Archive for Survival
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.
Familiar and Comfortable Coping Methods
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Have you ever had a comfy pair of bed sheets that were so soft and perfect that you didn’t want to throw them out and you kept patching and sewing them when they fell apart? What about a pair of perfect shoes or a pair of jeans that were the best fit ever and it was a very sad day when they were threadbare and had to go to the trash. Letting go is hard. Letting go of anything is hard.
My slippers are wearing out. They are my favorite; soft suede upper with sheepskin type soft comfy fluffy lining inside. Well that is how they used to be anyway. Now, they are wearing out and actually they are not as comfortable as they once were; in fact the support is going in them, and sometimes I slide to one side and go over a bit on my ankle, but still I can’t wait to put them on when I get out of bed or when come home. They are comforting and familiar; they are my slippers. They fit my feet; they are warm and cozy, like wearing pillows, soothing me after a long day. Well at least they used to do all that. They are not really doing ALL that anymore. But I still want to wear them, I don’t want to replace them, I don’t want to let them go, I keep remembering how great they were one time.
Looking back, before I decided to deal with my depression, low self esteem, dissociative identity problems, bi polar, post traumatic stress disorder ~ well you get the picture, I was like that with my life. I didn’t realize it but I was comfortable with my coping methods and I thought they worked. When I was a child I escaped into a fantasy world. When I was a teenager, I added to that fantasy world escaping into books, food, and then alcohol. I escaped into drugs to cope with the results of escaping into food. I had serious depressions which were a direct result of not having any help dealing with things. It got complicated. I liked not dealing with things; when I was a child I had no choice, I didn’t have any help to deal with anything; I had no support. Not dealing with things became the way that I lived. Coping methods became the way that I survived. Not facing the truth, not standing up for myself; all of that felt safer than trying to deal with things that I had never been given the tools to deal with.
So my coping methods; depressions, binge eating or starving, over exercising, flirting, dangerous relationships dissociating and disconnecting were all familiar and comfortable but just like the slippers, my coping methods were not working anymore. Oh I tried to make them work. I believed that they would work again, because I could not stop remembering that they worked in the past ~ when I was a child.
Just like when I was a child, I kept getting my reality mixed up with my fantasy ~ kept thinking that my coping methods were the answer, and that they would work again the way they used to work. I thought that if I could just be who my mother wanted me to be, she would finally love me. I thought that if I could just impress my father enough, he would finally notice me. I carried this struggle with me into other relationships and recreated not being good enough to be loved or noticed. And I used coping methods, many different ones over the years and I thought they worked and when they didn’t work anymore, and when they became the problem, I changed the coping method, but the belief system was still in place; the comfortable familiar belief system. I ended up needing coping methods to deal with my coping methods, all of which kept me safe from looking at the root causes, because deep down I believed that I could not face that kind of pain.
Round and round I went, spinning in an ever increasing cycle of fantasy, depression and low self esteem, disconnecting from the truth, even when I got a glimpse of it, because I facing the truth would mean that I had to take some sort of action, maybe take a good look at my life and the people in it, maybe make some changes.. and it just seemed easier to grab those old slippers.
But as most of you know, I didn’t stay there.
A whole new way to thrive;
Darlene Ouimet
Announcement:
Therapist John Wilson from ~ Online Events ~ presents ~ Emerging From Broken – Interview with Darlene Ouimet on Sunday Nov.03 at 12:00 Noon Pacific, 3:00 pm EST and 1:00 pm Mountain time. London: 8:00 pm, Sydney: 5:00 am. Please visit the following link in order to reserve your ticket. Click on the first box ~ there is no charge for the live event. Hope to “see” you there. http://emergingfrombroken.eventbrite.com/
The Little Girl who cried Wolf; Belief System Development
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I was labelled as a story teller from a very young age. I remember my parents saying that I talked to hear myself talk. Although I don’t remember exactly what I used to do, apparently I was a little bit dramatic and I pretended that I needed help a lot and I was told that I would scream “help” for no reason. I remember when I was a little bit older in childhood years that I believed I was a liar and made things up, probably because I had been told that I was.
