Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / Unsilenced: The Troubled Teen Industry

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Unsilenced: The Troubled Teen Industry · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

0:03
Speaker 1: This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about
0:06
Speaker 1: the game of living in and with chronic pain and
0:09
Speaker 1: trauma get into the heart of how to heal. I
0:12
Speaker 1: am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan
0:18
Speaker 1: on discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, holistic practitioners, loved ones,
0:23
Speaker 1: and anybody that is interested in having their voice heard
0:26
Speaker 1: in the chronic pain and trauma world that we live in.
0:38
Speaker 1: When I was fifteen years old, I had already been
0:41
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted twice. When I was nineteen, I was gang
0:46
Speaker 1: raped by more people than I could keep count of.
0:51
Speaker 1: When I was married to my ex husband, I lived
0:54
Speaker 1: with marital rape as well as massive amounts of emotional
0:58
Speaker 1: and physical abuse, of which my parents do not know
1:02
Speaker 1: about to this day. They don't listen to this show
1:06
Speaker 1: of mine for many reasons unless I say, hey, listen.
1:11
Speaker 2: To this episode.
1:12
Speaker 1: But I feel like they just might know that horrible
1:17
Speaker 1: things have happened to me, but they didn't want to
1:20
Speaker 1: face them. And I still feel like, especially my mother,
1:22
Speaker 1: that they don't want to face. She doesn't want to
1:24
Speaker 1: face the truth of why some of my rebellions started.
1:30
Speaker 1: And as a teenager and up to this day, I
1:34
Speaker 1: continue to protect them from what happened to me. And
1:39
Speaker 1: you know, if you've listened to the show for even
1:42
Speaker 1: you know, an episode or two, you know that I
1:44
Speaker 1: constantly talk about how the body keeps the score. That's
1:48
Speaker 1: a book that we've always talked about, and it is true.
1:52
Speaker 1: We talk about how our traumas are stored within our bods, right.
1:56
Speaker 1: We talk about how these traumas exercise our das into
2:01
Speaker 1: chronic illness, chronic pain, syndrome after syndrome, after whatever, and
2:07
Speaker 1: we go to our doctors and we're like, here are
2:10
Speaker 1: all the things that we are feeling. And they don't
2:13
Speaker 1: believe us, especially us women, but they don't understand that
2:17
Speaker 1: those traumas turn into health issues with us. Go forward
2:22
Speaker 1: and here I am forty six years old, closer to
2:25
Speaker 1: the fifty than I would like to admit, and we
2:29
Speaker 1: have more health issues and more health issues. And before
2:32
Speaker 1: I started the show, I had no idea why that
2:35
Speaker 1: shit was happening to me. And as I've then covered
2:39
Speaker 1: with every episode on the show, how trauma informs our pain,
2:44
Speaker 1: How trauma informs the decisions we make, the people we
2:48
Speaker 1: bring into our lives, the people we marry, the people
2:52
Speaker 1: we divorce.
2:55
Speaker 2: And you know I was as a teenager.
2:58
Speaker 1: I would absolutely compartmentalize myself into being a troubled teen.
3:03
Speaker 2: I was.
3:04
Speaker 1: I was rebellious, Still am was curious, Still am am sad,
3:09
Speaker 1: Still AM depressed, Still AM anxious, still AM scared, working
3:15
Speaker 1: on it, all of those things I'm working on. But
3:18
Speaker 1: today I am hopeful. Now, as you guys know, the
3:20
Speaker 1: show is about hope. Hopeful that we that we can
3:25
Speaker 1: help change what happens to us when we are young
3:29
Speaker 1: and have no control over that, because now we are
3:32
Speaker 1: in charge, not them. So today I would like to
3:37
Speaker 1: talk about the troubled teen industry TTI because we might
3:41
Speaker 1: say TTI throughout the episode, just so you know. I'm
3:44
Speaker 1: becoming unsilenced once and for all.
3:48
Speaker 2: And I have the most amazing guests today. Oh my goodness.
3:54
Speaker 1: Without further ado, I would like to introduce to you
3:57
Speaker 1: today my guest, Met Applegate.
4:01
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, my starling, Hello.
4:04
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here.
4:07
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, super excited. I mean, we've got to
4:10
Speaker 1: be excited to talk about trauma, don't we wait?
4:12
Speaker 3: Always always, it's.
4:16
Speaker 2: Never a downer. Yeah.
4:18
Speaker 1: Meg is the co founder and CEO of Unsilenced, a
4:23
Speaker 1: nonprofit aimed at stopping institutional child abuse within the troubled
4:27
Speaker 1: teen industry that TTI mentioned earlier. She's a survivor of
4:32
Speaker 1: two TTI programs, where she spent three and a half
4:35
Speaker 1: years of her teen years locked in institutional quote unquote programs.
4:40
Speaker 3: Right yep.
4:41
Speaker 1: She ended up getting a degree in psychology. She spent
4:44
Speaker 1: over seventeen plus years in various nonprofit boards focusing on
4:48
Speaker 1: board development, recruitment, and fundraising. But it wasn't until later
4:52
Speaker 1: in her career that she recognized the abuse that she
4:57
Speaker 1: endured and its impact on her adulthood. My lord right,
5:02
Speaker 1: and she has now dedicated herself to empowering other survivors
5:06
Speaker 1: of institutional abuse, amongst many other things.
5:10
Speaker 2: And so here we are today, we are here.
5:13
Speaker 1: We are so all right, I am rolling out the
5:15
Speaker 1: red carpet for you, babe, And I would like to
5:18
Speaker 1: just jump in, like nobody's business, about the day that
5:22
Speaker 1: you were abducted from your bedroom bias stranger, thrown into
5:27
Speaker 1: an suv and set into your first institution.
5:31
Speaker 2: And then let's take it from there.
5:33
Speaker 3: Right, We got to start off with the kidnapping. It's always,
5:35
Speaker 3: it's always the part that everyone.
5:37
Speaker 1: Always a little quick beauty fuls A good hook, isn't it.
5:41
Speaker 3: It's a good hook. Fifteen. I was kidnapped in the
5:45
Speaker 3: middle of the night by two strangers, you know, And
5:47
Speaker 3: that's and that's the truth. Yeah, I mean it was.
5:49
Speaker 3: It was about two am, and these two strangers came
5:52
Speaker 3: into my room. They woke me up and said, you're
5:54
Speaker 3: coming with me, and I remember thinking like, hella, and
5:57
Speaker 3: come with you, and like, I don't know who you are,
6:00
Speaker 3: and I thought I was going to be arrested. Like
6:02
Speaker 3: that was my first thought is I'm going to jail
6:04
Speaker 3: because I had smoked pop the night before, and I thought,
6:07
Speaker 3: oh god, I'm going to end up in California.
6:09
Speaker 2: I'm going to jail exactly.
6:13
Speaker 3: But immediately I could see my parents at the door
6:15
Speaker 3: watching and knew that this is obviously something that they
6:19
Speaker 3: signed on to. And the two people basically said we
6:23
Speaker 3: can do this the easy way or the hard way,
6:25
Speaker 3: and alluded to the hard way being handcuffed, and yeah, exactly.
6:29
Speaker 3: So I just went along with what they were saying,
6:32
Speaker 3: but I was super upset, and I remember asking them
6:35
Speaker 3: to go to the bathroom. They said they had to
6:37
Speaker 3: watch me get dressed. They said that they had to
6:39
Speaker 3: watch me do that too. And I remember the last
6:43
Speaker 3: question I asked was can I at least pack a bag?
6:46
Speaker 3: And they responded with your parents already did. And that's
6:50
Speaker 3: when I flipped out. And I remember screaming at the door,
6:54
Speaker 3: I fucking hate you so much. I'm never talking to
6:58
Speaker 3: you ever again, and and I just remember being so angry.
