My therapist actually thinks ABA and restraints are okay

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.....How do I cope with this?

I thought ABA was just positive reinforcement. As for restraints, as long as he's not suggesting them for you what does it matter what his opinion is of them? Restraints are needed at times, when people are violent or hurting themselves. I don't see a problem with them when they are needed. usually when somebody is lucid and not dangerous, they take them off. When I tried to kill myself I woke up in the ICU tied to the bed and so I called the nurse in there and asked her to please take them off, and she saw that I was ok by that time and took them off.

restraints are associated with increased risk of death and are being used less and less. tell your counselor to get up to date.

But aren't restraints just used temporarily when a person is violent? I would think they would be safer than just sedating them constantly. If somebody is violent you can't give them Haldol all the time, you have to give their liver some time to rest and keep them conscious so you can try to talk to them, and if they are trying to hurt you or themselves, what other option do you have? You can't keep two big orderlies in there to hold them down all the time, and you can't really do therapy if you are busy blocking punches constantly. Are you talking about restraints all the time, or what situation do they use restraints in that you are talking about?

I think a ball gag looks kinda sexy.

I mean like restraints that are done for minor offenses and are done improperly (i.e. sitting on somebody, holding them too tight across the chest, things like that).

The reason why it upsets me that my therapist thinks that these things are okay is because I have been in settings where ABA therapy (not the positive reinforcement kind, but the "fix the kid" kind) and restraints were used (I was restrained many years ago as a kid and never forgot about it - I forget what made me lose control in the first place, but have never forgotten the sheer terror of being restrained) and my concern is that if my therapist thinks that's okay, then she condones what I - and many of us - had to go through. I find the thought of that irksome, that's all. She's a good therapist aside from all that, and has helped me a ton, and maybe I'm making more out of it than I need to, but....still.

Last edited by LtlPinkCoupe on 03 Apr 2014, 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think physicality can be necessary when dealing with physically aggressive people (for whatever reason.) Tying people down is a little barbaric as it often leads to them being unattended which is dangerous.

Wow that sounds terrible....I know it would have and still would freak me out if I was restrained in such a way that interfered with breathing which is what that sounds like. I don't know if I had a therapist that agreed with that kind of treatment I'd probably find a new therapist, even if they where helpful otherwise I would not want treatment from someone who supports something like that.

I think that if your therapist is helping you, and you are comfortable with her, and ABA and restraints aren't even anything you would need to worry about in your own situation, you should just let it go and let what she does and suggest for other patients be up to them. Think about it like this, everybody is wrong about something and just because she's wrong about this issue doesn't mean she's not right about the issues she's dealing with you about. My go to guy for computers is a conspiracy theorist and extremely fundamentalist evangelical protestant Christian. He is one of those "go overboard on everything" Christians, who thinks homosexuality should be outlawed, women who have abortions or those who support it should face murder charges and he's so far to the right he insists that Obama is a Muslim and he almost committed suicide when Obama was reelected but didn't because it's a sin to him. I don't talk politics or religion with him, and we get along fine about everything else. He thinks I'm wrong, I think he's wrong, but those issues don't pertain to anything I talk to him about so it doesn't mean diddly to whether or not he can fix something with my computer.

Make it the same way with your therapist. Be sure and tell her your feelings on it though. Tell her that while you would love to change her mind about it, you know you probably won't, but you did feel that you needed to let her know your feelings and that it did bother you greatly at first because it made you wonder if you should keep seeing her. Let her know how you feel. Since neither of these issues pertains to you, you won't have to worry about them, but it will make you feel better to get it off your chest and maybe talking to her about it will help you feel better about the situation as well.

Hi little pinky!
Are you also afraid she might do it to you?
I can see how that would be scary, if you are thinking it (even in the back of your mind).

(and I think OOM, gave you some great advice there)

PS, when I was in the second grade a nun tied me to my seat. Wasn't fun! (But I did make life hard for the nuns.)

I would be really concerned depending upon the nature of what he advocates. Behavior modification therapies are really scary because they force kids to behave a certain way on the exterior while doing absolutely nothing about the things that might be really bad and wrong at home. They tell the kid they are not behaving well because they're broken inside, not because they might be reacting to dangerous, screwed up things around them. Blaming the victim.

I had to look up what ABA is, and I get the impression that at its best it's intentionally using positive reinforcement to encourage "good" behaviors. I think if that's what your therapist is advocating, that's okay. But I wish it were called "positive reinforcement therapy" or something that makes it really easy to say "you're doing it wrong" if people start to include punishments, even subtle ones like waiting longer than a minute to give food or water until positive behavior was displayed. (At one of the facilities I was at, this was done overtly and punitively, and in the case of food the wait was once days.) Positive training would be like "you have access to a varied and complete diet no matter how much you screw up, but if you behave well you can choose where we go to dinner tonight".