To put this in another way, I learned to question my memories ~ I learned to doubt myself. I learned to believe that I exaggerated and was a story teller. And I also remember embellishing the truth, nothing serious or life threatening, just kid stuff, but I think I did it for attention. I was so starved for attention and I think I did it because no one ever HEARD me. So mix a little truth in with a little false, and add the mind of an abused child to the recipe, and you have some understandable results.
I do remember being told the story of the little boy who cried wolf especially after this one event when I got in a lot of trouble but I really did need help that time.
I was about eight years old and my cousin was being baptised and we were all gathered at my grandparents for a big family after party. My grandmother smoked cigarettes and she had a lit cigarette in her hand and the kitchen was really crowded. I was small, and I looking up and I remember seeing her cigarette as she held it above her head and navigated her way through the crowd, BUT she bumped into my grandfather; her cigarette hit him in the forehead, and as I was looking up at both of them, the burning embers fell into my eyes and onto my eyebrows and face. I screamed. I was no longer able to see, but I remember my father grabbing me by the arm and very sternly saying “that’s it”. I was about to get spanked for screaming, but someone explained to him what happened, or he saw my face and eyes, I am not sure about that part, but I didn’t get spanked. He had to go to the pharmacy to get something for my eyes. And that is when I got the lecture. I remember being told that this was a prime example of why I should not scream for help when I didn’t need help because my father admitted that he was going to spank me for screaming for what he assumed was for “no reason”.
All my life I remembered having the embers falling in my eyes as a shameful event. It was the time when something bad happened to me, but because I was so naughty and always screamed for help when i didn’t need help, that this bad thing, which was an accident, became a reaffirmation that I was a bad girl who screamed for attention (help) when I didn’t need it.
It was very hard for me to sort these particular things out, because there were a few other significant memories that added to the cigarette accident, and intertwined with it forming an even more solid belief system about myself. This is about how the foundation formed and about how I regarded myself ~ how I was able to end up blaming myself for the sexual abuse, neglect, physical abuse and the resulting depressions, failures, and so many other things.
I will guess that I was between 7 and 9 years old when I did this horrible thing. I faked a nightmare. I had SO much trouble sleeping as a child, it seemed like I laid awake in bed for hours every night and in the daytime I tried so hard to get my father’s attention and I must have gotten some attention at one time from having nightmares (I do recall that I had a lot of real ones) so I screamed and cried and my father came in and he held me. Instead of that being a wonderful memory however, it was something I remembered for the rest of my life. It was an embarrassing memory filled with guilt and shame because I pretended to have a nightmare for attention ~ proving to myself that I was a liar and a faker. It was just one of the “things I did” that proved in my mind that it really was me that was the problem, that I brought it all on myself.
That time I lied, I was attention seeking, I was making something up, I was exaggerating, I was a bad girl and it was no wonder that my parents didn’t love me, didn’t want to listen to me, didn’t want to protect me from monsters that they told me only existed in my head. When I told the truth, I was ignored; I was told that I must be wrong, so I linked those admonishments to the times where I had been lying.
So let’s do a quick recap; (click on the sentence to see the related blog post)
~My first memory of sexual abuse was at the age of a little over two. I don’t know if I told or not, but I was left to deal with it.
~We have a story about how my mother dressed me up in a black lace teddy at the age of 6 and sending me out to dance in front of my father’s business associate, which I relate to being the beginning of learning that my value was sexual.
~We have the story of me telling my parents that I was being emotionally abused by a teacher and they didn’t believe me.
~In the present post we have a story of my being under a little shower of burning embers and getting heck for it, because it was a great way to “teach me” that I should not tell stories.
~ In the present post we have the story of an actual lie that I did tell. Yes there were others.
~ Then when I was 14, when my mother said it was in fact my fault that I got sexually assaulted in the night by her boyfriend… I accepted that.
If you keep in mind that as children we can’t blame our parents, because we believe they have the power to allow us to live or die, which means that our only choice is to change and be good enough to be loved ~ then do you see how these combined events worked together to help form my false belief system? Can you see how they led me to believe and accept false things about why I was not protected from emotional harm, and from sexual abuse? Can you relate to how I was convinced that it was me? That I was bad? I was unworthy of love, protection, and even simple affection and comfort?
It was in breaking this all down that I was able to understand how I came to those conclusions about myself. It was in understanding how the false belief system formed, that I was able to take it apart, re-wire it and put it back together in truth.
Please share anything you want to share, or if this post triggers memories in any way you are welcome to share them here if you wish.
