today,
we're looking at the ways in which the experience haunts
those who have gone through it and seek to find
solutions even years after, because remember, it's never too late

(02:53):
to start healing. Jonathan Newman is a survivor that attended
Provocanean School in We heard from him last episode. Now
an adult, the memories of the past continue to affect him.

(03:14):
You know, there's certain things you can never unsee, you
know it as an adult now. I mean, there's things
you've seen in your life. You just it's kind of
like that garage doory you build in your mind. You
can shut the door on it, and you know, I've
got I've had, I mean, and I say thank God,
because someone gave me the ability to shut that door,
and it was learned. And some of the stuff I've

(03:34):
seen has been behind that door in my fifty three
in January, it's been behind that door thirty plus years.
Watching the cook take a kid's hand and put it
on the stove because he wasn't doing what you're supposed
to be doing right, And he said, this is how
you get burnt. Let me show you. He took your
kid's hand and just put it basically on a foreigner
figgy degree cooking iron and held it there for about
twenty seconds, like kid was screwing, bl murder, and you know,

(03:58):
I've seen counselor strip kids downstairs and it's all retaliation.
And you can't unseen a bolt injuring a child, especially
when you're a child, because you don't know when you're next.
A common long term experience is one of emotional unavailability.
After perfecting the art of shutting down, they find that
lack of emotion continues in their relationships and daily interactions.

(04:20):
How do you think PC has changed you? I think
it made me no two. Uh, emotion, It's affected me greatly. Uh,
in relationships and the way I treat peers, the friendship

(04:43):
status I have with certain people. Uh, it's it's changed
my whole part, It really has. How how did it
change it? While because I never lived the normal hypehouse
side of there once I left, I don't have it
compared to it. I see what other people do and
their happiness, and I think, where do they get? I mean,

(05:04):
where's it come from? Because I don't have that anymore.
Mine's gone. A common long term experience is emotional unavailability.
After perfecting the art of shutting down, This lack of
emotion has affected his relationship with his children and even
potential partners. Even to this day, say stuff to my
kids and I'll go back and I'll think about what

(05:25):
I said, and I'm like, oh man, that's something awful
I said. Where did that even come from? Why did
I say it that way? Why would I talk to
my own kids? And it wasn't me. It was just
the manner I did it. It It wasn't really you know,
I'm abusing them early. It just me. They know me
that way. If you ask my kids to describe me, ah,
there's no personality to me. I'm just they love me

(05:48):
to death, but I'm not a social person that way
because I I'm an introvert. If anything, I push people
away from me. As a matter of fact, I've tell
them horrible story. There's this nurse and incology depart where
I work, who loves me to death, wants to dat me. Well,
I mean, I've been single for ten years, single father,
two kids, raising my shoulder and she's a great woman.

(06:11):
I'm afraid of hurt her. I'm I push her away.
I push her away, and you know, I don't know why,
but I can't have a relationship with anyone because I
just can't. I can't explain it. Is that door, and
I can't get him in the door, I can't get
him out of the door, and as I know is
I'm too hurt to open the door. Jonathan didn't necessarily

(06:33):
think he would ever talk about his time away. He
imagined it would stay locked up behind the garage door,
as he put it, for the rest of his life.
So when he heard about Paris's documentary, he was shocked.
It's all this thing. Looking at my school, I was like,
people talk about this. I was like, I cannot believe this.

(06:54):
I was flabbergasted at the least. I mean, for two
days I looked at your a site just I mean,
I find myself just in trance, just oh my god,
listening to this stuff, thinking I wasn't the only woman
you know, and I know I wasn't, but it was
something I never talked to my parents about for some

(07:31):
the way you can eventually become too much to carry.
Have you actually lost any friends from the program? Yeah, um,
I believe. Trying to count, there's been a lot from
the year, the seven months I was there that I've

(07:52):
either overdosed, committed suicide, or been in like tragic accidents.
I think it at least like seven, that that might
not be enough, Like I feel like there's more. What
I can say for sure, at least seven and the
majority were overdoses, unfortunately. And do you personally think provo

(08:20):
really contributed to that and that these programs in general
contribute to that within this survivor community. I do think
programs play a big part in what happens outside of
like after the program, because I mean, there's so there

(08:41):
are so many kids that adults now, UM, that have
overdosed from being in the programs. UM. The numbers are
kind of crazy because it's not even just Provo, it's
all of the programs. Everybody knows. I want to say
at least several people have dose that they were in
their program with, no matter how long you were there for,

