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Emotional Abandonment, Rejection and Recovery
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Darlene
When I try to conform to what other people want, I realize that I am rejecting myself the same way that I have been rejected by others. I can decide (even subconsciously) that I don’t see the point of trying or that it is too hard to stand up for myself, but that leaves me feeling the same way that I have always felt; empty, unsupported unlovable, unworthy and not good enough.
Rejected and emotionally abandoned.
Loving myself has so much to do with being there for myself. It has so much to do with not leaving myself the way that I was emotionally abandoned by others.
Rejection is not just when someone says “get out of my life”. I was rejected by every single boyfriend that I ever had although I was always the one that left the relationship. I didn’t understand my deep feelings of turmoil in those relationships. I didn’t see the reality of not being accepted. I didn’t realize how hard I tried to conform and comply. I did not realize I had experienced emotional abandonment again. Sometimes I didn’t even understand why I gave up and left.
And I was left with this huge feeling of restlessness about my life and why things didn’t work out, always sure that it was my own fault always looking to change myself, my reactions, my way of doing life. But in reality, I was always rejecting myself the same way that I was being rejected. Every time I saw the need to change me, I was agreeing with them. I was agreeing that the real me was somehow “wrong,” every time I tried to conform in order to make someone else happy.
All of this was combined with the underlying questions about why I was not accepted and trying to understand why I always had to change, and why I was still being rejected and abandoned emotionally by others, even though at the same time I was willing to accept that it must be me who had the problem.
Today I realize that when people asked me to conform to their ideas of who I should be, that’s rejection. When people asked me to be who they want me to be, they are rejecting who I am. They are rejecting who I was born to be; my individuality.
When people who are supposed to love you do this, it cuts really deeply and it is very hard to understand. When we keep trying to meet someone else’s expectations that is the same as rejecting of our own desires. We don’t understand it this way because we have learned that we MUST conform and comply as a child in order to survive; which is a true fact. In order to find freedom and wholeness however, I had to realize I am not a child anymore. When I began to understand this concept I made big progress in overcoming depression and dissociative behaviour.
When I was a child I had to do whatever was necessary for me to survive. I had to try harder to be what they wanted, to please, to make everyone happy. What I am saying now though, is that I had to realize that I am not that child anymore. The truth is that I do not need to conform in order to survive. The truth is that I do not need other adults to take care of me; my survival is not dependant on anyone else anymore. I am not a pawn in someone else’s game.
I had to realize this truth; I can take care of myself now. Then I had to learn to honour myself, to value and appreciate myself for who I am, so that I could “be there” for me. I had to stop rejecting myself in order to accept myself. I had to realize that in all of this learned behaviour, I had become the one who was emotionally abandoning me.
Looking forward to your comments on this one!
From surviving to thriving on the journey to wholeness;
Darlene Ouimet
Related Posts : Click ~ Who am I ~ will I like me?
Click ~ Depression and Identity Crisis
WHO AM I? Will I like Me?
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I remember the day that realized that I was no longer attached to my former identity. My former identity is the identity that was given to me by my family and almost every significant relationship I ever had since a very young age with the exception of a few special girlfriends and maybe a couple of adults along the way. It was how I had come to think of myself, how much guilt and shame that I carried for things that had happened to me and the way that I believed I was not loveable, that I was not good enough and that something about me was just “wrong”. That identity no longer resonated with me. I knew that I was no longer who they said I was. My identity crisis was over, I thought. I was certain that the little voice in my head would go away now. That little voice that whispered every time I accomplished anything; “who the hell do you think YOU are?? Everyone knows you are nothing, everyone knows that you are an imposter and anyone who doesn’t will soon find out”. I was certain that voice would shut up now and that I would never have an imposter issue again! (Unfortunately this was not the end of that issue, but let’s save that for another blog post later on)
I remember that the exact moment I realized that I was no longer who they said I was; that I was no longer defined by them. I felt euphoric and immediately empty. I felt like I had reached a goal, but something was missing. I felt amazing and terrified. I felt free and blank all at the same time. Full of real fear I questioned my therapist; “well if none of that is who I am, then who am I?” It felt scary, dangerous, foreign, lonely and somehow clean, all at the same time.