Darlene Ouimet
Announcement:
Therapist John Wilson from ~ Online Events ~ presents ~ Emerging From Broken – Interview with Darlene Ouimet on Sunday Nov.03 at 12:00 Noon Pacific, 3:00 pm EST and 1:00 pm Mountain time. London: 8:00 pm, Sydney: 5:00 am. Please visit the following link in order to reserve your ticket. Click on the first box ~ there is no charge for the live event. Hope to “see” you there. http://emergingfrombroken.eventbrite.com/
Dissociative Identity ~ The Solution became the Problem
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Susan Smith from “A Journey” wrote an inspiring guest blog post for me the other day about turning points and emotional healing, and it reminded me of the ways that I learned how to finally get quiet and face the turmoil in my mind so that I could face the turmoil in my life.
Like Susan’s therapist my therapist also taught me to be more aware of what was going on in my mind and in the end this is how I learned to stop dissociating and disconnecting from myself. Instead of examining alter personalities, my therapist concentrated on the behaviors I was presenting with. Recovery from dissociative identity disorder was about learning to stay with myself. I learned to ask myself a series of questions and I learned how to incorporate positive and gentle self talk.
In therapy sessions I would switch subject rapidly and jump all over the place and my therapist picked up on this avoidance technique and pointed it out to me. Much to my horror he wanted to video tape me so that I could see what I do. For some reason the thought of being videotaped while I was spinning out loud and dissociating really scared me and I decided to listen to his directions about how to stop doing it. He taught me to ask myself if the direction I was thinking in was going to help me get where I wanted to go in recovery, OR if it was going to hold me back in recovery. That became a starting place for me.
In asking myself those questions I also became aware of my body reactions. Did I feel tense or anxious and then I turned to my thoughts and considered the following; were there hundreds of thoughts at one time? Was there fear? Was there self judgment? When there was that much noise in there I could never pick out just one thought which is how I came to refer to it as the spin.
After becoming aware of some of this head chatter, I learned to recognize when I was about to dissociate. Often it was so profound that I could “see myself” leaving my body. In my mind’s eye I literally pulled myself back; I reached out my hand and grabbed myself by the back of my shirt and asked myself to “stay with me”… sounds so odd now, but it worked and pretty soon I was staying with myself more and more and becoming more conscious of time, thoughts, and feelings ~ especially fear.
The first step in dealing with fear was in acknowledging that I had them. There were many. I had to admit to myself that yes I had fears. I didn’t identify them all at once, and sometimes just identifying them was cause for dissociating but eventually I was able to acknowledge them; I was afraid that I was going to be molested in the night. I was afraid that I was not lovable, I was afraid that I would be hit. I was afraid that I would never feel good about myself, but I believed it was my own fault. Deep down I was mostly afraid that “they” were right about me, that I was the problem and if I didn’t figure myself out and shape up I would die a lonely and bitter unloved woman. My children would hate me and I had this sense of running out of time… all the time.
One of the problems that I realized I had with this whole train of thought is that I thought the fears were silly; that they were not logical anymore and in regarding them that way, I discounted them. Discounting my fears was the same as discounting myself, and once again, dissociative behavior was the result.
As I became more conscious, I was able to slow myself down, to slow the thoughts down enough that I could actually pay attention to them. This increased my awareness of what the self talk actually was. Instead of telling the “voices” in my head to be quiet, I learned to listen to them for clues. As I became aware of the fears that were some of the root causes that drove me to dissociate as an adult I was able to identify how much control those fears had over my life and as I listened to the head chatter, I realized the depth of the fear.
I learned that those fears were rooted in my childhood. My dissociative behavior was beneficial to my survival because as a child I had no choice. Going back there to those times and realizing where those fears were born and why they existed in the first place, enabled me to understand first, the purpose they served then and purpose of the resulting dissociative behavior. Then I looked at the purpose those fears serve now and began to look at whether or not dissociative identity disorder served me at all anymore. I certainly could comprehend why I needed to dissociate back then, and why the fears served me ~ both were a survival method. The fear was the warning system; dissociating was the coping method. I realized that I was afraid to let go of the fears. They were very closely related to self control and I believed without total control of my life I would be in danger and I would ultimately die.
