Like Minded?

I decided to do a search on Google using the key words “belief system” and one of the first things that came up was the instruction to “challenge your belief system” (not much instruction on “how to do the how”) But one of the suggestions on challenging your belief system struck me as odd; it said ~ “choose like minded friends”

That is an interesting directive; I chose like minded friends most of my life. And when I thought about that statement, choosing like minded friends was actually natural and also a part of the problem.  Like minded isn’t always a positive thing!

~ As a child at school I chose other kids who were withdrawn like I was. I fit in better with them.

~When I was a young adult, I chose other survivors of dysfunctional families who were in denial. We stayed in denial together.

~ I chose men who thought that they were more important than I was. I didn’t think I agreed with them, but my actions and the acceptance of the way that they treated me as “less than them” shows that we were in fact like minded.

~I chose friends who like me, were pretending that their lives were wonderful. We were like minded in our denial.

~ Sometimes I chose girlfriends that “used me” and took advantage of me to baby sit their kids or to drive them somewhere. They used me and I thought doing what they wanted was “love”. I thought that their needs were more important than mine were and they agreed with me. We were like minded that way.

The point is that I chose like minded people without realizing what was mixed up in my own mind! I didn’t realize that “like minded” was not necessarily a good thing!

The only way that I could change anything about my life was to find out what my belief system WAS and where it was on the wrong track.  That is not the easiest thing to do because the belief system forms when we are very young and we don’t realize in childhood when our normal is in fact a “false normal”~ meaning NOT normal or healthy at all.  It was a challenge to figure out what was dysfunctional IN my own thinking. “I had to expose “my normal” to myself and reject it as the “false normal” that it was.

So many “self help books” and “self help programs” focus on changing the thinking by using will power. Positive thinking, affirmations and “acceptance” of the past i.e.: it happened now let it go. I tried that for about 25 years before I found out that the real changes in my operating system came quickly when I found the roots of how the dysfunctional beliefs got there in the first place. I was not born broken. I was not born with a false normal belief system.

Choosing “like minded” people to hang out with and to have mutually respectful relationship with was a lot healthier for me once I found out the beliefs that were dysfunctioning and dysfunctional in my “mind” in the first place and then changed them; then it was much easier to choose “healthy” like minded friends instead of the like minded unhealthy friends I had gravitated towards in the past.  It’s obvious to me now that when friends and associates exhibited abusive and devaluing traits that were so familiar and even comfortable to me that it was only natural to connect with those people who seemed so “like minded”.

I am happy to say that have a much healthier idea of what “like minded” is today. I pursue mutually respectful and mutually valuing relationships.  I try to be aware and to resist dismissing any “red warning flags” that I get when I meet a new friend.  

I have also discovered that “true” self help is actually helpful and does not add more confusion.

Please share your thoughts about looking at the topic of “like minded” through a new grid of understanding.  The truth set me free, but it was not that easy to find it.

Another little snapshot of truth;

Darlene Ouimet

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Darlene Ouimet ~ Smile

One of the biggest uncomfortable and reoccurring memories that I have is of constantly being told to smile. It was not encouragement, it was a directive. I didn’t realize it at the time, I was too young when it started but today I know that it was a judgment of me. It was said “as a judgment”  

I wonder why no one asked me why I was so unhappy. I bet my mother would say that she did ask. But what I remember is her asking why I didn’t smile more like this; “Why don’t you smile Darlene… you always look so sullen.” That was a rhetorical question.  She didn’t want an answer. She was not concerned. She just didn’t want me to look “sullen”.

It is important to keep in mind however, that it doesn’t matter what her intention was. It was what I heard that matters because the message that I got from this “request” or “judgment” is the damage that I had to overcome. The message received was the damage. That is what I am talking about when I talk about overcoming damage and having to find out what the damage actually was in the first place.

I was extremely quiet. Perhaps “withdrawn” is a better word.  Didn’t anyone think that there was a reason for that? 

I heard the whispers about me. I heard the question “what is wrong with her?” many times. I don’t think that statement or question helped me become the happy child that they “wanted” me to be. It made it worse.

I overheard a conversation once between my mother and her sister (my Aunt) when I was somewhere around the age of 8 or 9.  They were discussing my “sullenness” and my constant headaches. It was not so much that they were concerned about me that struck me, but they were trying to decide what was WRONG with me.  I connected the word sullen with the smile directive and put all those messages together. My belief system had already begun to form that something was wrong with me and this conversation just added another layer to it. (I did not think about “why” I was so withdrawn. Only that they thought something was wrong with me)

I was getting worried about me too.  Something was “wrong with me” and nobody knew what! My grandfather got sick and he had cancer and was going to die.  Perhaps that is what was “wrong with me”. Maybe that is why I had so many headaches. 

I had heard about kids who were “different” at school; kids who were born “not normal” and I worried that maybe THAT was what was wrong with me.  I had to find out what was wrong with me so I could overcome it, fix it or hide it.  If I didn’t figure it out, I would never be acceptable ~ never be good enough and never be loved!

I heard my Aunt say that perhaps my difficult birth and the fact that they Doctors used forceps caused more damage than anyone had considered. She said that perhaps the Doctors didn’t know there was damage because I was just a new born baby.  The message that I got was that “what was wrong with me” may have been caused at birth.  Can you see how this false message began to form a “belief” in my belief system?  

Hearing this stuff made things far worse for me. Hearing their judgments increased my fear of being rejected and of being thrown away. Hearing this stuff confirmed that something WAS wrong with me, (just as I already suspected) and that I wasn’t good enough or worthy enough.  If only I could just pretend to be happy and remember to smile. I couldn’t force myself to smile and that make me feel like a failure. My belief system was well on the way to cementing the self blame.

