Friday, December 09, 2005

breakdown

I had a great, beautiful, loving family. My wife was the most amazing person I have ever known. My baby is the most incredible child there is. I thank God everyday for all the blessings. When I enrolled in LV59 leadership I expected to fine tune my leadership skills in a motivational and roll-playing type of scenario. I anticipated taking turns running meetings and reading mock speeches to improve public speaking, among other things.
It's needless to say that the first weekend a leadership was a total disappointment. Never before had I being pressured so much to sell anything and made feel so inadeccuate about my ability to communicate with my friends and family. The pressure was so strong that I decided to take the path of least resistance and enrolled my wife against her will. I honestly didn't think she needed any training and neither did she, but I just wanted to get the coaches off my back. In the days prior to LV60 my wife wanted to get out of it, but I told her I had already paid and there was no refund.
She went to Vision and was happy because she had met some really nice people there.
On the Friday that followed my wife got up and left the house at 3AM for a walk because she had a revelation from God and Judith the trainer. According to the revelation, she was to spread the word of peace, love and free will. She was supposed to put herself in the shoes of everybody she saw. She returned home and wrote a number of pages about what was happening before heading off to school (she was a full-time student). While at school something happened. She became agitated. She lost her mind. She was taken out of the classroom and into a backroom to try to control her, but she went outside. She climbed a wall and started preaching out loud. She kept on using words such as: free will, aknowledge, I declare my intension, I will source the world, you show up to me as.... These are clearly all ChoiceCenter words. She said she is the angel of love and when I arrived there after the school called me to go get her, I was the angel of judgement. She said we are a good couple because of that. She said "love eachother, stop judging, stop being mean, God doesn't want perfection, he wants us to love eachother, I declare my intention to tell you what you all need to be happy, etc, etc". She was franctically screaming all these, so 911 was called. I couldn't control her and get her to be quiet. The police arrived and they too tried to calm her down but she kept saying "go away, you are in the drift".
The police decided it would be best if she sat in a police car while the ambulance arrived. She was put in handcuffs. Four police officers tried to force her into the car, but she was kicking and screaming. While kicking, a female officer got in front of her to try and hold her legs, but she kicked that officer in the chest and the officer fell down. Using brutal force they got her into the police car. Now, instead of waiting for an ambulance, she was being arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assult and battery on a police officer. This all happened at about 1PM. It was an hour before the Henderson Detention Center told me that bail would be $1,700. I went to the bank and got the money to go post bail. The sargeant told me she could not be released back to me because she was still preaching and it wouldn't be safe. I was told that I needed to post bail so that a doctor could see her. I was told that an ambulance would come and transport her to a hospital shortly. These all happened at 2:30pm. I was told to go home and call every hour to see when and where she was taken. I called every hour and could hear in the background her screaming for peace and love. It wasn't until about 10:30PM, 8 hours later, that she was taken to the hospital.
I couldn't go see her until the next morning at 6AM. I found my beautiful wife looking like a corpse, with her legs and hands tied to the hospital bed. She had been sedated so that they could do cat-scans, spinal tap blood work and other stuff. They found nothing medically wrong with her. No drugs of course.
My beautiful, loving wife didn't know who I was. When I asked her what year it was, she said it was 1905. I asked her if she had a baby and she said she didn't know. I asked her for her social security number and she started singing ABC's. Later, she didn't remember anything that happened that day. I never left her side until she started coming back. By Sunday afternoon she was doing well enough that instead of holding her until there was an open spot at a mental hospital, they released her to me. I nursed her until she seemed to be completely okay.
We did followups with doctors, counselors, priests, etc. They all agreed on one thing. This was all brought on by the ChoiceCenter experience. She had early childhood trauma of losing her mother and feeling abandonment issues, she had suppressed everything but Vision had brought it all out and her brain didn't know how to handle it.
She had been given two court dates for the police charges, so we paid a lawyer $3000 to help us.
For a couple of weeks she seemed to be doing okay. This Monday she had another breakdown. This time was different. She was calm, but she was gone. Monday morning I walked around the house and asked her why there were more than 30 lightbulbs on during the day. She said we needed them on for the coming of the Lord. She is obsessed with praying. She calls me by all kinds of male names but my own. She is terrified by anything purple, and is obsessed with washing her hands. Sometimes she stands on a table and starts dancing and making up songs. Sometimes, she has outbursts and mixes trivial things that happened in the past with long random numbers. The first day I noticed her change I took her to the emergency room, but she was released because there was nothing they could do. That night was more than surreal. I had to shot off the water to the whole house remove some lightbulbs, hide everything sharp and later to be safe that nothing happened I had to put a chain and lock in our bedroom door so that she didn't wander off in the middle of the night if I fell asleep. Our daughter has been staying with my wife's sister. The next morning we went to see a doctor. She prescribed the strongest anti-psychotic medication she could find. My wife is now sleeping through the night, but she is still gone. I don't know what it's going to take to make her better. I don't know how long it will be before she starts coming back. We are seen a new psychiatrist next week, so I hope he can help us.
Right now I am scared like never before. I have lost my wife, my family, my joy. I've stopped working because I can't leave her alone for two minutes before she starts doing things. My wife never got sick before, not even a common cold. For this reason and because insurance it too expensive through my job I had her uninsured to save some money. Up to now, the medical expenses stand at nearly $20,000 and counting. I will have to pay for this out of packet, somehow.
I don't know if she will ever get better. I don't know where I will find the strength to go on. I am scared of what the future has in store for us. It breaks my heart to even look at my daughter. I don't know if I'll eventually loose my job because of my absence.
One thing I do know is that I can't stop blaming myself for all of these. This is undeniably all my fault and I have to live with it.
I just hope that others that enroll friends and family in LV's to come do not have their lives "transformed" the way mine has.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Henry, I have a son involved with ChoiceCenter...I am concerned...what is the deal with them and the leadership training? I'd appreciate any information.I heard Robyn Williams speak and was frightened!

10:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have been out of the "program" for a while now. ChoiceCenter is like putting a loaded machine gun in a two year old's hand. Judith knows her stuff but after churning the waters she walks away & leaves you in the hand of "coaches". These are graduates who have recruited enough people to gain this priviledge. The main concept is great -- Live your life without regrets, but they forget that no man is an island. It is incredible the number of people who have quit jobs or left marriages after being in the program.
Henry, my prayers are with you. B

11:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This post brought tears to my eyes, it must be awful to experience something like that?

6:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ARE YOU KIDDING ME. I AM SORRY FOR YOUR WIFE'S EXPERIENCE, BUT DO YOU HONESTLY THINK A FEW DAYS IN A CLASSROOM COULD BE THE SOURCE OF YOUR WIFES BREAKDOWN? THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE EVERY YEAR GRADUATE CHOICECENTER. JUST LIKE PEOPLE GRADUATE COLLEGE. MY WIFE HAD A BREAKDOWN IN LAWSCHOOL SIMILAR TO HENERY'S WIFE. IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH CHOICECENTER. PEOPLE, USE YOUR HEARTS AND YOUR BRAINS... PLEASE.

8:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am an Electrical Contractor, The General contractor Steve Alexander pestered me for hours about how great this program is-trouble is, the guy is a complete psycho. When things don't go his way he resorts to name calling and finger pointing. If this is a result of 'choicecenter' leadership training, it's just a matter of time before their 'training' results in an unnecessary death because of delusions visions of grandeur. This guy really is a freak, and maybe not due to 'choicecenter', but maybe you should screen your applicants a little closer.

7:22 PM  

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