(09:04):
and it's it's a huge issue, and I think it
plays a huge, huge role in it. Specifically for the
girls that I knew that that happened to. I can't
say for sure, but I do think it contributed to
how they were able to handle life outside. And some
of those people went through a lot worse things than

(09:25):
I did in the program. So I can only imagine
and what emotions to the like to the program. Does
that make you feel just confusion on how they're still open?
Just anger, not not anger, actually like frustration like and

(09:50):
confusion just like how how are you going to say
you're going to help these people and you just make
them worse? Like you take these kids with like an
eating disorder and turn them into like suicidal, suppressed, angry,

(10:13):
angry person. I just don't get it. Dr Vanessa Hughes
is a psychologist. She's also a survivor of Cross Creek Manor,

(10:36):
a facility three hours south of provocanean school that is
now closed. While she works every day with those who
have experienced trauma in a variety of ways, she sees
a distinct difference in this survivor population. I've been working
with traumatized populations for twenty years, and that includes survivors

(10:57):
of human trafficking, combat trauma, military, sexual trona UM, people
seeking asylum, and this survivor population is very unique. I
find it to be collectively more reactive, less trusting, higher

(11:23):
rates of suicide, substance use, overdose, um, lower functioning, more
reliance on social systems, more chronic medical conditions, more years
and therapy, more fallouts and broken relationships, with family with children.

(11:53):
I find that even the even the survivors who functioned
by what society says would be a high level of
functioning quote unquote successful ones struggle um thanks, struggling with
with relationships primarily and again personal with with groups with systems.

(12:18):
The impact of these programs on this population is absolutely heartbreaking.
The term high functioning is misleading. There's high functioning alcoholics,
high functioning drug addicts. Yes they are functioning, and for
those passing a cursory glance, all may seem fine, but
it's often right below the surface. A closer look will

(12:41):
reveal habits, neuroses, and damage that originated in a singular
event but then grows to obscure an entire lifetime. Those
suffering often have no idea that their daily reactions, feelings,
and behaviors may stem from a previous event. Without therapy
and time to process, survivors may believe that this is
the true identity, their authentic self. For Katie Mack, relationships

(13:04):
were most affected. Years of abusive care made her mind
a line abuse with love. I didn't know how to
handle it. I was like I was, I had all
this unresolved stuff in my head and like like trauma
that I just I did not know how to how
to cope with. And and then the in the weird note,
like I had relationship with people that were like obviously abusive,

(13:26):
but I was so used to abuse that it was
just kind of like my bram, like my gauge of
what's right and wrong in a relationship was like so broken.
I was just happy that somebody was loving me that
I was like, okay, this is it. There their love hurts,
but that's okay. That's like I'm used to it. I
remember thinking to myself, like, you know, if she's damaged,

(13:46):
it's I'm damaged too, so it's it's okay. But like
she was damaged in a different way that was really
incredibly abusive. So we stayed together for two years and
I finally eventually got away. These are crucial developmental years
for these young people. Adolescence is a time when we
learn about our identity, where we fit in the world,
and most importantly, personal boundaries. We spoke with Dr Hughes

(14:10):
again to discuss what survivors missed out on and how
their development has been affected by treatment. So that period
of time, the onset can be you know, twelve to fourteen, right, whenever,
how we hit puberty and the brain continues to grow
until you know, the mid twenties. Um, And if anybody

(14:31):
has been or known anybody in that period of time,
there's a huge UM shift and a huge change in
a fourteen year old compared to a year old that
we don't really see with like a thirty four year
old and a forty four year old. Right, that's a
that's a huge um period of time. UM. And the

(14:51):
brain grows, the body grows. UM. The developmental stages of
what is necessary are in that period of time. And
this is beyond just kind of like the neurophysiology, but
just into actual human development. Is that um? Intimacy isolation? Right,

(15:12):
that identity formation? Who am I? You see that in
high school? Right? So kids come and oh, I'm goss today, right,
and then the next week, no, I'm I'm um. I
don't know EMO, And I guess it's a playing the
same I don't even know these days, but whatever it is.
We go through all the different groups right to kind
of find out who we are. UM, were trying on

(15:34):
different versions of ourselves. We start to separate from parents. UM.
We learned how to flirt. That is a huge skill,
is learning how to flirt right, learning how to negotiate
those non verbals UM. I think the impact of doing
that in this this false environment UM, where especially if

(15:59):
there's puny and this is an especially there's punishment attached
to it. Right. So if you're an environment and human
touch is prohibited, and if you touch someone, you bump
into somebody, you're going to get a consequence. Now your
body is alert to being touched or to touch right
instead of that normal natural thing where you need to

(16:20):
hug right, have that get off the toesin um. The
body is fearful of that, and that that continues post program.