When I was in my twenties I overheard another conversation; I heard this same Aunt telling someone that I had brain damage from the difficult birthing experience.  Now, the “perhaps” part got dumped out of that story. (because my mother was not part of the conversation). She could say this “behind my mother’s back” and because it was so “normal” and common for me to hear this kind of “backstabbing” I didn’t really think much of it.  The way that I processed it was to feel sad that people were still wondering “what is wrong with me” and I was still wondering what was wrong with me too.  I believed that I had “failed” to HIDE whatever was wrong with me.

I was labeled “sullen” but no one wanted to know why. No one was interested enough to dig into the where that may have come from. How does a child become so unhappy and withdrawn? I was content to believe that something was simply “wrong with me” and I was born with something wrong with me. Even I stopped questioning why I was so withdrawn and tried to accept that I was just different and likely defective.

Maybe they already knew why I was so unhappy, but pretending that our lives were “normal” was more important than doing something about it.  OR maybe they were just as unhappy as children and they thought that all children are unhappy. Or maybe the accepted that life is really not a happy journey and why should MY childhood be any different than the one they had themselves?  None of that matters though, because the damage from the message is what I had to face in order to overcome it.  The damaging messages that now lived in my belief system had to be discovered at the roots and set back to the truth.

No wonder so many people question the meaning of life. The cycle goes round and round ~ passed from generation to generation.  No wonder there is so much depression, anxiety, addiction and overall coping when most of the world is resistant to looking at the roots of where it began. It is easier to accept a mal functioning gene; I know.. I accepted that for many years too, but it was when I faced the real roots of my belief system that I found freedom. It was when I began to understand where these false beliefs originated; where and how my belief system formed, that I was able to see the lies and overcome those false beliefs.

There was nothing wrong with me.  I was withdrawn because I was being abused; I had endured (and was still enduring) sexual abuse, physical abuse and emotional /psychological abuse.  I used the fact that I didn’t “smile enough” as one of the many answers to the question, “what is wrong with me” because that is what survivor mode is all about.  We take the blame on ourselves because we are too young to know any different. Taking the blame (self blame) is part of the coping method. Imagine the fear and hopelessness if we blame the adults in charge of our care. I had to find out the things like this “smile example” that I used to confirmed the lies forming in my belief system in the first place.  

Today I smile! My smile is natural; not something I have to think about and not something that I am EVER reminded to do.  My smile is born out of freedom and wholeness and from living in the truth. My smile comes from inside of me and shines through. I like my smile. I FEEL my smile in my heart as though it is a live part of me.

Perhaps after many years of not smiling, I had a lot of catching up to do!

Please share your thoughts! I look forward to how hearing about how this article will impact people.

There is Freedom on the other side of Broken

Darlene Ouimet

related posts see highlighted words in colour  also see: Manipulative and Controlling people and some control tactics

Beleif System Formation via the message Received in Childhood

 To Shrink? Or Not To Shrink… by Kylie Devi

 I have been raped, repeatedly. I have lived to tell my story. I healed by creating my own support systems, and not so much from psychology or therapy. I am sure there are many loving people with good intentions in the field, but the “system” is not set up for healing. The “get better” industry doesn’t thrive on people “getting better.” So for me, I realized I was going to have to take it into my own hands. I did whatever it took. And it took a lot. Writing, crying, sharing my story, connecting with anger, releasing guilt and shame. Forming bonds with people who deserved my trust. Simple things that seemed complicated at the time. That is what allowed my healing to occur.

 I made FOUR solid attempts at rape and crisis counseling. These experiences are comical to me now, but at the time they were re-traumatizing, life shattering, and felt like a second rape. I was addicted to drugs, destroying my relationships, and hanging on to my will to live by a piece of dental floss. I knew that childhood sexual abuse and rape in my teenage years was the root of why I was creating my life in such a way. I reached out for help where I could. Free county rape counseling, student rape crisis centers, expensive psychotherapy. Every time it was so hard to find the courage to ask for help when the previous counselor had either failed to create space for my experience to be real, thickening the denial I already had to deal with within myself, or practiced questionable therapeutic techniques. 

 I recount some of these experiences in a book I am currently writing called Love After Rape. The following three paragraphs are excerpts from this book:

 I wanted to talk to her. I really did. She was a counselor I went to see. I had twelve weeks with her. Twelve weeks to make her understand – to know where all the pain was coming from and how to heal it. By week six she said: “I have to fill out forms to track our progress together, in six weeks with you I have only gotten as far as where we should have been half way through the first session.” Paperwork. Everything was about paperwork, and progress, and moving forward, and being orderly. I could not feel. I just wanted to say “I can’t feel. Can you help me?” But I could not allow the broken notes to escape my locked throat, I wanted to say so badly. Every week I thought about that one hour and I knew that would be the week I could say it. The unspeakable, unsayable, unknowable, shameful thing. I could not, I was not willing, the words were not there. The words were scrambled, the memories. The twelfth week never came. One day she looked at me and said: “I wish I could help you.”

