Archive for Survival
Sexual Harassment and the Truth about Freezing in Fear
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- 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 Read More→
Three Keys to Breaking the Chains and Facing Emotional Pain
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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 Read More→
Why I Didn’t Know how I Felt about Anything
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On the blog post about the feelings of loneliness in recovery a commenter wrote about “going blank” when she is asked how she ‘feels’ or what she “thinks” about something. This is something that used to happen to me as well and it is another one of those pretty common reactions that people have. The reaction of going blank or freezing at the question of “how do you feel” has an origin; it comes from somewhere and like all reactions it was something that I learned to do in order to deal with people. Freezing or going blank for me became a coping method and a way to survive but there is a reason that my mind learned to shut off and react Read More→
My Relationship with Me ~ Emotional Healing
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“When a child has been in a dysfunctional family system, that child grows up with some dysfunctional thinking. It can’t be helped. The dysfunctional ways of thinking in my family system got passed on to me. Dysfunction and mistreatment, psychological abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse all contributed to the survival methods that I had to adopt in order to stay alive”. ~Darlene Ouimet
I have this “to do” list. I tell myself that I am going to get “this much done” each day. I have it all mapped out. But I don’t stick to the plan. I get distracted, I want to chat on the phone, I want to read a book, I want to spend more time on facebook talking to all my peeps and updating the Emerging from Broken facebook page. I want to catch up on Twitter. I tell myself that all these activities are part of the greater goals that I have to spread this message. But the truth is that I am not Read More→
How Blame, Guilt and Shame get Misapplied to Self
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a childs mind
The belief system that I am constantly speaking of does not form all at once or form completely from one event. This is where it gets complicated. Other events factor into it, some of them normal healthy childhood events that may have familiar feelings attached to them, and it is really easy to lump them all together.
When a child is devalued, abused, or discounted, it is a matter of necessity, (survival) to build an understanding or comprehension, and that comprehension becomes like a filter that we look through. Child sexual abuse, being put down, called a liar, made fun of and ignored, and being physically harmed all became part of my history and the way that I processed that history became part of this “grid or filter” that I viewed all events through.
Being ignored on the playground at school brought up familiar feelings of rejection. My mind searched through my history for a reason that I had been rejected, and quickly related it to the feelings surrounding a trauma event. (Continued….) Read More→
How One Trauma Led to Several False Beliefs
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- in the mind of a child
I remember when I was talking about my first memory of being sexually abused. As I was speaking out loud about the details, being prompted for other tiny details and trying to remember even the thoughts I had about the trauma, I suddenly realized that I thought I could have stopped it. That ONE single belief caused a whole spiral of other problems for me and developed a very strong set of lies in my belief system. Because I thought I could have stopped the sexual abuse from happening, I also took responsibility for it happening. That led me to believe that I was a bad person. None of these thoughts were conscious. They happened as a result of that first subconscious belief that I could have stopped an adult from sexually assaulting me. Because I thought I could have stopped it, but I didn’t stop it, I was filled with guilt and shame. Guilt and shame that wasn’t mine, but guilt and shame that I thought was mine.
Here is the breakdown: Read More→
D.I.D. and the Essence of Who I Am by Carla Logan
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- Lovely Hope
I am really excited to welcome guest writer Carla Logan today! Carla and I have become great friends on this journey to freedom. In her process of recovering from Dissociative Identity, (the multiple personality disorder kind) Carla has focused on getting to know each of her alters as individuals, which was very different from the methods that I used to overcome dissociative identity however we have discovered that the destination for all those who travel from broken to wholeness is always about the journey back to self. We celebrate the common goal and our mutual successes. Please share your comments and thoughts with us in the comments section.
~ Darlene Ouimet, founder of emerging from broken.
D.I.D. and the Essence of Who I Am by Carla Logan
There seems to be a common experience among abuse survivors, we don’t seem to know who we are, as a person. What is the essence of who I am? Where do I find myself? What about me is real and what is not? There is a disconnect that happens inside us, not only from the world around us and how we see and feel and interpret it, but also from ourselves in how we see and feel and interpret who we are. There is so much junk to peel away and so much about our true selves to discover.
My own struggle with this has been through the world of Dissociative Identity Disorder and it has been filled with turmoil and fear and self hatred, not only throughout the course of my life, but especially throughout my recovery process. Discovering at the age of 46 that I had separated parts of self operating independent of the whole, was utterly devastating. I didn’t know what to do with this. I didn’t know how to feel about myself. What to believe about myself. I didn’t know how to find the real me in this newly discovered cast of characters who had all played the role of me all these years of my life, each in its own unique way. Which one was the most true representative of me? Read More→
Coping Methods ~ Trying to Escape Myself
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- Staying with Me
No matter which coping method issue that I look at within myself I have determined the core of it to be related to trying to leave myself. There is a disconnection from myself that I developed when I was a child; it was my way to escape and I became attached to it. Every time I examine one of those “still tangled threads” I keep coming back to this disconnection that it seems I actually seek; escaping myself. I am convinced that at least one of the reasons that I am attached to this “leaving myself” is because when I was a child, dissociation is what worked for me.
