I saw this poster on facebook that said “PTSD isn’t about what’s wrong with you; it’s about what happened to you.” I believe this is a true statement. I believe that we can achieve all positive results through facing what happened; facing the trauma and the damage that trauma caused.

I believe that this is true for all depressions too. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the best term I have seen to describe depression. The name itself indicates that there was a trauma. After the trauma there was damage. The damage caused stress. Stress manifests itself in many different ways; depressions, dissociative disorders, physical illness and sleep disorders just to name a few.

But something happens when people actually try to face what happened. Looking back I can see how hard I fought facing it and how much I wanted to stay in the dark about the bottom line truth of it all. It’s human nature to try to protect ourselves when the truth is too painful. When we are kids it is much easier to cope by not thinking about the trauma and just “blocking it out”.

Quite often there is a terribly negative response from other people in our lives, especially from family when a survivor of trauma wants to face the facts and the truth about that trauma. When we try talking to our parents or our siblings, these people who are close to us may try to convince us that it is better NOT dealt with.  We are encouraged by many to let it go, leave the past in the past, put it behind you and the list of these unhelpful trauma directives goes on and on.

Therapists will even jump on board and suggest that you have to “forgive your family” or that we should “try to understand them”, or that these parents “did they best they could” and the problem is that all this is said BEOFRE the trauma itself has been examined and validated.  

The only way to get over a post traumatic stress disorder is to face and validate the truth about the trauma and quite often that includes facing that our parents let us down and that our emotional needs were neglected or even ignored. Sometimes it is even worse than that and we have to face the possibility that according to their actions, they didn’t even love us. Sometimes facing this stuff is more painful than the trauma itself was.

My family was so impatient with me whenever I even hinted at the past. I still remember my mother with her exasperated “OH DARLENE” and her impatience with my difficulty at not being able to put the past behind me. But the truth is that it wasn’t OVER yet. I had not gotten over it yet and that was mostly due to the fact that the trauma itself was NEVER validated. 

I had been dismissed;

I had been shushed;

I had been ignored;

No one ever said to me “oh Darlene, I am so sorry that happened to you. It must have been frightening for you. It must have been a nightmare.  Is there anything I can do?” None of this was said when it trauma events happened and none of it was said when I was ready to talk when I was an adult.  The reactions that I did get communicated to me that I was a failure BECAUSE I needed to deal with it and that somehow I was the one that was disgusting and despicable.

No one held me while I cried. No one soothed me ~ no one validated that anything out of the ordinary happened, so there I was with this unresolved trauma (a post traumatic stress) and I was being told that I needed to let it go; just get over it. Leave it in the past without even a few instructions on how I might go about doing that. All of it was shoved under the carpet and ignored. But I had to cope with those traumas. I had to go on living with the trauma and the wound that had been inflicted on me. The damage was there and it wasn’t going away.

I was left trying to figure out a way to comprehend why no one seemed to think that I was important or valuable enough to give some validation or assistance to. I had to figure out why I wasn’t loved enough to be worth that safety. And that is post traumatic stress disorder.

My constant depressions were seen as a weakness.  When I finally had to take medication just to get through a day it was viewed as the proof of my insignificance as a person and proof that I was the problem after all.  No one wanted to consider that one invalidated difficulty after another from as young as I can remember, was at the root of my problems.  No one considered that my issues may have been due to a lot of post traumatic stress disorder.  No, they just saw me as weak. Too weak to cope with life on life’s terms.  And I was too weak to deal with all of it because I was still oppressed by these same people.

Even therapists told me that what happened to me was over now and that there was no point in re visiting it. It was over.  I told a therapist just one small thing about my mother and the left over pain from something that happened when I was 6. I told him that I had been trying to “get over it” for over 20 years. He gently told me that I would never get over it and that my goal was to “get through it”.  He gave me anti depressants and suggested making myself do one fun thing each day. That was the only answer he offered to help me “get through it”. I felt my world crumble that day.  And I write “emerging from broken” because he was wrong. I got over it. I found the way to completely get over it and not just “get through it” and I don’t need his anti depressants anymore either.

Twelve step programs told me to see what I could have done better and although I don’t think that the original writers meant to suggest that we as children could have done things better so that we were not abused, that is the way that I heard it because I had been raised with the belief that I could have done better and that if I was better or more worthy I would not have been ignored or dismissed or even abused in the first place.

It was when I faced the trauma that I got better. It was when I found out that it was what had happened to me that caused me to struggle with life on lifes terms that I found understanding and compassion for myself. It was when I began to comprehend the magnitude of what those traumas caused me to believe about myself and when I validated that those beliefs were lies about me, THEN I found hope for freedom from depressions and post traumatic stress disorders. It was when I validated my pain, my right to be angry and changed those lies to the truth that I began to live again.  It was when I saw where and how my worth and self esteem got so damaged that I was able to repair the damage and reclaim my worth and my value.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a great name and diagnosis for what was going on with me. After the trauma I was under a great deal of stress and I could not put that stress behind me until I dealt with the damage the trauma caused. Today I don’t suffer from PTSD or from the disorders I was diagnosed with either; Bi-Polar Depression and Dissociative Identity Disorder. 

But it is the treatment for it that I am passionate about…..

Please share your thoughts about diagnosis, post traumatic stress disorder or about facing the truth and don’t forget to sign up for updates about the no cost freedom ROCKS survivor community event and how you can be part of it! (see the about page here!) People all over the world are getting involved! Let’s get ready to throw a freedom rock! Check the emerging from broken facebook page for updates too.

There is freedom on the other side…..

Darlene Ouimet

Who says it wasn't that bad?

It wasn’t that bad. What happened to me wasn’t “that bad” and I told myself that for YEARS.  When I was in my early twenties and struggling with trying to quit the coping methods of alcohol and drug use, some of my memories of child sexual abuse were coming up and I was trying really hard to get rid of them without resorting to alcohol or drugs. At that point in my life I had never told anyone (outside of family but they didn’t validate the abuse OR me) what had happened to me.

One day I was having coffee with a friend of mine who I had met in a 12 step program. In an attempt to mentor me and validate an issue that I was struggling with he told me that from as young as he can remember his parents sandwiched him in between themselves while they had sex. He told me that he can never remember a time growing up when he didn’t have sex with both his parents. He told me that by the time he was 5 he liked it and by the time he was a young teenager, he loved it. He didn’t know it wasn’t “normal”.  It was his normal.  And now he was struggling to learn what the truth about “normal” actually was and to overcome the damage that had occurred in his life. He was having all kind of relationship problems as a result of child sexual abuse.

Although I felt extreme compassion for him, I didn’t hear any of what he was trying to communicate to me. He was trying to communicate that it wasn’t his fault and that his body reacted to being sexually stimulated. He had been sexualized from a very young age. All I heard was how horrible his childhood was and how horrific the child sexual abuse that he endured was. And the biggest thing I “heard” was that what had happened to me did not compare with what he had survived.

 I remember thinking “what the hell do I have to complain about? It wasn’t that bad for me.”