7:02
Speaker 3: And that's really when the switch flipped and I just
7:05
Speaker 3: started disassociating, and I remember they just dragged me out
7:09
Speaker 3: of the house, put me into the back of an sub,
7:11
Speaker 3: locked the doors, and we were off to Lax Airport,
7:15
Speaker 3: and I remember they had to face me away from
7:18
Speaker 3: the gate. I wasn't allowed to know where I was going.
7:20
Speaker 3: I couldn't look at my ticket, like I didn't have
7:22
Speaker 3: a cell phone. So it's like, what would I have done?
7:24
Speaker 3: I have no idea, But.
7:26
Speaker 2: That's one hundred years ago.
7:28
Speaker 3: Here. It's like the paper tickets that you had to
7:31
Speaker 3: get mailed to you. You know, there's no eed to
7:33
Speaker 3: gets back then. I couldn't look at it right, right,
7:37
Speaker 3: I know. But I remember I got on the plane
7:40
Speaker 3: and I didn't know where I was going until the
7:42
Speaker 3: captain came on and mentioned Boise Idaho, And as soon
7:45
Speaker 3: as we took off, they handed me two letters, one
7:47
Speaker 3: from my mom and my dad. And that's when I
7:50
Speaker 3: truly just disassociated and I don't remember anything until I
7:55
Speaker 3: walked the doors of my first program.
7:58
Speaker 1: That is insane reading your book, which we'll get into.
8:02
Speaker 2: I was such a rebellious teenager.
8:05
Speaker 1: I mean I did all means we are, yeah, I mean, yeah,
8:09
Speaker 1: we all are. But when you taught when I when
8:11
Speaker 1: I opened up with what I opened up with, I've
8:13
Speaker 1: never said at all to anybody what I opened up
8:16
Speaker 1: the show with. Oh wow, So today was a hard
8:19
Speaker 1: episode for me. Start right, Yeah, Hi, thank you. I
8:24
Speaker 1: told you before we started the episode that this was
8:25
Speaker 1: gonna be hard.
8:26
Speaker 2: For both of us.
8:27
Speaker 1: But when you feel abducted versus being abducted, like I
8:33
Speaker 1: remember feeling like I was trapped in a place with
8:38
Speaker 1: my parents that they were trying to lock me down
8:42
Speaker 1: as hard as they could from rebellion because I was
8:45
Speaker 1: trying to protect them from what had happened to me.
8:49
Speaker 1: But in your situation, you've got parents that think I've
8:53
Speaker 1: got this troubled teen yeah, and they were cursed into
9:00
Speaker 1: You've got to bring your your kid into this institution,
9:04
Speaker 1: I want to talk instantly about the institutionalism and the
9:08
Speaker 1: political part of it, and the money making side of it,
9:12
Speaker 1: and all of that right out of the gates before
9:14
Speaker 1: we get into the rest of this, because that is
9:17
Speaker 1: incredibly interesting to me.
9:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very important.
9:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, all the dark and twisty, all these rich, wealthy
9:27
Speaker 1: people and the things that they do. It's like eyes
9:29
Speaker 1: wide shut. That's the first thing I thought about when
9:32
Speaker 1: I was reading your book was eyes wide shut exactly.
9:35
Speaker 3: I Mean, we're talking about a twenty three billion dollar
9:38
Speaker 3: of public funds industry, twenty three billion, three billion, and
9:43
Speaker 3: that's conservative, and that's conservative. That's really we can't count
9:47
Speaker 3: the private funds. We have no way of knowing how
9:49
Speaker 3: much parents are funneling into these facilities, but we know
9:53
Speaker 3: that they cost anywhere from five to thirty thousand dollars
9:56
Speaker 3: a month. So there's no telling really how much has
9:59
Speaker 3: really on into this industry we're talking.
10:02
Speaker 1: We know that we know that they're willing to put
10:04
Speaker 1: money into like buy their kids into USC and yeah, yeah,
10:08
Speaker 1: so that's just to get them into a college, much
10:10
Speaker 1: less this stuff, dear lord.
10:12
Speaker 3: Right, and we're talking about like tax payer dollars here
10:16
Speaker 3: we're talking about school funds and special education IEP plans
10:20
Speaker 3: of sending kids out of these school districts into these
10:24
Speaker 3: programs to be abused. And we're also talking about programs
10:28
Speaker 3: that are backed by private equity. We're talking about programs
10:31
Speaker 3: that are nonprofits. They're all over the board, but one
10:34
Speaker 3: thing stays the same, and regardless of where the money
10:37
Speaker 3: is coming from, and that it's not evidence based. And
10:41
Speaker 3: kids are leaving calling themselves survivors, which should never happen
10:45
Speaker 3: within any healthcare industry. It's absurd.
10:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in your book you talked about that about
10:52
Speaker 1: how people left and they felt like even you to
10:54
Speaker 1: a certain extent, were.
10:56
Speaker 2: Like I made it through. I made it through the world,
10:59
Speaker 2: and the for us everybody in case you didn't know.
11:04
Speaker 1: But yeah, like these stories of these people are like
11:06
Speaker 1: I made it through.
11:07
Speaker 2: I made it through. I made it through.
11:09
Speaker 1: But then they didn't make it through and so many
11:12
Speaker 1: of these people, as you mentioned in your book, about
11:15
Speaker 1: how a lot of them started to die.
11:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that that's that's the really hard
11:20
Speaker 3: thing is when you're so young, you look at a
11:23
Speaker 3: hurdle as like I just got to get through this, right,
11:25
Speaker 3: I just I got to get through. And that's even
11:26
Speaker 3: if you know it's a hurdle at the time. I
11:28
Speaker 3: was brainwashed, so I didn't know it was a hurdle
11:30
Speaker 3: at the time. But even if you know that it's
11:32
Speaker 3: something that is hard for you, you just look at it
11:34
Speaker 3: as as long as I can get over this. But
11:36
Speaker 3: people don't realize that when survivors are going through what
11:39
Speaker 3: they're going through in these programs, it's just the beginning.
11:41
Speaker 3: Getting through that hard part was just the beginning. Because
11:45
Speaker 3: all of the things that are infinitely more likely to
11:48
Speaker 3: happen because of that abuse later in life is so crazy.
11:53
Speaker 3: We're talking about substance use, We're talking about future domestic
11:56
Speaker 3: violence situations and more likely to be in them. We're
11:59
Speaker 3: talking about hindered education. We're talking about physical health issues
12:04
Speaker 3: and autoimmune disorders and obesity and higher rates of suicide.
12:09
Speaker 3: So we're talking about overall health and mental health. That
12:13
Speaker 3: these survivors are leaving these programs thinking, oh, thank god,
12:16
Speaker 3: I'm out, and really it's just begun because it's set
12:20
Speaker 3: them up for just failure in life. And it's really
12:23
Speaker 3: sad because many times these survivors don't know where to
12:27
Speaker 3: go to for help. Because many times they were abused
12:30
Speaker 3: by their therapists, and so that's the one thing you do, right,
12:33
Speaker 3: you need help, you go to a therapist. Well, if
12:35
Speaker 3: you were abused by one, it's really hard to make
12:37
Speaker 3: that decision. So a lot of us are just left
12:39
Speaker 3: to our own devices to figure things out. We don't
12:42
Speaker 3: have any help reintegrating back into society. Many of us
12:45
Speaker 3: are doing that at eighteen with zero idea how to
12:49
Speaker 3: do normal things in life because the programs didn't teach us.
12:53
Speaker 3: So it's like it's really important for us to realize,
12:57
Speaker 3: not only do we need to stop sending these kids
12:59
Speaker 3: to these programs obviously, we need to focus on the
13:02
Speaker 3: survivors that are unfortunately already survivors and how we can
13:05
Speaker 3: support them because they've been really just all left.
13:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's like what like one hundred and like
13:12
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty two.
13:14
Speaker 3: Hundred twenty to two hundred thousand a year conservatively.
13:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is insane. And that's is that in the
13:21
Speaker 1: United States or is that globally?
13:23
Speaker 3: So that would be just the United States for now.
13:25
Speaker 3: There was very many programs throughout even outside of the
13:29
Speaker 3: United States, but many of them have been closed.
13:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, So and I know that you you're an advocate
13:36
Speaker 1: for all of this, and we're going to get into
13:37
Speaker 1: that a little bit later, but i'd like to talk
13:40
Speaker 1: about your actual experience now. And I know that it
13:44
Speaker 1: might jump up a couple of things, and it will
13:45
Speaker 1: jump up stuff with me even though it wasn't there.
13:48
Speaker 1: So I'm an EmPATH, like nobody's business. But I'd like
13:51
Speaker 1: to talk to you a little bit about a day
13:54
Speaker 1: in of what you were experiencing, like when you got there,
13:57
Speaker 1: and then what your life was and what you witnessed,
14:01
Speaker 1: because the things that you were witnessing, the things that
14:03
Speaker 1: you were all kind of trying to protect each other
14:06
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, but also fearful to try to
14:10
Speaker 1: protect yourself and others as well.
14:12
Speaker 3: Right, So it depends on the program, because you know,
14:15
Speaker 3: the first program I went to is a lockdown facility,
14:18
Speaker 3: just extremely rigid. Every single second of your day is scheduled,
14:23
Speaker 3: and it leaves little room for any kind of wiggling, right,
14:27
Speaker 3: so highly highly controlling environment. And so with a day
14:32
Speaker 3: in the life of that is just basically you just
14:35
Speaker 3: you get up and you do the same thing. You
14:36
Speaker 3: have the same expectations. You have to make sure your
14:39
Speaker 3: room is tidy in the exact same way. You have
14:42
Speaker 3: so many rules that you can't fit them into your
14:45
Speaker 3: brain and you were never pulled them, so you have
14:47
Speaker 3: to memorize them as you go. But you aren't given leniency.
14:50
Speaker 3: So if you forget one, you can like lose a
14:52
Speaker 3: level in a day, And if you don't learn quick enough,
14:55
Speaker 3: you'll just continue to have that happen week after week
14:58
Speaker 3: and lose privilege and gain privileges, lose them, really easily
15:02
Speaker 3: gain them. It's really hard to do. So it's just
15:04
Speaker 3: it's a constant up and down roller coaster of emotions
15:08
Speaker 3: without any support. So with me, they really heavily focused
15:14
Speaker 3: on removing all control. They thought I had control issues,
15:18
Speaker 3: and they wanted to make sure that I know I
15:21
Speaker 3: have no control over my life, and they wanted to
15:23
Speaker 3: make sure that I was beaten down enough, so to speak,
15:27
Speaker 3: that I gave in to other people. Basically I was
15:30
Speaker 3: too strong willed, and so they were trying to break me,
15:32
Speaker 3: is really what they were doing. So for many months
15:35
Speaker 3: I spent my day at a desk where I would
15:39
Speaker 3: like from the normal hours of like nine to five,
15:41
Speaker 3: I'd be at a desk writing assignments. And if I
15:45
Speaker 3: wanted to be allowed to go with my peers or
15:47
Speaker 3: go to the cafeterior, go to therapy, or YadA, YadA, YadA,
15:50
Speaker 3: I'd have to pick out of a bag a yes
15:52
Speaker 3: or a no. And there was ten pieces of paper
15:55
Speaker 3: with one yes and nine no's. So almost always I
15:59
Speaker 3: didn't get to go with my peers, And so that
16:02
Speaker 3: bag was there. It's called random draw And that was
16:07
Speaker 3: their idea of trying to take away all decision making
16:11
Speaker 3: so that I learned how to not try to take
16:13
Speaker 3: control of my life, which I don't know why that's
16:16
Speaker 3: a bad thing, but they really wanted to break that.
16:19
Speaker 2: In me for once in my life. I'm speechless. I like,
16:28
Speaker 2: she's never speechless.
16:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, that it taught me is to never to just
16:32
Speaker 3: not speak up.
16:32
Speaker 1: Is enough, to not use your voice, don't use your too,
16:35
Speaker 1: because you just get in trouble. Yeah, because in your
16:38
Speaker 1: book you talked about that it was it's almost like
16:40
Speaker 1: it was like a demerit plus like like it's almost
16:44
Speaker 1: like every day that you were there, you were like
16:46
Speaker 1: earning money to go into a bank. Almost like felt
16:49
Speaker 1: like it was a prison, right, Oh for sure, my bad,
16:52
Speaker 1: It was a fucking prison.
16:54
Speaker 3: It was, yeah, exactly, and it made it worse too
16:58
Speaker 3: because we were super medicated. So they diagnosed me within
17:02
Speaker 3: the first week with bipolar, and I was heavily medicated
17:05
Speaker 3: for that. I don't have bipolar, so it rereaped havoc
17:08
Speaker 3: on my body. I ended up gaining sixty pounds in
17:11
Speaker 3: that six months, and they'd give me copious amounts of
17:16
Speaker 3: antipsychotics and I would get tired and like fall asleep
17:19
Speaker 3: while I was writing in my journal and I couldn't
17:21
Speaker 3: help it, but they would punish me for it. But
17:23
Speaker 3: I had no choice but to take my meds. So
17:25
Speaker 3: it's like an endless loop of getting in trouble, but
17:28
Speaker 3: there's nothing I can do about it because they're making
17:30
Speaker 3: me get in trouble. So it was just this feeling
17:34
Speaker 3: of helplessness. But it really wasn't until my second program,
17:38
Speaker 3: when the real coercion and control came in, that I
17:42
Speaker 3: really finally reached that point of just learned helplessness where
17:46
Speaker 3: I just gave up on being who I am and
17:50
Speaker 3: gave in to just letting people tell me who I
17:53
Speaker 3: am so I can just have it easier in life
17:55
Speaker 3: because I just fully gave up.
17:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know how you couldn't have. It reminds me.
18:00
Speaker 1: When I was reading your book, it reminded me of
18:02
Speaker 1: the movie A Girl Interrupted.
18:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Many survivors say.
18:09
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, and I have.
18:11
Speaker 1: Gone through I went through a really weird stage in
18:14
Speaker 1: my world with abuse and all of the stuff that
18:18
Speaker 1: my parents weren't sure what was wrong with me, And
18:22
Speaker 1: what was wrong with me was the trauma that happened
18:25
Speaker 1: that I didn't share with them, so to their merit, Like,
18:29
Speaker 1: you talk about your parents and your book and you
18:30
Speaker 1: give them all kinds of accolades and love and all
18:33
Speaker 1: of that, your adopted parents, and I think that that's
18:36
Speaker 1: really wonderful for you to do that. But at that time,
18:40
Speaker 1: when you're in your life where you're like, what the
18:42
Speaker 1: hell did I do wrong? Yeah to get this kind
18:47
Speaker 1: of treatment, I'm like, dude, I was just smoking pot.
18:49
Speaker 3: Yeah you know.
18:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, So you ended up you went to the
18:54
Speaker 1: first one that was for what was that six that
18:56
Speaker 1: was for six months, right, the first time for six months,
18:59
Speaker 1: and you went for three fucking years.
19:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true.
19:05
Speaker 1: Yep. So let's talk about what happened there and the
19:08
Speaker 1: indoctrination of what started to happen there, which is a
19:11
Speaker 1: little bit into the the cult and corrosion that night
19:14
Speaker 1: of it.
19:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and it's very It was very different.