In the case of restraint I think it's okay in the sense oliveoilmom was advocating. You can't have a functioning anything if people aren't stopped when they're hurting each other or (some might argue) themselves. I think it should only be done in the least forceful way possible. I also think a restrained person should have a person sitting with them whose job it is to do anything even remotely reasonable that they ask. If they want water, they get water. If they want a change in position, that is accommodated as far as possible. Restraint should be seen as a horrible societal failure and a tragedy that anyone was allowed to get so broken they lost control.

Restraint as punishment is abusive. If we just grabbed a stranger on the street and restrained them like that, it would be considered assault and we would go to jail. For the more extreme types of restraint, parents and society outsource abuse. Institutionalized people are seen as untermenschen, subhumans. The same human rights that apply to other people don't apply to them anymore, and assault done to them in the facility is seen as for their own good or for the good of society. It doesn't count.

I think if your therapist supports positive reinforcement as a method of training (I use this on my cats. Weird, but not inherently abusive.) and the type of restraint oliveoilmom talked about, that's pretty normal and you'll have a hard time finding someone who doesn't. If you actually like your therapist then I'd just talk with her about understanding the difference and the role consent has in subjective experience and stuff.

I think if your therapist supports the really scary, abusive type of behavior modification or restraint, it might be worth trying to educate him/her. If your therapist sees any clients who are under majority age in your country he could be suggesting to parents that they send their kids to places where these happen. Google things like "teen deaths from restraints" and "wilderness program deaths" (as you probably know behavior modification is heavily used in wilderness programs because there's no one to hear the kids scream) and then show articles. I think it's worth helping the profession "get it" because that might reduce the rate of abusive placements and eventually stop it.

If you've established for sure that your therapist supports abusive practices, I'd quit seeing him and post a review stating that he supports specific practices that you disagree with online somewhere. That way you can warn away other people and still help stop the abusive. I mean, if it's actually the abusive stuff he's supporting.

At the other program where you were restrained, you might want to think about if what you went through might qualify as assault. They will have some records of what happened because they are required to keep them. You can request your "medical" records and then take them to a lawyer or the police. Maybe the ACLU if you're really brave and can handle being in public. You are young enough that you might be within the statute of limitations in many places. You might be able to have them arrested or sue for damages so they can't keep hurting kids. If you think you might want to do that, don't let the statute of limitations run out. I didn't know about it before it was too late, and I wish I did.

For a difficult to read example of the types of abusive programs we need to warn about and shut down, click here: http://parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fu ... cleID=6136

Well, I woke up and my hands were tied to the side of the bed and I was in a semi sitting position with the head of the bed up, and alone in the room, but I was in the ICU where it's all windows and my sliding glass door was open and there was somebody right there at the nurses station who could see me. In fact I didn't even have to yell when I woke up, I just said "Excuse me" a little louder than I'd normally talk. I wasn't combative in the ER or anything, I did ask when I woke up because I wanted to apologize to them if I had been, they just tied my hands because they didn't know how I would wake up. I mean, I had downed a bunch of Xanax and Ambien and chased it with a pint of vodka really fast in a suicide attempt so they didn't know if I would be normal or out there when I came to. I was normal and oddly enough, I had no hangover at all - I think it was the charcoal that did that because I know they sell charcoal to take before bed when you've been drinking although I've never tried it. So, I could see why they did that to me. I would have done that too. I was normal and polite and she came right in and untied me and checked on me and gave me a toothbrush and a wet washcloth and held my IV bag while I went to the bathroom. She was really nice, and I was very polite with her.

I had absolutely no problems with any of the staff either there or in psych, except I did complain about the "therapist" that led the group therapy. It wasn't actually therapy. He would ask somebody about how they were doing, then talk to them about Jesus. Really. He basically told us that being crazy was a choice. ::eyeroll:: I didn't pay him much attention. I didn't like it that we couldn't smoke, not even outside, and they wouldn't give me a nicotine patch and I also didn't like the lady who came to do occupational therapy, which consisted of drawing pictures of how whatever the particular tape she played for us made us feel. I mean it was all New Age music, which I like, but it all sounded basically the same and what does the feelings I might try to notice that I feel from listening to instrumental music have to do with major depression anyway? Here's a hint. It doesn't have anything to do with it. Nor does finding Jesus. But, I was put back on my regular meds and that helped me so overall it wasn't too bad. Of course it could have been a lot worse if I didn't know what was wrong with me and they were trying to find out and find out what meds work for me, and if I had actually put my trust in that therapist and occupational therapist to tell me something that would really help me.