(16:45):
Many survivors have a negative connotation of therapy and never
go on to talk about their experiences. I didn't for years,
and before the launch of Paris Is documentary a year ago,
many had no idea. There were others with idea of
cool experiences. Even those that attended together or a similar
times it rarely spoke about what happened to them. A

(17:07):
natural reaction is wanting to forget about what happened and
to bury it down in some deep dark place inside.
I remember thinking at the time like I don't want
to think about this anymore. I don't want to talk
about this anymore. I don't like so when people bring
it up, I I just I wouldn't so. I like
after that relationship, like a lot of stuff really went
wrong in my life, like um, and it was in hindsight,

(17:31):
like a lot of weight how I was dealing with
my trauma and how I wasn't taking care of myself.
But like up until the age like twenty six, I
was just kind of like on a like I was
like kind of throwing away my life. And things start
changing when I was twenty seven, like twenty seven or so,
and I did a lot, like I had a series
of events that kind of woke me up and realized
like I needed to do better and be a better person.

(17:53):
And um, and I still I still didn't like talk
about probo h much with anybody. Like none of my
friends in real life, none of my work friends. Nobody
knew about provocainean school or like Mexico Costa buy the
Sea in Mexico. Um it was. But I did have
like a couple of friends from the program I stayed

(18:13):
in contact with. And there's this one guy from Cosa,
his name was Brock, and I have no problem sharing
his name, and I hope you guys share his name too,
because he's since passed. Um. I remember we stayed in contact,
like he was somebody I remembered in seminars at COSA
and I remembered his name. His name was so memorable,
Brock Riley, and he uh, he was. He stood out

(18:38):
to me because he was this one guy like we
were partnered up in seminars and he was just like
he and I both were looking around like this is bullshit,
like like this is absolute bullshit. This is crazy town.
And it was the one like the few times where
we got to see somebody from the boy side and
like it was just a breath of fresh air for
somebody else to be like not drinking the kool aid.
So after I got out, I remained in contact with

(18:58):
them because I found his name and he was just
in a local area on the internet. So remained for
friends for the years. And when I started to improve,
things got better for me. But like he's somebody who
kind of like he would still have nightmares about the program.
He started drinking um, drinking a lot, and he'd want
to talk about it, and I remember being like, no, dude,

(19:21):
just get over it, like you know, like you it's
so long ago. It wasn't like is this a messed
up it was. I remember saying something like it wasn't
like they were marching us into ovens, Like it wasn't
like the worst thing possible. So why are we still
talking about it? Like I remember being really insensitive, and
that's like to a lot of regret I have now

(19:43):
and um, I like I still have like old childlos
with them where I was less, like why are you
still talking about it? Why are you still having nightmares
about it? Just push it out of your mind. And
because I kind of become a workaholic to kind of
deal with my own trauma at the time, I was
just trying to fix his problems by giving him like, hey,
how about we study together, how about we do this together?

(20:03):
And it never worked. He was still like he his
life started falling apart, like, um, you know in like
two thousand and thirteen, two fourteen, and just went downhill. Um.
He got a divorce from his wife, he became homeless,
and he eventually took his own life. And when I
found out he took his own life, like you know,

(20:24):
it just caused me to kind of wake up and realized,
like I couldn't talk to him about COSSA or about
the programs or anything because, um, not because he like
he should have gotten over it, but because I really
I couldn't talk about it. At that time, I realized
that I was the one in denial, that this was
like really messed up, and it messed me up and
us up. And um, that's kind of like two thousand

(20:48):
seventeen was kind of where I started re exploring the side,
like it's it's I kind of had two waking ups,
Like when I got out at eighteen, I realized that
was wrong, but I like I just went back in
those closet of just being like in denial about it.
And then when I was, you know, like two seventeen,
watching like someone I loved like lose their life over

(21:09):
like the trauma I couldn't resolve, I realized, man, like
it's it's still in me too. Like I just found
like instead of drinking and like doing substances, I my
substance was work holism and just getting like working my
butt off and just burying all those feelings under that.
And I never wanted to go back as far as
like trying to go back into denial, but like, you know,

(21:32):
like I have to be honest, Like if I was
if I had handled my crap earlier, maybe I could
have been a better friend. I don't know if I
could have changed the course of what happened to him,
but like I could have at least listened better for him,
And you know, I that's kind of where I started realizing,
like how much this has affected me over the years.
I can't tell you how common this experience is. This