 I did try again, a few years later. I wanted someone to understand. I went to the free state or county funded therapy on the bus. Once again, I had twelve weeks. If I was really effed up, they would reapply at the end of my twelve weeks and see if I could qualify for more. I rode the bus for an hour each way, watching the town sink into itself, watching the filth and the gray of the city I will never call home buzz by. Watching the gray after gray finally turn into brick red and then it was my time to get off. The whole time my stomach was in knots. Could I say it, could I say? What would I say. My clever mind would plan the whole way. Plan it’s defense against the truth being seen, all the while wanting desperately for the truth to be seen. She was short, and had a face that reminded me of a bulldog. It looked out at me with a kind of meanness. A bulldog therapist with brown hair. She kept on telling me that I had anger, I have anger, I must have anger. I don’t have any anger, I have made my peace in the world, have found peace. Peace through marijuana and promiscuous sex. She sent me to Barnes and Noble to buy a book about shame. Healing the Shame that Binds You, by John Bradshaw. I was desperate. Bulldog or not, I needed her. I read it, cover to cover. I was proud of myself for doing so. The next time I got off the bus at the red brick building, and walked up the long flight of stairs, down the hallway that smelled like an attic and too many years of unfiled paperwork, yes, that time. She was not there. Something had happened to her. Instead, a chipper blonde bird lady was there. She said “I cannot tell you what happened to Mary, I cannot.” I hadn’t asked. She went on to say a whole lot of other things. She talked and talked. She did not ask me about the Bradshaw book I had in my hand. We made another appointment, even though not much had happened in this one. I went back the next week, on the bus, through the gray, up the stairs, same as before. She was ranting and ranting. Her son was too young to have a baby. His girlfriend had never even held one before. Did I see the Jodie Foster movie with the rape scene. Did I know how many times she said no in that movie? Did I wonder if I would be raped again? It could happen again. It could keep happening, again and again. This was therapy? She looked at me wide-eyed, at the edge of her seat, and talked, and talked and talked. I am glad someone was getting help.

 I tried one more time, years later. At college. My relationship was falling apart. My drug addiction was literally killing me. I went to the place on campus where they specialize in dealing with rape and sexual assault. I was tired of talking. I wrote a letter to the therapist. I told her everything. That I had been raped as a child, as an adult, that I was killing myself with drugs, that I couldn’t have sex with my fiancée without blacking out. I told her everything. She rustled through the papers quickly, clinically. She said, “You know, we can talk about the assault you experienced in high school. As far as childhood goes, I really don’t want to put ideas into your head.” Ideas into my head? I just told her what happened. It took so much, so much courage to share that. I could not even speak it. There were no ideas put into my head. There were penises put into my mouth. That was all I was trying to say. Even those who are meant to serve this population of me, of me’s, of the women and men who endured what I had, couldn’t speak. Even those specially trained and educated. They did not want to know. They did not want to hear about it. Why were they there? What were they doing there? I never saw her again. Later I learned about an “epidemic” of women accusing families of origin of sexual abuse that supposedly had never happened and it ruined those families. Therapists all over the country were suddenly afraid to touch it. Like it was rotting meat, stay away, don’t touch it, its raw. You could get an infection, a disease. Don’t ruin the families, protect those who abuse, protect their rights, they have them too. File your paperwork. Go home. Enjoy your house, your television. Collect your paycheck. Allow those you serve to suffer in silence, continue this for years. One day, before you die, in the last moment of your life, you will think to yourself. Maybe they were telling the truth. Maybe they had been raped by their fathers, their mothers, their brothers, their uncles. When they confronted their families, it tore their families apart. We were afraid to tear a family apart. Telling the truth is not what tore those families apart, and if it were not true, it would not have torn anyone apart. I will tell you what tore them apart. Sleep well. Enjoy your life.   

You know, I am no longer a drug addict. I no longer consider suicide, I value my life. I may have been victimized, but today, I am not a victim. I am thriving and living on purpose. The “get better” industry is not to credit for that. Not one bit. I healed myself, with the help of others who shared their struggles and their solutions. In the end, we are our own solutions. We all have everything we need inside of us, and within the communities we create, to live the life we are meant to.

Kylie Devi

**As always, please feel free to contribute to this article with your own stories, feedback or comments.  ~ Darlene Ouimet ~ founder of Emerging from Broken

Kylie Devi is a writer and healing artist working with men and women who have survived sexual trauma. She offers an eight week course “Recovering the Spirit from Sexual Trauma” in Gainesville, FL, and is writing two recovery oriented books. Her passions are poetry, qigong, bodywork, and transformative communication. She can be contacted through her blog at www.kyliedevi.com

Related Posts ~ Official Notice to Oppressors, Abusers and Perpetrators

Emotional Healing does not depend on…………

“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is YOU who will get you where you want to go, no one else.”  Les Brown

There is a critical fact that I had to DRILL into my brain in order to get the full benefit of the process of emotional healing.

EMOTIONAL HEALING DEPENDS ON ME

My emotional healing would not have been accelerated if my mother or father suddenly admitted their part in all the dysfunction that I grew up with. It would have been wonderful and today it might mean that we could restore our relationship and heal the damage there, but it would not be the source of my emotional healing. It would not be the necessary fuel.

Emotional healing would not have happened more rapidly if my parents sincerely apologized to me for the damage that they contributed to in my childhood.  It might have helped a bit but it would not be where the healing comes from. 

My emotional healing would not have happened faster if the people who sexually abused me suddenly confessed and turned themselves in.

My emotional healing would not have miraculously emerged because the police arrested the perpetrators and the courts agreed that these people committed crimes against me, and put them behind bars.  It would be great; it would be a cause for major celebration, yes… but it would not have been the foundation of my healing process.

