By Jeff Brain

Really?  I had not thought of it that way before.  It’s no secret that The Family Foundation School and the principles for which we stand are “under attack”.  In part by a youth rights advocacy group and in part by a handful of angry, resentful alumni – a minute percentage of the 3,000 young people we have served over the past 30 years.  They do not know how to engage in a civil discourse but rather use slanderous and subversive tactics to intimidate.  Yet, in the way that a bully gets noticed, these few alumni and their minions spread lies, and slander us on the internet.  And in this way, represent a modern age organizational bully.

This was revealed to me this week by a wise, experienced and supportive colleague.  She suggested that I reframe in my mind those who attack us as a bully.  She reasoned that they are engaging in all of the same behaviors as a bully.  In fact, it is likely that if we researched the history, we might find bullying as part of their childhood history.

In this new age of being heard on the internet, bullies have a new tool to try to hurt their victims.  They sound convincing, hiding behind the anonymity of the internet – unable to see their faces, hear them speak and thus see them for who they are.    Our children are at risk in the same way.  There are news reports of kids spreading gossip and rumors about one another on-line.  A recent workshop announcement titled “Cyberbullying” seeks to educate parents and educators on the dangers that lurk on line for their children and students – and how bullies are using the internet.  “Bullying isn’t just in the hallways anymore — it occurs on cell phones, in chat rooms, and on the ‘Net”.

Dealing with bullies remains difficult.  We do not consider ourselves victims.  We believe in who we are and what we do.  We are proud of that – and will stand up for our students and our parents – and they are standing up for us.  We are also not afraid – we trust that as we are guided by God, and by our principles and best practices in the field, we remain an important therapeutic option for families.  We are listening to our students, alumni and parents – who continue to support our mission.

It was helpful however for this colleague to reframe this in terms of bullying.  We help our students learn how to deal with bullies – how to be confident in themselves and their abilities and how to find strength in positive relationships.  My colleague said the following:

“They are not going to impact our programs if we truly are doing what comes from our heart.  They can target anyone they want, and as long as they get attention, they will continue to do so. You do not need to fight for a good reputation when you already have one.  Fighting takes a lot of negative energy and time and wastes your mission at FFS.  However, this is exactly what they want you to do. Most parents I have encountered who have found these negative websites have called and asked about it.  When they trust in the person who is assisting them, that is more powerful that some radical negative comment on a website. It is not difficult to represent your client when you stand in integrity. So, what can be done? you ask. Every time you go to their site, they know, and every time you mention them, someone will go to their site, even if out of curiosity, and that gives them more of what they want.  Not every student in every program is going to leave happy.  There is just too much tied to each child, family, situation, that you have no control over, and is not your responsibility. So the unhappy people twist their beliefs to feel better.  Again, human nature.  Jeff, you cannot fight human nature.  What to do?  Nothing.  I have a much more important aspect to my life and practice than to give these people any attention at all.”

My colleague is correct – let’s re-focus our energy on our mission of helping teens and their families.  Let’s not give the bully the fight he craves – for his motives are only to harm and come from a place of pain and hurt within himself.  For this reason however, I will continue to pray for our bullies.

A fascinating lecture on the cognitive trap of the remebering self as opposed to the experiencing self by Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman at TED.

By Richard Reeve

In his carefully scripted response during today’s press conference Tiger Woods began to face the music of his actions in the public arena.  Tiger, unlike many who face similar behavioral difficulties, will never benefit from the gift of anonymity.  The gauntlet of critics lined up for years to come will likely be harsh and relentless.  The ten minutes of diatribe I tuned into on New York sports radio after the speech revealed a level of hostility that has little to do with the actual man who is suffering.  It has all to do with his brand and the power it holds.

None the less, his statement today was filled with all the hallmarks of an individual embarking on recovery.  He used the words amends, and demonstrated that he knows it will not be words but future actions that demonstrate his sincerity in learning to live a life of integrity.

Woods went on to state “I never thought about who I was hurting,” noting that he lived his life believing the rules didn’t apply to him.  He repeated a few times that his failing was rooted in selfishness, echoing the slogan “selfish self-centeredness is the root of our disease.”

Woods also referenced his spiritual roots in Buddhism, indicated though a shared textual passage that he became lost in the world’s illusions. Woods said “Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security.”  He defined his need to reconnect with a spiritual perspective to center his life which is another hallmark of a recovered life.