It was in taking all of this apart from the outside and exploring into the depth of the inside that I found the keys to healing.
How does this post resonate with you? Can you see that dissociative behavior, which once was the only answer, eventually became the problem?
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
Survivors of Abuse and Re-establishing Self Worth
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- Emerging from Broken
Being survivors of sexual abuse, domestic violence, religious abuse or psychological abuse has a lasting effect on us. One of the worst consequences is that our value has been falsely defined by others. We are told who we are and who we should be. Over time we are conditioned to accept that we don’t deserve as much as others; we don’t feel like we are “as good” as others and we don’t know how to grow our own healthy self esteem. The building blocks for self esteem and self worth were taken from us, often when we were children. Abuse robs us of innocence and the ability to progress to maturity in a healthy way and since we are conditioned to somehow accept that the abuse is something we deserved or caused, we don’t look at ourselves with clear vision.
In my case I constantly tried to fix me and when others were having a bad day I thought I should fix that too. In any relationship problem in my life, I took responsibility for the repair of it. I took the blame for the breakdown of it too. This didn’t always look like I agreed that it was my fault, but I was willing to believe that I was too sensitive, too demanding, too controlling, too needy and too unreasonable, and I was willing to adjust my expectations accordingly. Usually that still meant that I was willing to take less than I deserved and take way less than I was willing to contribute to a relationship. The problem was that I was always the one doing the adjusting. That came from the conditioning and the belief system that I adopted as a result of being devalued. I had grown up believing that I was not as important, not as valuable as others and I was used to it. I was used to trying to make someone else happy and I believed that if I complied that I would be safer. It never occurred to me that the abuse was not something I caused OR deserved so I still believed that being what someone else wanted was where I would be accepted and loved and the truth is that I was never once loved for being who someone else wanted. It was as though they demanded I be who they wanted me to be and then they resented me for being so compliant and in order to feel good about themselves again, they demanded me to change more. I was so used to jumping through these hoops that I kept trying to comply and the cycle just continued; the fog got thicker and I had trouble seeing what was really going on. My self esteem got worse all the time, but until I realized the root of the problem, there was no real lasting recovery.
I had to get to the bottom of the truth before I could discover who I really am and find my value for myself. This began with me realizing that I had always been at the bottom of the value barrel in my family of origin, in my husband’s family and then it was even happening in my marriage family, with my husband and kids. I was so used to having less value that I accepted and even expected to have less value. I accepted it as the truth.
I had to decide that I was worth more, that I was worth saving and that I deserved equal value. And then I had to realize that it was up to me to take my value back; to take back the value and self worth that had been taken from me. I am not suggesting that this was easy, or that all I had to do was decide to do it. I had to go deep into the heart of what I believed about myself, and realize that my beliefs were taught to me by abusers and controllers and that most of my beliefs about myself were not given to me by people who loved me in the true definition of love. I was able to grow up my self esteem when I realized where the damage to it came from and righted those wrong beliefs. I had to realize that no one, not parent, friend, lover or therapist, was going to be able to establish my worth for me. They can help along the way, but no one’s approval is going to make me okay unless I believe I am okay, but it was only because I realized how ripped off I had been by the adults in my life, that I was able to take responsibility for my recovery and begin to emerge from broken!
If you believe you aren’t worth it, nothing will convince you to treat yourself otherwise.
Darlene Ouimet
Dysfunctional Family Contributes to Sexual Coping Methods
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In my last post “Psychological Abuse is the Root of All Abuse ~ many years later ” I talked about one incident that reflected on how my belief system impacted my life. I continue today with examples of how this played out in the past.
I have written in the past about how I was actually taught that my value as a woman was sexual and how that belief became true for me over time. This false belief has caused me many problems some of which I continue to become more aware of as time goes on. Like so many other multi level belief systems, this belief that my value was sexual has been a very complicated belief system to untangle, especially since I acquired it by the time I was about 6. As I grew up, it was continually reinforced along with the connected belief that I brought on and actually caused any sexual misconduct or inappropriate behaviour that came my way.
Coming from a dysfunctional family system, out of necessity we develop survival systems and these become our coping methods in order to deal with the feelings of not being valuable, not being safe etc. Each person has their own way of doing this and the dynamics between us can be very similar and very different or a combination of both. Because these systems were developed in the first place to protect us, it is hard for us to re-wire them. Our minds actually caution us against changing our thinking because we so deeply believe that these coping methods are what are keeping us safe.