19:19
Speaker 3: You know, in the first program, everyone treats you the same,
19:24
Speaker 3: which is kind of mandated by it, and it's not great, right,
19:27
Speaker 3: but there's little variation. There's no like variations really, you know,
19:31
Speaker 3: more of a hospital field. But Chrysalis, it gives this
19:35
Speaker 3: illusion of like we're a big family. In fact, we
19:38
Speaker 3: called each other family. It was also these are our
19:42
Speaker 3: Chrysalis sisters, and this is our Chrysalis family. It had
19:46
Speaker 3: very crazy I mean, looking back, it's like, why did
19:49
Speaker 3: I not see that? That's cold? I have no idea,
19:52
Speaker 3: but I was fifteen.
19:53
Speaker 2: Right, so you're fifteen to what this is?
19:56
Speaker 3: Right, But it gives this illusion of safety which is family, right,
20:00
Speaker 3: and this familial unit that takes care of each other
20:03
Speaker 3: and we hold each other accountable and we're just one big,
20:08
Speaker 3: happy family. You're not like it's you know, yes, I
20:11
Speaker 3: made great friends while I was there, and I met
20:14
Speaker 3: some amazing people, like the other girls that I've kept
20:16
Speaker 3: in contact with TILT today. But the way that the
20:20
Speaker 3: program was run was not okay, and there were many
20:24
Speaker 3: staff that probably saved my life from just being really
20:27
Speaker 3: really good humans and showing love and care and compassion
20:31
Speaker 3: and forcing them to take us to the doctor when
20:33
Speaker 3: we really needed the doctor. And those people are like,
20:37
Speaker 3: thank god they were there. But the two people marrying
20:40
Speaker 3: Kenny that owned Chrysalis at the time really damaged me,
20:44
Speaker 3: really damaged me. And you know, anecdotally from other people
20:48
Speaker 3: as well, is what I've heard, and their tactics just
20:52
Speaker 3: it was very antiquated and non evidence based and utilized
20:59
Speaker 3: things like attack the therapy and which they called circle,
21:02
Speaker 3: which was their form of group therapy, but it's a
21:05
Speaker 3: it's based on principles that are rooted in a cult
21:11
Speaker 3: called Synanon. They had something called the Game, which is
21:14
Speaker 3: where they sit in a circle and just publicly braid
21:16
Speaker 3: and you know, tear down other members until they acquiesced
21:21
Speaker 3: to the program, which is exactly what they did to us.
21:24
Speaker 3: And I would go through I don't know, like eight
21:27
Speaker 3: to sixteen hours of that every week. So it acted
21:32
Speaker 3: as a way to tear down your confidence, tear down
21:36
Speaker 3: your certainty, keep you on your toes, make sure you know,
21:40
Speaker 3: don't ever feel comfortable enough to like let your guard down,
21:45
Speaker 3: and once you were torn down, that's when they'd swoop
21:48
Speaker 3: in and help you rebuild, right, like okay, now now
21:51
Speaker 3: we're going to work the program right. And then they'd
21:54
Speaker 3: come in with their with their version of who you,
21:59
Speaker 3: who you're supposed to be, and then they rebuild you
22:01
Speaker 3: and the way that they think you are and enough
22:04
Speaker 3: of you know, when you're that young, hearing so many
22:07
Speaker 3: things wrong with you constantly, you just reached this point
22:10
Speaker 3: of like, you know, you mentioned like what did I
22:12
Speaker 3: do to get to this point? No, it's you, you know,
22:15
Speaker 3: it's who you are. It's not what you did. It's
22:18
Speaker 3: that you're being told that it is because of you,
22:21
Speaker 3: because of who you are. Even your parents think that
22:24
Speaker 3: that's why you're here. It's so much deeper of a
22:27
Speaker 3: I'm internally flawed, and I was told that by them
22:31
Speaker 3: that if I don't change who I am, I will
22:34
Speaker 3: never be loved, I will never be accepted, I will
22:37
Speaker 3: always be a pariah and never have friends. Like they
22:42
Speaker 3: told me these things, And so that became. Even if
22:45
Speaker 3: it wasn't conscious, like to myself every day, the way
22:48
Speaker 3: that I thought about myself, it was definitely deeply rooted,
22:51
Speaker 3: and I didn't even know it.
22:53
Speaker 2: How could you?
22:54
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, so we're babies, right, So, I mean,
22:57
Speaker 1: and we don't even form our brains right until we're
22:59
Speaker 1: like what twenty four, twenty five years old, where brains
23:02
Speaker 1: actually are starting to Actually.
23:04
Speaker 3: It's actually what he said to me in the circle.
23:06
Speaker 3: That is actually what he said. He said, Lizzie, because
23:09
Speaker 3: that's what I went by in the poom. Lizzie, you
23:11
Speaker 3: have time still. You're only fifteen. It was almost sixteen.
23:15
Speaker 3: Then you're only sixteen, and your brain doesn't fully form
23:18
Speaker 3: until you're twenty five. And you still have time because
23:21
Speaker 3: if you don't do it, you're never going to be accepted.
23:24
Speaker 3: You're prickly, you push people away, you're intrusive. You know,
23:28
Speaker 3: they say all these bad things, but that's what he quoted.
23:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yes, what all of those things that he
23:33
Speaker 1: said is why you're a gritty, mother fucking badass.
23:37
Speaker 2: Oh, I know.
23:38
Speaker 3: It was just a strong human growing up into a
23:40
Speaker 3: strong woman, that's right, And just you know, I had
23:43
Speaker 3: to work through my stuff.
23:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I identify with it. You know, I
23:48
Speaker 1: absolutely understand rebellion. I absolutely understand abuse and drug abuse
23:53
Speaker 1: and alcohol and all of the things I did all
23:56
Speaker 1: that stuff, and I didn't until I actually really truly
24:00
Speaker 1: started this show where I was having to if I'm
24:04
Speaker 1: going to be if I'm asking my guests to be
24:07
Speaker 1: open and honest on this show with me, then I
24:09
Speaker 1: have to do the same, which is why I opened
24:11
Speaker 1: the way that I did today. And that was a
24:14
Speaker 1: hard thing for me to do, and it was something
24:15
Speaker 1: that I had to decide that I was going to
24:17
Speaker 1: do today for sure maybe my parents might listen, And
24:20
Speaker 1: now I've.
24:20
Speaker 2: Got a whole different fucking weekend ahead of me.
24:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I am proud of you because there's going
24:26
Speaker 3: to be that part of you that just opened up,
24:28
Speaker 3: that little box that's going to start to heal.
24:30
Speaker 1: Now well that there's that, and that also might open
24:33
Speaker 1: up within my parents, Like uh oh makes complaint.
24:41
Speaker 3: Because you bring up, you bring up, You brought up
24:43
Speaker 3: something that's really important, and that is you could have
24:45
Speaker 3: been easily a tt I survivor, right, you know. And
24:49
Speaker 3: the reason why is because if you look at the
24:52
Speaker 3: behaviors that are sending these kids away, even like smoking pot, right,
24:56
Speaker 3: something like that is oftentimes or you know, what's you know,
25:02
Speaker 3: classified as a problem behavior or a troubled team behavior
25:05
Speaker 3: are most commonly covering up prior trauma. And so that's
25:10
Speaker 3: the issue, is that these kids that seem troubled are
25:14
Speaker 3: actually really going through something that need to be addressed,
25:18
Speaker 3: but we're not addressing the trauma. In fact, we are
25:21
Speaker 3: sending them to places that are actually compounding the trauma.
25:25
Speaker 3: And these kids that already have established adverse childhood experiences
25:30
Speaker 3: and a high number of ACES are being sent to
25:32
Speaker 3: facilities where they perceive more ACES, and so they can
25:36
Speaker 3: go on to have a worse life because of dealing
25:39
Speaker 3: with health issues and mental health issues that they do.