Woods made an appeal to the families and youth of the world to find “room in your heart to one day believe in me again.”  It’s an interesting request because it recognizes that some will never make that room, regardless of what he does.  Such a recognition shows a level of acceptance of the damage caused by his actions.  A asked a student at our therapeutic boarding school his opinion about Woods and he struggled to express his emotions.  Finally this student said “All I know is that I’ll always see him in a different light now.”

As Woods makes his slow re-entry into the world he will be mocked.  I witnessed this a few weeks ago as airplanes pulled banners around the PGA event at Torrey Pines advertising adult clubs with the messages “We miss you Tiger” and “Rehab Special!”   Again, acceptance will be needed to overcome the mocking.  But not everyone will continue to taunt and mock the man.  If he keeps his word a transformation will be noticeable.  For instance, little things, like the cursing and club throwing  during tour events will likely cease.

For millions that take up the slow walk of recovery, the promises are simple:

“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”

These audacious promises are just as valid for Woods as they are from any ordinary Joe.

Finally, his insistence that he is learning to ask for help and that will continue his journey which has no clear time line felt more authentic then the many repetitions in his speech where he stated “I am sorry.”

Time brings healing, and as Woods noted, these are his “first steps.”

By Rita Argiros, Ph. D.

Never Saying Sorry?

When I was 13 the movie Love Story was in the theaters. The most famous phrase from the movie was, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” At 13 my personality was prematurely cynical. And I thought that phrase stunk.  All these years, I never felt like I understood my own visceral reaction to the statement. I just “knew” that saying you are sorry was important. Neurologists would tell you that you remake your memories every time you revisit them. So the memory may be a complete fabrication. But my memory of the film and my reaction comes back every time I sit down to think about love and forgiveness.

There must have been plenty of grown-ups who liked Love Story because it was a big box office hit.  But the most important adult opinion in my life at the time was my mother’s and she thought the entire movie was stupid. (I liked the movie a lot. Just hated that tag line). I remember her telling me the story was completely unrealistic. She was always looking for a “realistic romance”.   The movie was perfect for teenage girls.  There are two star-crossed lovers, Oliver and Jenny. Oliver is rich. Jenny is from the working class. He goes to Harvard. She goes to Radcliffe. There is a lot of verbal sparring. She’s gotten to Radcliffe on her intellect. He plays hockey. She is very defensive. He is emotionally open. They fall in love. His father practically disowns him over the relationship. They get married anyway. He becomes a lawyer. They moved to New York. She gets cancer which they discover when they go to the doctor to see if she is pregnant. She dies. Son is reunited with his father in grief. Lots of romance. Lots of tears. Just enough conflict to move the movie along.

Amends and The Family Foundation School

The concept of love is central to everything that we do at The Family Foundation School and I have this fantasy that it is possible to derive all other important values starting only with love,  just the way my 10th grade geometry teacher brought forth an entire geometry starting with only a few simple postulates. So it is important for me to have a good answer to the question, “What’s wrong with the statement, Love means never having to say you’re sorry?” I need an answer that goes beyond a gut feeling that it’s wrong.

With love comes the possibility of intimacy and trust. Intimacy requires openness and that takes trust. To be trustworthy means to be responsible and to follow through on my commitments, to honor the relationship. But I am human and the people that I love are also human. We are all fallible, and separate. We don’t always live up to our word.  In our separateness and uniqueness we misunderstand each other, and we disagree. Conflict is inevitable. And while we may strive to resolve conflict skillfully and with as much compassion as possible, because we are human, injury is inevitable. So, inevitably, human love implies conflict and hurt.

For me, the measure of my true love is my willingness to apologize. When people who love each other are making up after a fight, we use our reservoirs of love to re-approach each other with trust and understanding.  Therefore, an apology may be unnecessary to hear.  But, nevertheless, the apology, will be said.  The feeling of love will compel the apology.  When I was 13 and  “in love”, the words, “I love you” were in my heart ready to gush out. It took all of my strength to hold them back  since girls were never supposed to say them first.   Today, If I am wrong and I know that I am wrong and I love you, then the words, “I’m sorry” fill my heart in exactly the same way—ready to gush out.  Love might mean that you don’t have to say you’re sorry, but it also means you won’t be able to help yourself.

