A Search For Survivors

DAY 58. Fellow survivors found: 2

Mia* found my site through the YouTube video clips I’d embedded. The following is a transcript of one of our conversations conducted in an informal “interview” style, focusing on her account of attachment therapy. This is Mia’s first public disclosure of her personal experience.

*Name has been changed.

Wayward Radish: Hello!

Mia: Hi! This is so exciting…

WR: Indeed!

M: So you were at Evergreen too?

WR: No, the “therapeutic” foster home I was placed at was in Evergreen, Colorado. The AT clinic I was at was called “The Human Passages Institute” in Denver. It’s been shut down, but the “therapist” who tortured me is still at large–he now apparently has a position at a private school. This guy never had a license or even a degree in psychology, he’d just paid the $100 registration fee to practice psychotherapy in Colorado.

M: Wow, damn…that’s insane.

WR: Were you adopted?

M: Yup. When I was 3. My biological mom was abusive, so I was put into foster care. It was just one bad situation after another. This past year I met my biological dad. He feels horrible and guilt-ridden about everything that’s happened.

WR: What reasons did your adoptive parents give for sending you to AT?

M: *laughs* I don’t even know.

WR: How did they even find about AT/P?

M: I was in a hospital when I was 14 and when I came out, the doctor there started telling my Mom about AT. She searched the Internet til she found Evergreen.

WR: Wow, the beginning of your AT/P closely resembles mine. I was institutionalized when I was about 11, got sent to AT shortly after my release. I don’t think my adoptive mother found out about it via the Internet though, I think a social worker turned her onto it. Anyway, were you diagnosed with “attachment disorder” or “reactive attachment disorder?”

M: Reactive attachment disorder. You?

WR: Attachment disorder. Who was your attachment therapist?

M: Neil Feinberg. I hate him. He’s the one who laid on top of me…it’s sad because my parents still think he and all the AT/P people are amazing

WR: Are you and your parents close now?

M: No, we aren’t.

WR: Heh, this $%#@ is such a rip-off. Every survivor I’ve found (so far there’s only 3 of us, but the few other survivor accounts available online confirm this as well) has been unable to trust their parents afterwards, much less maintain any loving relationship with them.

M: Yeah, things were definitely made worse by AT/P.

WR: So how long were you in for?

M: I did the two-week intensive and went home, then went back a couple years later for what was supposed to be only two weeks, but I stayed like from the end of May to the beginning of August. There was talk of me living there permanently.

WR: Wow, again that’s a lot like my experience, the back-and-forth shuttling and being made to stay for indefinite periods. I did the initial two-week intensive too. Did they do the “blanket therapy” to you too?

M: I did the kind of holding therapy where you have to lay on the couch and kick and they scream bull$%#@ at you. I’m trying to remember if they did the blanket…I want to say they did something close to that. I know I had Neil [Feinberg] lay on me.

WR: Were you ever on the floor?

M: Yeah, that’s when he laid on me.

WR: Did he ever have any assistants working with him to help “hold” you?

M: No, on the floor it was only Neil on top of me, that’s the only time he was really involved. Other than that I was on the couch, where Margaret had me lay across her lap, with an arm behind her back and I would have to kick…she would start saying that crap like, “I know you’ve been hurt, you hate what those people did to you, you’re too damaged to ever love anyone,” all that nonsense. She would yell in my face and when I was pinned down they let the “therapy mom” lick my face because I didn’t like people touching me. She was doing it to piss me off. They were always trying to make me angry.

WR: Was Margaret your “therapy mom?”

M: No, Margaret Meinecke and Neil were individual therapists. Connie was the “therapy mom.”

WR: So no one else “treated” you except for Margaret Meinecke, Neil Feinberg and your TFP Connie?

M: Right.

WR: Do you remember any specific thing that Margret made you say? Or that she said to you?

M: “I’m angry,” that’s what they always wanted me to say. I’m not clear. I remember she had me repeat a lot of junk she was saying. She would talk about me being a baby and my biological mom abusing and neglecting me.

WR: Do you remember what your life was like with your biological parents?

M: No, I think I suppressed it. It was just my mom who mistreated me, my real dad didn’t even know it was happening. But I question everything now because DHS had the wrong information about who my biological dad was, among other things. Their paperwork was so off-base it’s not even funny.

WR: What’s DHS?

M: Department of Human Services–it’s Child Protective Services basically.