25:42
Speaker 3: And so we really need to get to the root
25:44
Speaker 3: of the actual I say this very loosely problem behaviors, right,
25:49
Speaker 3: because usually they're not problem behaviors. They're just they're highlighting
25:52
Speaker 3: the need for them to address some things.
25:55
Speaker 1: We're asking for help in our own way, right, Yeah,
26:00
Speaker 1: knowing that we're doing that, And like my nephews have
26:04
Speaker 1: been hanging out with us for the past couple of
26:06
Speaker 1: months in our house, we've just kind of been their
26:07
Speaker 1: guardians and their behavior is not like how I would
26:11
Speaker 1: raise them, and I feel like there are so many
26:15
Speaker 1: things that are going on with them that I know
26:17
Speaker 1: need to be addressed. That I cannot address because I'm
26:20
Speaker 1: just their anti and it's really tough because I know
26:23
Speaker 1: that they're going to be dealing their boys, so it's
26:26
Speaker 1: a little bit different than their girl's side, so I
26:29
Speaker 1: can like kind of dabble in the boy world. I'm like,
26:31
Speaker 1: boys are just sticky. You guys are just sticky. But
26:36
Speaker 1: trying to help them be really, really wonderful men is
26:41
Speaker 1: my goal whenever they're around me to treat women with
26:44
Speaker 1: respect and also to treat theirselves with respect, because I
26:49
Speaker 1: think that we end up getting into the whole me
26:51
Speaker 1: too thing that it's all about women. Yes, of course
26:54
Speaker 1: girls and women are definitely more affected by this, but
26:56
Speaker 1: there are boys that are going through the same shit.
26:59
Speaker 1: In fact, they're as There was a father and son
27:02
Speaker 1: that were on my show episode. I think it was
27:05
Speaker 1: like in the forties, like forty four or forty five,
27:08
Speaker 1: Ryan and Rob Delana and his father and mother sent
27:12
Speaker 1: him to a tti like you, and he talked about
27:17
Speaker 1: his restraints and all the things that went on with him,
27:20
Speaker 1: the shoulder, the knee, and the shoulder blade like you
27:23
Speaker 1: mentioned in your book, like somebody leaning on you. Can
27:26
Speaker 1: you talk just a little bit And I don't want
27:28
Speaker 1: to trigger you at all, but I mean, unfortunately that's
27:32
Speaker 1: why you're on the show. Yeah, so trigger you're away,
27:36
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Paying Game Podcast.
27:38
Speaker 2: We will trigger you'll trigger. Yeah, we'll trigger the show
27:42
Speaker 2: at you.
27:42
Speaker 1: But can you just briefly talk about, like if you've
27:44
Speaker 1: got a moment or two that really stands out to
27:47
Speaker 1: you about the abuse that you went through, because that
27:53
Speaker 1: to me a stick and twists as we are. We
27:55
Speaker 1: always look at the car accident, we look at the
27:57
Speaker 1: train wreck, but I want to e eight the abuse
28:05
Speaker 1: that goes on in these institutions today.
28:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that the one that comes to mind.
28:11
Speaker 3: So Chrysalis is where I experienced like a very heavy
28:15
Speaker 3: dose of psychological and emotional abuse, a very fair amount
28:20
Speaker 3: of medical neglect in my opinion as well. But I
28:23
Speaker 3: think the story that really highlights not the actual abuse happening,
28:27
Speaker 3: but the effect of the abuse is in my mind,
28:30
Speaker 3: going to be most powerful. And that's when my dad
28:33
Speaker 3: came to visit me for Thanksgiving and he rented a
28:36
Speaker 3: car and we were driving from Kallis Bell to Eureka, Montana,
28:40
Speaker 3: which was I don't know, like sixty miles something like that.
28:43
Speaker 3: And I have a permit, and so I couldn't drive
28:45
Speaker 3: without him in the car, and he was letting me,
28:48
Speaker 3: and so I was driving and we got into this
28:51
Speaker 3: massive car wreck where the car literally flipped over I
28:55
Speaker 3: don't know, like six times. We took out like small
28:57
Speaker 3: trees and we landed upside down, and you know, my
29:01
Speaker 3: hand actually broke the windshield and my head broke the
29:05
Speaker 3: side window and we landed upside down and we had
29:07
Speaker 3: to crawl out of the windows right. And it was
29:12
Speaker 3: on Thanksgiving Day and we were on our way to
29:14
Speaker 3: Thanksgiving dinner with Kenny and Mary and all the girls.
29:16
Speaker 3: And my first thought was I'm going to get in trouble.
29:19
Speaker 3: I am going to get in a lot of trouble.
29:21
Speaker 3: And people stopped behind us and they were like, I'm
29:24
Speaker 3: going to call you an ambulance. I blood all over
29:26
Speaker 3: me and I said no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
29:28
Speaker 3: no ambulance because I had been labeled as dramatic by Chrysalis,
29:33
Speaker 3: and I said, no ambulance. I had I have a
29:36
Speaker 3: huge scar in my hand here and it had broken
29:39
Speaker 3: the skin, there was glass in it and everything, and
29:43
Speaker 3: he's like, you need to get seen, and I was like, no,
29:45
Speaker 3: I don't want to and I convinced my dad to
29:48
Speaker 3: take a taxi to Thanksgiving dinner to show up on
29:51
Speaker 3: time instead of go to the hospital. And the reason
29:54
Speaker 3: being is because and I remember being in the cab
29:58
Speaker 3: on the way there, thinking, Kenny's gonn be so proud
30:00
Speaker 3: of me, because to be so proud that I didn't
30:02
Speaker 3: need a doctor. And then I'm not being dramatic and
30:05
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about how it hurts and how I
30:08
Speaker 3: want to cry, and I'm not crying. And it perfectly
30:12
Speaker 3: highlighted the way that they wanted Chris Bliss girls to be.
30:16
Speaker 3: They wanted us to fall in line. They wanted us
30:19
Speaker 3: to not create extra work, which would be going to
30:21
Speaker 3: the hospital or going to the doctor, and they wanted
30:24
Speaker 3: us to not talk about the bad things or the
30:27
Speaker 3: way that we feel if it's going to be negative,
30:30
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Like it was, it perfectly
30:32
Speaker 3: highlights just how brainwashed I was into believing that I
30:38
Speaker 3: didn't like. And I remember those circles I was talking
30:41
Speaker 3: about that that attack therapy. I remember a couple months
30:45
Speaker 3: later because I never went to the hospital.
30:47
Speaker 2: Attack therapy, attack therapy.
30:49
Speaker 3: I remember during these circles, I know, during these circles
30:52
Speaker 3: I would, you know, when I wasn't being attacked, I
30:54
Speaker 3: would look down at my hand and it started to hurt,
30:57
Speaker 3: and so I started to massage it in these circles.
31:00
Speaker 3: And three months after the accident, I started noticing glass
31:03
Speaker 3: coming out, and I would pick glass out during circle.
31:06
Speaker 3: And I remember it was the circle that that like
31:08
Speaker 3: period of time was my favorite circles because I would
31:10
Speaker 3: sit and do something during circle and I would pick
31:12
Speaker 3: glass out of my cut that never got washed out,
31:16
Speaker 3: And it was like my favorite circles because I just
31:18
Speaker 3: sat there with something to do and it's it's so
31:22
Speaker 3: fucked up that I'm like that. It made it fun
31:25
Speaker 3: just because I didn't have to focus on all the
31:27
Speaker 3: shit going on around me. And yeah, but the medical
31:31
Speaker 3: neglect was bad. Anytime you were sick, you you just
31:35
Speaker 3: don't talk about it. You don't ask to go to
31:37
Speaker 3: the doctor. You don't because Kenny gets mad. He says,
31:41
Speaker 3: you don't go to the doctor unless it's a broken bone.