Coping methods become like a buffer zone. Sometimes there are some really destructive behaviours that we believe keep us safe and we are afraid to give them up because we are convinced that these behaviours are part of the solution, such as in the case of addictions. Depression and sexual behaviour can also be coping methods though. The purpose and passion that I have for writing the posts for this blog is to shed some light on the stuff that gets in the way of this work; I believe it goes deeper than just the coping method. It starts in how we develop our belief systems in the first place. The challenge is that we have developed so many belief systems and coping methods, therefore there is so much to untangle.
When it came to men and my belief system about my sexuality, I believed that my power, value and even my safe existence all depended on men; not just men but men who desired me and part of the problem is that therefore, I tried to make men desire me. Taking this all apart and sorting through it was difficult because there were so many different beliefs, fears and aspects to it. I remember in high school I had a science teacher, a much older man who wore nerdy glasses and bow ties and I was very afraid of him. How I coped with that fear is that I constantly stared him in the eye and smiled while he was in the middle of teaching. It was my way of throwing him off. He was not at all the kind of teacher that any girl would flirt with. I was so mixed up that I thought being sexually attractive proved my worth, but it also might keep me safe in certain situations. If he was sexually attracted to me, he would not yell at me or pick on me for not understanding the work. He would show me “favour”. It wasn’t that I thought “having sex” with someone would keep me safe, it had more to do with the misunderstanding of my value, and my behaviour around sexuality. I thought that a man “wanted me” I was safer. I thought he would feel more tenderness towards me. I had love and sex mixed up. In the case of this science teacher, I was not afraid of him sexually, I was afraid of his moods, so I threw him off balance with my sexuality because that was the foundation that I had been taught about survival.
As you can imagine, this tactic sometimes backfired.
Because I had been sexually abused, I also associated sexuality with fear and when I was afraid of a man, I often turned on the sexual energy thinking of that as somewhat of a protection. It made me feel more in control and I believed that being in control was all important. I associated not being in control with being hurt in all ways. When I was 19 I had a boss who was over 40 years old and married. I was afraid of him and saw him as having power over me (my job was in his hands) and I turned on the charm; it backfired when he took me up on my flirting. I was so sure that everything in life was my fault so I just froze the same way that I did when I was a child. I froze and dissociated ~ disconnecting from myself and from the situation. (Another coping method.) You can also see how this coping method does not work. Once I dissociated, I had even less control and my job was in jeopardy even more then it was originally.
These two stories illustrate two very different aspects of one coping method that was born out of my belief system based on how I was taught that my sexuality was my value but I was also afraid of it and believed it was the cause of my problems as well. As I grew in my understanding of how my belief system formed, I was able to untangle the beliefs as well as replace them with truth and I was able to stop reacting to situations this way. I also stopped connecting my value with my sexuality and realized that my definition of safe and in control was very wrong. As this all got sorted out, I needed coping methods less and less.
Fearlessly exposing truth!
~ Darlene Ouimet
The Beginning ~ Emerging from Broken
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I have been writing some pretty in depth posts about how the belief system gets messed up and altered and how the lies that we owned as the truth have shaped our belief system and imprisoned us in falseness. And I have been getting emails and questions about the “overcoming part”. There are many parts to the overcoming part which is commonly known as “the process”. In the coming weeks I hope to shed a bit more light on this.
Each part of the process has its own difficulty and each part has its breakthroughs and celebrations. The point is to pursue wholeness at each stage; to keep going forward. To keep pressing on because a little bit of freedom is just over that next wall and a little bit more freedom is over the wall after that. A little bit of freedom, a little bit more wholeness, and so on and so on. That is the process of emerging from broken.
Most of my adult life I’ve been what I refer to as a “truth seeker” or “a seeker”, which to me is the same thing. I studied many religions. I studied inspirational speakers and teachers and their work. I studied Greek and Hebrew word origins for 8 years in precept bible studies and did a lot of homework every day. I felt guilty that I didn’t feel purposeful, that I didn’t feel like I was okay or that I fit in and belonged. I practiced gratitude, and felt guilty that I deep down I was unhappy; I practiced positive thinking, I prayed every day but I never felt really right. I remember asking a therapist that I was seeing for one of my major depressions, “when am I going to just get over this stuff, (the past) I have been trying to get over it for 20 years.” He said that the abuse was part of who I was. That I might never get over it.
