PTSD From The Academy at Sisters - Needing Advice
I went to the Academy at Sisters in 2024, and it closed down the following year. Ever since, I've had PTSD related to being there. When I was there there was a massive focus on "doing good" and literally having to be perfect or else you'd be punished. If you were sick you only got your fifteen minutes in your room to rest and that was it. There was a lot of forced labor with really minimal pay. We would do intense physical labor for hours every day in the heat while the staff would just sit there and never help. If you missed even a bit of dust on the windowsill, you'd be punished. During chores you had to be completely silent and you couldn't talk to your peers at all. They wouldn't feed us as much as we needed, and if we wanted snacks before dinner we would be shamed. we had to hide snacks just so we'd have something to eat. what they did feed us was completely unpalatable, it was often mystery meat that made us all feel sick. And then we'd be shamed for not wanting to eat it and gaslight into thinking it was good. during eating your meal you had to put your hair up, no matter what. one student was really manipulative and had serious issues and for my birthday she gave me dirty, used scrunchies she probably found on the ground. she brought in a squirrel into the house and it died and rotted on the carpet and everyone was forced to just sleep there. she ate some of my food that I bought with my own money and gaslight me into thinking that I ate it in my sleep. the staff took her side too and gaslight me too. she would be awful and then cuddle up to me for some reason and beg me to protect her from scary things and it made me uncomfortable. we were on a camping trip and she made fun of me for having OCD. we went on a rafting trip for four days and had to sleep on the ground with flimsy mattresses, no tents or anything. and we weren't allowed to have seconds on the food the raft guides cooked for us. we got caught in a twenty to thirty miles per hour windstorm with no protection and dust and sand got everywhere. my blow up mattress blew away and I had to run down and retrieve it on my own, the staff wouldn't help me at all. if you wanted to advance to the next "level" in the program, you had to go in front of the whole staff (ten plus people) and your parents and get votes from all the students before you could level up and get more "privileges". you were isolated from your family for at least a month with no phone call and when you did get phone calls, they were fifteen minutes and the staff would cut you off the second it went over fifteen. for my seventeenth birthday I had to spend it there and I only got one fifteen minute phone call from my dad and that was it. I tried to talk to the staff about feeling scared and confused that I was there but they all didn't understand why I felt like that and were really harsh and dismissive. one staff member had a weird obsession with me and she wasn't in my "treatment team," but she claimed that she was and wouldn't let me do therapy work with the certain horse I wanted but forced a different one on me I had no connection with. when I expressed that I was excited that I was leaving that place, she asked if I was coming back, and I said no, and laughed cause I hated that place. and then she proceeded to literally follow me into the dining room and tell me everything she thought was wrong with me, that I was being manipulative, that I was supposed to come back, that everyone comes back and wants to visit, that I use the "silencing" manipulation tactic when I've always been insecure about how I'm quiet. She made me cry and still wouldn't stop talking really loudly and abrasively to me. I had to go outside and my best friend had to bring me food. the rest of the staff didn't take this emotional abuse seriously. a lot of people there ran away and the cops had to come to our house, or people would smash everything, breaking dishes and throwing food and ripping up papers and throwing furniture in anger and yelling at students and staff. one student assaulted another student and a staff and ran down the hallway saying we made him want to slit his wrists and he knocked over a big plant and rolled a chair really really fast down the hallway. some staff would just be rude to you. I would come back from home visits and one staff would completely ignore me, acting like I didn't exist. one staff told me to shave my legs and gave me my razor and wouldn't let me use the bathroom but forced me to stand outside on the deck and use the hose like a dog. The actual therapy sessions we had were extremely unhelpful and one of the therapists I think was high the whole time. when I would change in the shared bedroom we had, my peers would purposefully pull aside the curtain to look at me in my underwear. you weren't allowed certain pieces of clothing until you achieved a certain "level" in the program, so I got the majority of my clothes taken away and was only left with a few items. you had to wear shoes inside the house and you couldn't take them off no matter what. right when we got woken up at six forty five a.m., music would blare and they would make us clean, and everyone had to be fully done before everyone could eat breakfast, so we'd go a couple hours without it. they made us use bleach to clean three times a day, which gave me intense headaches. one of the staff dumped a bucket of cold water on a student when she wouldn't wake up in the morning. I experienced endless emotional abuse, physical neglect, coercion, and manipulation. I still have a lot of anxiety from it and I was wondering what has helped you guys in your healing?