(21:56):
is not one person who is having a hard time.
This is nearly every survivor who comes out of these facilities.
For myself, I didn't know how to live in the world,
and I also didn't know how to live just within
my own self, and so in my late teens and
early twenties, that actually lead to drug addiction. And after

(22:21):
seven years of addiction, I finally realized that what I
was coping with was trauma from when I had been
in the program. But then, even once I acknowledge that,
it was really difficult to cross that threshold to seek help.
And there's a lot of people, as Catherine just explained,

(22:43):
who will never make it to that couch. They will
never make it to that therapists office because life becomes
too much and it becomes overwhelming again. This is just
one of those trauma responses that we see in the
survivor community and within other communities that have been trauma to.
Post Traumatic stress disorder is a concept many are familiar

(23:06):
with in the American lexicon, most often used in relation
to veterans and past military experience. It's the presence of
stress and negative behavior that results from a previous injury.
The presence of these long term effects are extremely debilitating
and increase the likelihood for later self destructive behaviors and
even suicide. A new, albeit unconfirmed term is emerging, one

(23:29):
that takes into account the uniqueness of each traumatic experience.
Complex PTSD so currently complex GTSD is not in the
d s M. Right so, PTSD is a diagnosis that
has particular criteria that need to be met to able
to have the diagnosis UM complex PTSD. UM. There's a

(23:53):
growing body of literature that really shows that this is
kind of separate UM. SO I see this in my
work with with veterans. Right. So, UM, my men and
women that come back from combat will have a certain
manifestation UM a certain set of symptoms that shows up

(24:13):
in a particular way, and my survivors of military sexual
assault that looks different. The experiences are different. UM. We
have systems in our body that allow us to negotiate
the dangerous things that happened in the world. UM. You know,

(24:35):
we have our body will scar um to heal itself.
We have an immune system. UM. If we slip and fall,
you know, our body will you know jolt to help us.
You know, we gain the balance, UM. So our body
is able to negotiate a lot of those natural experiences

(24:58):
that happen. We are less able to negotiate the experiences
that happened at the hands of people. So complex trauma
really gets that experience as that happened intentionally at the
hands of people, or kind of those prolonged chronic UM experiences.
And when we're talking about things that need to be
described in those ways, our body doesn't have a natural

(25:20):
system to process that. So our body doesn't have a
system that is able to help us negotiate naturally that
somebody would sexually assaultists while restraining us in an isolation
room over and over, or would zip tie us and
put us in a horse draw. The human body doesn't

(25:46):
have the system to process that. Yeah, I love that
we got into complex PTSD. I really do, because once
I learned what complex PTSD was, everything made sense. I
had been diagnosed by polar I had depression, anxiety, all
of these things. None of it made sense. I didn't
fit into anything. But complex PTSD is exactly what it is,

(26:10):
and was it doctors just not understanding complex PTSD that
they were diagnosing you with all these other things first, So,
like Vanessa mentions, it's not in the d s M.
So their d s M is the diagnostic manual that
they used to diagnose people. So if it's not in there,
they're obviously not going to be diagnosing people with that thing.

(26:31):
And there's that means the most therapists coming out of
university are not schooled in it. They don't know what
it is, they don't know how it presents. So this
is why you have a lot of survivors who end
up being diagnosed with things like borderline personality disorder, um
bi polar disorder and all of these other kinds of
like personality things, when really it's complex trauma and how

(26:52):
to defining it allow you to heal well. It allowed
me to heal because then I realized that what I
was experienced seeing as far as like a roller coaster
of emotions. I would go through these like very fast
cycling periods of um like heightened hyper vigilance is what
they call it, anxiety and just not being able to

(27:14):
relax and even kind of like grandiose sense of self,
grandiose ideas, and then I would just like plummet into
like a hollow, empty depression. And I wasn't under I
was thinking it's bipolar. But then eventually what I learned
is that this is my trauma. And so when I
could then look at the trauma and deal with it,
it lessened all of those other experiences completely. Wow. Yeah,

(27:37):
that makes sense. And I just want to underscore there
that PTSD and complex PTSD is an injury to the brain.
It is not a deficiency of any kind. It's not
a chemical imbalance, it is not anything that is wrong
with that individual. It is from a series of stress
and a series of trauma that has created a physical,

(28:00):
cool injury. And that's why we've got to approach it
completely differently. And we're so lucky to have had the
chance to speak to Dr Hughes, who has dedicated her
life to understanding and fighting for survivors. And there's so
many others out there fighting for the entire community as

(28:23):
parents ourselves, or if you are a parent listening, know
that there's other options out there. Victoria Humanick, one of
the survivors we heard from this season, is also a parent,
So I asked her thoughts on what she would tell
a parent today. What would you tell a parent today
who was looking at sending their child to a program?