31:43
Speaker 3: Even when it's a broken bone, you barely get to
31:44
Speaker 3: go with the doctor. So that was really just perfectly
31:49
Speaker 3: highlighted it for me.
31:52
Speaker 1: Okay, everybody just take a beat on that. Yeah, exactly,
31:56
Speaker 1: Please pull over on the side of the road if
31:59
Speaker 1: you haven't all read listening.
32:01
Speaker 2: To the Yeah, so it was all girls there.
32:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was all girls.
32:08
Speaker 1: Interesting m h, I'm curious about Okay, fuck Kenny, let's
32:14
Speaker 1: just start there.
32:15
Speaker 2: So, what the hell was going on with Mary?
32:18
Speaker 1: So?
32:18
Speaker 3: Mary is an interesting character because she was my actual therapist,
32:24
Speaker 3: like on paper, even though Kenny Kenny, they were married
32:28
Speaker 3: and we all lived together in a log cabin in
32:29
Speaker 3: the middle of the woods. And just put it into perspective,
32:33
Speaker 3: just so people understand that A're listening, Like we lived
32:35
Speaker 3: in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. I
32:38
Speaker 3: shared a bathroom with my therapists for the first six
32:41
Speaker 3: months I was there. My bedroom was right next door.
32:43
Speaker 3: Like think about how on Like just so many no's, right,
32:48
Speaker 3: oh my god, so many knows. And just to put
32:51
Speaker 3: in perspective, like we are all this big family. Kenny
32:53
Speaker 3: would wrestle us, like, which is so weird. You would
32:56
Speaker 3: have wrestling matches, you know, just very inappropriate relational dynamics
33:02
Speaker 3: between who we were supposed to look at as our
33:05
Speaker 3: therapists and ourselfs. So but Mary kind of you know,
33:09
Speaker 3: she had this soft side every now and then where
33:12
Speaker 3: she would like when you had gotten to a certain point,
33:15
Speaker 3: she'd like come up with a cute nickname for you,
33:18
Speaker 3: and that meant that she liked you, and she had
33:20
Speaker 3: that softer side. Kenny was a big presence, so like
33:24
Speaker 3: you know, when you see them together, like Kenny almost
33:27
Speaker 3: always took the seat, if that makes sense. But I
33:31
Speaker 3: had like good experiences with Mary, and I also had
33:35
Speaker 3: I didn't the bad experiences that I had. I don't
33:38
Speaker 3: think I realized at the time were bad experiences. It
33:41
Speaker 3: was so looking back, I'm like, man, why didn't you know?
33:44
Speaker 3: The problem I have with her is that I have
33:47
Speaker 3: like eight journals full of me complaining about the mistreatment
33:51
Speaker 3: from Kenny, her husband, and it was never addressed like ever.
33:56
Speaker 3: Like I remember writing in my journal saying, I'm really
33:59
Speaker 3: sad and I feel bad about myself right now because
34:01
Speaker 3: at breakfast I accidentally got syrup on the place Matt
34:04
Speaker 3: and Kenny called me a pig, and never once was
34:08
Speaker 3: it addressed like so. And I would say things like
34:12
Speaker 3: I just want to be loved, And here my therapist
34:15
Speaker 3: is reading this and she's in control of like that
34:18
Speaker 3: relationship dynamic, and it should have been addressed. And it's
34:21
Speaker 3: very sad. But Kenny he had favorites. He picked his favorites,
34:27
Speaker 3: and if you weren't Kenny's favorite, you wanted to be
34:30
Speaker 3: because you got the good Like you got the good
34:34
Speaker 3: things in life, right, he'd be more likely to give
34:35
Speaker 3: you the front seat instead of sitting in the back
34:37
Speaker 3: of the van, like you would get good things. And
34:41
Speaker 3: but he paired him being like you being in his
34:44
Speaker 3: good graces for that moment with pain, so like you
34:47
Speaker 3: would come up behind you and grab the back of
34:49
Speaker 3: your neck and squeeze, and I remember that feeling of,
34:53
Speaker 3: oh my god, this hurts, but I'm so happy because
34:55
Speaker 3: it means I'm Kenny's I'm in like I'm Kenny's favorite
34:58
Speaker 3: right now. And that piring of pain and love was
35:04
Speaker 3: super damaging. In fact, I think it played like such
35:07
Speaker 3: a huge part in me and entering like relationships that
35:10
Speaker 3: ended up being very toxic and abusive. The whole thing
35:14
Speaker 3: was just so sick in my opinion.
35:17
Speaker 1: In your opinion, yeah, in every single person's opinion.
35:21
Speaker 2: That's listening right now, my love, Oh my god, when
35:25
Speaker 2: what now?
35:25
Speaker 1: Now we're getting closer to like now you've got to
35:28
Speaker 1: get the hell out of here, Like what happens now
35:31
Speaker 1: now I've like, you've been in there for how long
35:34
Speaker 1: until you decided I got to get the fuck out
35:38
Speaker 1: of here?
35:39
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't. Unfortunately I was eighteen and a
35:43
Speaker 3: half when I left, because I fifteen. I went in
35:48
Speaker 3: at fifteen, and I had effectively became a people pleaser,
35:52
Speaker 3: and my parents didn't think I should come home for
35:54
Speaker 3: senior year, and so I just acquiesceed and finished off
35:58
Speaker 3: my senior year there, graduateday teen and a half, and
36:01
Speaker 3: believe it or not, looked at it as the best
36:03
Speaker 3: thing that happened to me and saved my life until
36:07
Speaker 3: I was like in my mid thirties, and it didn't
36:11
Speaker 3: really start to hit me until then. And I also
36:15
Speaker 3: didn't realize, you know, I was having so many issues.
36:20
Speaker 3: I kept having organs removed because I.
36:24
Speaker 2: Got all these organs being pulled out.
36:26
Speaker 3: I'm like, I know, like my dad jokes like I'm
36:28
Speaker 3: bionic at this point, and it's.
36:30
Speaker 2: Just like, you know, called the bionic women in my family.
36:33
Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah, that's what they say about me. And
36:35
Speaker 3: it's just like and they also say that I'm the
36:37
Speaker 3: doctor of the family because I've had so many medical
36:39
Speaker 3: issues my entire life that I like every doctor I
36:42
Speaker 3: walk into, they're like, are you Are you a doctor?
36:44
Speaker 3: I'm like no, I've just had to advocate for myself
36:46
Speaker 3: for wait time. That's why, you know, honorary doctor right here. Yeah,
36:50
Speaker 3: we all have them by exactly in our position.
36:54
Speaker 1: I've got so many honorary deed exactly nuts.
36:59
Speaker 3: Otherwise how are we gonna get help? No one listens
37:01
Speaker 3: to us, So it's yeah, we're the zebras, you know, like, yeah,
37:04
Speaker 3: we're not horses or zebras. So I think that I
37:08
Speaker 3: think that, you know, it took a really long time
37:10
Speaker 3: for me to realize that. You know, the reason why
37:13
Speaker 3: I developed agoraphobia was potentially because of the shit that
37:16
Speaker 3: I had going.
37:17
Speaker 2: On on my joby maybe I don't want to be around
37:18
Speaker 2: a group of yees.
37:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, And to be honest, you know, I think a
37:23
Speaker 3: big part of it also, like another waking up period,
37:25
Speaker 3: even after I realized it was it was abuse that
37:27
Speaker 3: I went through, was when I got diagnosed with autisms.