Love not in the steps, or is it?

We use the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous to teach core values at the Family Foundation School. The word, “love” never appears. Yet it’s there, especially in steps 8 and 9.

Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

I wonder if AAs founders left the word “love”  out on purpose, knowing that it would be too mushy and sappy for the typical alcoholic of the day—the 1940’s white male. Even my mother, who got sober in 1968, would have been turned off by a program that was all about love. That’s not surprising.  The object of our addiction is our love object. It’s a false love to be sure but it’s all we have.  So many of us are turned off by talk of love, and seem to avoid love.  Yet, if we are to recover, then we need to replace our addiction with real love.  The steps do that in a sort of underhanded way. If you work the steps, you will back into love. It hits you and you never see it coming.

I brushed up against the 12 steps when I was a teenager. I put off doing the eighth and ninth steps for a long time because I thought I knew what I needed. The child of an alcoholic and a very dysfunctional family, I was full of hurt and resentment and I wanted love. Since I had been injured, I would be healed when the people who injured me, my parents mainly, made it right.  They tried—they were in the program of AA too. But I could not forgive my father. I wanted to. But I was missing something. I thought I loved him. But I did not, not enough for the relationship to mend.  My heart was full of grief and longing for love lost or never felt.

I did not understand any of this at the time. I only knew that I was sad.  Sappy statements about love made me mad. and the steps made no sense to me because I was the injured party. They seemed backwards. Why should I apologize?  Yet I believed in the steps—or I had hope in them. I saw the miracles that the steps were working for others.  I had to make sense of them for myself.  So, I reframed myself as the villain.  I focused on my character defects, my shortcomings, my wrongdoings. I thought that if I could see myself, and the part that I had played in our family’s drama clearly enough, that somehow the equation would balance itself out, my wrongdoings = theirs. And I would be able to forgive my parents.  It didn’t work. Although this exercise taught me tolerance for others. Tolerance is not love. And the nasty side effect of this approach was that I confused resignation with acceptance. I was resigned to the fact that we are all sick people. But there was no comfort in that belief. I felt bad about myself and bad about everyone else.

I was no longer fantasizing about how I was going to get even with dad but I didn’t feel open, warm and loving toward him yet either. I lived in limbo.  I was stuck because forgiveness requires that we already have love in our hearts and  I did not have enough.  What to do?  It turns out my adult sponsors were giving me the right advice all along, even if I twisted what they were saying.  Apologizing and being open to the forgiveness of others without any expectation of receiving it, creates the conditions necessary for love to emerge.  I may have harmed you without you even knowing it.  But when I come to you and apologize, I am vulnerable to you in that moment and the possibility of a relationship is created. The emotion or energy sustaining that relationship is love.  And  that ability to be in loving relationships gets better with practice. It’s as if you could store up the love you experience in one relationship in a battery and then use it to create or to heal other relationships. This spiritual truth is present in all religions and in much psychotherapy as well.

My early sponsors told me to work the steps to the best of my ability and I would feel better.  I didn’t feel better for a long time.  I misinterpreted their message and it’s nobody’s fault.  There is a big gap between adults and adolescents. What my sponsors and therapists and the great religions of the world were saying made perfect sense but only from a perspective that I didn’t have.  And because I didn’t get it and I am now the adult, I must accept that many of my students won’t get what I am trying to say here.  All I can do is hope that I don’t create the possibilities for the same misinterpretations that I suffered from.  That my mistakes will be different.   I hope the kids at the school can understand this.  If you are in serious conflict with people who you are supposed to love and who are supposed to love you– people like your parents–your instincts are going to mislead  you.  Revenge, restitution, getting even, are not the answer.  It is if there is a hole in your heart, regardless of where it came from, regardless of whose fault it is, you have it in your power to fix it and to fill it with love. Love can be created when say you are sorry and make amends.  Don’t try to make sense out of this because there is a good chance you will misunderstand.   Simply try making amends wherever possible and see if it doesn’t get easier to love and feel love in return.

(image from Prairie Cottage)

Brian Lombrowski, president of CAFETY, revealed the duplicitous nature of his organization when he mailed a letter to thousands of residents in our area last fall. Agree or disagree with the mission to expand youth rights, we will always recognize the validity of organizations to champion causes.  This action of waging a smear campaign against those who do not completely agree with them is wrong and outside the activities permissible under the non-profit laws.