Prior to this day, in my mind’s eye regarding the process of recovery from all my depressions and dissociative identity etc, I had visions of huge construction equipment digging up buildings, rotten foundations and roots that were miles deep. At first clearing this wreckage ~ what my life had become ~ seemed overwhelming. I didn’t think I could do it, there was so much debris to deal with and the mess went so deep. Sometimes I even pictured huge floodlights so the work could also be done in the dark, as though there was no rest from it. It seemed to go on and on, the things I found in the digging were sometimes shocking, sometimes frightening, and sometimes so enlightening it was like finding diamonds! Most of the time the shocking and frightening stuff eventually was so enlightening that it was like finding treasure too. I found the truth! It was exhausting but somehow I kept going.
Now, on this new day in my mind’s eye I pictured a huge area of land that has been cleared of all trees, structures, garbage, weeds and rubble The land was all smoothed and prepared and the huge construction equipment had been taken away. This new foundation was ready and waiting for me to rebuild on it. I felt shaky at first, as though like a baby, my legs were still wobbly. I was curious about who I would find on this new leg of the journey to discover the real me. Would I recognize myself, and even more frightening, would I like myself? There was still that little voice inside, asking “what if they were right about me”? What if the people that had defined me all my life were right about me after all”? What if I can’t do me? What if no one likes the real me? What am I going to find out next?
Feeling blank has many fears.
The following months were in many ways no less complicated than the prior months in therapy, they were just different. I had to learn how to live in my new belief system, and sometimes it was uncomfortable. I tried new things, and almost everything I did felt like I was doing it for the first time, because I had changed all those old beliefs and I was not the same person anymore. Sometimes I wanted to run back to the old life! At least it was familiar and even comfortable there. At least I knew how to function there.
As I got to know myself, my happiness increased. I felt free, alive, brilliant, strong, dynamic and reborn. I began to feel comfortable; like I was really alright, and in fact I was “right with myself”. I felt like I finally knew what it means to feel like I was who I was meant to be. I was able to impact others in ways that I never did before. I started to feel purposeful and fulfilled. Today I continue to become more and more comfortable in my own skin, more alive, more able to live life fully and to flourish and thrive. I become more “ME” with each passing day and I love who I am!
Please share your own stories, feelings, fears and victories as we travel this road and celebrate our discoveries.
Darlene Ouimet
click here to read the post on my struggle with my identity
My Coping Method Failed and Depression Increased
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- RUN
It was a big decision to tell my therapist what was going on in my mind. I could tell him what was going on in my life but what was going on inside my head was a different matter.
I lived inside my head for years. I constantly wondered what to say. I constantly wondered what you (or they) wanted me to say, what would make them mad, what would make them like me and accept me. What would keep me safe? Those are a lot of questions going around in my mind that I needed to think about BEFORE I answered anyone. I got quick at it though. This was one of my coping methods.
This was my survival mode. This coping method went so deep that I realized even as an adult, I was always wondering what everyone else was thinking. Always trying to guess what they wanted me to say, who they wanted me to be, what they wanted me to do. I wondered this so long and so deep that I didn’t know what I thought anymore. And worse than that, I didn’t care what I thought most of the time. I don’t think I even thought about what I personally thought; I was too focused on everyone else, believing that understanding and complying with others, would keep me safe. It was one of the ways that I coped, one of the ways that I survived.
I was always afraid that everyone was disapproving of me. I didn’t want to meet with any disapproval. Oh I used to say all the time “I don’t care if “they” like me or not”. But it wasn’t true. I was just saying one more thing that I had heard from someone else. I was lost in a world that was not mine. It was exhausting.
Eventually I fell apart and just could not seem to climb out of the serious depression I kept going back into every time I tried to stop taking the anti-depressant medications. I felt like I was being pulled under water; deep, murky, heavy, mucky, dirty cold and yet comfortable water. Looking back antidepressants really only represented a band-aid and I had come to the point that I needed the cure or I was going to just stay under that water and drown; once and for all.