I found so much comfort in that statement.  I told myself things like “at least my parents didn’t do ‘that’ to me.” It was as though I believed that because they didn’t take me to bed with them and have sex with me from as young as I could remember that the things that did happen to me were irrelevant. I could just forget the abuse I suffered because it wasn’t “that bad.” I could just be grateful that “that” didn’t happen to me.  I used the extremely abusive and dysfunctional family situation that my friend told me about to cancel any right I had to feel hurt by the dysfunctional family situation that I had lived in just because I decided that it wasn’t “as bad” as what he went through.

I told myself in an almost reprimanding way that If he lived through that, then I can live through the “little bit” of pain that I had in my own childhood.  Every time I thought about my own childhood and the abuse I suffered, I thought about his situation of horrific child sexual abuse and I minimized what happened to me. And I used his situation to trump mine and to discount and discredit my pain and my hurt. I used his story to invalidate my own story.  I told myself that I was a wimp, told myself to suck it up, told myself to be grateful that what happened to him didn’t happen to me. I invalidated my own rights, so I could stay in denial of the child sexual abuse that DID happen to me. 

I told myself “But it wasn’t every day”

I told myself “But it wasn’t both my parents together

I told myself “But there was far more emotional abuse than any other kind of abuse…”

I told myself “But it wasn’t “violent” sexual abuse”

And I told myself “but I deserved the beatings…

But but but…

People comment on this blog all the time saying “Oh my gosh Darlene, it wasn’t that bad for me.” Sometimes people tell me that they don’t think they have a right to call what happened to them “abuse” or that they feel as though they don’t have a “right” to feel as though they had been wronged in childhood. And these feelings are common! I had them all too. It wasn’t “that bad” for me either. In fact even today when people write to me saying that they are grateful that their lives were not as bad as mine was and go on to tell me of their childhoods, my first reaction is “WHAT? You think what happened to me was worse than what happened to you!!”

 Denial is a funny thing. Denial enabled me to avoid facing the damage that happened to me. Denial was one of my favorite survival tools.  When I hear these kinds of statements today, I think about my friend who told me his story of family dysfunction, incest and child sexual abuse and how I thought the same things. That it wasn’t “that bad”.

Most survivors of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and psychological or emotional abuse will all say the same thing when reading about someone else’s child abuse stories. They will say to themselves or to the other person; it wasn’t that bad for me. It wasn’t “that” bad. 

It was when I finally faced what that statement was doing for me that I reached a new level of healing and understanding.  Like a coping method, that statement allowed me to stay in denial of the truth that I had been abused, devalued, discounted, not protected as a person.  I had to set aside the story about my friend and the child sexual abuse that he lived with almost daily, and validate my own life experience. I had to face and validate that what happened to me was just as damaging to me as what happened to him was damaging to him.  It WAS that bad.

Abuse is abuse and for the record, emotional abuse, verbal abuse and psychological abuse is no less damaging then physical abuse or sexual abuse; the damage is done to the person ~ the value of the person being abused is diminished. The value of the “victim of abuse” is defined as not worthy of more, not lovable, not important.  The self esteem is squashed, tarnished, broken, harmed and torn apart.  And it is the damage that has to be validated and faced in order for healing from that damage to take place. 

There is no “not that bad” when it comes to being devalued or discounted. There is no “it wasn’t that bad” when it comes to helpless powerless children.

Please share your thoughts on this topic.  It might interest you to know that even while I was writing it I was still reminding myself that what happened to me WAS THAT BAD.

There is freedom on the other side of broken;

Darlene Ouimet

Related Posts ~ Sexual Abuse ~ Devalued, Discounted and Unprotected

I organized my world around trauma and abuse

Also see the colored words within the body of the article for other posts

 Understanding Depression Led to Facing Sexual Abuse by Tracie Nall

I knew that I needed help before I knew the reason why. Or at least before I would admit it to myself. Depression was something I had battled since my childhood years. By my late teens, I was working in a bookstore, and I found myself regularly drawn to the self-help section, searching to answers for questions I hadn’t articulated.

 One hot summer day, the kind of day when no one wants to leave the comforts of their air conditioners, the bookstore was completely empty, and we hadn’t had a customer for hours. I wandered to the biography section to re-alphabetize books and look for a new read. It was that day I came across a little book where the author shared about her experiences with depression. I skimmed through several chapters, and then hid it behind a stack of books. It scared me how much of my own life I saw reflected in her words.

 Two weeks later, I was at another bookstore on my day off (bookstores are my very favorite places) and found another copy of that book. I wasn’t looking for it. It wasn’t even sitting in the right section. I re-shelved it, and left the store.

 I couldn’t get away from that book about depression, though, because the next day at work someone came into my store looking for it. I finally bought a copy of my own to take home and read. But I went back to the other store to get it – not wanting my coworkers to see me purchase a book about someone with depression issues and start asking questions.

 I still have my copy of that book. It is marked up, highlighted, the margins written in…If you look closely at those margins, there are small snippets of my abuse story written in code. Those snippets were the beginning of me admitting to myself what had happened in my childhood. I started counseling sessions soon after that.

 My counselor was sweet. Her office was painted light blue, and there was crochet doilies and covers on everything that stood still. She reminded me of a grandma. I spent several sessions dancing around my reasons for seeing her, before I realized that I would never tell her anything of importance. I just couldn’t see her in that light. I called the office the next day and cancelled my future appointments.

 But my heart was bursting to talk. To tell someone what I was starting to admit and the memories that were coming more and more often. My uncle sexually abused me. I tried writing it down, but promptly burned the paper, not wanting anyone to find it.

 I decided to tell a close friend. He had grown up in an abusive home, and I thought that would make it easier to tell him. I showed up at his house with my marked up book, and a container of chewy spice drops, and asked if he would help me do something. I had planned to go to the graveyard where my uncle was buried. I was going to try to make peace, or get closure, or maybe just yell and kick the tombstone a lot. I didn’t know what exactly I was going to do, but it seemed like that was the place to do it. And I knew I wanted to leave those spice drops there as a sign that I was no longer under his abuse or control.

 We stood by the tombstone, and I stammered out, “My uncle. He, um, he used to….well, when I was little, he made me play this game. with these spice drops. And he….”

 At that time, I didn’t know words like “grooming” I didn’t know that sexual abusers sometimes use games as a way to molest children, and I didn’t know how to tell my friend what happened. I said, “He touched me,” I don’t know exactly what I expected. A hug? Support? Something.

 But what I got was, “Did he hit you?” I shook my head. “He didn’t hit you. So what’s the big deal? You are way overreacting.”

 What’s the big deal? That definitely was not what I was expecting. Then he asked if he could eat some of those spice drops I was carrying around. We left the graveyard. I drove, and he sat in the passenger seat eating spice drops. I felt sick.

 I continued to write letters and memories and notes, and then quickly burn them. The reaction of my friend confirmed my thoughts that I shouldn’t let anyone know what I was dealing with. I kept silent for several months, and pulled away from friends. I called that counselor back and got another appointment, but after just a few minutes sitting on her crochet-covered, flowered chair, I knew the visit wasn’t going anywhere. We ended up talking about cookie recipes.