The smear letter CAFETY sent claimed The Family Foundation School is under federal investigation. This is untrue. This intentional attempt to create a negative image of FFS within our community based on a fabrication is an act that each member of the board of directors of CAFETY is personally accountable for based on their non-profit status and the laws that govern CAFETY’s activities.

The letter then crafted snippets of “testimonies” Lombrowski has collected that highlighted FFS staff members by name in an unfavorable light. The effect of such actions is notable and more than a little bit ironic. Staff members received death threats citing the letter.  The actions of an organization committed to the ethical treatment of youth also led to the children of these staff members becoming targets of ridicule in their own public school classrooms.

Another tangential question gets raised and this relates to CAFETY’s active pursuit of gathering testimonies from program participants. Does such an activity further the mission of the organization or is it driven by the need to find more ammunition for the smear campaign? True to their mission they have been supporting legislation in Washington.  While CAFETY is clearly becoming impatient with politics in Washington, we are noticing CAFETY’s mission creep.  They are now taking it upon themselves to declare war on programs that they have publicly listed.  This is more than questionable from a non-profit governance angle.  The government does not allow for tax deductible donations to be used to incite death threats, to republish slanderous accusations, or to commit acts of defamation.

Brian Lombrowski closed his letter, a duplicate of the ad he ran the year before in our local newspaper, asking people to contact him. Notably, some four months later, while still celebrating on Wikipedia their action of mailing these letters, CAFETY has not been able to share the results of generating any public feedback they supposedly were seeking. The silence on their part regarding lack of evidence is telling, but to admit to that does not fit their agenda.

Non-profit organizations are granted the ability to solicit tax-deductible donations for the furthering of their stated missions. The legal counsel guiding CAFETY will recognize the legitimacy of the concerns raised here and well as the vulnerability of the board members and their personal assets as the result of such actions. The concern extends also to Mr. Lombrowski’s actions contacting professionals in our field and making the claim that The Family Foundation School is beyond help. An amazing claim from someone who has never visited, indeed declined the invitation to visit, the very program he is condemning.

It was an interesting thing to have been the first organization to call out CAFETY on their questionable activities. While visiting with colleagues last week at a conference we received overwhelming support.  Even more notable we received grateful feedback from the other programs that are being treated in similar ways by CAFETY.

Dear Rita,

Thanks for addressing the many lies and distortions being propagated by the alleged Truth campaign.

It is common knowledge that the campaign was started by a family member of mine who disagreed with my parental decision to enroll my daughters at the Family School. This family member has no children of her own, and maintained at best a superficial relationship with my children. She is estranged from her siblings and parents, who are all supportive of my decision to provide my daughters with the best help I could find. I can only describe my sibling’s behavior in pursuing and funding this campaign as disturbed and out of touch with reality. It is indeed unfortunate, both for the sibling and the apparently troubled individuals who choose to follow her lead.

The Family School helped my daughters turn their lives around and rebuild relationships between them and with me. They successfully transitioned from the school in June 2009 – one to a top-notch college and other to a top-notch prep school.

With my parents, friends, and partner, I spent perhaps hundreds of hours at the Family School during the 18 month period my daughters were enrolled there. I attended countless table topics, many sports events, choral performances, picnics -in short, with two daughters at the school and the many opportunities for parental involvement, I felt Family School was my second home for those 18 months. Every visit left me feeling that my daughters we receiving the best possible support, care, love and guidance available anywhere. On top of that, they received an excellent high school education.

My gratitude for the Family School is immense. I am an attorney and dedicated mom who left no stone unturned in trying to find the best therapeutic program anywhere to help my daughters. I searched from Vermont to Hawaii, making personal visits to several schools. No where did I find the unique opportunities offered at the Family School.

The Family School was undoubtedly the best thing I could have done for my daughters, and indeed my family. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart, and know that the truth will prevail – it always does. I pray that the troubled individuals relentlessly pursuing the anti-Family School campaign will find peace and move on with their lives, rather than remain stuck in their torrent of anger, denial, and confusion.