I went to a therapist again because I was afraid for my life. Not because of others this time, but because I was really aware that I was losing the fight. I was losing my lifelong fight to just be okay and belong somewhere.
So taking into consideration everything that I said above, why would talking to a therapist be any different then talking to someone else? All my approval issues and fear of being hurt came with me to therapy. My “what do you need me to be” mode didn’t go away just because I was paying someone to talk to me. I still worried about what he would think, what he would want me to do and how would I stay safe? I didn’t trust because long ago I had learned to keep my guard up. I’d had a few inappropriate therapists cross my path too. All of this came into the therapy room with me although I didn’t know that. I was operating the exact same way that I always did. Survival and safety, coping and extreme self control came first. I had been groomed that way my whole life.
I was afraid of what he would think of me. I was afraid that I would be in danger if I told him what I had been through and what I was really like, because I was convinced for most of my entire life, that I was the problem. I even told him in that first session that the problem was me. I told him that I had a fantastic life but I just wasn’t happy and I was ungrateful. Something, I told him, is really wrong with me.
I had to break through this wall that stood between me and my recovery before I began to change and the first step was realizing that I although I believed that I all thought about was me, the truth was that I never thought about me.
Stay tuned this post will be continued…… HERE
Exposing Truth ~ One snapshot at a time;
Darlene Ouimet
Poetry ~ Overcoming Sexual Abuse with Kate Swift
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Today I am pleased have guest poet Kate Swift’s work on my blog!
Kate Swift from the website “This Tangled Web” in the UK has written and compiled a collection of poetry. This poetry emerged out of the extreme child sexual abuse that she suffered. Kate’s poetry is deep and haunting and it gives the reader permission to talk about sexual abuse. The first step in recovery from sexual abuse is admitting it happened and talking about it. If you were not taken care of as a victim of child sexual abuse, it is important that you get help and support so that you can move beyond that devastating part of your life. I have read the book and I recommend it to anyone who has a history with sexual abuse or is close to someone who has suffered from the effects of being sexually abused.
Kate has graciously allowed me to share a poem that she wrote, with the readers of Emerging from Broken.
SHAME…NOT ME
Shame on you…for damaging me
Shame on you…for your lies and pretence
Shame on you…for your twisted world
Shame on me…NO THERE IS NO SHAME ON ME
Shame on you…for causing me to suffer so
Shame on you…for not hearing my silent screams
Shame on you…for turning your back on me
Shame on me…NO THERE IS NO SHAME ON ME
Kate Swift 2010
(this poem was used with permission)
It is so important for survivors of sexual abuse to realize that the shame does not belong to them, but to the abuser. Thank you Kate for allowing me to post this inspirational poem on my blog.
You can find more of Kate’s work on her website This Tangled Web http://www.thistangledweb.co.uk/
Kate’s book is available at the following websites;
While I am on the subject of sexual abuse, A reader sent me the following link to an article about the American Statistics regarding sexual abuse from the website Parentdish.com. I thought some of the readers here would be interested in checking that out too.
Here is that article: please click: Child Abuse by the Numbers
In truth and freedom,
Darlene Ouimet
I Organized my World around Trauma and Abuse
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“Most people have been mistreated to one degree or another in their lives, but the experience of being mistreated alone does not cause someone to develop a victim’s outlook. It is only when a person is abused and then left to deal with it on their own that the victim mentality begins to form. The abused child begins to organize his/her world around the wound.” Mic Hunter author of “Abused Boys the Neglected Victims of Sexual Abuse”
This is so true and it is such a good point. In my experience this is not about any one kind of abuse; this statement is true for all types of abuse. It is also important to understand that it does not matter how many times we experienced a trauma or traumatic event. If we did not have help to deal with it at the time, the consequences are deeper, greater and more difficult to live with. When we are children, we have no choice but or organize our world around the abuse. We have to accept it somehow; there is no other option. When we can’t fathom the “why” did this happen we can easily sink into depression, develop behavior problems, physical illnesses, nightmares and all sorts of other manifestations result. When we can’t make sense of what happened or is happening we find other ways to cope.