WR: Ah. Do you think Margaret or anyone else exaggerated what your biological mother did to you?

M: I believe in general what they said was true…but some details have been blurred. Honestly, I don’t know. It’s hard to say what really happened.

WR: Do you remember Margaret or Connie doing anything else besides the physical restraint, verbal abuse, face licking and making you kick to the point of exhaustion?

M: No, that was it. It just went on for hours.

WR: That was my next question, how long it lasted.

M: 2-3 hours…better to estimate low. Seemed like 4 or 5 at times.

WR: Yeah, it’s really hard to estimate the time, it’s not like they bother to tell you anything or give you a damn watch.

M: *laughs* True!

WR: Were you ever allowed a bathroom break or a drink of water or anything?

M: I don’t remember. I know I would say I needed one, or that I couldn’t breathe. According to them I was just making excuses to get away.

WR: Did your adoptive parents ever help the attachment therapists/parents? My adoptive mom joined in on some of my sessions.

M: No, my mom and dad didn’t join in. But I remember them standing still behind the big glass window and watching.

WR: So they watched you being tortured through the glass and didn’t do anything to stop it?

M: Yes. I think it was actually a one-way mirror, a very cheap one though because I knew they were there. Details are still a bit blurred…sorry.

WR: Did you fake your behavior and responses in the holding sessions in order to ensure they ended sooner?

M: HECK YEAH!

WR: *laughs* I mean, obviously you were forced to repeat all the junk they were screaming at you, but did you ever act “cleansed” or “healed” after the therapy to fool them into thinking it had worked so you could get out of there?

M: I think the first time I did… I just went into a submissive exhaustion the second time because that session lasted so long. I think the first time I might have acted like I was “healed,” but then again I might have started to believe it…I was so exhausted.

WR: Do you remember how many sessions you endured?

M: The first two weeks it was basically every day…I think during my second stint it was like maybe every other day or something. I’m not sure honestly.

WR: Yeah, neither am I. It’s like there could’ve been 25, could’ve been 50.

M: *laughs* Yeah, things blur while you’re there.

WR: Yeah. Sorry, I’m asking you a lot of questions that I can’t quite remember the answers to myself…I know it’s hard but I have to check just in case you do happen to remember.

M: It’s OK, I understand. My memory sucks.

WR: That might have to do with the fact that you were traumatized. My memory is usually like a steel trap, but I can’t remember much of what happened during those 2 years of my life. It’s like all that time is just lost.

M: My memory is strange now. It’s like, a whole year can happen and a year later my mind blanks it out. Does that make sense?

WR: Yes, though I’m not the same way. Of course we all block the AT/P out as much as we can…I don’t know for sure what long-term effects it can have, it’s still too early to tell. What do you think? Did AT/P wreak any physical/neurological/psychological affects on you that you’re still dealing with (aside from the bad memories of course)?

M: It damaged my relationship with my adoptive parents even more…I don’t like to be confined and I think there’s still a bit of resentment…and I think the anger towards the people there is bad. I still shudder thinking about it and like this past weekend I was having lunch with my biological Dad and he asked if I had been through AT (I don’t know where he heard about it) but after a short time I wanted the conversation to end…I get very uncomfortable. My counselor wonders if it caused post-traumatic stress disorder or whatever, but I don’t know, we haven’t explored it totally.

WR: Yeah, several people have raised the possibility of PTSD. I didn’t tell anyone about this whole thing until last month or so…for 10 years I didn’t even think about it. For a long time I thought I was the only one who went through this, the therapists and TFPs isolated me to the point where I could think such a thing.

M: Yeah, I never talked about it much.

WR: And your adoptive parents still swear by this “therapy???”

M: Yes. My mom especially. She’s still in contact with Margaret [Meinecke], the attachment therapist… be right back, I gotta take a quick shower. That’s one good thing about the TFPs [therapeutic foster parents]…I started taking really quick showers, we had like 5 minutes and they had a chain that somehow if you took longer they would pull it and it turned the water cold. *laughs* I’ll be right back!

I’ll post the second half of our conversation tomorrow, which addresses a different, lesser-known aspect of AT/P: the AT-approved “therapeutic foster homes” and the so-called “attachment parents” who run them. I haven’t yet taken the time to shed much light on TFPs and the foster homes us “attachment disordered” kids stay in, so I’m very grateful for Mia’s highly detailed, devastating account. Stick with us.