Peace to all.
Meg Sheehan

An selected index for content from across our platforms…

Satisfaction from Personal Growth

Be open and you will hear what you need to hear

Just Open Myself Up

Old School and New School, Friends for Life

Eternally Grateful

The Most Amazing Gift

Reunion with our beginnings

The Administrative Beat

Sincere Respect and Thanks

By Kurt Hock

Spectrum analysis really states that all things are possible. This does not have much to do with a right and positive decision, nor a wrong and negative decision at any particular moment in our lives. However, a particularly bad moral decision and a particularly good moral decision have as profound an affect on our lives as an accumulative weigh-in on a person’s good or bad merits. Simply put: our actions dictate where we land on the spectrum between notions and behaviors acquainted with evil and ideas which are divine and as God would have it: loving.

In comes distortion. We are all free to align ourselves with any type of persuasion we want. At this point we have entered the world of malleability. Our culture of capitalism is keenly aware of this state of neediness and is the very reason for media manipulation and the cause for its reprehensibly early start on the collective minds of our nation’s youth.  Advertising agents, lobbyists, and politicians are very aware of the powerful force of persuasion. It’s a force prone to distortion.  It appeals to our most dangerous vices:  vanity, greed, distrust, false righteousness, warped sexuality and false love.  Mixed and confused messages are the goal.  Distortion creates oceans of space for misguided judgment and, of course, misconstrued truths. The goal is simple: create insecurity and uncertainty.

Keeping our serenity demands we steer clear of these dangerous shoals and to seek in all our affairs the greater “good” and to understand clearly how distortion seeks to consume us.

I have worked at this job, which has transformed into a vocation, for 9 years. I am witness to the miracle of positive change each hour I’m at work.  The direction our school has moved since I’ve been here has focused on safety. And daily we assist in the difficult yet extremely rewarding work of helping young people to fulfill their potential while being mindful and very in tune to the raw feelings and stressed emotions of each student. I now work in a very different school then the one I began to work in 9 years ago. And I expect the school nine years from now to be very different from what it is today, because we are always testing and changing.

The distortion is this: The Family Foundation School just is not the place that its detractors say it is. The school runs on a deep level of accountability. The school has and continues to transform itself and to operate at the highest level of professional care for it students and for the community.  This school is bound to honesty and carries on, in search of truth, today and everyday.

I definitely do not condone the serious extortion which paints a different picture on the internet. Again, distortion is a tool to create doubt and confusion. God asks that each of us rise above it.

By Richard Reeve

Much of the cutting edge brain science is sending a clear message:  brain damage is caused by adolescent drug use. This new study, focusing on the effects of ecstasy and cocaine use in adolescents continues to reinforce the message that drug use during the teenage years causes damage to the developing brain.

“The results highlight that the so-called “reinforcing effects” are greater in adult mice treated with ecstasy or cocaine during adolescence than in adolescent mice not exposed to these drugs. “Adolescence is a critical stage in development, during which time drug consumption affects plastic cerebral processes in ways that cause changes that persist right through to adulthood”, adds the scientist.” Read the full article at Shrink Rap

At first this seems like an expected finding.  But if we consider how our culture has treated teen drug use over the past fifty years, brain damage has never been one of the main reasons presented to youth to avoid drug use.  It’s important that the relevance of these findings be recognized not only because of the  seriousness of what they present, but because they are presenting a new concern relating to adolescent development.

Recently someone called our admissions office posing as a parent with a child in distress. They asked for a list of parents they might contact who would discuss their experiences with the school. We have quite an extensive list of references and we sent it thinking that we were helping a distressed family. We are shocked and outraged to find this list appearing on the family truth website (with phone numbers)!

By duplicitous methods CAFETY members obtained this list and used it for their purposes. Our agreement with parents was to share this list only with families seriously interested in the school. Whatever our detractors motives were, this was a naked attempt at intimidation. This action says “support The Family Foundation School and we will publicly post your name and phone number over the Internet.”  Our parents  agreed to help distressed families through private communication, not to publicly advertise their contact information or personal affiliation with the school.

These are the fraudulent and deceptive tactics of the smear campaign — distortions, intimidation, and lies. While each of the parents offered to help others, none volunteered to have the fact of their child’s attendance at a therapeutic boarding school published on the Internet. For all their concern for “the ethical treatment of youth,” it does not seem to concern them that by exposing the parents, they have exposed the children.