He might as well have shot me right there. I took his answer to mean that there was no hope that I would ever be free of the past that secretly drug me down into the depths of despair on a regular basis. My past messed with my self esteem, my self worth and my productivity as a person. It had become who I was, I was someone who had been abused. I was someone who had used alcohol and illegal drugs to cope with life. I was someone who struggled with depression and dissociative behaviours. I was someone who identified with being “unfit” and “invalid”. I was “used”, dirty, and shame filled. I was really tired. These things defined me.
I wanted to be defined differently but could not seem to ever get past the past. I wanted to be “washed clean” and all that great stuff that I heard when I went to churches, but it didn’t seem to happen for me. I could not have tried harder. For well over 20 years I was preached at, prayed over went to self help programs, seminars, conferences, well you name it, I tried it. The dirty feeling didn’t go away for very long; it always came back.
I felt like I had to hide all these feelings because everyone else said that they were “saved” or free or healed but never said exactly what that meant and I thought I must be doing something wrong, or that I was just plain ungrateful. No matter how often I picked myself up, my past seemed to be there, and I was getting really tired. But one day, on perhaps the darkest day before the dawn, I met someone who gave me hope. I met a therapist who had a different way of looking at things then other therapists I had been to. I was told that I could get over my past, I just had to learn how. I had to face it, dig down deep into my past and expose the lies that I had accepted as truth, and replace them with real truth. And so it began.
Stay tuned I will continue….. Darlene 
Security Blanket of Coping Methods ~ My Survival Mode
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- Darlene at 21
Everywhere I go I have the privilege of meeting people and impacting their lives. Usually I can plant a few seeds that take root and grow the desire for wholeness and freedom from things that hold people back from being all they can be and all of who they are.
While I was in Mexico last month, I met an interesting man in his late twenties, who by his own admission, was not quite ready to let go. He reminded me so much of myself when I was younger that my heart was touched. Even though I found myself intently listening to his story, on another level I found myself reminded of things I had not thought of for a long time. He triggered intense memories about my resistance to recovery and how frightening it was to think of giving up my coping methods. I recalled the fear that I had of living in freedom and even where I still struggle in a few areas. I was reminded of the absolute terror of learning to trust myself, the fear I had of finding out who I really am and what it took for me to learn to live in that wholeness.
In the two weeks since I have been home, I’ve realized a deeper understanding of how scared that I was to get healthy; to face and deal with my issues and live a whole life in freedom from the chronic depression and dissociation that I lived with for so long. My dissociative identity, constant depressions and my obsession with my weight and body image had become like a blanket of comfort for me. They were the spin that I lived in. They were me; my identity. They were my survival mode and they made me feel safe. I believed that that these coping methods were the solution; how could they ever be the problem? Every time I tried to let go of the cozy blanket of survival, even to let go of one small piece of it, I felt naked, exposed, freezing, scared and way too vulnerable. I felt out of control. Control was essential if I was to feel safe. Deep down inside in my subconscious, I felt sure that I would die without the security blanket of coping methods that I had developed over the years.
It is necessary to develop these coping methods especially when we are children however a huge part of my recovery process was about realizing that I was no longer a child, and that so many of my coping methods were developed to protect myself as a child. They did evolve into adult coping methods, but the problem was that they were based in childlike thinking. I had to recognize that these problems were indeed coping methods, recognize the lies I believed which gave them their basis, replace those lies with the truth, and then realize so much of the protection I developed was no longer necessary. Then I had to re-parent myself with my new grid of understanding.
It wasn’t that the abuse or that I was so devalued was a lie; it was that I thought I had some control over it or that I should have been able to have some control over it; that I thought I deserved it and that I brought it on myself ~ that was the lie. I developed my survival methods for protection in two ways. The first one was to be able to deal with and live with the abuse itself. The second was to protect myself from further abuse.
In my process through therapy, on my journey to wholeness, I threw off the security blanket of coping methods one layer at a time and learned a new way to live. Some days I do feel exposed and sometimes I still get scared, but I find that as time goes by, I get more and more comfortable with my new life.
~Darlene Ouimet