 The next time I spoke the words, I was in coffee shop late one night. A guy sat at my table and we started talking. At one point in the conversation, he told me that he was four years sober, after an arrest for drugs that scared him and changed his life. He was so calm about it. No hiding, no stammering. When he asked me about my family, where I was from, I found myself staring at a painting of a coffee cup hanging behind him and saying, “My uncle molested me.” It came out of my life just like that. I was stunned….and the guy sitting across from me was probably a little stunned, too. To his credit, he didn’t freak out on me. He said something like, “That sucks. Guys like that should be shot,” and asked if I was okay.

 I don’t remember that guy’s name (he asked for my number, but never called me for a date – I can’t say that I’m surprised), but I will forever be grateful to him. I still felt broken after that night, and it was a long time before I spoke those words out loud again. But his simple response allowed me to see that what happened to me was wrong, and it was a big deal, and I wasn’t overreacting or crazy.

Tracie Nall 

Through her journey, Tracie found “Emerging from Broken” and other great sites, including Band Back Together. She has become instrumental in the daily operations and is an Officer of the Board for The Band Back Together Project, a group website “that provides educational resources as well as a safe, moderated, supportive environment to share stories of survival. Through the power of real stories written by real people, we can work together to destigmatize mental illness, abuse, rape, baby loss and other traumas so that we may learn, grow, and heal.”

The site is the brainchild of Becky Harks of Mommy Wants Vodka, and came from her desire to connect with others in her same situation after her daughter was born with a previously undetected neural tube defect. She, along with Jana Anthoine of Jana’s Thinking Place, launched Band Back Together in September of 2010 and it has grown to house over 2000 stories from individuals and over 300 specific resource pages.

Band Back Together would like to invite you to join in helping break the silence behind so many things that we all feel we can’t or shouldn’t talk about. They’re our stories, good or bad, and it’s time to own them.

Join Band Back Together on Facebook, and  the Band Back Together website  Darlene Ouimet on Band Back Together

trapped in the deep

I was fifteen or sixteen when I worked in that Real Estate office as a receptionist on the weekends. I answered the phones, and typed offers for the salesmen.  My mother’s disgusting boyfriend got me the job. That should have been the first red flag.

There was this one chubby salesman named Ron who gave me the creeps. He was about 40 years old. He was just a little too friendly. He would come up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. He tried to rub my back. I was terrified of him and didn’t even understand why. It was one of those feelings that today I have come to realize was my intuition. It was my “radar” warning me about a predator. That man had really bad motives when it came to me.

One day he came up to my desk and showed me some porn pictures. At first he was on the other side of the reception desk. He handed them to me; I took one look at them and handed them back without speaking. They looked like snapshots and they were mostly of naked people having oral sex.  Those snapshots were pretty graphic. He came around to my side of the desk and at first I tried to look away, but he told me to look at the pictures. Something about him scared me and so I did as I was told and looked at the pictures. He slowly flipped through them, and I looked at them one by one. I was horrified and terrified, but I didn’t turn away. I thought if I was strong, if I showed no reaction, that he would lose interest in me. I thought that if I just pretended that it wasn’t bothering me, he would not ask me to do those things to him. And then another one of the salesman joined in on this humiliating event. They were egging each other on, asking me if I had “ever done that” and asking if “I would like that” or if I would like to “do that”.  I was scared to death, but I never even flinched. I just kept looking at the pictures as he put one behind the other.  I was sure that I had to stay neutral to be safe. (Today that reminds me of how and why I’d learned that staying neutral would be the safest choice.)

There was a hot tub out back at the real estate office. They tried to talk me into going in it with them. They said that I didn’t need a bathing suit. They told me I could go in my underwear if that made me more comfortable. (like I could possibly EVER be comfortable in a hot tub with two disgusting older married men who showed me porn pictures)  They laughed at how uncomfortable I was when they were around me. I had this one boss there that I liked, but I didn’t tell on those men. I didn’t tell my boss and I didn’t tell my mother. I didn’t even think about telling! (Today that reminds me of how I learned that telling wouldn’t help me anyway so why bother. I was way too young to have to deal with all this stuff alone.)

They never let up on me until I finally had the guts to quit that job before they could complete their version of the grooming process.

I did not know what “sexual harassment” was. I didn’t know what sexual harassment was in the work place, or at school, or with boyfriends.  I did not know that what these nasty older men were doing was illegal. I didn’t know I had rights. I especially didn’t know why the hell I froze and just looked at the pictures! The thing that stuck out the most in my memory was that I froze and complied. I may have even laughed trying to be tough and make them think I wasn’t scared to death. I may have even mumbled the answers to some of the questions.  

And I was haunted by the question to myself about what I would have done if they had forced me to go in that hot tub with them. What if they had pushed me harder? What would I have done if they had demanded that I go? Deep down I was pretty sure I knew the answer…

Silence is consent and all I could think about was that I looked at the pictures and didn’t say no. I didn’t try to stop them. I didn’t report them. I felt as though I had actually gone along with them. For years I beat myself up over that day and the fact that I didn’t “do anything” about it. I didn’t stand up for myself. I didn’t call them dirty pigs. I didn’t say NO. 

I was so angry at myself kicking myself with questions like “Why did I freeze like that”? I bombarded myself with berating statements like “I should have…..” and “why didn’t I?”  It was many years later that I even considered that the TRUTH is that both those men should have been charged and would have been held accountable for the crimes they committed against me. This thing they were doing  was sexual abuse.

I was in my forties when I finally learned that “freezing” is what many children do when they are being abused and overpowered by an adult. I had learned to freeze and dissociate when I was just over two years old. It had become one of my main coping methods. I learned very young that compliance was the safest way to go. I had learned not to react, not to fight and I had learned that fighting or reacting would only make it worse for me. 

What I hadn’t realized as I grew up was that I would continue to believe that inaction is the best course of action well after I was old enough to say no. I could have gotten those men in trouble. I could have called the police, but I had been trained to accept unacceptable behaviour. I had been taught that I was not going to be believed OR protected. I had no reason to believe that was ever going to change.

I continued beating myself until I realized the truth about why I chose passive submission most of the times I had been abused from the age of 13 or 14 onwards.  There was a conflict in my belief system. As a grown woman I understood that silence was consent; what I didn’t realize was that my compliance and silence was also the childhood coping method that worked for me.  Silence and compliance was learned behaviour and the only way that I knew and since it was the only way all those years growing up, why would I try or even think to try another way just because I got older? Logically I told myself I “should have known better or should have done something” but the truth was that what worked for me best as a child always won out. I would freeze, dissociate and comply.  

I didn’t tell on those men because I had been groomed from a very young age not to tell. I didn’t fight because I had been taught from a very young age that fighting would only make it worse. I didn’t do anything because I didn’t know that I had any rights or any choices. I didn’t really learn my rights or choices until I was over 40 years old. My power had been taken from me from a very young age and I since I had never had any power in my own life, I didn’t know that I could ever have any.

Today, I know the truth about rights and choices. Today I have my power back.

