I also didn’t want the stigma of trauma. I didn’t want my new friends to see me as a collection of things that happened to me. I didn’t want people to define me based on what I had been through or what their preconceived notions of what a “troubled teen” was.

Looking back, I think part of that was because the programs that I attended, namely the therapeutic boarding school Carlbrook, stripped away my sense of self. I was afraid that people would see me as the damaged kid who went to a program like this because I didn’t see anything when I looked in the mirror. I couldn’t look at myself and see that emotional core that defines a person. They took that from me. And they did it because it is easier to control people when you supplant their identity with something of your own making.

It was 2007 when I began my journey into this industry, starting with the wilderness therapy program Second Nature Blue Ridge (now Blue Ridge Therapeutic Wilderness). Why, then, am I just now beginning to speak out?

First, when I got out of Carlbrook, I spent just nine days at home before going straight to college. My life changed dramatically and I was busy trying to form a new identity. I thought I could just forget what happened and move on. Add to that the fact that I was thoroughly institutionalized - like all survivors of cults and intense behavior modification programs - that I didn’t really understand the full gravity of what I went through.

This was also before a lot of the research and advocacy for survivors in the TTI had gone public. Most of the narrative around these programs was coming from people like Dr. Phil, a noted proponent of programs like this who regularly sent child guests on his show straight into places like Turn-About Ranch. Also the mainstream conservative politicians of the time from Nixon to Bush had spent decades praising these “tough love” programs as the answer to why children were just so darned bad these days. To say that speaking out against these programs fell on deaf ears is just the best case scenario. At worst, I watched several peers face ridicule and disbelief, with people telling us that we deserved what we got for being such bad kids.

For me, there was a clear turning point. In 2026, nearly 17 years after graduating Carlbrook, my parents casually told me they had helped a family friend who had adopted a kid out of foster care find a therapeutic boarding school for that kid who, at just twelve years old, had been showing signs of extreme behaviors like climbing trees and not coming down until the fire department had been called.

Now if that doesn’t sound like the sort of behavior that should get a child - one who has undergone the trauma of foster care and adoption - locked up into programs that will further abuse and traumatize that child, it’s because it isn’t the behavior most people expect.

The vast majority of people assume that kids get sent to programs like these for doing heroin or running with gangs. Perhaps at one point that was what programs like these purported to treat, but these days the educational consultants and other entry points to this industry are pathologizing perfectly normal teenage behavior and convincing scared parents that these actions will end up with their child dead or in prison if they don’t get help right then.

Of course, we know this isn’t true. Most teenagers act out. It is actually a normal and (usually) healthy act of experimenting with independence. And most teenagers will grow out of their impulsive behaviors long before they face the worst-case consequences that these fearmongers predict.

I am starting to speak out and advocate for survivors of this industry because I needed someone who would do that for me. And it would be a betrayal of that version of me who was crying out for someone to fight for them. And so I decided it was time to start fighting for the hundreds of thousands of kids who are still getting sent into these programs.

But this isn’t advocacy based in anger. I am angry. We all are. You’d have to lack any sort of empathy not to be angry at the things that are done to these kids. But what I want to do with this platform is educate. I want to investigate the businesses that profit off of these children. I want to help parents make better decisions and avoid sending their kids to a program that will forever change their relationship. I want to work with therapists, social workers, survivors, journalists, and legislators to build a network that will create meaningful regulation for these industries and resources for the survivors.

Anger is great for tearing things down. And there are certainly elements of this industry that need to be torn down. But it will require more than that to build real change. And that is what I want to do. I’m hoping you’ll join me.

In December 2007, my parents told me that I was going to go to a four-week Outward Bound program for teens, complete with zip lining, camping, and adventure. I am an Eagle Scout, so this sort of outdoor activity appealed to me. After my parents left, I was strip searched. It was my first time, but far from my last.

I was at Second Nature Blue Ridge, a wilderness therapy program in Clayton, Georgia, for seven weeks. We had no tents; each participant was given a tarp that we would use to construct a shelter each night. The weather was brutally cold. Many nights would get into the single digits or below zero. Many mornings I would wake to find my jacket frozen into a solid brick.

In 2007, Georgia was in the middle of a long-running drought, so the entire region was on a fire ban for the vast majority of the time I was in the program. When we were allowed fire, we had to create it ourselves with bow drills. Most of the time, any heat we had would come from hot water in our water bottles. Our staff had propane stoves to cook for themselves while the students often had cold, dry ramen or raw beans and rice softened in creek water.

The “therapy” that was on offer consisted of irregular meetings with a man who gave us assignments like “draw a perfect circle.” The real assignment was trying to divine what lesson the activity was supposed to teach you. I spent weeks trying to convince my therapist that I understood that there was no such thing as perfect. The actual lesson? You just had to ask for help. Before wilderness therapy, I was happy to ask for help.

Another critical part of wilderness therapy was the accountability letter. This would actually become a recurring theme during my journey. My therapist instructed me to write a letter to my parents explaining all of the bad stuff I had done. I told the truth. I had been angry. I had gotten into fights with bullies. I had yelled at my mom and dad. I was impulsive and I swore and I listened to loud music. In short, I was a teenager.

My therapist read the letter and told me to redo it. I wasn’t being honest. So I wracked my brain looking for anything else I could add to it. Multiple times we went back and forth. He told me he knew I had been drinking, having sex, doing drugs. It wasn’t until I lied that they determined I was telling the truth.

This problem is endemic in the troubled teen industry. Because the industry only works if it is bringing in more and more victims, we see this incredible scope creep. What was originally intended to help hardcore drug addicts and true juvenile delinquents was expanded until the people feeding kids into this machine were pathologizing normal teenage behavior.

These letters, which all participants in these programs are required to write, are then used to convince the parents that their kids are dangerously out of control and they should be sent to another program. On February 14, my parents picked me up from Second Nature Blue Ridge and drove me to the Carlbrook School in South Boston, Virginia.

I’ll never forget my first day. I was taken on my tour of the campus and informed that I was going to be on bans with all students in the Lower School part of the program. Bans were a sort of communication restriction. When on bans with a person, you could not speak with them, make eye contact with them, sit near them, or make any acknowledgement of their existence.

I went to the bathroom and greeted someone who I was told was in my peer group. He replied “I’m on bans.” I laughed and introduced myself. I’ll never forget the fear in his eyes when he repeated “I’m on bans” and rushed out of the bathroom. I had assumed that the rules would be followed in front of adults and then disregarded when alone.

How wrong I was.

The most insidious part of these programs is that they are exceptionally talented at population control. The most effective way to manage a population is to have the population manage itself. Your peers were often the most vicious enforcers of the rules. You would disclose details of your life and your peers would find the cruelest time possible to twist those disclosures into attacks. We were bred into the program’s attack dogs, foaming at the mouth to tear into one another.

People that I trusted and loved at that program have said by far the worst things to me that I’ve ever heard. Some of this “feedback” has stuck with me and will echo in my mind for the rest of my life.

And yet, I will never blame the other students for anything they did. We were doing anything and everything we could to get by. The cruelty was a way to keep attention off of you. It was performance theater. It was survival. And I won’t begrudge any of my peers for surviving that place. Goodness knows so many of us didn’t survive.

At some point, I will write about my time at Carlbrook in real depth, complete with interviews with people who attended the program with me. But today is not that day. I will end this portion of my story by saying this. I came out of Carlbrook changed. What I went through there was not normal. It was traumatic. But sharing my story has helped me begin to heal. I would encourage any other survivors to do the same, in their own time. This site will always have a place for survivor testimonies. If you would like to add yours to the list, please get in touch.