Archive for Freedom & Wholeness
Standing up to Damaging Advice and Overcoming Trauma Directives
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- unhelpful directives
People always told me things like “deal with it” and “get over it” and “put it behind you” They always seemed so impatient with me and even exasperated that I was still “there” and not over it.
Has anyone ever given you instructions on HOW to “deal with it”? Have you been giving information about HOW to get over it, that didn’t include statements to which you have to keep asking “how do I do that”?
Just get over it (HOW?) Just put it behind you. (HOW?) ~ “give it to God”. (HOW?) To which the answer was “Have faith” (HOW?) well you get the picture.
I was told to accept things with statements like “nothing happens by mistake” And while I totally love that expression when I was in the right place at just the right time and suddenly met the person who was going to change my life, what about when someone uses that expression “nothing happens by mistake” when you are trying to comprehend the leftover emotions from child abuse? That expression becomes a way to try to make you grateful for having been abused!
What about people who tell me that I would not be the person that I am today if I had not been abused; that the abuse made me a stronger person. (again that I should be grateful that I was abused) But the truth is that I will never know how I would have turned out. I don’t know how strong I would have been if I had never been abused. Perhaps my brilliant mind would have been capable of Read More→
The Healing Power of Righteous Anger by Pam Witzemann
Posted by: | CommentsI am grateful and excited to have another guest post from Pam Witzemann ! This time Pam is writing about Anger. Righteous anger. Justified anger. Pam is a frequent guest blogger here at Emerging from Broken and contributes her voice to the comments in almost every post. As always please add your thoughts and comments. Darlene Ouimet Founder of Emerging from Broken
The Healing Power of Righteous Anger by Pam Witzemann
Righteous anger is the anger that Jesus used to clear the temple. It is the force behind the Civil Rights Movement and can be a powerful force for healing when employed by those who are victims of abuse.
As a child, I was emotionally and medically neglected. I was also emotionally and psychologically abused. This came by the hand of my parents. As a teenager, I was sexually abused and exploited by men. I spent most of my life thinking that I was the one at fault and my anger (which was enormous) was turned inward. I was angry with myself for all of the things that I suffered as a child and it led me into self-destructive habits and even, attempted suicide by age 18. I was angry enough to kill and I attempted to kill the one I viewed as my enemy, Me. At the time, I couldn’t even acknowledge what I felt as anger. I saw all anger as being wrong and I denied my own angry feelings. I, like many people, was taught that all anger was inappropriate and I hid my angry emotional responses by stuffing my anger and being mad at myself for being angry. By the age of 12, I was very depressed and I believe, my stuffed and misdirected anger (which was rage, a mindless and destructive anger) was Read More→
Saying Sorry Doesn’t Automatically Cancel the Damage
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Last week I published a guest Post by Pam about Self Abuse and how sometimes we “learn to be self abusive” by the ways we are treated as children. I enjoyed the conversations that went on in the comment discussions. I’m adding to another highlight to the conversation about self harm today.
Something that I was really confused about, both in the past and during my process of emotional healing was that I mistakenly thought if someone was truly sorry for their behaviour I believed it should cancel the DAMAGE done by their behaviour. I thought that I should be OVER it as soon as someone expressed regret for their behaviour. I felt guilty and ashamed that I still felt the effects of the damage that was caused to me. I am not talking about an isolated one time minor incident such as my mother losing her temper and calling me a brat. I am talking about being devalued, criticised, discounted, picked on, neglected and or abused over time.
I am familiar with both sides of this coin. My mother never said she was sorry for any of the damage that she had a hand in over my lifetime. A few times she said “I’m sorry but…” and the BUT always had excuses tagged on to it like “I’m sorry but I never wanted to be a single mother” or “I’m sorry but Read More→
Anger Problems on the Emotional Healing Journey
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I had a tough time with anger. I had problems with feeling anger. I didn’t think I felt it. I denied to myself that I ever had it. I didn’t want to feel it. I was proud that I wasn’t an angry person.
And the truth is that I totally misunderstood anger in the first place. I had a different kind of anger problem.
I related anger to self pity. I thought that if I was angry with someone who treated me badly that I was just feeling sorry for myself. I detested self pity; I had been taught that self pity was the “worst” emotion, so I certainly was not going to engage in it. I believed that anger WAS a form of self pity; therefore I didn’t allow myself to feel anger.
Because of the way that I had been raised, my belief system was all wrong. I had love mixed up with obligation. I had respect mixed up with ownership and compliance and the list goes on from there. In the same way that I had the definitions of love and respect mixed up, I also misunderstood my own emotions, labelled them as “other emotions” and dismissed the real emotion. That was part of how I survived.
Labelling certain emotions as other emotions was how I dealt with many emotions, not just the emotion of anger. Like my definitions of words like “love”, “respect” and “relationship” I misunderstood emotions like anger and self pity and traded them for other emotions so that I could Read More→
SPIRITUAL ABUSE:- THE CONFUSION OF FALSE TEACHING
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I am pleased and excited today to welcome my friend Fi Macleod. Fi is a fellow blogger and an amazing survivor of horrific abuse. Fi has a passion for writing and the subject of spiritual abuse is close to her heart. Please help me welcome Fi and her debut post on Emerging from Broken! As always, please we invite you to post your comments and participate in the discussion. ~ Darlene Ouimet ~ founder of Emerging from Broken
SPIRITUAL ABUSE:- THE CONFUSION OF FALSE TEACHING By Fi MacLeod
There is no aspect of my life which has not been affected by religion, religious and spiritual abuse. I grew up in an abusive religious family full of unattainable expectations. I witnessed religion used to explain abuse of all kinds.