Please share your thoughts. This post can be applied to any situation where adults misused their power over another person.

There is freedom on the other side of broken,

Darlene Ouimet

This is going to be an exciting year for Emerging from Broken. If you would like to receive updates about events, news about my upcoming book or other newsworthy updates, please subscribe to “get the latest news” button at the top of the blog on the right sidebar. Don’t forget to check your email and confirm your subscription.

Related Posts ~ Adult Victims of Child Abuse Still need to be Heard

Dysfunctional Family Law and Family Belief Systems

Effects of Abuse. Guilt, Shame and Solutions

Depression began at a very young age for me. I think that fact added to the belief that I was somehow defective and different from other people. 

Depression always began with a sinking feeling. Sometimes I fought it. When I fought depression it felt like I was fighting in a mud bog and I was too tired to battle my way out. It felt like my legs were tangled up in vines or underwater foliage and I couldn’t get free of them. They were pulling me under. I could see and feel hands grabbing at me, trying to drag me down.  “Something” or “someone” was pulling me under.

Sometimes I felt like someone was sitting on my chest and holding me down. Holding me back; Keeping me under; I felt like I was fighting just to be seen. I felt like I was drowning in a deep black swamp and people were standing around but they didn’t notice me. People, only a few feet away and they could not see how close to death that I was. And they didn’t CARE. They were laughing and talking as though they were at a cocktail party and no one cared that I was thrashing around, fighting for my life and sinking in that swamp.

Many times I thought it would be so much easier just to give in and let the dark water close over me. But it never took me completely. No matter how tired I got, I lived a partial death but complete escape from the dark was not attainable.

That was before……..

That was before I found out how I ended up in that swamp

That was before I found out who “they” were ~ the ones who stood around laughing and talking while I was drowning, sinking, and dying only mere feet away.

That was before I fought for my life and fought to find the truth about how I could escape that oppression and darkness that I lived in for so long.

Depression almost killed me but I didn’t know that depression itself was “a result” of something. There was a root to depression ~ there was a reason that depression was so prevalent in my life.

I wanted “someone” to save me and I felt guilty and unjustified in wanting that. I also felt like I was not worth saving. There were roots to those conflicting thoughts too;

1.  I had been taught growing up that I was nothing without “them” that I needed “them” (people, relatives, adults, teachers) in order to survive. I had been taught to depend on these people for my value and to try harder to obtain that value. Controlling manipulative people always ask for “more”. They want more effort, more proof of submission, more time, more love, more compliance. The more that I tried, the more THEY felt validated. And today I realize that fact is about them; they used me to validate themselves. They made me jump through hoops to prove their own value. They asked for more and more because their own self esteem was so low.  AND I believed that if I could make them feel good about themselves, then I would feel good about myself.  If I could prove their worth ~ then I would HAVE worth.  That is what they taught me. I had no choice but to believe it. There was no other option presented to me.

“I felt hands grabbing at me trying to drag me under” ~ or perhaps  those hands were trying to grab at me so they could use me to get themselves OUT from under the water in their own murky swamp. My purpose and value to them was in making them feel better about themselves.. Restoring their order and their value was what they wanted from me, and it was what I wanted to do (because I truly believed that was the only way that I could be valid) ~ but it was never enough.

1. I had also been taught that I was unworthy of their approval. Over and over again I failed to restore their value. It was never enough and I didn’t know that restoring the value of another human being is not possible. It was the definition of love that I had learned and I believed it. I kept trying. The truth is that in their view I was not “good enough” or “deserving enough” for “them” to bother saving me. My only value (as they saw it) was in saving them.

Those two conflicting beliefs ~ that I needed “them” the very people who defined me as unworthy in the first place, to validate me and the fact that I (believed) I was indeed not worthy to be validated, warred in the depth of my soul. 

As my life progressed I found myself sinking more and more. Descending deeper and deeper; fighting less and less. Murky visions of what it might be like to stop fighting for life (and validation) became more frequent. Sometimes seeing blurry sunlight through the frozen ice above me; perhaps there was hope but I had no idea how to access it. The older I got the more tired I got. The more I fought (the truth) the more I sunk. I was exhausted.

Until; I faced the roots of depression. I finally looked at the truth about the past. Not just the events, but what those events communicated to me about me.  What happened to me? What had gone wrong? What was at the root of depression and the way that I felt about myself and my life?

I finally realized how I had been defined by the actions and communications of others and that these trauma events and the hopelessness surrounding them had resulted in the constant depressions.   

I realized that validation could come from me.

I started to change the visual. The underwater foliage broke free. I started to see myself kick those hands away. I raised my fist to all those that restrained me. I started to fight back. I got angry at the way that I had been held back, held down and oppressed.  I saw the roots of the depression and they were not my lack but someone else’s false definition of my worth.  I started to see myself strive for the sunlight. I wanted to be IN that sunlight. I fought to be there. I broke through the ice. I emerged from the depths. I shivered and shook with cold and fear and self doubt but I pressed on. I fought for my life. I fought for my birthright; my original value. I fought for me.

And I won.

Please share your thoughts. Remember that your information will not be shared with anyone and you may use any name you wish. EFB has a Facebook page, however your comments here are not connected to facebook nor are they published there.

Darlene Ouimet

 Other Related Posts ~ The black hole of Neglect by Pam Witzemann 

Why I didn’t Know how I Felt about anything ~Darlene Ouimet

If Happiness is a decision WHY couldn’t I make it ~ Darlene Ouimet

I saw a poster on facebook.  It reminded me of the extremely foggy place that I emerged from.  It reminded me of the lies that I told myself in order to resist looking at the truth about my life. Believing this type of statement, (or trying to) became a big part of how I survived. It was also how I beat myself up. 

The poster states: “What screws us up most in life is the picture in our heads of how it’s supposed to be”

~ Survival thinking was: “As soon as I can achieve this standard and realize that my own thinking and expectations are the problem then, I will be able to put the problem (which is really all in my head) behind me.”

~ Self abusive thinking was: “I am a failure at getting over the past because I am the one who is wrong about it; I should be able to realize that my expectations are way out of line.”

Again, The poster states: “What screws us up most in life is the picture in our heads of how it’s supposed to be”

This poster is intended to be motivational and inspirational. The poster is inferring that “fantasy thinking” is the root of the problem. That unreasonable visions of how it should have been “screws us up”.  That this fictional thought in my head is what screwed ME up.

I have heard this type of teaching in 12 step programs, self help books, churches and religious teachings and from countless people.  I learned and tried to accept that my problem was that I longed for some sort of “perfect family” like we saw on television and that there is no such family. I learned to tell myself to “get real” and get over the past. Just “let it go”. I learned and tried to accept that my “expectations” got in the way of my ability to accept reality as though the reality that I was trying to accept was actually good.  As though the bad stuff wasn’t bad but that I had some unreasonable wish for how it was “supposed to be.”  I was conditioned and brainwashed to believe that I was making a big deal over “nothing” and that the breakdown of my mental health and self esteem issues were not only of my own making but also my own fault, my “failure” and my weakness”.  I learned that I had “a problem” instead of that this was all caused FROM a problem that had nothing to do with my choice.