In my case, coping methods often caused new problems, and I developed coping methods to deal with coping methods, all because I thought they kept me safer; I had childhood depressions, I got physically ill, I withdrew, I made up stories to get attention. (which made it easy for everyone to say that I was the problem in the first place) I was too young to deal with the abuse myself and when my thinking started to derail, (as it is bound to do when we are coping with overwhelming burdens on our own) it just got worse.
Not being seen as an individual who had emotional needs, just by itself, is cause to develop coping methods. If not being heard, not having a voice or trying to have a voice and having no impact is devastating to an adult, how much more so devastating would it be to a child? It is no wonder that we develop coping methods. It is understandable that depression, eating disorders, ill health, stomach aches, nightmares, nervous habits and behavior problems develop.
I tell a story (Psychological abuse ~ How Self Doubt Grows) about how I was not protected from a psychologically abusive teacher when I was in grade five which clearly represents the progression of the struggle to be heard and protected. I had to deal with and process this psychological abuse on my own. I didn’t come up with TRUE conclusions. I sunk into a depression and got really sick. Because this situation was not dealt when it started, the teacher, the abuser, got away with it and her devaluing attitude and psychological abuse towards me got worse. I concluded that my only course of action was to ‘try harder’ to win her favor.
Abusers enjoy watching their victims struggle to suck up to them. As a victim I thought it would work to bend myself into a pretzel for the controller or the person who was abusing me (this is true for physical abuse, sexual abuse and all psychological abuse) and as a victim I believed when it didn’t work that I just needed to try harder, work harder to find the right “key” the right way to prove that I was worthy of the abusers love. Abusers become like a puppet master, enjoying the game of seeing just how far the victim will go to please the abuser. Just how much of the spirit of this victim can the abuser break? It is as though the abuser establishes their own value by how much control the victim gives them and how hard the victim tries to be what they want, but it never ends. It is never enough. These puppet masters always want more.
When I began the process of looking at the things that happened to me and how I processed them as a child, and then looked at how my belief system developed, I realized that in some ways it was the after effects that were the most damaging in the long term. So many of the beliefs that I adopted as the truth, were developed because no one helped me deal with anything. As children we cannot deal with any kind of abuse or devaluing behavior on our own with any kind of effectiveness. As adults we must remember that we were merely children and it was not our defect, nor are we to blame, that we could not overcome the traumatic event on our own.
Please contribute or share your feelings about this post.
Exposing Truth, one snapshot at a time;
Darlene Ouimet
Parent Child Relationship When Loyalty Costs too Much
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When it comes to parent child relationships I often feel as though I struggle to explain or communicate the difference between how I felt about the past when it was in the past, how I felt about it when I was in the healing stages of it and how I feel about it now. This comes up a lot on the blog and on the facebook page for Emerging from Broken so I thought I would write about it.
This blog gets hundreds of views every day. The comments don’t reflect that though, and I get these private emails from people who don’t want to write publically, especially about parent stuff. By some of the questions that I get asked, I understand why this is; most of us have really big loyalty issues when it comes to our parents and our parent child relationships. This has to do with several things; our belief systems, our upbringing and the way that society frowns on anyone revealing family secrets ~ even if the whole family could recover from the pain of the past if they were revealed ~ some things are just taboo.
I sometimes wonder how different my life would be today if my mother were willing to pursue wholeness and freedom herself? How different would it be if she were willing to work on our mother daughter relationship stuff with me? But sadly this isn’t the case.
I know one thing for sure, it would not change the past. What happened, really happened and it was dysfunctional, devaluing and abusive much of the time. So my decision was to get on with the present and future and to do that I ended up having to deal with the past. (Again) But this time I went deeper then I had gone before. I ventured into previously uncharted waters. The truth about my parents and just how dysfunctional the parent child relationships were.
When I talk about anger and blame towards my abusers as well as my parents ~ anger and blame were a necessary part of my healing. I had to look at the truth ~ almost from a neutral point of view if I were ever going to heal from it. I can only say this in retrospect as I didn’t realize that this would be a key before I did it.
