Rediscovering Who I Am

After Conversion Therapy by Arielle Rebekah

When I try to sit with other girls at school assemblies, staff enforce the school’s sex-segregated seating policy, telling me I should “know better” and publicly humiliating me until I comply. When I try to sit next to two of my female friends on one particular school trip, an ultra-conservative male staff member asks me to move. When I rebut, “but I’m transgender,” he looks at me and sternly warns, “Do not fuck with me.”

A few months before graduation, I practically beg my new therapist to let me so much as speak with her about being trans. In response, she asks me to complete a writing assignment detailing why I would “never be a complete man nor a complete woman.”

Carlbrook’s abusive reprogramming tactics are rarely as evident as during our workshops. During each of these multi-day marathon group therapy sessions, an unlicensed and often untrained “therapist” would lead us through scripted activities designed to wear us down to the point our self-concept becomes malleable. Many of these activities involve being forced into the middle of the room with loud music blaring as staff and peers verbally attack or humiliate us. Others are designed to physically and emotionally exhaust us, which combined with sleep deprivation and severely delayed meal times means we are extremely emotionally vulnerable. Once it becomes clear our spirits are sufficiently broken, staff seize the opportunity to reprogram us into believing what they want us to believe. For me, this means forcing me to “reconnect with that little boy” inside me and making me feel guilty for “pushing him away” with “all this gender stuff.” At one point, I am publicly belittled and angrily kicked out of a workshop for asserting my truth to the conservative Mormon woman who is acting as the lead therapist, even though she herself is not licensed to practice therapy in the state of Virginia (nor anywhere else, to the best of my knowledge).

After sixteen agonizing months of pleading with the school administration to allow me to live my truth, I finally graduate. Only by this point, I am more doubtful than ever about how or even if I want to transition. They’d spent years strategically sowing the seeds of doubt, forcing me to put my trust in them and positioning themselves as the authority on what I need. When it’s finally time to trust myself, I find myself unable.

After finally beginning to socially transition in summer 2015, I spend almost a year afraid I’ve made a terrible mistake. Carlbrook’s invalidations echo inside me on an endless loop, perpetuating the noisy self-doubt that had taken permanent residence in my brain since I was a child. I even briefly consider detransitioning but fear that if I do, I will never be believed about my identity again.

In the half decade following my graduation, fellow survivors and I gradually unearth a treasure trove of seedy stories about Carlbrook, and specifically its origins. We discover our school was descended from Synanon, a notorious cult from the 1970s that masqueraded as a “drug rehabilitation” program while practicing attack therapy and violently abusing children. Though Synanon was ultimately disbanded in the 1990s, the concept was replicated in the form of CEDU schools, whose treatment philosophy became the foundation for Carlbrook and a number of other teen residential treatment programs. Though Carlbrook shut down in 2015, descendants of CEDU still exist to this day, engaging in the same baseless and manipulative “treatment” tactics I and so many others have endured.

Rediscovering Who I Am After Conversion Therapy by Arielle Rebekah

I need folks to understand that tactics stemming from conversion therapy are shockingly prevalent, even today. While some programs explicitly and shamelessly refer to themselves as “reparative therapy” programs, others are more insidious, using the playbook of conversion without ever showing their hand or revealing their motives. My parents genuinely believed they’d found a program that would guide me toward happiness. School staff were experts in controlling the narrative: we were gaslighted into believing our daily experiences were normal, our families strategically taught to trust the administration above their own children.

I have thankfully been able to find peace and a healing, but many survivors still suffer. While I came home to a family who has learned to accept me, and a community that has my back, many survivors return to the same chronically invalidating environments they left. I long for the day reprogramming is a thing of the past and no one again has to suffer through what so many of us have endured. Together, I know we’ll keep fighting until that becomes our reality.

AUTHOR BIO: Arielle Rebekah (they/them), founder of Trans & Caffeinated Consulting, is a transgender writer, coffee enthusiast, and mother to the three most different cats in the world. While their work centers mainly around transgender visibility and education, Arielle is passionate about creating a world where all people have access to the tools and resources they need to thrive. An admirer of media’s ability to shape culture, Arielle’s all-time favorite show is The Good Place. While this sounds like a silly thing to write in a bio, this understatedly poignant comedy dares to dream of a world in which rather than being punished for their mistakes, people are given the love and support they need to do good. As a teenager, Arielle survived 2 years in a supposed therapeutic inpatient program that drew its tactics from the methodologies of cults and conversion “therapy” and has since dedicated their life to making the world a safer place for all transgender people.

STATEMENT: From August 2013 to December 2014, I lived at a therapeutic boarding school in South Boston, VA–a small rural town right on the border of North Carolina, as early talks about HB2 began in the backdrop. Carlbrook, which on paper sought to help struggling young adults live happy, fulfilled lives, used many of the same reprogramming tactics as conversion therapy and cults. Early in my stay, believing I was finally safe to do so, I came out as transgender. A largely Mormon and Evangelical school staff spent the next year working to emotionally, spiritually, and physically break me to the point that I was malleable, then fed me information about the “man” they believed me to be until I eventually started to believe them. It took a year after graduation to finally begin living my truth, and nearly another decade to unpack the trauma of living through the fear, pain, and trauma of their reprogramming efforts

Arielle recently shared the story of their time at Carlbrook on an episode of The Anti-Trans Hate Machine, a podcast hosted by Imara Jones and TransLash Media. In the episode, Arielle goes into greater detail about the organized and sinister machine of CEDU schools and their personal experiences at Carlbrook

SOCIAL MEDIA: Instagram/Twitter @Ariellergordon, Website: transandcaffeinated.com