The fact is that my reality was not good. If what screwed me up in life was the picture in my head of how it was supposed to be, then what screwed me up was that I thought I was supposed to be safe and protected. I thought I was supposed to be loved and even nurtured. I thought that I should not have had to live in fear of the next beating or the next sexual assault.  I thought THAT was how it was supposed to be. 

I was caught in a fog spin by these so called inspirational and motivational quotes.  These kinds of sayings and quotes were the things that I lived by. I would have posted this quote 10 years ago without blinking an eye. These so called motivational and inspirational quotes supported me in escaping the truth of what my life was really like.  As long as I was telling myself that it wasn’t “that bad” and that I had the wrong idea about what it should have been like, I didn’t face what actually had in fact happened to me.

And what had in fact happened is NOT the way it SHOULD have been.

It is not motivating or inspiring to try to convince people that they have a misconception about their own lives.  It causes further damage. It adds to the trauma that being mistreated and devalued already caused. It is not helpful when people or organizations try to encourage people to move forward before the actual truth has been validated.  It is abusive to invalidate the truth by teaching that facing it or talking about it is the same as whining and even the same as lying about it.

Facing the fact that things in my life were NOT the way that they should have been was one of the first things that gave me hope for recovery from the issues that I struggled with overcoming. Being told and then realizing myself that what happened to me was wrong, that is was child abuse and emotional neglect, and that it was not something that I should try to accept as being “meant to be” or something that “made me stronger” or fabrications and exaggerations that were “all in my head” helped to set me free. Understanding how much these beliefs held me back was like silky healing balm on festering wounds.

Overturning these beliefs became keys in the rusty locks of the prison I had been trapped in since childhood.  My childhood (and because of this brainwashing, continuing on into adulthood) was NOT the way it SHOULD have been.  It was NOT my weakness, my imagination or fantasy thinking that was the problem; it was that the things that happened to me were WRONG and those things CAUSED the problems. 

I was screwed up because of the way things actually were. 

I found wholeness and freedom by facing the way that things actually were.

NOTE: I spent over 25 years trying to change my thinking about what was wrong with me by accepting that it was ME.  It only took me 3 years to find freedom and wholeness by facing the root causes of my struggles.  

Please share your thoughts and insights with me and the other readers here.  Remember that you do not have to use your real name in the comment form. Your email address will not be shared and only the name you choose will show up in the comment thread.

Exposing Truth one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet                                       

Related Posts ~ The Problem with Statements like “Get Over It” 

~When Inspirational Material triggers Self Blame

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The Black Hole of Emotional Neglect by Pam Witzemann

Emotional neglect is largely, invisible. When one is emotionally neglected as a child, it is impossible to understand what is missing because it is impossible to understand what one has never known and can’t see. The emotional neglect of a child, places within them a black hole. It produces an insatiable loneliness that can consume the spirit, body, and soul of a child. As a child, I was a victim of emotional neglect.

My most familiar emotion as a child was loneliness. I was prevaded and often overwhelmed by it; but I also couldn’t name it. At the center of my being, was a darkness that often pulled me under and left me in such a state of depression as to paralyze me. I was filled with a deep longing for someone to notice my pain and help me. This core emptiness followed me into adulthood and ruled over the choices I made. Inside me lived death and I longed for the final consummation of death. In that deep night, I was made blind to happiness, joy, and life itself. I was a dark child who didn’t expect to live past fifteen. When I outlived my expectation, I was careless with my life and did everything possible to hasten my own demise.

I was a tiny girl. I was often sick and spent many hours, days, and weeks alone in bed. I spent the bulk of my fourth year of life sick, in bed recovering from Scarlet Fever that was left untreated for too long. I lived in a kind of nether world, suspended within my own inner darkness that enveloped my thoughts and dreams. All of my childhood memories are set within that dark void. I was sick so often that illness became the main feature of my identity. I knew myself as small, weak, and sickly. My demeanor was pouty and morose. My companions were books and paper to draw on(front, back, and every blank space so as not to be scolded for wasting paper) and the books I read were far beyond my years and suitability for my age. I loved Edgar Allen Poe as the black hole within me recognized a spiritual companion. I accepted the void inside as normal and never understood that I was lacking the interest, love, and nurture of my parents. I saw the problem as me. I was too small, too sick and weak, too clumsy, too mopey and pouty. No one could love or like me because I was unlovable by design.

I grew to be an angry and rebellious teenager. My rebellious acts were my desperate cries for help as the pull of the black hole, sitting in the place of my true, undeveloped identity, threatened to consume me, forever. I wrote poems with lines such as follows: “My souls illusion, Your souls illusion, Named love, The never ending dream…” because by my late teens, I was sure that love was only a dream. It was an illusion that taunted me and frustrated me as I moved from the emotional neglect and psychological abuse of my parents to the sexual abuse of men. By age eighteen, I had experienced so much personal destruction by those claiming to love me that I became as a dying, bitter, old woman with no hope for any future. The only comfort and relief from the constant emotional pain, that I felt physically in my chest, was my drugs. It seemed to me that my drugs loved me better than any human being because they relieved me of having to feel the emptiness inside that grew more powerful by the day. My drugs loved me and I loved them. My drugs closed over me in death and I welcomed the darkness as a refuge that empathized with my inner being; but also, as the final and eternal comfort that my empty, shriveled heart desired.

There are many theories about black holes and one theory states that when a black hole fully consumes a world, it emerges from the other side, whole and made new. That is how I also experienced my final consummation that came by my own hand in the form of suicide. When the doctors brought me back from death, I was sorrowful to find myself alive. I don’t know how many days I laid in that hospital bed but I do remember the tears I shed at the thought of returning to a life that was little better than being one of the walking dead. A junky’s life is lived as a vampire in constant pursuit of the substance of enslavement. When my systems stabilized, I was admitted to the mental unit for three days observation and then released back into the world that held no promise or future for me. I continued in the pursuit of my love until I weighed 75 pounds and became sick with hepatitis. This was my bottom and the moment when there seemed no way to go but up. I completed my passage through the black hole and began my rebirth on the other side.

There were so many things missing inside of me that even as I became a spiritual person and began to see life as a solution rather than death, I couldn’t name what was missing. The emptiness and aloneness were still the major markers of my character. No one, besides my grandmother, was ever interested in who I was, what my talents and dreams were, or what I thought about anything. As a child, I was to entertain myself and not bother. I was a big bother when I was sick and I knew not to expect anything more in the way of attention or nurture. I wasn’t encouraged in anything unless it was of benefit to my father. Then I was to perform, admirably, on cue. If I didn’t, I would displease him and displeasing my father was the household definition of wrong-doing. It was sin. There was no God, no outer authority to measure morality by but instead, the whims and pleasures of my dad were the moral code we lived by. The ranch I grew up on was isolated and my family was a world of its own with little connection to society. The world revolved around my father and no one else’s needs mattered. The mother I needed belonged to him and he jealously guarded her from me. I don’t remember my mother holding me; and she told me once that it made my dad too jealous. I have one sweet memory of her singing to me but mostly, I remember her disgust and disapproval of me. I remember the anger and disappointment that seemed constantly aimed in my direction. I ran away from home on a regular basis but there was nowhere to go. I would run the mile or so to the eastern gate and stop, and wait, but no one ever came. Tired, thirsty, and cried-out, I always returned home and no one ever cared that I had been gone or that I had returned. Sometimes, I felt as if I didn’t exist and wondered if my dreams were real and my life the true dream.