I was so wrapped up in should and should not’s and because I believed expressions like “if you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future you are peeing on today” I was stuck. So I had to look at what my life story was as though I was looking at it through someone else’s eyes. Some of the events of my life were shocking and yet I didn’t think so. I felt guilty for feeling even a glimmer of hurt or anger towards my parents, especially my mother because I felt so sorry for her. It was almost easier to just accept the blame for our difficult mother daughter relationship.
If someone else told me the exact same things had happened to them (that had happened to me) I was horrified. I could feel justifiable anger, outrage, shock, disgust, sadness, sympathy compassion and love, but I could not feel these things for myself about my own life or about the things that had happened to ME. I can’t stress enough how convinced that I am that taking a look at my life story through different eyes was one of the biggest keys to the eventual restoration of my emotional health and overall mental health. This was also one of the biggest keys to overcoming depression. Seeing things from a neutral view point, was a huge key to my overcoming dissociative identity disorder and the integration of all my “alter personalities” and a major key to my wholeness and freedom.
As a child, I surrendered all my power over to my parents, teachers, and elders. When those people treated me with less value then I deserved or abused and controlled me in ways that were not acceptable, I complied and surrendered even more of my will. I had no choice as a child. It wasn’t a decision I made, it was survival and it was necessary. But this became my way of life and when we live under dysfunctional control, we become accustomed to living under dysfunctional control. This becomes a habit that is familiar and even comfortable. I grew into an adult in this familiar comfortable fog and I continued to give control to the abusers or controllers. Often when we are adults this control and abuse is psychological and emotional when it comes to our parents but none the less is in not really love. It is not a healthy, functional, love based parent child relationship.
But there I was in it anyway and in order to survive and cope I convinced myself that it wasn’t really wrong. “My poor mother didn’t know any better.” (true but so what?) Until I had nowhere else to turn and I was an emotional mess and I realized through getting some help to navigate through the false and the true, I suddenly realized that if I remained “loyal” to my parents, and if I didn’t want to look at this stuff that had happened to me at their hands through the lens of truth in order to place the burden back on them and realize that this was not my fault, then I was actually giving them control over MY recovery and my will to recover, in order to protect them. (as we have learned to do our whole lives)
This isn’t about loyalty. I was fighting for my life, and I had to get really honest. I had to accept the past the way that it was ~ the plain honest way that it was without the loyalty and excuses that I consistently made for them all my life. What I am trying to express in this blog is about emerging OUT of victim mentality and into wholeness and freedom and real relationship.
In love and in truth,
Darlene Ouimet
Psychological, Physical, and Sexual Abuse WHY Questions
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Sometimes we get stuck on the “why’s” and the why questions. We can talk endlessly about what happened, we can realize that it was not our fault, we can face the pain of having been devalued, used, unprotected, powerless and disregarded, but the why questions still remain.
~Why did my mother seem to take pleasure in humiliating me?
~Why did my own mother publically tell men they could sleep with me? She even told my cousin that he could sleep with me because I was on the pill.
~Why would an adult sexually molest a child?
~Why did my mother’s boyfriend come into my room when I was a young teen, and why didn’t my mother believe me? Why did she blame me?
~Why did my mother hit me with a belt and then say that she was going to give me something to cry about?
~Why didn’t my Dad do anything to protect me? Why didn’t he notice?
~Why did my teacher hate me and threaten me every day until I was too sick to go to school? Why didn’t my parents believe me when I told them?
Thanks to the Emerging from Broken facebook page readers for participating in this post. Here are some of the questions that came in from readers on our Facebook Page:
~“Why are churches so closed minded about sexual abuse? Why do they put programs in place to prevent abuse, but not put programs in place to help victims?”
~“Why is it that in churches they tell you that if you read your Bible and pray, all the things from the past sexual abuse will just go away. They think you don’t need counseling or anything; you just need to get over it. Why is that?”