Emotional healing did not occur because I had “the right therapist” A therapist cannot do the work for you. Therapists are only guides and most of them caused me more damage in the long run by trying to get me to “accept the past and leave it there” instead of getting to the core of the damage and overcoming it. And then there are the ones who actually seem to help and then take advantage of the trust that you put in them.

My emotional healing did not happen because my husband stood by me. In fact he DIDN’T stand by me at all.  He fought me and he fought the process. My healing and taking my life and individuality back threatened his control over me. It threatened his orderly little world where he was King and I was his servant.  He had his life all organized the way HE wanted it. He liked me messed up and compliant and he is the first one to admit that today.

My emotional healing did not depend on ANY of that.

In the beginning, when I first realized that I was not born broken and that the way I got messed up was not my fault but was in fact  caused by other people, I was really angry that I had to FIX what “they broke”. I had to move forward with my emotional healing anyway. No one was going to do it for me in fact the majority of people in my life didn’t want me to heal. They too liked me weak and sick and compliant. NO one wanted me to realize that I actually had equal value to them or their power over me would be exposed and they would therefore lose it. And when I healed and faced the truth about the ways that I was regarded by them, they did lose their power over me; because I refused to live that way anymore.

Overcoming dysfunctional relationships and emotional healing depends only on ME. Not on results, outcomes, negotiations, agreement from others, the law, or whether or not I lost or gained weight. Emotional healing does not depend on people or on “things”, money, or circumstances.  

It depends on ME.  

My husband’s emotional healing did not take place until HE did HIS work.

My healing came because I did the work. My emotional healing depended on ME.

YES YOU CAN… IF I CAN THEN YOU CAN.

Yes you can do the work.  I told myself that I could do it a million times and I still tell myself that. I can do this. I can face this. I can get through this. I can get to the roots of this and overcome it. And I keep going forward. I learned to FIGHT for me where no one else ever did. I had to do it. I learned to depend on ME. I became everyone and everything that was ever missing in my childhood. I did this for ME.

I keep going forward; knowing that my identity, my self esteem, my emotional health ~ depended and still depends on me now.

That is how I emerged from broken. That is how I accomplished my own emotional healing.

This concept is one of the biggest stick points that I encounter when working with others. I think that in my case I was afraid to believe that it was up to me to do this, because I was so convinced by the messages from others my whole life, that I could not succeed at anything and that I was not really worthy of equal value and a wonderful full life. I was afraid to take my life back in case I failed. I was afraid to fail because that would prove “they” were right.

 Please share your thoughts and feelings.

From surviving to thriving on the journey to wholeness;

Darlene Ouimet

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Related Posts ~ False Beliefs like “I know I would be okay if…” 

Saying Sorry doesn’t automatically Cancel the damage 

This week I am pleased to have Lynn Tolson guest posting here on Emerging from Broken. Many of you know Lynn; she is a frequent commenter and contributor to the conversations here in EFB. Lynn is an advocate and the author of “Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor’s Story” ~ Please help me welcome Lynn and as always, please share your thoughts in the comments section.

~Darlene

Learning to feel feelings Isn’t Always Easy  by Lynn C. Tolson

In therapy, clients talk about their feelings. Therapists ask, “How are you feeling today?” Conversations with my therapist(s) frequently sounded like this:

“Lynn, what are you feeling?”   

“I don’t know.”

“You must be feeling something.”

“No, nothing.”

“Please, tell me what it feels like.”

“I don’t know.”

I shrugged my shoulders, which was not an acceptable answer to the question of “how are you feeling.” How should I know? I had no clue, no compass, and no map to lead me through the hot and sweaty tropical jungle of twisted emotional thorny vines that lay strangled with family secrets and lies.

My step-father had taught me to deny my feelings at seven years old. He said, “Whenever someone asks you how you are doing, you say, ‘Fine, thank you,’ no matter what.” He added, “Speak only when you are spoken to.” He raised me under his spell of “children should be seen and not heard.” These powerful childrearing dictates led to the cold, calculating climate of control that froze all feelings into a block of ice that could only be released when talk-therapy chipped at the surface decades later.

What I felt was numb, which is a suppression of real feelings. Talking about my experiences and emotions in therapy years later did not feel good. If/when I felt, I felt crappy. Even in the company of a therapist I sensed I was safe with, one whom I trusted and developed rapport with, I dared not enter the realm of emotion. I was afraid to unlock my heart and uncover emotions. If I felt a bona fide feeling, I would surely go insane.

I felt all alone. Loneliness envelopes my being, seals me in a tomb lacking air. I am trapped in the darkness of my heart, all alone, Choking and grasping to find tender loving care.

With that admission of feeling in the form of prose, my therapist taught me that putting words to experiences and the emotions they carry can dispel the hold they had on me. She said, “As your fears recede, courage will emerge. Love was locked inside, shielded by fear. When the darkness of fear disappears, the light of love appears. You built walls around yourself to block out bad feelings, so you also blocked out any good that could come your way. You perpetuate pain by locking up feelings.”

My therapist explained that the depression used to cover up emotions can become a permanent part of the personality. She said, “The symptoms of anxiety and depression you experience are not personality flaws but the consequence of childhood wounds. When you excavate and explore emotions, you allow the fear to fade.” Digging deep like this may alleviate the depression, and allow room for expansion of joyful feelings.

I also had to accept that emotions are transitory, universal, and can co-exist. I had to trust that feeling would not drive me crazy. I learned that feeling could lead to positive emotions, especially L-O-V-E. I understood that in my head, but I needed to feel it in my heart. Transformation from fear to love requires more than rationalization and intellectualization. Healing transpires from fully feeling emotions, and then taking necessary action, like this: determine the cause of an emotion, identify the feeling, and acknowledge its presence. Honor an emotion in the moment; just be with it, and that is more like going sane.