If not for my grandmother, nothing that is me would ever have had opportunity to live. I wanted to live with her and no matter how long I was at her house, I never wanted to go home. With my grandmother, I was someone. I had substance but with my parents, I was mostly invisible as I felt the someone I was with my grandmother disappear upon entering my parent’s home. I lived in the make-believe world of, “Heidi” or “The Wizard of Oz” and other books I read. I found new definitions of me in assuming the roles of the main characters, who were strong, and loveable, and acting out their stories as if they were mine. What I experienced of the world outside of our ranch and school was through the characters I read about. Playing the roles of others became the way I dealt with life and the emptiness that was, me. There was never any thought given, by my parents, to introducing me to the world outside of our family to prepare me for adult life. My talents and interests were not worth developing. The only things that mattered about me were those attributes that would someday, please a man. My life didn’t matter and neither did I.

I no longer live with the void that I experienced as a constant pain in my chest; but now, as I write about it, I feel the memory of that pain. That empty place has gradually filled in and it began with the faith in God I found when the black hole consumed me and I was reborn on the other side; and I began to see life and not death as a solution to my problems. The light of life began to shine for me and lead me into a better way to live. It is common for people to say that we all have a void that only God can fill. That is probably true but the emptiness I lived with and inside of was greater than any natural, inborn need for God. It was the void that nurturing parents are assigned to fill as they love, protect, and encourage their child. By this they teach their son or daughter who they are, and of their importance, and place in the world. I didn’t have that and though I managed to survive, I had no fully developed identity of my own. I hid inside myself and assumed the role that best fit my current situation. I survived as a changling and when one role no longer served me, I discarded it, disconnected from everyone I knew, and assumed a new role to play while locking away, deep inside, any trauma connected with each act of my life. 

The filling in of the black hole of emotional neglect has been like the rebuilding of a faulty foundation beneath an old house. It began with God and has ended with my own identity developed and in tact. I played many roles as the real me was nurtured through the love of God, the love of my husband, children, and a few dear, old friends who saw something in me that was constant, no matter how many people I tried to be. I didn’t do this consciously but since I have confronted myself, my past traumas, and accepted the girl or girls and women that I was ashamed of, this pattern is clear to me. The people I’ve been don’t always agree and have little in common with one another, other than protecting me while I became. I am the constant that held them together. I am, Pam revealed by the power of truth and love. The black hole that once sat in the seat of my identity, no longer exists and the roles that I’ve adopted as a way to live life are falling away as I shed them and emerge fully, me.

Pam Witzemann

Pam Witzemann was born in Santa Fe, NM and is now 54 years old. She has been married for 33 years, raised two boys and has two grandsons. Pam and her husband have had their own business for about twenty years. Pam is a painter and a writer and hopes to make these pursuits more than a hobby in her later years. Pam authors the blog Boomer Back Beat; a place where baby boomers find inspiration in the process of aging.

Other posts by Pam ~ How I learned to Self Abuse ~ Profile of a spiritual abuser ~

Sometimes facing the pain seemed so overwhelming that I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to face what I had to face in order to get on with my life. I didn’t want to feel anything. I had survived by shutting down my feelings and by shutting down my needs. I didn’t want to feel or be aware; it was much too frightening.

This was the spin; the vicious cycle.

But I must have wanted to live. There was a tiny spark in me that didn’t go out. There was a tiny flame that belonged to me and a determined little flame it was. That spark was determined to live. The “how to go about doing that” was the problem. I wanted to be free but there were certain chains that had to be broken. Certain things held me back and because those chains formed when I was so young, I didn’t realize they were even there. They were familiar; they were part of me. I thought they helped me, and even thought they were “saving me”. I was afraid to break them and emerge into the sunlight. That was the spin that I was caught in.  I had lived in “survivor mode” for so long that it was all I knew. 

Survivor mode is the shut down place; not feeling, not needing, not facing the truth.  Survivor mode is the only way to get through any kind of childhood trauma. But as an adult it was in my way.  It became one of the road blocks to freedom.

Victim mentality believes that being compliant will keep me safe. Being compliant means never facing or talking about childhood trauma. Being compliant means never standing up to the abusers, oppressors, or to anyone who triggers those feelings or fears that are born out of survivor mode. Victim Mentality is a learned behavior also from childhood and being compliant was the only hope of being safe as a child; the problem is that I never grew into an adult with value when I was stuck in that way of thinking. Living in victim mentality, I perceived everyone as being more important than I was and therefore was compliant to almost everyone.

At the root of depression and low self esteem and wrapped all around my victim mentality and survivor mode was my difficulty with self love. I had not been taught my value. In fact, I had been taught to doubt my value. I had been taught that I had no real value. When I was told I had value, it was usually attached to some form of control or manipulation which carried the message that my value was only in what I could do for someone else. I had to learn to value myself. That might sound easy but in reality, self love has been one of the hardest things to learn. Even today, every struggle that I have has an element of struggle with self love at the root of it.

These three things; understanding survivor mode, understanding victim mentality, and realizing that I did not know I had value and therefore had not learned to love myself, held the keys to freedom.

I learned everything in this process of recovery and achieved all forward motion by looking backwards. I had to examine the results of being devalued and understand how I had come to live in victim mentality. I had to take a look at how I survived, so that I could see that I survivor mode, although necessary back then, was no longer necessary anymore. In order to learn my own value, I had to take a look at why I didn’t know my value. I had to take a look at how my self esteem got “broken” and went missing in the first place. It was there that I realized where all the depressions and dissociative identity originated. It was there that I began to see how to replace the missing links in my childhood so that I could overcome depression, low self esteem and dissociative identity disorder.  

It was there that I found so much HOPE that there really was freedom on the other side of broken.

And that was when I realized that my fear of the pain of facing that stuff was also in my way. Perhaps the pain would not be as bad as the pain that I finally realized I was already living in? I had to take that chance. Of course it paid off and I was right. The pain in the process, which is more acute but never permanent was never as bad as the constant although more subtle pain I had always been submerged in.

Facing those details was what set me on the path to overcoming low self esteem, overcoming all the abuse and the resulting depressions and dissociative identity disorder and most of all, overcoming the false belief system that defined my life and had determined my course up till that point.

Please share your thoughts. Please feel free to use any name you wish; It is important to me that you feel safe here.

Another Snapshot of Truth on the Journey to Freedom

Darlene Ouimet                    

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How I learned to Self Abuse by Pam Witzemann

I was a self-abusive person. I wasn’t born as a self-abuser. I was taught to abuse myself by the way I was devalued as a child and the behavior that was modeled for me.