~”Why are the accomplices (those who ignore or allow or even assist in the abuse or hiding the abuser) are not charged or punished in the case of sexual or domestic violence abuse. Maybe more would speak up if a precedent was set. I know a lot of these people were/are victims or survivors too, but that is no excuse not to protect your own child.”
~ “Why is it that you feel as though you have just told someone you were abducted by green aliens when you talk about being sexually abused? They look at you as though you just said something that only a delusional person would say. AND that you have the audacity to put them in a position of having to respond.”
And this last question along with a very personal comment; ~ “Why is it that sexual abuse is one of the most heinous crimes out there, but most of the abusers never serve a maximum sentence? My father got out on good behavior; of course he did! There are no children in prisons to molest so he was on his best behavior! “
These questions are really just a handful of the “why questions” that we all have when it comes to having been abused, hurt or devalued in any way. Some “why questions” have possible answers but do they make us feel any better? When we hear that some people don’t care about their own children, but only their own selfish desires it only adds to the frustration that we already feel. Some why questions have no answers and sometimes the reason that we keep looking for answers is not just because we want so badly to understand but also because we believe that if we could understand that we would be able to move on. But think about that for a minute.
There is a danger in getting stuck on the WHY questions. Part of my victim mentality was made up of always seeking to understand others, and what that transferred into was that I made excuses for some of my abusers; there are as many excuses as there are abusers but really do any of the excuses help? I whispered in the dark to myself that my mother really did care, she just didn’t understand. I assured myself that my father didn’t know so he couldn’t do anything about it and that deep down he loved me as much as he loved my brother, it was just that he wasn’t interested in me because I was a girl and I assured myself that all fathers are this way. I told myself that some of my abusers were in an “altered state of mind” and really they just had no conscious clue what they were doing. I felt sorry for some of the women abusers that I had and told myself that surely they too had been abused and therefore it was not really their fault. I thought that I needed to try harder to “love” them and do what they wanted so that they would stop hurting me.
And as I have said so many times before I had been groomed and trained to believe that the reason that I was devalued is because I was not as valuable and because I deserved no better. I was convinced over time that I had done something; brought it on myself. I tried to understand my mother and I felt sorry for her, so I excused her behavior for many years and in excusing it, I allowed even more of it. I thought that if I found the reason “why” I could find the proof that really they did love me and then I could excuse them if only I understood. In reality, I was still looking to prove to myself that it really was my own fault or that I was still missing the “key” that would make them stop hurting me and start accepting me.
I had to let go of the why questions for a while. I had to in order to heal.
Today I still have why questions, but I also know that some questions don’t have answers and even more important than that, if there was an answer, it wouldn’t change anything, it would not make it alright, and it would not heal me.
Please feel free to add your own “why questions”,
Darlene
Victim Mentality (What Happened to Prince Charming?)
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Okay I admit it! Deep down I had dreams that prince charming would arrive and whisk me away on his beautiful horse and save me from the sad life that was mine. I was sure that being loved and treasured by the right guy was the answer that would solve all the problems and sooth all the hurt. As soon as that guy showed up, everything would be okay and I could start my real life. (Man oh man I waited a dang long time before I gave that dream up.)
But I had been victimized; I had a victim mindset and I was attracted to broken men. I was attracted to guys that needed me to rescue them, and for some reason I believed that if I did rescue them, then they would love me enough to make my life worth living.
I had this idea that if I did all the right things and soothed their pain, I could prove how much I loved them and they would love me back. I never noticed that I had this same belief about my parents. I didn’t realize that I believed that love is something that comes from doing something “good enough” for someone else. I didn’t know that deep down I thought that I was missing some key thing which is why no one would rescue me from my pathetic life.
Have you ever made excuses for someone because you knew that they had been hurt by life? Have you ever stayed with a boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, because you wanted to somehow communicate that you would not hurt him/her like the rest of the world had. Have you ever had a deep desire to prove to someone that not all life is bad, that not all people will hurt each other and that you could be the one person who understands; that one person that could make the big difference?
I had a few relationships like that.