My therapist and I started with where I was at: scared to death of the world at large. There was a pervasive apprehension that cast an ominous shadow on my world. Slowly, we examined the fear to make it manageable. With each exhale of fear, I could inhale the courage to face my fears, feeling compassion for myself and others. As Eleanor Roosevelt says, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. . . You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” That is how we learn how to feel.

Contributed by Lynn C. Tolson, advocate and author of Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor’s Story

Lynn C. Tolson

Please visit Lynn C. Tolson’s blog at http://beyondthetears.blogspot.com/

Bio: After her first eighteen years in the Northeast, Lynn Tolson moved to the Southwest where she engaged in careers in real estate and property management. During those years, she survived post-traumatic stress disorder, which manifested in addictions and suicide attempts. Through the therapeutic process, she determined the causes of her dysfunction, which included childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence. Ultimately, she was able to achieve a life that reflects health and happiness. Her memoir, “Beyond the Tears: A true Survivor’s Story” illustrates physical, emotional, and spiritual transformation; her story offers a message of hope. Tolson moved to the Midwest where she returned to college to obtain a degree in social work. She has also overcome breast cancer. She resides in the Rocky Mountains where she works as an artist, author, and advocate

I am pleased and excited to have guest blogger Susan Kingsley-Smith sharing about dysfunctional relationships within the mental health system while I am away on vacation.  Susan is my friend and fellow truth seeker, as well as the author of  “A Journey” and I’m also blessed to have her as a frequent commenter here on Emerging from Broken. As always, please contribute by adding your own comments and feedback ~ Darlene Ouimet

Dysfunctional Relationship with Mental Health Providers by Susan Kingsley-Smith

I’d have never imagined that in my healing journey I would find myself healing from not only the original trauma’s of my childhood but that I would also be faced with mourning the life I lost to a second trauma; that of becoming victim to those I’d turned to for help.

I’d been conditioned from an early age to not question authority. To do as I was told; and especially to view my doctors and other health care professionals as the authority over my health. In hindsight though, what I discovered, is that my early life experiences of abuse had set me up to become a victim to any relationship or system that was based on my sacrificing myself in order to appease those in authority. Continued..

At first I didn’t think anything of it when the psychiatrists would tell me, and the therapists would reinforce this message, that there was something “wrong” with me. That I had a chemical imbalance in my brain, that there was no cure. In hindsight though, this was just the beginning of a fifteen-year journey into, through and finally out of the mental health system.  This was a journey that would change me forever.

The mental health “professionals” had successfully stripped me of any hope when they informed me that my brain was broken. They had laid the groundwork for my lifetime dependence on them; telling me that they, and only they, knew the answers and in order for me to “get better” I needed to submit myself to their care.

My power was taken from me in the numerous drugs I was prescribed as the doses were adjusted and more drugs were added. Slowly, like a toad in pot of water coming to a boil, the drugs overtook my mind and destroyed my health. I found that I could no longer think or communicate coherently. I gained enormous amounts of weight on one drug; then lost it rapidly on the next. I had no energy, I was constantly fatigued yet I suffered from insomnia and couldn’t sleep. I developed irrational fears and began to isolate myself.

I felt even more ashamed of myself. The professionals were validating what I’d been convinced of all along. That I was defective, something was “wrong” with me and I felt powerless to understand or change it.

The side effects I was experiencing were legitimate side effects of the drugs yet it was made clear to me that any negative effects were caused by a defect in my character and motivation.  I was told to eat better and exercise more.

Fear was used to coerce my compliance. The threat was always there that if I stopped taking the drugs that I would “get worse”. What I forgot was that before the drugs, I’d never been “sick”.

I had been conditioned to believe from the beginning of my entry into the world of mental health that when the “therapy” was failing that it was my fault; that something was wrong with ME not that the therapy or “treatments” were not effective or in fact abusive and oppressive – but that I had done something wrong to have cause this failure.

There was a fear that was always present that I would be rejected or that I might be “fired” by my providers if I was not compliant and cooperative. This often unspoken threat was often the thing that kept me in line. I saw these relationships as my only hope. This I’ve since learned is another way abusers control their victims in many different relationships; threatening the loss of the relationship if there is a lack of compliance.

Shame was never far away. In my time in the mental heath system I at first resisted. I insisted that something was wrong, I reported that the drugs I was being given were not working, that I felt worse. But instead of listening to me, my complaints were dismissed. I was told that I was being resistant to the therapeutic process, I was non compliant and difficult. In other words, these therapeutic relationships were telling me the same thing I’d learned in the original trauma and abuse: that whatever the problem was in this relationship, it was stemmed from me.

And when the biological approach did not prove to be effective is when I was told that I had “personality disorders”. Now, besides this chemical imbalance in my brain my personality was also defective, that I was broken through and through to the core of my being. There was no hope offered and because of my “defects” it was justified to treat me as “less than”. 

One of the most crippling things I was told was that one of the “symptoms” of this “disease” is an inability to see it for oneself. In other words – if I could see and admit my “problem” then I was a compliant patient. If I did not agree with the way others were defining me I was non-compliant, difficult and resistant and this was further evidence of this mysterious “illness” that even my own psychiatrist admitted there were no tests or true scientific evidence of. I was broken simply because she said so. In her own words; psychiatry is more an art than a science.