Now I have to remind myself that any form of coping method, although it may have worked at one time, is an escape from me that doesn’t work anymore.
I used to have dissociative identity disorder. I had the kind that was once called multiple personality disorder. The name of it was changed to dissociative identity disorder because lots of people leave themselves or dissociate from themselves and from their identity without actually becoming someone else or having alter personalities. Although I did have alter personalities and I did switch, I have found many similarities to others with dissociative identity disorder that were simply just “dissociated”.
Recovery for me has been about coming home to myself. It is a journey back to me and it is not an easy journey because for about 43 years I tried my hardest to get away from me; dissociating was the way that I did life. Somewhere between leaving me and coming back to me are the actual steps that I took to get the wholeness that I have today and that is what I write about.
As I take this recovery journey, I become more and more aware that the answers are within me, but when I forget that I start looking for answers outside of me. I mistakenly think that validation from others is going to help me. I think that having more friends is going to help me. I think that having the most popular blog on the internet is going to help me or losing weight and getting fit is going to help me and I chase those things for a time and come up feeling disappointed and not knowing why. I have to remember that that my validation does not come from outside of myself.
When I stay totally present it is as though I become “too aware” of myself. Life without coping methods means mega increased self awareness. When I become really aware of myself, I am subconsciously afraid that I might find out that I’m a disappointment, a failure and just plain not good enough. In the past I took on all that self blame and shame and I needed to keep dissociating because I was too scared to be me, because I thought “me” was so bad. Deep down I am afraid that with too much self awareness, all those memories about being unlovable and unworthy might come rushing up to the surface. The fear has always been rooted in being afraid to find out that the beliefs I adopted about myself as a child, the beliefs that were “taught” to me through actions, abuse, and the behaviour of others, might be true.
I have not switched personalities for several years now and I rarely dissociate the way that I used to either. I have found myself and my purpose. I live my life with passion and conviction and go after my goals with determination. I love my children and I work on my relationship with each of them and on my relationship with my husband almost daily. I love life. I love the freedom that I have found but sometimes I get going the wrong way too and I suddenly realize that I am facing something I haven’t faced before. And usually when I take a closer look I realize that I have tried to disconnect from myself again. I find myself, and then I get scared and try to leave myself, all the while trying not to admit that I am trying to get away from me again.
It is as though I believe that I can leave myself, in order to deal with myself, without having to feel anything myself. It never works, but I still try. So for me, this journey is about remembering to STAY with me and that is about self love, self acceptance, self validation and self empowerment.
“They” said it was me… But they were wrong. And I have to keep reminding myself that they were wrong, because none of this leaving myself or trying to escape awareness of myself, is conscious. It happens without thought. And so becoming more conscious is actually the goal. The more I face the fear of being present with myself, the more I realize that the fears are not real. I am afraid of lies; lies that I have spent years undoing and replacing with the truth.
I long for connection, freedom and peace but it is only in coming back to me that I find the freedom and peace that I long for and it is only in self connection that I get to keep it so that I can give it away. The good news is that the more often that I connect to myself, the more I remember that the keys to freedom are within.
And it is key for me to catch myself when I try to leave myself.
What are your thoughts about this topic? Have you ever related a coping method to escaping yourself?
Darlene Ouimet
Founder of Emerging from Broken.
Related Posts ~ Keys to Living in the Present
Tomorrow I will Start to Face the Pain
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- Healing and Holidays
Throughout the years of trying to change, I tried many things; in fact I tried almost everything that was suggested to me to try. Seminars, self help books, 12 step programs, I tried holistic medicine, cleanses, meditation, medication, vacations; I tried diet plans, fitness plans, naturopathic medicine, homeopathic medicine, you name it I likely tried it. Most of them became another obsession and another way to escape. And I am not saying that any of it was useless, just that none of it got me that much farther ahead. ALL of it was pointing me in the right direction towards emotional healing, but it just wasn’t the entire answer.
(NOTE: Something I noticed in the editing process of this post is that I opened this post with; “Throughout the years of trying to change” ~ See how deeply it goes? I never considered that I was trying to HEAL, just that I was trying to “change” as though I needed to “change” in order to be “okay” when in reality I was trying to give up coping methods without understanding why they were born.)
I was thinking about all the things I had tried attempting to enhance my recovery because of the quote I posted as a mental health tip on the emerging from broken facebook page. This is the quote: “Do not wait; the time will never be “just right”. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.” Napoleon Hill
I thought about this one thing that I told myself when I was trying to stay out of this coping method that was escaping into a fantasy life that I really loved to live in. The fantasy world was what I thought to be a “safe escape” but I was spending so much time there that I knew it was becoming self harming and destructive and that it wasn’t really helping me get where I really wanted to go. I tried very hard to notice when I was going into that fantasy world, trying to catch myself before I was immersed in the depth of disconnection from reality. And I remember that for a long time I would tell myself “just this once more”. I would promise myself that I would only escape there one more time. I would plead and convince myself that it was not harmful, that it didn’t hurt anyone… that one more time would not really change or damage anything.