37:30
Speaker 3: I went through a whole new wake up period of
37:33
Speaker 3: holy shit, I was abused because I'm autistic all of
37:37
Speaker 3: the things. Thinking back to the circles, everything they wanted
37:40
Speaker 3: to change about me, They were my autistic traits. They
37:44
Speaker 3: were just a part of who I was. And what
37:46
Speaker 3: it taught me to do was always mask. Never trust
37:49
Speaker 3: people are going to like who you are. You're not
37:51
Speaker 3: good enough the way that you are. And I got
37:54
Speaker 3: really good at pretending I am not neurodivergent and I'm neurotypical,
37:59
Speaker 3: and so I I The reason why my body started failing,
38:02
Speaker 3: in my opinion, is I was spending so much in
38:05
Speaker 3: my career going to board meetings and like doing all
38:08
Speaker 3: these things appearing as a neurotypical, and it was it
38:11
Speaker 3: was killing myself. I was completely ignoring who I was,
38:15
Speaker 3: and you know, the body keeps the score, as you're saying,
38:18
Speaker 3: and it took I call it the Trauma s Viral
38:21
Speaker 3: of twenty eighteen, when I hit a point that is
38:25
Speaker 3: probably you know, I talk about it as being even
38:27
Speaker 3: scarier than the TTI. Those two weeks of constant panic
38:32
Speaker 3: attacks from the CPTSD being triggered and realizing, oh my god,
38:38
Speaker 3: something's going on, and that was really the bottom for me.
38:42
Speaker 3: And then the next bottom happened when I watched Paris
38:45
Speaker 3: Hilton's documentary and realized, oh shit, the goons that took
38:49
Speaker 3: her said the exact same thing when they kidnapped me, Like,
38:52
Speaker 3: how is that possible they were different people. Well, it's
38:54
Speaker 3: an industry and there's like a whole community of survivors
38:57
Speaker 3: that have been through this. So these different waking up
39:00
Speaker 3: periods is really what led me to where I am now.
39:03
Speaker 3: And it's funny as soon as you get it's not funny,
39:07
Speaker 3: but you know, trauma, right when you get to the
39:12
Speaker 3: point of like realizing, oh my god, my body is fine. Now,
39:19
Speaker 3: I'm stopping having so many issues. I'm not continuously getting
39:22
Speaker 3: diagnosed with things. The things I'm diagnosed with hurt less.
39:25
Speaker 3: When I start working on the mental pain, and it's
39:29
Speaker 3: so wild when you realize, oh my god, it's all connected,
39:33
Speaker 3: Like you have to treat the mental pain, you have
39:35
Speaker 3: to treat the trauma before the gut problems get better,
39:39
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. It's all intertwined. And I'm
39:42
Speaker 3: finally just healthier all around because I've been awakened to
39:48
Speaker 3: what I really went through when I was fifteen.
39:51
Speaker 1: Well that and also you've given your you've become on
39:54
Speaker 1: silence right exactly, And when you start to open your
39:58
Speaker 1: mouth and you start to address the stuff that happened
40:02
Speaker 1: to you. Whatever you experience, the way you experience something
40:07
Speaker 1: is for is your truth. And I know that a
40:10
Speaker 1: lot of women, especially well, I'm just gonna speak for myself.
40:14
Speaker 1: I know that if when we talk about rape, for example,
40:17
Speaker 1: and sexual abuse, women are always looked at and young
40:21
Speaker 1: girls are always looked at like we brought it on ourselves.
40:24
Speaker 3: Oh for sure, I experienced that when I was fifteen
40:26
Speaker 3: as well in me too.
40:28
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and that's well, you were dressing provocatively or
40:31
Speaker 1: whatever the exactly it is. I'm like, I went to
40:34
Speaker 1: Contempo casuals. That was what I was wearing at the time. Okay,
40:41
Speaker 1: don't blame me for fashion like trends.
40:44
Speaker 3: I got it from what Seal.
40:46
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, exactly, I got two thousand scrunchies that match
40:49
Speaker 1: my socks. I legitimately worked at Contempo casual and what Seal,
40:59
Speaker 1: I'm not even kidding. Would you like a scrunchheet to
41:01
Speaker 1: match yourself? That was literally the line when people walked.
41:04
Speaker 2: Into wet Seal.
41:05
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Maybe that's my trauma.
41:09
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe has nothing to do with.
41:11
Speaker 3: What's really what we need to do?
41:14
Speaker 2: What Seal, I've got some news for you.
41:19
Speaker 1: Anyways, I just find that, you know, we we we're
41:24
Speaker 1: faced with so many things in our lives and so
41:26
Speaker 1: many challenges, and we can approach them in different ways.
41:29
Speaker 1: But when you're young, young young ladies or young men,
41:33
Speaker 1: we do not know what we're being faced with. We
41:35
Speaker 1: have no idea how that is going to affect us
41:39
Speaker 1: later in our lives. But now that we're here later
41:42
Speaker 1: in our lives, we can take our control back, right.
41:46
Speaker 1: And that's something that I've had to learn because I
41:49
Speaker 1: let go. Even though I'm a control freak, I control
41:53
Speaker 1: things that I know I can control because all of
41:56
Speaker 1: the other crazy shit that's happened to me in my
41:59
Speaker 1: life and my brain and my noodle and my emotions
42:01
Speaker 1: and my sadness and depression and anxiety and panic and
42:05
Speaker 1: eating disorders and alcohol and drugs and all those things,
42:10
Speaker 1: those are hard.
42:11
Speaker 2: To deal with.
42:12
Speaker 1: But man, oh man, I have confronted them all now
42:16
Speaker 1: without restraint, right, And that is something that I'm very,
42:21
Speaker 1: very proud of. And I know for you, you have
42:24
Speaker 1: a family of four children. Yeah, you got two balls
42:28
Speaker 1: and two girls, baby, and so can we jump into
42:31
Speaker 1: that really quick about how motherhood is for you within
42:36
Speaker 1: this well, actually just you and your husband like how
42:38
Speaker 1: you guys have raised kids together under this, because I
42:41
Speaker 1: know that you talked about you know, it's difficult for
42:44
Speaker 1: you with kids, like they act in a certain way
42:47
Speaker 1: and you're like, WHOA, I don't want to do that,
42:48
Speaker 1: but I need to do that. Can you talk a
42:50
Speaker 1: little bit about how, yeah, how hard that's been for you,
42:52
Speaker 1: because you've been very successful at it.
42:54
Speaker 3: Oh, well, thank you. I think it's it's really it's twofold, right.
42:57
Speaker 3: We have inborn in us the way that we were parented,
43:02
Speaker 3: so we're battling that. And then for myself, I have
43:05
Speaker 3: the way that I was treated right in my programs,
43:08
Speaker 3: and so I'm battling that. So whenever there's something that
43:12
Speaker 3: happens that triggers something that oh I need to parent
43:16
Speaker 3: this right, I need to address this, I have to
43:18
Speaker 3: go through those two filters of you know, there are
43:22
Speaker 3: things that my mom and dad did absolutely correctly, and
43:24
Speaker 3: then there's things that I just choose to do differently,
43:27
Speaker 3: not based on it being wrong or bad, but really
43:30
Speaker 3: just it works for me and maybe research supports it now,
43:34
Speaker 3: you know, And I think that it's hard to choose
43:39
Speaker 3: to behave differently than your instincts. And I think that
43:43
Speaker 3: the best thing I ever did was just go out
43:45
Speaker 3: and learn and have someone teach you. The best thing
43:48
Speaker 3: I ever did was hiring a parent coach and having
43:51
Speaker 3: them coach me through some really difficult parts of parenting.
43:55
Speaker 3: And it's all behind the kids back right. They're not labeled,
43:57
Speaker 3: they're not stigmatized, they have no idea that we a
44:00
Speaker 3: parent coach, and they're teaching us how to be better
44:02
Speaker 3: parents to each individual kid, which I think is really powerful.
44:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, you talk about that in your book. It is. Yeah.
44:12
Speaker 1: So with everything that you've gone through, you've worked in
44:14
Speaker 1: the nonprofit sector for many, many, many many years, and
44:18
Speaker 1: within that.