In hindsight after I’d escaped the drugs and left psychiatry behind me, I realized that what I had experienced was exactly like the other abusive relationships in my life; and that I was a perfect victim for being defined in this system because I had not yet learned how to define myself.

Thankfully, like Darlene, I had the good fortune to connect with a therapist trained in trauma who supported my hidden belief that it was possible to live beyond diagnosis. This was someone who was willing to show me a different way and offer true hope. Over the next 2.5 years I was shown a healthier therapeutic relationship defined by clear boundaries vs. control and compliance. Here is where I came to understand that by learning to recognize the original lies that said I was not good enough and changing the core beliefs that told me I was powerless over my own life this – is where I began to learn that I could learn to live far beyond that place of broken.

Susan Kingsley-Smith

**Note and disclaimer from Susan: It is very dangerous to discontinue these or any other drugs without a clear understanding of the process and what happens when we go into the withdrawal process. I discontinued them because I was forced into it and I had an understanding that I was dealing with a physical withdrawal. But anyone who doesn’t understand that process could be at risk for suicide. 

Doctors do not know how to go off these drugs safely and will use the withdrawal symptoms to say “see. You’re mentally ill”. 

There’s plenty of research and evidence on this issue but there will always be those who can’t get past this part of their belief system. 

Susan’s Bio: I am a trauma survivor…but I no longer live only to survive. In 1992 after a lifetime of trauma’s ranging from physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect as a child to two violent marriages, I entered the mental health system seeking help where my lifelong history of trauma was dismissed. For over 15 years I was given a variety of “diagnosis”, numerous mind altering psychotropic drugs and a routine of weekly “talk” therapy. In the fall of 2007 I was abruptly taken off of the drugs I’d been prescribed all those years and began to reclaim both my mind and my life.

Today, I no longer accept any labels for myself and live the life of my choosing, following my dream and passion to share a message of healing and hope as I write and speak about this journey that has been my life.

Beauty in the Ruins

Sometimes I get a comment that is bursting with questions that I just HAVE to talk about in more depth than just a comment back. In my last post “coping methods ~ trying to escape myself” I got one of these comments from Susa.

 Susa wrote: “Interesting perspective and I really appreciate reading your experiences with dissociation.  I suppose I could refer to switching as escaping myself, but the only problem I have, is what part of me is actually me?  Who is really “myself”?  I have always spontaneously deferred to a part of me who can more easily handle the specific task at hand, and have never had any control of that process.  At this late stage of the life game, I am finally starting to almost be co-present with some parts of me… and yet I, Susa, still struggle with the question of who, or which part is the real me, or the original me?  I know that I am not the original birth person, and have only been the CEO since 2006.  I suppose the real me would be a sum of my parts, but hard to pinpoint any specific part of me.” Susa ( To read the post and the rest of the discussion read “coping methods ~ trying to escape myself“)

As I read this comment from Susa, several things were going through my mind. One of them was that although I am frequently asked to talk about my experience with dissociative identity disorder, (the multiple personality kind) I rarely do talk about it other than to say that I had it and I recovered from it. I tend to stay away from the subject because there are so many different beliefs about what it is, and how it operates. My opinion is that it was one of the ways that I coped; first with the trauma and then with life, and that in the final analysis, it was no more or less important than any of my other coping methods. All of my coping methods were tangled together to form a huge armoured tank around all my issues, protecting me from the outside world, but in the end also shielding me from the freedom and wholeness that I wanted so badly. All of my coping methods served the same purpose; survival.

Switching was an effective escape; it was a necessary coping method that in the past I had come to understand was about escaping the trauma, pain and or emotions that I was experiencing at any given time. As I grew up I learned to switch at any perceived danger. It became automatic. Anything that was even remotely familiar to the feelings surrounding childhood abuse or trauma, caused me to “switch”, becoming the alter I most needed to be in order to handle the situation. This was necessary as a child. It was not so necessary when I became an adult but I had no way of knowing that. Dissociative Identity and switching alters had become the way that I did life. As an adult, the switching personalities seemed to become more about me becoming whoever someone else wanted me to be, but was still a survival method or coping method due to the fears that I carried with me from childhood into adulthood.

When I came face to face with my dissociative identity disorder, I had those same questions. Who is the “real me?; Which one is in charge?; how will I ever know?”  Will I ever find out which one of “me” is the original one? And I got really invested in thinking about all of that. So much so that you could say it became yet another escape. The “original me” quest however became very important to me as I began this healing journey.

I found out that all of them were me. Each fragmented self had arrived to protect me or to take the feelings and handle the fears for me. Each one held its own memories and had its own triggers. Each one had the job of protecting me from the memories, pain and trauma so that I could survive. Some alters were male, some were children, one was much older then I was. They took care of me. That was their job. And I had only even had or been glimpses of the original me or the core because the core of me was the sum of all parts.

I had a lot of fears about who I really was and about which alter was going to be the strongest one in the end. I was really afraid of one of them as I had gotten into most of the trouble in my life with her in the front. I tried to shut her down and one time when I was in intensive therapy I dreamed that I tried to kill her. I woke up from that dream with the profound realization that I had tried to kill myself in a dream. Through that dream I realized that I could not ditch one of “them” and  that I had projected most of the self hate, blame and shame onto that part of me. My therapist had a less known method of treating dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) and the method he used was instead of concentrating on which alter had which memories and emotions, we concentrated on the trauma events themselves and we began with the earliest ones that I remembered. I had lots of alters popping out in therapy, and my therapist just let it happen without giving too much attention to the individual alter. It was more like he treated me as though I was only “one” and then I came to realize that all of this trauma actually happened to me and not to the alters whom I believed were separate from me.