I made these kinds of excuses for others. I seemed to have a soft spot when I knew that someone had had a tough break in life, and I felt sweeter towards them. At the very heart of my heart, I wanted to be understanding and I wanted to think only the best about others; I didn’t want to believe that they might actually intentionally hurt me, so I let it go when they did. I believed these people when they said “You know I would never hurt you on purpose, I love you, you know me” So I was cheated on, hit, forced to do things I didn’t want to do, degraded, devalued, stood up and so many other things and when I complained I was told there was something wrong with me and that I just didn’t understand. They assured me that they loved me so much. I adjusted and I believed, just like I believed my other abusers; just like I believed my parents.
Something that comes to mind when I think about all the boyfriends that I “understood” and believed I could love into wholeness and ease their pain with my amazing love powers, is that I never cut myself any of that same slack. I was always willing to be the one who tried harder. I was always willing to say “oh that’s okay honey, I know you didn’t mean to hurt me”. But I was also always willing to chastise myself and tell myself that I was a bad person. I never thought that I deserved that healing love power myself.
I didn’t consider that I deserved to be loved and saved by ME. I didn’t even think that if I loved and cherished myself, that my dreams of feeling and being “good enough” would come true. I didn’t consider that if someone cheated on me, degraded and forced me, that I didn’t have to take it. I didn’t have to TRY HARDER; I just needed to get out.
Today I don’t have that same definition of love and I certainly don’t think it is up to me to rescue, sooth, restore value or carry all the burden of the relationship. I have learned to value and respect myself and to look at myself with the empathy that I have always had for the ones who treated me like crap. I declared my own value and I embraced it and believed it. When I finally figured out how my value had been defined by others, and where they were wrong and why I believed it, I was able to re-wire that belief system and eventually I knew who I was and what my value really was. It is others who treat us like we are not good enough to be loved; it is not that we are not good enough to be loved.
Darlene Ouimet
Dysfunctional Family Teachings and the Fears of a Six Year Old
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- on the rocks
Dysfunctional families are dysfunctional early on. We may not realize it early on though because we have no other frame of reference. When we look back at our lives, we are unaware of getting stuck in some of our childhood fears. I talked a bit about this in my last post ~ Dissociated Identity as a Coping Method for Mental Health
Feeling the feelings is very scary especially if you don’t realize when you are facing them with the fears of a child. I used a cave analogy a little while back in a post about how navigating recovery is often like trying to feel your way through a pitch black cave with a faulty flashlight.
I had another image of the cave this time looking at it from the outside. It just flashed through my mind a few weeks ago; I was sitting on a picnic blanket in a beautiful field of wildflowers on a breezy sunny day. It was quiet and peaceful and I was all alone. I was surrounded by food and was using both my hands to eat, while I stared wide eyed in fear, into the mouth of the cave.
Something about that whole image bothered me, and it kept coming back to me over and over again in my minds eye. My wide eyed staring at the mouth of the cave seemed logical, I understand the fear or hesitation that I have about going in there, but the chipmunk eating (which I figured was just nervous eating) was what didn’t seem to fit right. The way that I was using both my hands seemed odd to me. When this image had flashed in the back of my mind for a couple days straight, I noticed that my shoulders were bare and that I had a little sundress on. I looked a little closer at this image in my mind and I realized that I was about six years old in this scene, sitting by myself in a beautiful felid facing the mouth of a pitch black cave which represented my faulty belief system.
Although I have faced many “fears of the unknown”, for some reason facing the cave this time was really scary until I realized that I was six; in my mind, I was trying to face this fear of dealing with more false truth and belief system stuff as a six year old!
I think this is a good illustration of the process of recovery. We usually think we are facing things at our current adult age, but the things we are facing that happened when we were children we seem to face with the same mindset we had as children at the time of the incident which formed the false belief.