I don't have a problem with negative consequences either for kids, like ABA but I wouldn't withold food. I might withold dessert if they were doing something that we were trying to get them to stop with food, ie; eating mashed potatoes with their hands, but not for not eating one of the dishes as long as they at least tried it. That was always my rule. Just eat one bite and if you don't like it you don't have to eat it, unless it was something they had tried before and I knew they didn't like. In a family with four kids and two adults you are always going to have one dish that somebody doesn't like and that's ok as long as they eat the rest of the food, or part of it. I never did the "clean your plate" thing. I wouldn't go overboard with the ABA though. I would pick one particular behavior and use it consistantly until that was resolved. I mean you can't let a kid eat certain things with their hands once they are past a certain age. If they choose to eat it that way alone in their room, thats one thing, but they have to be at least able to sit at a table with other people and use a knife, fork and spoon correctly. Even though some things are ok to do at home, they aren't ok to do in public or when you have guests or are a guest, so you have to learn to get used to doing things a different way for that and the best and easiest way to learn it and get a little more comfortable with it is in the privacy of your own home so I can see making it a rule that you can't eat at the table with your hands and not giving dessert if the kid keeps doing it, but not if he just slips up and does it then stops when reminded. But don't keep them from having food, and don't work on more than one thing at a time because you'll just be constantly punishing and everybody will get frustrated. Positive and negative consequences are how kids learn. Sometimes the consequences are natural ones (touch the stove and you get burned) and sometimes the parent dishes them out (pick up the depression glass and get your hand popped) as well as the positive ones (share your toys/snacks/games and your friend will share with you and play with you again another day or do something nice for someone or your parents or get a good grade and your parents will tell you how happy they are about it or buy you something because of the grades). I just think when people overdo it, constantly monitoring every little thing their kid does and correcting every single thing over and over, that it gets to the point that nobody can keep up with anything anymore, let alone the poor kid who just wants to be left alone for a change.

I don't have a problem with negative consequences for kids either, but there are lines that should not be crossed.

I sat in the wilderness. Alone and hungry. I didn't have a fire. I had a stove, but despite two weeks of practice suddenly I couldn't get it to light. I had a pile of lentils and I couldn't eat them because I couldn't cook them and I didn't want to make my stomach hurt by trying to eat raw, dry grain. My stomach hurt from hunger. On day two I was hungry enough to eat some raw flour mixed with margarine and water. I told them my stove was broken and they told me I was lying. I didn't have anything besides raw flour, margarine, and a handful or two of semi-rancid dry apricots for four days. On day four somehow I hiked out of a canyon with fifty pounds on my back. They made me. I was so so weak that I fell and struck my raw, sun burnt skin and already bruised bones against rocks so many times. I didn't bother screaming because that would have taken more of the energy I didn't have and no one who would have cared could hear me anyways.

They told us if we tried to run away we would be restrained. Kids have died from this kind of restraint with multiple adults sitting on top of them face down. I knew from the smaller things they did to me there were no idle threats and I did my best to do everything they told me whenever I could because I wanted to survive. They told us if we tried to hurt ourselves we would be left out there with one staff to sit in the wilderness with no heat and no shower while we healed. And then we'd do it again. I thought about walking into the river and drowning myself. But then there was a part of me that thought maybe in a weird way that was what they wanted. That they sent me there because they thought the world would be a better place if I wasn't in it as who I really am. I decided to outwardly do what they told me, but to inside just try so hard to cling to at least some shred of myself so I had something to grow back from.

The punishment for not hiking was either more hiking or lower quality and less food. A particularly severe punishment was only giving people boiled grain with no salt for weeks at a time. I think it was meant to mess with the victim's electrolytes and make it harder for them to think and function. It's not fun hiking like you think of it. It's having a backpack half your weight in 110 degree sun in the desert while you're clinging to cliffs and going over difficult terrain with no trails. It was coerced with threats of additional punishments and those continuing until you finally broke and did what they told you. No matter how much pain you were in, you did it because you didn't want to do it again when you were weaker inside after they continued to hurt you. Like sandpaper against skin, the suffering had a cumulative effect and became harder and harder to withstand. I became so thin. They used it like US government agencies use stress positions to break people. They were trying to break us. We weren't allowed to take water breaks when we wanted. There was no medical attention and I could slap 30 knats off my cut up, bloody legs in one swat. There was no state supervision. There was no phone within forever miles as far as I knew to call 911 from.

I remember being under water with my pack on. They were trying to make us hike through this slot canyon and I must have fallen in the water. Somehow someone grabbed me and helped me get ahold of a rock and pull myself out, but until then I was drowning under the weight of my pack while my shoes filled with water and made it harder for me to kick. I would have taken them off but they were boots and my hands were trying to paddle and keep my head up, and anyways somehow I had to get some air and maybe figure out how to get out of that pack while under water and holding my breath. It was a few moments of torture.