Dissociative identity disorder allowed me to separate trauma events and view them as though they happened to someone else.  Because more than one alter personality  would come out at each trauma event, I was able to detach from the event on many levels. I saw each tiny moment as separate from another moment. That was how I was able to deal with them. But I did the same thing with the lies that I learned. With all the memories fragmented, it may have been easier to cope, but at the same time I accepted the lies, shame and self blame because I separated those memories too. I believed that I must have done something to deserve what happened because I didn’t have one whole memory. So if someone indicated that it was my own fault or that I deserved it or that I was the problem, I remembered that as a single event too.

As I looked at the memories, and started to connect the fragmented pieces, I realized how many false beliefs that I had accepted about myself in the course of my childhood. As I uncovered those lies and exposed the truth (to myself) I began to come together. As I realized how many lies that I had accepted about myself and corrected them, I began to calm down. As I calmed down, I became more comfortable. I felt like I was growing up. In the calming down, I felt like I was coming together. I was able to become conscious of when I had switched and soon I was conscious even before I switched and found ways of talking to myself that enabled me to stay one.

The trauma happened to me. The memories were all mine. Each personality was me and I was restored, by connecting, facing and accepting the truth about the past.

Please share your thoughts. We always have a wonderful discussion in the comments section!

Darlene Ouimet 

Note: It is important to understand that it was not the recall of the events that restored me. I do not have all my memories, and I still remember only fragments of certain events, but I remembered enough to realize how my belief system had formed and why. The key was in realizing how I had come to believe so many lies about myself, and was not about remembering all the events.

**This is an example of my personal journey. All processes are different. Many people need to dig really deeply into the personality of each alter; I am not discounting other ways of recovery. I am only sharing how it worked for me.

Related Post ~ D.I.D. and the Essence of who I am by Carla Logan

On What Authority?

Controllers, abusers and manipulative people don’t question themselves. They don’t ask themselves if the problem is them. They always say the problem is someone else. This was a huge problem for me when I went into therapy because I was very willing to convince my therapist that the problem was me ~ I believed it so deeply. I went to therapy because I thought I needed help changing. I had tried everything I could think of, and now I wanted a professional to tell me how to change so that I could be acceptable to certain people in my life. I was fortunate that my therapist realized that I had been so devalued my entire life that I believed all those lies I had been fed about how I was the one that needed to change. He was accustomed to this type of victim thinking and he resisted my insistence that the problem was me.

One of the most productive, powerful and freeing things that my therapist and I talked about was the fact that “controllers” “abusers” and otherwise manipulative people never question that the problem might be them.  That concept stopped me dead in my tracks and caused me to think about the people in my life that had I had tried so hard to change for.  I scanned my memory for clues or indications that I my therapist was wrong about that fact. I think I wanted the problem to be me. I had learned to accept it and I was used to trying harder and If it wasn’t ME then that meant they had to change… and I had lost faith in that possibility.

It turned out that my therapist wasn’t wrong. Abusive and controlling people do not ask themselves if they are being abusive or controlling. What they do is demand changes from other people. They excuse their behaviour by blaming it on the defects or shortcomings that they have decided someone else has.

I could not ever remember a time when someone who devalued me, or someone who told me that I had a problem or that I was the problem had ever stopped to question themselves. The people who told me (usually not in words) that I needed to change somehow had ever looked at their own behaviour. I could not remember a time when one of those people had ever taken a look at themselves the way they thought I should take a look at myself! The only time one of the people in my life that mistreated me ever hinted at some sort of personal change, apology OR regret, was usually when they had a personal manipulative motive for doing so. Like if they were afraid to lose me as their victim or afraid that I was catching on to the one sided relationship. 

I spent a lot of time thinking about this revelation. It was eventually one of the major truths that helped me to see that relationships are not meant to be one sided and that I should not have to carry the entire burden of each relationship. The success of relationship does not depend solely on ME. Abusers do not ask themselves if they are abusing. When I realized this truth; that the controlling manipulative and abusive people in my life NEVER looked at themselves while they constantly pointed fingers at me, I turned a new corner in my process and entered a brighter and healthier pathway.

Please share your thoughts about this subject. Don’t forget to subscribe to the comments since this blog always generates amazing discussions.

Exposing truth, One Snapshot at a Time;

Darlene Ouimet

Emerging from Broken

Final note: Later on I realized that some people, my mother for instance, changed and adjusted for other people, just like I did for her, but she didn’t for me. That was the beginning of my understanding that there seems to be somewhat of a “pecking order” in dysfunctional family systems and in dysfunctional relationships. The key for me was to decide that I would no longer accept my place in the pecking order.

Related Reading ~Demonstrating Appreciation in Relationships

Going Behind the Walls

In today’s blog post I am taking a look at motives driven by beliefs about ourselves that are not based in the truth.  In order to do that, I am going to post some food for thought questions.  You may answer them in the comments if you wish. You may share them with your friends. You may click the facebook “like button” or not. You have a choice. I want you to have a choice. The point of this post is not to make you feel guilty about yourself. The point is that in answering these questions for yourself, you will see some truths about your belief systems. 

How many of us hide our communication in facebook from our families and close friends? There is nothing wrong with using that option and I am not suggesting that you stop hiding your likes and dislikes or comments in facebook.  This exercise is merely an exercise in fog busting and truth realization. Everyone will have different answers. Some of us never use the hide button.  Some of us really must use the facebook hide buttons, because to neglect to do so would truly be dangerous. 