Realizing that I am facing fears of a false belief that I adopted when I was only six helps me to be gentler with myself. I can use self talk to reassure my inner child that she is not alone. Becoming aware of my mind/age also helps me to understand where this particular fear started; I was around six when my mother started to teach me about sexuality. Our mother daughter relationship had some faulty foundations. Another benefit of realizing my mind age is that instead of looking at my fear of dealing with yet one more thing from the standpoint of an adult and reprimanding myself for still having these issues, I was able to realize that I am facing this with the thoughts, fears and understanding of a six year old ~ a six year old who was being taught that her looks and sexuality would serve her in a world that she was not ready to live in. I developed fears about not looking good enough, and because I was also sexually abused, I developed fears about looking too good. I was able to understand the confusion that still exists inside of me. I was able to breathe a sigh of relief because now that I know I am facing the cave as a six year old and I have been through this process before, I know how to re-parent myself and begin the process of getting me and my six year old self through it.
Emerging continues…
Darlene Ouimet
Dissociated Identity as a Coping Method for Mental Health
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When we find ourselves facing our mental health struggles, we usually realize that avoiding feelings is one of the biggest reasons that we develop coping methods. Sometimes avoiding feelings is the only way to survive the trauma. I realized when I was in my healing process that my dissociated identity disorder was one of the ways that I coped with everything. I had fragmented or broken into alter personalities so that I didn’t really have to feel because “they” (the alters) did it for me.
The way that I understand how this fragmenting takes place is that when a child experiences a traumatic event that is way too much to cope with, a new personality is born to take the memories and feelings and is in a way, separate from the core personality. In my case these other personalities began to deal with certain situations for me. For instance I did a lot of traveling in my twenties, and there was one alter that took over for all of my airport adventures. I didn’t realize that I had this other personality, but I did realize that I was completely different when I traveled. I had all this amazing confidence and wondered where the heck it came from. To this day since I have become whole, I feel very weird and uncomfortable in airports.
Different personalities took care of different situations. That was how dissociated identity disorder worked for me. When I got scared or even just uncomfortable, I disconnected from myself and the situation, and an alter personality took over for me. The purpose of “the alters” was to take care of me, my fears and my feelings. I was no longer able to deal with life, so they got me through. They took on the feelings and the memories as though they were separate from the real me.
There is an upside to it; these alter personalities got me through, they were how I survived. “They” dealt with everything for me, and as I got older, I even recognized a few of them and appreciated what I thought were just radically different sides of me. They got me places that I was afraid to go, they helped me do things that I was afraid to do.
There was also a downside to it; my life was a mess, I was not happy and the bottom line was that really, even with the alters, I still couldn’t cope. In becoming aware of some of my personalities, I was afraid of a few of them and the things that I-they would do often scared me. I was confused a lot of the time and had a lot of noise and chatter going on in my head. I never felt like me and I had these imposter issues. Sometimes I did things that “I” would never do, which was really confusing.
When I look back on my life with multiple personalities, it all looks very hazy as though I was on drugs or something. It was crazy and exhausting and when I got married and started having babies, I was so afraid of my strange behaviour that I completely shut down and eventually I never wanting to do anything or go anywhere and the depressions that I had on and off for most of my life got worse.
When I went into therapy, finally willing to face my dissociative behaviour I was terrified to learn how to live without dissociating but I was also sick of being sick and confused all the time. I had lost hope of ever living without depression and I hadn’t considered depression or dissociation as being types of coping methods. In a way I felt defeated, and in that defeat I think I surrendered the armour that I had built around myself, the ways that I coped and the walls that I had built around me, to protect my real self from the world. I gave up and I think it went a long way towards healing.
It turns out that coping methods are a lot of work! In the end it is far easier to just be one whole person. By facing the past and feeling those feelings I was able to heal. The reason that I used so many coping methods was really about the scared child inside me. I was still viewing the world as a powerless child because due to the circumstances of my upbringing, I was not able to grow up properly. By talking a look at the belief systems that I had adopted, I was able to go back and re-parent myself so that I could grow up and begin to view the world as an adult. When some of the wreckage of the past was exposed and seen for what it really was and the building of a new foundation was underway, eventually I didn’t need all those coping methods and my real life began.
Keep striving to go forward ~ You are worth it!
Darlene Ouimet
If you would like to contribute to this post, as always I invite you to leave your comments.