As a child, I was medically, emotionally, and spiritually neglected. I was psychologically and emotionally abused. I was given alcohol as medicine on a regular basis from the age of six months and also allowed sips of beer and other adult drinks. On holidays, I was allowed to drink hard eggnog and wine. As a toddler, I was allowed to eat only candy and drink coffee with the adults. I use the term toddler as an age descriptive term but I was never actually a toddler. I was what is now called a schoocher. Because I was born premature, my brain didn’t know where my arms were and I used my legs instead. I sat on my bottom and scooted. I tried to walk at about one year but fell like an egg, unable to catch myself, and didn’t begin walking until I was three. I never had any medical help with this disability. I don’t know if there was any help available but I do know that my parents never investigated any further than the family doctor. My mother worked with me and taught me to pull myself up on a broom handle. I was very uncoordinated and my childhood drawings were of heads with arms and legs coming directly out of the head in various places. I had poor control over my body and I never could physically keep up with other children my age. I felt that I was very different from others and I was never free from a pervading loneliness.

At four years old, I became sick with a high fever. I developed a rash and my parents decided that I had the measles. They put me in a darkened room and gave me the usual hot toddies, a mixture of bourbon, honey, and lemon juice. My grandmother came to visit and was alarmed at my condition. She told my parents that she thought I had Scarlet Fever and she insisted they take me to the emergency room. My grandmother was right and I spent the next year taking Penicillin. I learned how to read that year as I spent so much time alone in bed. My great aunt and my grandmother were both teachers and they gave me books on phonics and primary readers. I taught myself how to read. I also had to learn how to walk all over again. I couldn’t start school until I was seven but people thought I was about four. I don’t know how tall I was but I do know that I weighed 20 pounds. I didn’t know how to relate to other children as I had been around very few children. Because I was so small, the bigger girls played with me as if I were a doll. I was miserable and I always felt that I was alone. I was sick often. Partly because my immunity was low,it was an escape from the children at school, and  it was the only sure way I could get any attention from my mother. My parents continued to give me hot toddies when I was sick and I developed a taste for bourbon. I wanted those hot toddies and I don’t remember not knowing the taste of alcohol. In my house, booze was god and I took part in the regular sacraments when offered or when no one was looking.

I don’t remember being held by my mother. I remember being held by my dad when he came home after a long drunk. Most of the time he was gone working or drinking. My mom began drinking when I was about six, in what I now believe was an effort to keep him at home. My dad was a dramatic drunk who frightened me and I was terrified when I saw my mom also, begin to drink. I hid in my room or in the closet when they were drunk and arguing. The most predominant memory I have of my parents is of them sitting at the dining room table drinking. If it moved from the table it would spin out of control and those were the times that I and my siblings were terrorized by my dad’s out of control, violent behavior. To me it seems that my entire childhood revolved around that table where they sat and drank every day. I dreaded being called to that table for a drunken lecture; but if they directed anger toward my siblings, I would willingly insert myself and take their place at that table. At twelve, those lectures were an every Friday night event. This is how my parents spent time with me. My first memory of contemplating self-abuse was also, at twelve. I hid in the closet during one of m dad’s out of control terror sessions, with a hack saw in my hand, sliding it back and forth across my skin as I thought about cutting my wrists. My deep feelings of loneliness overwhelmed me and became an almost constant state of mind that year. It seemed that if I no longer existed that it wouldn’t matter to anyone and I wouldn’t have to hurt anymore. By the age of twelve, death seemed to hold more promise for me than life. I was sure that I wouldn’t live past the age of 15.

My dad treated my mother as a possession. He called her his “mommy doll”. This was supposed to be a term of endearment but he truly, treated her as a toy. He was 28 and she was 18 when they married. When my mom became pregnant with me they moved onto the ranch owned by my father’s parents. My dad took my mom’s driver’s license and when her glasses broke, she didn’t get new ones. The ranch was fifty miles from the nearest town and our closet neighbor was three miles away. We had five neighbors. My mom was not only my dad’s toy but a prisoner. She never had a friend of her own but was expected to cater to the people my dad wanted admiration from. These relationships never lasted long and ended when my dad’s true self would become known and he was confronted with his own failings. My mom never fought for herself but always submitted to my dad’s ill treatment of her. He demeaned her looks and made fun of her intelligence. The more he mistreated her, the worse she became, and he would denigrate her even further. He included my siblings and I in that denigration of our own mother. When we displeased him, we were told that we were just like our mother. My mother’s development froze at 18 and she never grew up. To this day, she willingly submits to my father’s mistreatment. She is content to do his bidding and never having to take responsibility for anything. She never fought for her children either even though she could see that we were being destroyed from the inside out just as he destroyed her.

My dad is a huge liar. He lives in a world created by his lies and no longer knows what it true about his life. My mother goes along with him and supports the lies. I grew up inside that world formed by my father’s lies. I believed those lies as a child and accepted many of them into adulthood because they were so seemingly, inconsequential. I know now that even small details of my father’s life are fabrications. Lies told at one time to impress someone and then made permanent in an attempt to remember them and maintain a preferred false image of himself. Now I believe nothing except what I witnessed myself. As a liar, my dad was also a manipulator. He manipulates for attention and he will do anything to anyone to get attention. He loved to manipulate me and I think he practiced his technique on me while also getting an emotional fix from being able to control me. He teased me mercilessly and when I would cry, he would chastise me for not being able to take teasing. He loved to hold me and prevent me from moving. Sometimes, I thought he would crush the air out of me. When I got older, he manipulated me by pretending to be my friend and side with me against my mom. He would purposely get between me and my mom to try and get all the attention and admiration for himself. He let me start smoking at fourteen so that I wouldn’t burn his barn down and so I would think he was cool. When I got caught smoking pot at the same age, I was given beer to drink and cigarettes to eat, and then told that if I wanted to get loaded, I could drink at home. If I ever brought up any of his short-comings, he would turn them around and blame them on me. My mother also blamed me for everything that went wrong in our family. She resented me most when I began to want to make decisions about how to dress and I wanted to be with my friends instead of her. In her mind, she expected me to become the girl friend that my dad never allowed her to have and she was angry with me for failing her. They also taught my sister and brother to see me as the problem source when my parents drank too much and did something they were ashamed of. I was the one who caused them to drink because I was so hard to deal with. I was marked and isolated within my own family. I was told I couldn’t sing (a lie) when the rest of the family was musical. My father was a musician and since he saw all of us as part of himself, a child with no musical ability was of no good use. At sixteen, when a pedophile (I didn’t know what a pedophile was) enticed me to leave home and I saw it as an exit from the misery I lived in, they let me go. I wasn’t allowed to drive because my dad said I was too immature and would wreck his car. However, when it came to going to live with a 28 year old man in the porn industry, who was divorced with a child, that I barely knew, and they didn’t know at all, they stepped aside and allowed me to make that decision. They turned me loose in much the same way as people in the Old Testament of the Bible sent their scape-goat out into the wilderness after they placed all of their sins upon it. In me my parents saw everything they hated about themselves, each other, and the misery of daily life in our family. They left me on my own to get what they deemed I deserved or more aptly put, to take in their place, what they deserved. This was my value to them, that I be held responsible and sent away so they never had to face or take responsibility for their own behavior.

