“I have only very recently discovered the name of the torturous ‘Attachment Therapy’ I had to endure as a child. The sheer amount of horror stories I have read and seen have helped me understand what was done to me; so I feel it is necessary to join the fight to put an end to this form of therapy and to stop children from being tortured. Too many either suffering lifelong trauma or are being murdered from this form of ‘love.’
My personal horror story took place around 1989 in Salt Lake City, Utah at the Primary Children’s Hospital – Residential Treatment Center – Wasatch Canyons Inpatient Psychiatry unit (RTC). When I was around ages seven or eight years old. I lived at this facility and another of their branch facilities (RTC South Satellite Building B) off and on from four to about ten years of age.
I cannot recall a lot of my childhood memories because as anyone who grew up within the system knows, you are an unwilling and unwitting test subject for new compliance/therapeutic medications. A handful, two-three times a day plus vitamins. But that is another story for a different day.
Similar to other stories I have read about Attachment Therapy there was a lot of emotional and physical abuse disguised as love and for our best. This is by far the most emotionally and physically painful experience of my entire life. Worse than being molested, all the broken bones or stitches I have ever had.
My experience involved the Facility Head (Jim/James, who also happened to be my therapist) along with at least one other therapist and staff, forcibly holding me down and pinning my arms to my side, then rolling me into two thick blankets preventing me from moving my arms, legs or head. The blankets would go above my head and I would have to angle my face upwards to breathe. This, I assume, was done to force me to look at my (then) potential parents (Cory and Janet, who now work for Wasatch school district) and my therapist. They would then proceed to have two staff lay on top of me to prevent me from wriggling out of the blankets and hold me still. After I was properly secured a third staff would remove my shoes and socks and start tickling my feet relentlessly for the entire session.
In case you’ve never experienced prolonged tickling its only funny for a few minutes before you can’t breathe, and it turns into searing pain that just does not relent but gets stronger and stronger. So strong you feel and pray that you are going to pass out, but you never do. It is torture in every sense of the word.
At this point my therapist would instruct my potential parents to take turns saying every hateful thing they could think of toward me, to yell and scream insults, to tell me how much I made them hate me. He would have them do this inches from my face, all while mercilessly tickling my feet. They would force me to regress into tears in less than five minutes. They told me it was my fault my biological family did not want me. That I always messed good things up and was a waste of time and effort. They would belittle me in every imaginable way and laugh at me when I was crying and pleading to be released from the blankets. They would tell me I had to release my feelings, that I had to scream and yell back and let out all my anger and pent up emotions, and then they would release me.
However, when I would scream and yell as they wanted, (like I was already doing because of the terror and pain I was in) they would simply laugh and continue yelling at me and saying cruel things until the entire session was over, again while mercilessly tickling my feet.
Often times I felt like I was going to die and would just wish it to end already.
It didn’t take long for me to be drenched in fear-induced sweat from the combined heat, lack of air, pain from being laid on, and my feet being tickled, coupled with the emotional torture I had just endured. Once the session was over they would release me and I was told how proud everyone was of me, the entire room would act as if I was some awesome, amazing person and how much they loved me, and promise to buy me a Butterfinger (my favorite candy, I even went as one for Halloween at the RTC) as my reward for being so good during the session. My therapist would then instruct my (then) potential parents to continue the therapy at home. They did but without the tickling or blankets…
Instead, they would lock me in a mostly cement room except for a wall infested with mice and a single red overhead light. They would keep me locked in this room every night and portions of the day depending on how they wanted to deal with me that day.
One Christmas I was locked in the room and was given a bag of green apples as my only Christmas gift that year, while the rest of the family left to be with relatives.
Another time I had made a paper mâché reindeer at school about a foot tall and it was eaten overnight by mice. I remember laying there scared all-night being ignored by my (then) parents. Listening to the mice scratch, claw, and devour it. By morning all that was left was the base of one leg.
They would scream at me the same things they said to me during the sessions and hold me tightly and refuse to let me go while doing this or act in some other aggressive manner that included physical abuse and emotional abuse. There are two particular occasions of this I can recall.
The first was when my (then) dad was screaming at me and my (then) mom threw herself to the living room floor and demanded I urinate on her, as that is all I do anyway, and all I was ever going to be capable of doing. She proceeded to repeatedly say this, mixed with other hurtfully designed words. What else happened that night I cannot recall as my mind blanked it out.
The second happened one evening when (then) mom and dad were going to go out, and they left their older biological son (cannot remember his name) in the kitchen working on a model and told me to stay in the living room and watch TV. When they came home, they asked who ate the candy bar from the cupboard (they always put them on the top shelf). Their son told them I ate the candy bar. I must have snuck into the kitchen somehow without him seeing me (the table was right in front of the cabinets). They all screamed at me, told me they were giving me up, and said they were going to lock me in my room until they could get the hospital to come to get me. They refused to believe me when I told them it was not me. I ended up running away for the first time in my life that night. Scared for my freedom and of being hit.
I ended up getting myself locked into a Rally’s and got myself into trouble for opening Marvel comics card boxes, eating food, and playing with rubber cement getting it on merchandise. I ended up finding a working phone and it set off an alarm and I went home after the police let me out. (I ended up doing Restitution once they gave me back to the RTC. Three months of sitting in a corner all day long, facing the wall, only being allowed to do chores.)
That morning as I slept locked in my mice-infested room, I was violently yanked out of bed and thrown into the cement wall, picked up and held off the floor, then hit repeatedly while being asked where a missing gold ring from the store was. A ring I never took, and from the reports, was never taken in the first place. They then took me back to the hospital (RTC) for a stay with them. I never spoke of the abuse while I was there because I was scared and did not want to lose my only family and I did not know who to tell. Although I do recall being pulled into a room at school and asked about bruises and abuse. In the end, this family found a way to get rid of me by adopting a new baby (Sarah) and accusing me of being jealous of her and poking her in the eye while they were outside because she was crying when they came in, which I never did.
There are a few other small tidbits I can remember but for the most part, I spent a significant amount of time just being locked in the room and doing chores, or being told how worthless I was and how this hard life would help me be a better person and make me love them more.
I cannot tell you how crippling the fear I have of my feet being touched is. I felt only increasing terror, pain, and panic the entire time. I will never be able to fully put to words how I felt during those sessions. They had me convinced I deserved it all. I had the feeling you get when you think you are going to die but then you do not, and it keeps going and going and going and you know you deserve it. So much that you start to think not dying is part of the punishment. (Which I still feel every time my PTSD takes over multiple times a month.) I mean, after all, I have to love and obey them or I am worthless and unlovable.
Because of this, I have a very hard time accepting, believing, understanding, and knowing how love is supposed to feel. I am scared to try and allow myself to be loved because I don’t know how it is supposed to feel outside of movies, (Free Willy and The Santa Clause) that created a false reality of what love was supposed to be. Unfortunately, I have never felt what those movies conveyed in real life. In short, I created a fantasy-based reality as a coping mechanism and it only leaves me feeling alone. I almost always misunderstand what affection feels like, and back away scared or push them away without intending. This has created a lifelong desperate need for approval from people I cannot win it from, and fear of speaking out or being assertive to anyone I see as better than myself. It has become a core belief that I am unlovable and deserve every bad thing I experience.
I know what i should feel, but I never feel it and this makes me feel very alone.”
-Josh