MSNBC did an exposé on Teen Mania airing in November of 2011. You can check out related posts on this blog about Mind Over Mania. Suffice to say, it created quite the ripple.
The 2011 year was quite the year for me and this 45-minute long documentary left a huge impact on my life. To paint a picture: I attended the Honor Academy in 2007 and stayed for my second year in 2008, ultimately leaving in December 2008. I spent 2009 trying to get my life back on track. This included dabbling with alcoholism and a toxic relationship. It wasn’t until 2010 that I finally realized that I was depressed and should do something about it so I started therapy. All the while, I was still fairly convinced that Teen Mania was a good organization, the Honor Academy was still a good experience save for some really bad moments, and that I should carry on with the 5-year plan I developed during one of the Vision LTEs.
By November 2011, I had already spent a week in the mental hospital recovering from suicide, my parents got divorced and I went no-contact with my dad. I also cut my best friend off, moved out of his apartment and moved into a new one with a complete stranger then changed majors from computer science to psychology then pre-med. Mind you, this is all between January and August. Don’t worry, my bestie and I have since reconciled as well as my dad and I. It was just an intense year for me. Then the exposé aired and I learned about Mica and this blog. I had some sleepless nights glued to my laptop as I went through post after post on the blog. It was wild for me to see posts and comments criticizing Ron Luce, David Hasz, Heath Stoner, as well as just Teen Mania itself and reading the cult accusations. The word “cult” really stuck out to me. All of this because a former coworker at the Honor Academy made a Facebook post about Mind Over Mania which put it on my radar. Fourteen years later, here I am managing the very blog that probably saved my life. Truly, life is strange…
So my predictions this time around?
There is quite the buzz forming from former interns regardless if they’re still pro-TM or have since deconstructed their experience. Full disclosure, I am not really in the same circles as the pro-TM people, so I cannot really comment on how excited they are about this documentary. Suffice to say, I’m willing to bet that they’re not super stoked, especially within the Thankful HA Alumni circle. For those of you who are new or don’t remember, Thankful HA was in response to the Recovering Alumni blog. I don’t know if it’s still up, but to join the Thankful Facebook group, you had to fill a survey including stating that one is not now nor has ever been a part of the RA community.
I anticipate that there will be a sizable viewership among alumni. I am joining a watch party myself and I’m sure that most of the viewers overall aren’t alumni but are returning to see the continuation from season 1. As a result, this blog as well as similar blogs and podcasts will most likely get a huge tick in visitors/listeners. We’re already seeing a spike in visits as I got the blog back up. This year has actually had fewer users visits compared to the same period last year (Jan 1 – Jul 20) while the engagement has increased since last year. This includes the months-long hiatus between mid-April and July. Of course, it is my hope that this documentary will get loads more people on here to learn more but if for no other reason than to equip people with tools, resources, and perhaps even community to move forward.
Like in my experience, I wonder if there have been a lot of alumni that have been struggling with their mental health and this documentary will get them on track to recovery. For future readers, if this applies to you, welcome! It is my hope that you find at least some answers here. I don’t expect every visitor to join the RA community, spend several months or years analyzing their own experience then find some enlightenment. Instead, you may get only one or two breakthroughs here and that’s okay. This blog isn’t supposed to be a one-stop shop in recovery even if that might have been the case for me last decade. That said, check out the recovery category as well as the links in the Recovery page to turbo boost your recovery.
One common experience I heard in the early days of RA was about how many alumni feel like they wasted their 20’s trying to bounce back from their abuse. They didn’t have this blog as a resource and had to figure it out on their own. I came into the scene a little bit late so I had two years-worth of posts to help me out. That said, I’m still fighting the good fight so I am often questioning if I’ll ever be “healed” and done with this.
On the other hand, it’s quite possible that you won’t find any benefit here. I hope this isn’t the case but as long as one person gets something out of this blog like I did, then it’s already achieving 100% more than what I was aiming for. Again, this blog is just a really expensive journal and repository of information for me and my therapist. If you don’t get anything here, or even if you are anti-RA, I simply ask that you recognize that we all are in recovery in our own way and on our own timeline. Healing looks different for everyone.
Like in my experience, lots of alumni are deconstructing or have already deconstructed their faith. Most of us grew up as Evangelical Christians and have come to understand the world very differently than what our parents and clergy taught us. The majority of this blog was written with a Christian slant with my posts shying away from that perspective given my decades-long atheism.
I hope this blog serves to help you deconstruct your own experiences. Even if you weren’t a Teen Mania intern, you probably have experienced similar dangerous doctrine and dogma. I don’t attribute the RA blog to guiding me away from Christianity, I had plenty of help from former friends in that regard. That said, there may be some posts here that can help you contextualize your experiences with the Church.
Ultimately, I predict that the world will continue to turn. Life will continue to be outrageously complicated and too expensive. This will create a stir that will help some, potentially hurt others, but be a novelty for the majority of viewers. Regardless of which group you fall under, we should always endeavor to help our neighbor in times of need. Everyone, and I mean every single human being, is hurting in some way and little acts of kindness can lift people’s spirit just enough that they decide to stay alive one more day, decide to not self-harm or self-medicate, or just pay it forward. As they say, be the change you want to see the world.
I’ll see you on the other side of the documentary…