I told my parents the program was bad and they told my parents I was trying to manipulate them. I tried to tell the truth and they talked my parents into leaving me in another place for another 6 months. When they were done with me I was a product. A docile, compliant, affectionate girl. With a heart encased in stone that took many years to crack.

It took me many years to heal. I'm not sure I'm ever going to be fixed enough to have more than a basic job because I still have deer in headlight can't function type panic attacks pretty often. I'm usually eloquently verbal but during those I can't get out a coherent sentence. I'm still broken, but I've found a way to be genuinely, truly happy in life. I've learned that as long as I'm safe, well-fed, warm and have at least someone or some animal who loves me for who I am, I can be happy.

But these are very different types of restraint and abuse. It's not the same thing at all. Somehow I need to do my part to stop this stuff.

Geez, that almost made me cry!
I'm glad you survived it.

Thank you and thank you for hearing me and listening.

Mua, that sounds more like one of those two week "learn to survive in the wilderness" camps you take for fun and learning than it does something they would force you to be in. Thats just horrible! Even those survival ones give you an out when you've had enough. I don't mean it sounds fun even as a survival camp, but you go into that knowing it's going to be hard, you will be deprived of things and it won't be fun but thats the point of it. This sounded just punitive and ineffective. Sure it made you behave there, but the rest of the world isn't like that.

Can I suggest a different way of looking at it? I know it may not help and probably won't, but if you think of it like you were going through boot camp and you survived it rather than they broke you and bullied and abused you, you might can start to let go of some of the trauma feelings you have. I know that sounds simplistic, and I'm not saying to excuse them at all, but holding on to it like that is just hurting you. You can't change the past but you can change how you perceive it. Convince yourself that you went through some strict ass training, some hard core military s**t, which you actually did. And you did learn what your body can and cant take and that you're stronger than you though. Thats the up side of it. The down sides of it will do nothing for you now except hold you back. Taking the strength from it and the self determination and the powerful will you have to survive away from it and leaving all the "your a bad kid" s**t they drilled into you isn't doing them any good, but it can do you a lot of good.

You are NOT forgiving them and you are NOT condoning them, but you are actually screwing them over in the final analysis because you are taking the good you got from it, the strength and knowledge that you can rely on yourself and throwing out all their rhetoric and BS they WANTED you to absorb. Focus on the strength you found you have. Remind yourself every day that if you could get through training as tough as the military, you can get through whatever it is thats bothering you on a particular day. Make surviving that something to be proud of. You did it! I couldn't even do that. You're officially a badass since you made it through that. While you might not be able to speak up very well, or kick somebodys ass or anything, the speaking up will come. Focus on the strength. Remind yourself every day that you survivied military style training and came through with flying colors. You were stuck there but they didn't break you. Slowly, your self confidence will start to come back. You will start being proud of yourself for it and when you start thinking about the BS they said, make yourself think of the hardships and how it felt and how you got over them. Dont think about how you felt emotionally because of the reasons they did it. Think about how you felt physically and how strong you actually were but just didnt know it. A good thing came of it. It showed you that you are much stronger than you ever thought you were.

It's not to say it was good to send you there, but to "win", you take the horrible situation that was designed to break you and turn you into clay for them to shape, and used it to find the strong woman inside of you that you didn't know was there. Now is the time to get in touch with her and bring her out to help you deal with every day life. She can tell you that you aren't clay and you aren't something to push aside or somebody bad. She can help you build up the strength in your emotional well being as well ifyou just focus on that part of you. That strong woman who is bound and determined to get through it all no matter how bad it is. Remember that and a bad day at the office gets put in perspective real fast.

Think about it like guys talked about the war. "Oh, you had a bad day at school? Your PE teacher yelled at you? I marched across Europe carrying 100 lbs on my back with just a canteen full of muddy water and holes in my shoes and blisters on my feet, being shot at!" type thing. Think Red Foreman talking to the kids when they complain. Tell yourself that kind of thing in your mind when you start feeling helpless and scared. What are you scared of? What can they do to you now that you can't get through. You have proven yourself. Thats something that a lot of people never get to do. You faced the choice of folding and giving up, or manning up and pushing through it. You chose to go balls to the wall. I'm proud of you. That is something to be VERY proud of. They did that to you, yes, but you survived. You are nobody's victim, you are a hero. A victor. A winner. A survivor. Help your mind catch up to what your body did and be proud of yourself!

They aren't off the hook, and they weren't right at all, in fact that was downright wrong. But if you turn it into something good for you now, you win. That screws them over but good, in many ways although they will never know it. Who knows, maybe one day youll write them a letter telling them that they didn't break you, they made you stronger and while you hate them for it, you got something that lots of kids don't get. The chance to do or die, and you did.

Last edited by OliveOilMom on 04 Apr 2014, 12:56 am, edited 2 times in total.