I had completely morphed my brain to believe what the staff wanted me to believe.
FullCircle Survivor Story: 2019 - 2022
When I first joined Fullcircle I had just turned 15 years old, literally 3 days prior. I was struggling with substance abuse along with other untreated mental Illnesses. I did not have any friends at the time of joining so evidently i fell in love with fullcircle. A dozen or so kids ran up to me eager to be my friend when first entering the shop.
6 months passed and covid-19 first hit. We switched to online meetings along with taking other safety measures. Also around this time I was put on steering committee. I had 6 months sober at the time. Whilst in quarantine I began to want out of the program. One of the former staff would say things about the girls dressing to revealing (referring to tank tops) and how boys in the support group would jerk off to what they were seeing. I didn’t like this messaging and felt as if girls were being sexualized. Reminder I was 15, and fell victim to the comments. Despite being uncomfortable I decided to stay in fullcircle from fear that my life would be nothing without it. I had made my entire life revolve around fullcircle. The school I went to, the friends I had, the job I had, absolutely everything.
Flash forward to 2 years in the program. I had completely morphed my brain to believe what the staff wanted me to believe. This included preaching abstinence unless in a long term relationship, wearing modest clothing/ enforcing modest clothing, extreme methods of the second step, boy-cotting all mental health medications, etc.. I was 16 or 17 at the time and just wanted to please “the group”. I had completed lost myself and my own ways of thinking. All I cared about was appearing “cool” to the staff. When graduating the program, I was 18. I had been in fullcircle for over 3 years and believed it to be an amazing place.
Since graduating, I am finally reaching a place where I see what was really happening. Though, I do not believe the program is a cult, I definitely believe that there are extreme ways of thinking members are expected to believe. The program is filled with impressionable, insecure teenagers, so they are inevitably going to believe whatever they are told. I should not have had to deal with the amount of things I did as a 15, 16, 17, and 18 year old. Crisis management should not be a skill a teenager has. As of right now I am trying to distance myself from all of the former ways of thinking I had adapted and really follow what I believe. All and all I still say I am grateful for the program saving me when I was 15, but I will never forgive them for the trauma they have enforced upon me.