(28:44):
What would you want them to know? There's a lot
more options. There's a lot more options. Don't give up
because as a parent, I have a teen tween and
he's mean to me sometimes and I switch on that
switch and I'm like, you know, and I'm like, or
I want to backhand you were like, I can't believe

(29:05):
you said that to me. But I think it's really
important to be present for your children. To put down
your phone and to be there and to answer the
questions and to get annoyed because you've heard about roadblocks
for four hundred times, because you only have that time now.

(29:27):
Need to be present for your children because in ten
years we're what building now we're building these children. And
when you have a child and bring it into this world,
sometimes it's really important to put aside your needs. And
I have a lot of friends in life that make

(29:49):
the choices when their kids are young or have problems
in their marriage, and I always tell them, be selfish
for your kids right now and put your stupid needs. Fine,
you might not feel pretty today, but guess what she
needs to feel pretty for a few more years, and
then you can go feel pretty. You can go do

(30:10):
whatever you need to do, because as long as we're
doing that, our lives well are shaping their lives. And
if our parents had done that for us, I think
some of the things that would have happened to us
would have changed things. We'd still be these super cool,
awesome people, but we probably have a few less face tattoos,

(30:34):
like maybe you know you love that. We need to
stitch that on a pillow. That's gonna happen. That needs
to be a bumper sticker, Like maybe we'd have a
few less face tattoos. I feel that what happens now,
you know, it's just we'd still be the super red people,

(30:55):
but we wouldn't be have the little hamps we wouldn't
have gone in that marriage Jim Vegas, or we wouldn't
have been like with that guy who was really mean
to us and put that through. But what we became afterwards,
and rebirth is part of that process absolutely, And I
think you know, when it comes to the parenting, what
I hear you saying is talking about emotional availability and

(31:19):
having that capacity for your children even on the bad days. Right,
It's like you're going through almost like a marriage with
your children, for better or for worse. And so I
think back in the eighties and nineties especially, and I
know it's still lingers um a little bit, but this
ideology of like tough love, right, because it's so much

(31:41):
easier to be like emotionally cold and uh, to put
this wall up, right, especially because I always say that
when we parent, it brings out all of our insecurities,
It brings out all of the things that we haven't
healed within ourselves. It tests you to the limit, uh,
looking at my seven year old and and and that's it,

(32:02):
and that's a part of parenting, right, And so yeah,
that is just such an incredible point, And thank you
for sharing that. Do you have any other thoughts or
anything that you would like to share with us today.
Before we close out, I just want to say thank
you so much for doing all this and bringing awareness, because,

(32:24):
like I said earlier, I honest to God believed that
Provocanon was and what happened at Provo was something that
we deserved, we as being the patients and students or
whatever we were. I believed it was a part of
my past that I which has happened. I never thought

(32:47):
and he would want to talk about it even though
it was something in my mind on a regular basis.
We all live it every day, we think about it,
or we think about certain people or experiences, and um,
I just want others to know that, you know, we're
not alone, and you're gonna be okay, And you could

(33:09):
be successful and amazing and still have bad stuff happened
to you in your life. Yeah, it's just a little
bit of just a coat you gotta wear. You could
take it off and shake it off. It's still going
to be fine. If you're a survivor. Life after Provocanean
school and any treatment program of its kind can be
really hard, really really hard. Believe me, I know this,

(33:35):
But if this episode means anything, I hope it lets
you know that you are not alone, you are not broken,
you are not bad, you are not damaged. You are
amazing and deserving of the same kind of love and
understanding is any human being on this planet. Well, we

(34:10):
just journeyed through some pretty heavy stuff. Yeah we really,
we really did. It's beyond devastating that these kids are
coming out so much more traumatized than when they went in.
I say it constantly to my team that I work
with that it's so rare that people go through a
trauma and then they actually have the ability to create

(34:32):
change on a systemic level to prevent it from happening
to other people. I mean that that is healing. That's
not just healing on the individual level, which of course
it is, but it's it's healing to the community, into
the world and where we live, and it's that collective action,
that collective energy. Hand in hand looking at pro Vocanian

(34:53):
School and saying we see you, survivor, we are here
and we will save you. Over the past year, we
have mobilized thousands, We have protested, we have gone to
d C and talked with lawmakers and legislators. We are
fighting back. We are the change, and we need you
to be a part of this. We need you to

(35:13):
break your silence. Will you join us next time? On
Trapped in Treatment