44:19
Speaker 2: You started you know, Unsilenced.
44:23
Speaker 1: Can you speak a little bit about what you're doing
44:25
Speaker 1: in regards to your organization and justice and justice for
44:28
Speaker 1: the troubled team industry.
44:30
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah. I mean Unsilenced is you know, a
44:35
Speaker 3: nonprofit that really focuses on empowering self advocates to promote
44:39
Speaker 3: lasting social change. So we really focus on not only
44:42
Speaker 3: creating awareness and transparency into an industry that, let's let's
44:46
Speaker 3: face it doesn't exist, but in trying to like stop
44:51
Speaker 3: the kids, interrupt that pipeline of kids from communities to
44:54
Speaker 3: these programs through awareness and education, but also serving like
44:59
Speaker 3: I said, this survivors that are already there and some
45:02
Speaker 3: of the ways that we serve them and empower them
45:05
Speaker 3: as you know, creating resources for them. We send out
45:09
Speaker 3: independence packs, which are backpacks that have a laptop, a
45:13
Speaker 3: chock full of resources. It's got you know, gift cards
45:17
Speaker 3: and essential tools and items for survivors who are aging
45:21
Speaker 3: out of programs and battling homelessness. So you know, we
45:25
Speaker 3: ship those all over the country. We also offer free
45:28
Speaker 3: support groups to survivors, and we also are trying to
45:35
Speaker 3: connect survivors to be able to have access to justice,
45:37
Speaker 3: and that is one of the biggest initiatives that we
45:39
Speaker 3: have right now. And we've developed relationships with attorneys and
45:43
Speaker 3: law firms throughout the entire country and we are actually
45:47
Speaker 3: launching very soon in the next couple of days, our
45:49
Speaker 3: Attorney Directory, which is going to help connect survivors to
45:53
Speaker 3: law firms all over the country. And these are law
45:57
Speaker 3: firms that you know, at least you know in the beginning,
46:00
Speaker 3: we're going to be sure that we have relationships with
46:02
Speaker 3: We know that they understand the TTI, which is really
46:05
Speaker 3: important and you know, being able to make sure that
46:08
Speaker 3: you know this isn't just standard personal injury, right, It's
46:12
Speaker 3: really about understanding how these how these facilities function, but
46:17
Speaker 3: really how they hide abuse. Because unless you know behind
46:21
Speaker 3: the scenes how these programs work, it's really hard to
46:23
Speaker 3: litigate against them.
46:25
Speaker 2: Right.
46:25
Speaker 3: So it's really important that we continue to educate and
46:28
Speaker 3: work with the legal community, and also, like you said,
46:32
Speaker 3: with all the other systems that are leading into this industry,
46:35
Speaker 3: foster care, juvenile justice, the amount of awareness and the
46:39
Speaker 3: amount of education that needs to be done is so big,
46:44
Speaker 3: which is why it's so important that everyone listening takes
46:47
Speaker 3: it as something that they need to do is just
46:49
Speaker 3: talk about it, right, talk to people about it, because
46:52
Speaker 3: chances are there's someone you know who has been to
46:54
Speaker 3: a program and you know, if you bring it up,
46:58
Speaker 3: maybe they needed to talk about it and they didn't
46:59
Speaker 3: think they could. And it's really important that we look
47:02
Speaker 3: at this as just a health crisis. It really is.
47:05
Speaker 2: This whole thing is insane.
47:07
Speaker 1: And you know, I as a trump quote unquote troubled team,
47:11
Speaker 1: which I one hundred percent know that I was, and
47:14
Speaker 1: that to a certain extent, I still kind of am
47:18
Speaker 1: starting to advocate for myself and starting to use my
47:21
Speaker 1: own voice for the things that have happened to me,
47:24
Speaker 1: some of them.
47:25
Speaker 2: I know that I've.
47:25
Speaker 1: Gotten myself into icky situations, but nonetheless it doesn't mean
47:28
Speaker 1: that I should have gone through the things that had
47:30
Speaker 1: happened to me right, and so on and so forth.
47:33
Speaker 1: But we all suffer in our own ways. We have
47:36
Speaker 1: all been through a lot of stuff in our lives. Guys,
47:39
Speaker 1: you know some worse than others. So don't compare yourself
47:42
Speaker 1: to Meg today. Don't compare yourself to me today. Only
47:46
Speaker 1: compare yourself to yourself and do what you feel is
47:50
Speaker 1: right for you, and advocate for yourself, no matter how
47:54
Speaker 1: scary that might be. I mean, this has just been
47:57
Speaker 1: incredibly educating and I opening and your book is incredible,
48:03
Speaker 1: and I would like to read something that's at the
48:07
Speaker 1: end of your book really quick before you hit the
48:08
Speaker 1: dusty trail.
48:09
Speaker 2: So this is from her book.
48:11
Speaker 1: I am now daily living a life that I had
48:13
Speaker 1: accepted I would probably never have. There was such a
48:17
Speaker 1: long period of my life when if I had died
48:20
Speaker 1: at that point, people would have said things about me
48:24
Speaker 1: like she had a really sad life, she was in
48:26
Speaker 1: a lot of pain, she suffered a lot. I think
48:30
Speaker 1: That was my worst fear back then, but that's no
48:32
Speaker 1: longer going to be the way people talk about me now.
48:36
Speaker 2: I know that if I died.
48:37
Speaker 1: It would be doing something that I love, having an
48:40
Speaker 1: impact on people, and being part of a movement that
48:44
Speaker 1: has helped hundreds of kids and families. Now, whenever that
48:48
Speaker 1: time comes, I will die being proud of who I am.
48:51
Speaker 2: I am unsilenced.
48:54
Speaker 3: Wow, I haven't heard that, like read aloud when I
48:57
Speaker 3: wasn't writing it, and it even affected me.
49:01
Speaker 1: The one that doesn't cry, yeah, exactly, the one that
49:04
Speaker 1: doesn't cry just got to cry. Yes, I did it.
49:09
Speaker 3: You broke the seal.
49:11
Speaker 1: Well, you're welcome. It's your words, honey. So is there
49:14
Speaker 1: anything you'd like to leave us before we go here?
49:17
Speaker 3: I don't think so. Just thank you for having me,
49:21
Speaker 3: and I am so glad you enjoyed the book. Honestly,
49:25
Speaker 3: I love hearing what people think. So means a lot.
49:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here. This
49:30
Speaker 2: has been incredible.
49:32
Speaker 1: And we are behind you on advocacy. I will put
49:36
Speaker 1: everything up in show notes. You can find her everywhere
49:40
Speaker 1: at Megapplegate dot com and also Unsilenced dot org. She
49:46
Speaker 1: is on Facebook and Twitter and all the things, all
49:49
Speaker 1: the places will put there out there, but this book
49:51
Speaker 1: becoming Unsilenced, surviving and fighting the troubled teen industry. And
49:57
Speaker 1: that is what we have been talking about today and
49:59
Speaker 1: we will can continue to do so to support her
50:01
Speaker 1: and others that have been through it. So thank you
50:04
Speaker 1: so much for your time with us today. This has
50:05
Speaker 1: been Thank you for having me, absolutely wonderful.
50:08
Speaker 3: It has been.
50:09
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. You are exclusively invited.
50:12
Speaker 1: To share this on Silenced Vip Pain Journey Together. Let's
50:17
Speaker 1: get to the heart of how to heal with you
50:19
Speaker 1: by my side. Please follow the Pain Game Podcast wherever
50:23
Speaker 1: you digest your podcast content, we will be there. Visit
50:27
Speaker 1: us at the paygamepodcast dot com and follow us on
50:31
Speaker 1: all the socials. Thanks for listening, my little VIPs. Catch
50:34
Speaker 1: you on the other side.