Having said that, here are the questions. Not all of them will apply to everyone;

~Why don’t I want my family to know that I am going to define my own value from now on?

~Why don’t I want my family to know that I participate in or read discussions about emotional and psychological abuse?

~Why do I use the hide button on some comments and not on others?

~Why don’t I want my family to know that I am reading a self empowerment blog?

~Why don’t I want my family to know that I am finding out that they were wrong about me?

~Why don’t I want my family to know that I do not belong to them? They don’t own me; or do I   still think that they do?

~Why don’t I want my family to know that I have a mind of my own? That I am thinking about forbidden things; that I am going to grow up without permission from them?

~Why do I feel like or believe that I have to hide my actions?

~In thinking that I am protecting their feelings, why do I worry more about their feelings then I do about my own.

~Why do I question myself and my actions, MORE then I question theirs?

When I stood up for myself and took my life and my identity back, I was not using facebook for any kind of self improvement type work. If my family would have been on facebook with me, I would have been terrified they might find out what I was doing. I would have used all the hide features. That is not the point of this blog post.

The point is that It was in answering these kinds of questions that led me to realize my own belief system and all the problems that were rooted in that system. When I asked myself why I questioned my own actions more then I questioned theirs, I was stunned. I felt as though someone had punched me in the gut. These kinds of questions served as a giant spring board into the depths of my mind and greatly advanced my own process of changing the lies I believed, back into the truth.

Please remember that I am in no way encouraging you to stop using hide features or to start standing up to anyone, either family or friends. This is not about judgement. I am not judging you and I do not want you to judge yourself. This is an exercise in exposing your own belief system. This is not easy. This was what worked for me.

Please feel free to share your thoughts with me and with each other.

Finding treasure in the darkest places;

Darlene Ouimet

Emerging from Broken on FaceBook

More on Mother Daughter Dysfunctional Relationship ~ there is a discussion in the comments that relates to this post

For those of you who are worried about privacy settings on Facebook, here are the instructions on how to set privacy settings:

Note: PRIVACY CONCERNS on Face Book

On Facebook, Emerging from broken is an open group. If you are concerned about others outside of this group viewing your posts, you can choose who sees your posts by following these links: Account, Privacy Settings, Personal Information and Posts, Posts By Me, then Customize. Choose who sees your posts from there. Please note that this option applies to all your comments, not just those on facebook pages.

For individual wall posts, below the ‘share’ button, there is a ‘filter’ option. If you click on that, you can choose who sees that particular wall post. This only applies to wall posts and not to the discussions or comments.

"I saw the light" by Azelinn

I thought that my present could be resolved by talking about what was wrong with the present… but it turned out it was resolved by sorting out what went wrong in the past. And I had been told all my life to live for today so …… you can imagine the conflict!  

This is one of the most foundational messages that I have to deliver. It is one of those things I just didn’t realize. Living in the present sounded so right and so perfect, I strived for that ideal, never realizing that what was in my way was the unresolved past. We hear things that can back up our belief in these sayings, such as “you can’t change the past” and “live one day at a time” and “live for today” and my favourite of all ~ “If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you are peeing on today”. When I look back over the years when I tried so hard to live by these sayings, I realize that they did me no good. I thought that acceptance was the answer, but I really didn’t know what I was trying to accept and so I accepted the blame and responsibility for abuse and for relationship difficulties that were there far before I was ever old enough to be a problem or even a factor in the demise of any one of them.

I got living for today and accepting the past mixed up with the realization that I can’t change the past, forgetting that the goal in healing from the past is not to change the past, it is to resolve it. The goal was to be ABLE to put it behind me in order for me to be able to live in freedom; to be able to LIVE in the present moment.

And I got so used to running from today that I didn’t know I was running.  I got so used to thinking that I WAS living in this day, and so accustomed to avoiding those feelings by using any number of coping mechanisms and escape tools, that my coping mechanisms rode piggyback on each other and every time I resolved or exposed and untangled one escape route, my cleaver surviving mind switched and adopted another one. The survival instinct is very strong and I got so messed up that I didn’t KNOW that I was even in survivor mode. I didn’t know that my coping methods were because my brain was so badly wired that it thought the escape tools WERE better and safer for me. I thought the problems WERE the answers.  

In order to live in the present I had to be willing to actually LOOK at what I was running from. I had to ask myself ~ why did I disconnect and dissociate. Why did I use food for comfort? Why did I go to bed for days on end? I had to ask myself what I was afraid of feeling. I had to become aware of my survival methods and look at where they came from; what they developed as a result of ~ and guess what??? All those questions led me back to the past.

But when I answered those questions one by one, month after month, over time I was able to stop using all those coping methods.  Little by little, as I understood the past and where my desire to run was born they just seemed to fall away and the more that they fell away, the more that I was able to live in today. And not just live in today, but LIVE. THRIVE.  Really live with the new energy that I found I had when I didn’t have to use all my energy to COPE so dang much. 

For the most part, I live in the moment today. The work that I do with Emerging from Broken is my chosen purpose and in order to shed light on how I found my own freedom, I write about my past almost every day in one way or another, however I do not live in the past any longer because my past is resolved. Today, the past is in the past and I can actually appreciate all those lovely quotes, understanding the true intention behind the sayings now.

Keep going, keep growing and please share with me and the other readers!

Darlene Ouimet

Related posts ~ “the problem with living one day at a time”

Note: please take advantage of the “subscribe to comments” button. Since Jan.01 this blog has been generating an average of 47 comments per post and readers are responding to each other’s comments. 

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