I did this with almost every coping method that I ever tried to give up. I did it with binge eating. I did it with purging when I was bulimic. I did it with skipping my fitness programs when I was finally doing them for the right reasons. I even did it when I was going into a self berating spin and trying to learn to stop myself from beating myself up. I told myself that I would start tomorrow. Tomorrow would be the first day of my new life. Tomorrow I would make the necessary changes.
I did almost anything I could to avoid progressing into “better mental health”.
And when I finally noticed that I was doing this avoidance technique, I finally started looking at what I was avoiding. Why was I so afraid to STAY in reality? What was I avoiding taking a look at? What exactly was I trying so hard to escape from? WHY did I have so many coping methods?
And the answer, (or at least the root of the answer) of course was ME ~ I was trying to escape me. I was trying to avoid facing me but NOT for the reasons that I thought;
Deep down I really truly believed that I was the problem and that was why I could empathize with you and see your value ~ I could validate you and try to convince you that you didn’t deserve whatever happened to you, but I could not see that for me. The reason I was so afraid to face reality was because I was afraid that I would find out that I HAD NO REAL VALUE and I was avoiding finding that out.
I had to stop running from that fatal lie and when I did, that is when everything began to change. That was when I began to emerge from broken. That was when I finally turned that corner and began to progress into the new life that I live now.
How does this resonate with you? I find this stuff MUCH harder at holiday times of the year. Please feel welcome to share your thoughts and comments.
Darlene Ouimet
p.s. this is a process and I am not perfect. When I was almost but not quite finished writing this blog post, I jumped up and grabbed some crackers out of the pantry. I got some raspberry jam and cream cheese out of the fridge and proceeded to make myself an afternoon snack. When I thought about what I had been doing when I decided I needed the snack, and that I wasn’t really hungry, I realized that for some reason sharing this post with you made me want to escape. And that is very much what it looks like for me ~ I suddenly feel like “running”.
Do I worry about it? No….. well at least not nearly as much as I used to… it is all part of the process of emotional recovery. I often feel insecure about writing the things I write and lately I have been looking at some of the unhealthy ways that I deal with those thoughts and insecurities. And so today I decided to actually tell you. =)
Due to the depth of the comments on this post I wrote a follow up post which you can read by clicking the post title: “Before I faced the Pain I had to face the lies”
The Real Problem With Being Fake by Christina Enevoldsen
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- Christina Enevoldsen
It is my honor to have Christina Enevoldsen ~ Cofounder of the website Overcoming Sexual Abuse guest posting for Emerging from Broken today.
The Problem with Being Fake by Christina Enevoldsen
Many years ago, I tried to cultivate a relationship with an acquaintance. I listened attentively; I asked questions; I shared my thoughts and feelings. Nothing seemed to work. I had the feeling I was spending time with a mannequin. I tried for months to break through her plastic facade, but I never found anything vulnerable or real. I knew facts about her—carefully constructed data—but I didn’t really know her. One day, in exasperation, I told her to drop her phony act and be herself. I assured her that I’d like the real her, but the fake stuff was driving me crazy. Not surprisingly, my pep talk didn’t inspire intimacy. She backed off in a big way and we rarely spoke after that.
I crave intimacy and deep connections, so masks have always turned me off. I want to know what you’re really passionate about. What are your deepest fears? How are you really feeling? I don’t care about the weather; I don’t want to know what you bought at the mall. Tell me who you really are.
The funny this is, for most of my life, I’ve been covered by a facade. My childhood abuse gave me a distorted image of myself and I was convinced people wouldn’t like the real me. I couldn’t articulate just what was so bad; I just knew that the real me was impossible to love. I desperately wanted acceptance and thought that covering up was the only way to have that.
I’ve worn a variety of masks for different occasions and for different people. I made it a habit to study others to figure out what they wanted so I could conform to their desires. I’d gauge their reactions and adjust my performance accordingly.
I thought wearing masks would make me more likeable, but it was actually making me less likeable. I eliminated the possibility for deep relationships by constructing a barrier. Looking back, I can see why I experienced so much rejection, even from nice people. They couldn’t relate to my false front. Even if someone connected with that false persona, it wasn’t the type of connection I longed for, since it was based on a lie. I could never have real intimacy.
I rejected my true self before I even gave people the chance to accept or reject me. The rejection of my true self led to putting on a false self, which led to rejection by others, which led to more rejection from me. What a very vicious cycle that was!
I discovered that before I could have a satisfying relationship with others, I had to have a satisfying relationship with myself. I couldn’t have that as long as I was covered in shame and self-loathing. I needed to see the real me instead of the lies my abuse taught me. I needed to sort through those lies and accept the truth so I could see my value and love myself.
When I learned to accept myself, I let the real me shine through. I can connect with others now since I’m connected to myself. I have deeply fulfilling relationships based on truth—who I really am—a unique and lovable person.
Christina Enevoldsen
Christina Enevoldsen is cofounder of Overcoming Sexual Abuse, an online resource for male and female abuse survivors looking for practical answers and tools for healing. Christina’s passions are writing and speaking about her own journey of healing from abuse and inspiring people toward wholeness. She and her husband live in Los Angeles and share three children and three grandchildren.
Overcoming Sexual Abuse also has a very active facebook page.