I first started using drugs at twelve when I began stealing my mother’s allergy medicine to sleep. I was depressed and anxious most of the time. My family teased me for moping and pouting and I was called a scrooge because the holidays sent me into depression as they were days for my dad to drink to excess and spoil whatever childish expectation I had for culturally important days. I was afraid of holidays. No one ever tried to find out what was wrong. I was different and I was alone. It was my fault that I felt so sad, scared, and isolated. Soon after I stole those first pills from my mom, I began swiping pills from my grandparents. When school started, I found kids who were using pot and by fifteen, I was smoking pot nearly every day. I seldom went to class and my parents were angry that I was bringing home F’s but they never delved into the problem or made an effort to find out what was wrong or help me. My drug use took over my life and I put myself in risky situations to obtain more and stronger drugs. I endured sexual abuse as a teenager because they kept me high and when they were done with me, I became the worst abuser of me. I became like my aggressors but instead of abusing others, I also targeted myself for abuse. I blamed everything on myself and I punished my body with needles, pills, and whatever I could get my hands on to feed my head as I continued where the sexual abuse ended in promiscuous and dangerous relationships. I often combined drugs with opposing affects such as Heroin and Cocaine, called speed balling. I was a joy-popper and would inject anything into my veins. My life became a death dance by the age of eighteen and eventually, I committed the ultimate abuse. I intentionally overdosed on a mixture of Morphine, Heroin, and sedatives. I murdered me. A friend found me out cold, not breathing, naked, and wrapped in a sheet. She called 911 and I was rushed to the hospital where they used paddles and brought me back to life. When I came to I cried because I was still alive. I saw no solution to the problem, which I viewed as myself, but death.

Just as my decent into self-abuse was incremental and slow, my climb upward was long and arduous. It began with my belief in Jesus and my receiving the gift of eternal life. I wasn’t instantly changed into a person with no problems with a healthy psychology but I no longer celebrated death. Instead, I began to celebrate life. It was as if a light bulb switched on and I became aware of the life and beauty around me and I wanted to be a part of it. I began to try and make changes in the way I lived my life and I conquered my drug abuse over twenty years ago. Confronting the abuse in my past began with stopping the behavior that threatened my life. The journey continues today as I continue to learn how to value myself and others by placing blame where it belongs and ceasing to abuse myself in my thinking. I am learning why I developed certain patterns of behavior rather than believing that I am somehow, corrupt.

There have been many people who have helped along the way and I believe that God has placed each one in my path at just the time I needed them. My husband is the person who has given me the most help toward healing by simply loving me and showing me what unconditional love is. There have also been friends, pastors, doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists. My children have taught me more about myself than anyone. None of it would have mattered though if I had never believed and had my idea of a solution changed from death to life. I needed a healthy spiritual outlook to strengthen me in overcoming the negative psychology that I was programmed with from birth. Emerging from Broken is also important to me as I continue to confront myself and my past as I continue to reprogram and search for greater healing. I believe God also directed me here at the moment I needed it most as through what Darlene writes and what commenters share, I’ve found that I’m not alone and there are many on this same journey with me.

Pam Witzemann

Pam Witzemann was born in Santa Fe, NM and is now 54 years old. She has been married for 33 years, raised two boys and has two grandsons. Pam and her husband have had their own business for about twenty years. Pam is a painter and a writer and hopes to make these pursuits more than a hobby in her later years. Pam authors the blog Boomer Back Beat; a place where baby boomers find inspiration in the process of aging.

It dawned on me a while back that this statement implies that if I am unhappy, then I am deciding to be unhappy. When I was unhappy and depressed, I tried everything I ever heard about to get myself over it. I tried to “decide to be happy”.  Oh I had brief success with it, yes, but not the enduring happiness that I sought after for so long. I got a little relief but never a permanent result. I tried self help; I tried books, affirmations and seminars.  I took vitamins, changed my diet and exercise, bought new clothes and said “I love you” to myself in the mirror and did other affirmations.  I quit coffee, quit drinking alcohol and quit smoking and I improved my lifestyle.  I WANTED to be happy. I wanted to believe that life was worth living. It just didn’t seem to be that easy! If happiness is merely a decision… then no one ever told me how to make that decision.

I did a Google search for the phrase “happiness is a decision” and I came up with lots of articles about how we can just “decide to be happy”.  None of it was very helpful at all but I think that when we don’t have any solution we are willing to accept half a solution or anything that sounds like a solution.  Be mindful about where that acceptance might lead you though.

Other than for brief moments, such as when I got a new car, new haircut, new boyfriend, took a vacation, or read a fantastic inspiring self help book or attended an equally uplifting seminar, lasting happiness escaped me. I wanted MORE than a Band-Aid. I wanted the real deal.

But I believed that happiness was a decision that I could make. I believed that happiness was a choice. I even told other unhappy people that happiness is a decision and a choice.  And deep down I felt like a failure because I couldn’t MAKE that decision.  Because I believed that happiness is a decision, I also believed that I CHOSE not to make that decision.  And there is the guilt. That was the underlying disapproval of myself. That was where the little voice inside got to say, “you have a choice, you can be happy, but you don’t want to be or you would decide to be”

Those statements got to me, but I never realized it. I never looked at it the way that I do now. I didn’t know that happiness was NOT a decision. Not in my life it wasn’t. Not for me. I think those sayings are really meant for different circumstances.

My teenage children have had some unhappy times in their lives. I am SO glad that I didn’t tell them that happiness is a decision.  Looking at it through the grid of teaching that concept to children brings to mind so many ways that I was discounted and verbally discouraged.  There is a subconscious element to this whole thing.  If you tell an emotionally struggling person that happiness is a choice, the deeper reaction to that statement IS guilt and self blame.  I “heard” that the choice was in my own hands when in reality it wasn’t until I went through the process of facing the truth about why I was unhappy.

I found real and lasting happiness when I faced the things that had caused me to be so unhappy in the first place. And now I really can choose my attitude.  I found that being grateful, being able to sustain an attitude of gratitude came much easier after I faced the past and was allowed to have my resentments for the things that stole my happiness. When I gave myself permission to feel the anger and NOT judge myself for it, I didn’t have to fight it anymore.  When I put the guilt,shame and blame back where it belonged and to who it belonged to, I was able to let go of guilt, shame and self blame. When I validated my right to be angry, hurt and resentful over the things that happened to me in the past, finally I was able to rise above the past.  The anger, hurt and resentment were no longer a problem.

The biggest difference between today and back then is that I don’t have those dark days anymore now that I have faced my past and faced the pain. By owning my truth I have taken my life back. Emerging from broken is about HOW I did that.

Today I can decide to be happy but that was never possible with I lived with the black cloud of the past and all the lies that belonged to it. It was in facing the past that I let it go, found peace and regained my ability to choose.  Happiness can be a decision now but I rarely think about it, because I am so rarely UN-Happy.

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Exposing Truth, one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

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