I went to a Catholic school from age 8-11 because my mother was a teacher there. During that time I was taught to be a good Catholic, say my prayers, kneel, genuflect, cross myself, do all the right things, say all the right things. I witnessed nuns slap, beat and mock kids in the name of religion. I was taught only Catholics were the true religion, the Catholic way was the only way. To me the Catholic church was cruel, controlling and about keeping people apart. I could not get my head round that. The abuse I witnessed taught me “no matter how religious you are, no matter how good you are, there will always be something which will mean you’ll never be good enough, there will always be something that will mitigate against your religious goodness“. It taught me God was a fierce old man with a big stick in his hand who looked for every opportunity to beat you. It told me Read More→
I contacted my Childhood Sexual Abuser on Facebook by Nadia Ackerman
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Nadia Ackerman
Today for the special Friday feature, I am excited to have recording artist Nadia Ackerman sharing about contacting her childhood sexual abuser on Facebook after 30 years had passed and the results of this meeting. Nadia has graciously offered my readers a complimentary download of the song she wrote about her experience of being abused so please make sure that you visit the link to the download at the end of this post. ~ Darlene
I contacted my Childhood Sexual Abuser on Facebook by Nadia Ackerman
I had arrived home from a full day. I opened my computer and went online to read the news of the day that had just been. Scrolling down msnbc.com I stumbled across a video about a story of a letter in a bottle that had landed on the shore in Russia 24 years later after it had been thrown into the Baltic Sea.
A 13 year old boy Daniil found the bottle and inside there was a letter from Frank Uesback who was only 5 years old when he wrote the letter. “If you find this letter, please write back to me, and I will write back to you” the letter said.
Daniil made contact with Frank and they now chat online.
Whilst watching the video I was struck by the pureness of the little boy writing the letter and the bottle washing up on shore, still in tact and the connection they made. I finished up with reading the news and was struck with a sudden need to Google one of my abusers names Read More→
Dealing With Diagnosis Beyond the Labels
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- Darlene Ouimet CTACC
This past week I did an internet radio Broadcast on Blog Talk Radio with Susan Kingsley-Smith from Empowering Solutions.
It was a really good show and the feedback has been fantastic! We talked for 40 minutes about emotional healing starting off with my “in a nut shell account” about where it all started, the history of my depressions and dissociative disorders which were diagnosed several different ways by several different doctors and mental health workers. Susan contributes some of her history as well.
The bulk of the conversation is about where the solutions actually came from and the process of how I took my life back. I talk about the commonality that I discovered between myself and the people that I was speaking to in mental health seminars, which made me realize Read More→
Emotional Healing and the Causes of Low Self Esteem
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- Let the Sunshine In
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding” Khalil Gibran
I struggled and fought for some sort of “place” in the world for a very long time before I began to find my way out of that darkness that I talked about in my last post. I felt as though I didn’t belong; as though I was different then everyone else; as though I was somehow on the wrong planet. My healing began when I was able to face the causes.
That was where I found the answers to all my questions about why I had struggled so long with low self esteem, depressions, and dissociative disorders. It was scary to face the truth about my past, but looking back what was scary was that I thought “the truth” was going to confirm what everyone ELSE taught me about me. And what I had been taught about me was NOT the truth. I had been taught through actions, inaction, voice inflictions, direct statements and indirect statements, inference and intolerance, nurturing or lack of nurturing as well as rejection and that others WERE more important and therefore more valuable then me, all went into a big melting pot that became the collection of all the experiences that made up “my life” in order to form my belief systems.
The ways that I was treated and not treated, communicated to me that I was not really a valid person
And then on top of being defined as invalid, I had been taught, mostly in non verbal ways, that I was the only one that felt that way. That “my problem” was something that was Read More→
Coaching with Darlene on My Definition of Love
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I am really excited to welcome my friend and guest blogger Carla Dippel. Today Carla is writing about a coaching session we recently did. This post is an excellent example of how to dig down and discover your belief system about a specific concept; in this case “love”. As always please feel free to contribute to this wonderful post by leaving your feedback and comments. ~ Darlene Ouimet, founder of Emerging from Broken
Cocahing with Darlene on my Definition of Love by Carla Dippel
A few weeks ago, I was freaking out about love. I felt anxious, confused, and stuck. I had this sense that I was missing something, that I was scrambling in the surface of myself while there was much deeper stuff going on beneath that I couldn’t get at. I described this “freaking out”-ness to Darlene. In her masterful way, she asked me a couple simple questions that changed everything. I really cared about working through this struggle because I really cared about the part of my life that it was affecting. So I decided to be open and reveal the truth as honestly as possible. I had hope that in doing this I would find better answers than the ones I was working with at the time.
First Darlene asked me to reveal my definition of love. She added, “Don’t worry about sounding silly or trying to have the RIGHT answer. Just write what naturally comes out, what you believe off the top of your head.” I had this sense of taking my focus off the leaves of the tree that were sick and shifting it to the soil. What was really down there?… I felt afraid to be so honest. I don’t like feeling vulnerable or sounding stupid (especially). But I went to work. Here is what came out, un-edited and un-analzyed: Read More→
Emotionally Abusive Statements Designed to Control
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- with clarity comes freedom
Continuing from part one “Emotional Healing by Understanding Psychological Abuse” I talked about how Psychological Abusers misuse their power in order to control and abuse others. In this post I continue with some of the statements that emotionally abusive controlling people make to create fear, confusion and the inability to think, and to force compliance and obedience.
NOTE: These statements are used by ALL controllers, and although I often refer to parents, these statements are used by everyone who misuses their power in order to control others.
I believed statements like this: Read More→
