Archive for abuser
Before I Faced the Pain I had to Face the Lies
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- The Road Ahead
Something is happening here on Emerging from Broken. There is a depth of sharing and honesty that I didn’t expect. There is a community growing that I only hoped for. There is a profound expression of struggle and healing, all working towards the overall good and towards emotional recovery.
This post is the follow up to my last post ~ “Tomorrow I will Start to Face the Pain” . If you have not read it, I really recommend that you take the time to read it and the 50 some amazing comments that it has generated so far. There is something special there.
Some of those comments made my heart ache with pain and I wanted to touch each heart and convince each one that there is hope for emotional healing. It is possible. It is doable. This is curable! I feel your pain because I remember that pain myself.
~The pain of realizing that any kind of abuse including emotional abuse is rejection. I worked so hard all of my life to be this great person full of acceptance and rejection was my biggest fear, only to wake up one day and realize how rejected that I was all along. But that was not MY failure.
~The pain of realizing that my life was built on lies. But they were not MY lies.
~The pain of realizing that all of my efforts to avoid being alone, left me alone anyway, but then realizing that the journey is lonely because we have to go through it as individuals. All my life I tried to do life how someone else taught me to do it, but in reality, I had to find my way because there is only one of me. They took that from me for way too long.
~Realizing that I had been defined by someone else and then suddenly realizing that if I was not who I thought I was, then who was I? And being scared to death to find out who I might be. Which comes from the same fear of rejection and round and round it goes.
~I was so stuck in realizing that after the abuse I felt like no one ever loved me again ~ thinking the answer would be in finding someone to love me again, but in truth, I didn’t love me either. I didn’t know how. The abuse defined me. I wanted someone else to fix it just like someone else broke it. But I had to do it for me. I had to decide that I would love me. I had to find out how. I had to redefine me and in that new beginning, I was able to take my life back.
~Realizing that I never believed that MY abuse was really valid and therefore I was invalidated; first by them and then by me. But that was not my choice. That was what I learned to do. I wasn’t given a choice. But I have one now. I have one today.
~Realizing and finally acknowledging that I was filled with guilt and shame and not knowing exactly what the heck to DO with it. But it wasn’t MY guilt and shame and realizing that was what got me to the next step in the process of letting it go.
~And the frozenness that goes along with all of it and seems to return with each new stage. That feeling of being immobilized; the fear of forward motion; all of that with its own history, each one of us with a slightly different story that the frozen is grounded in and has its roots in and everything even remotely related to any of the following things.
~ I told but was ignored
~ I didn’t tell because I was too scared of the consequences
~ I told and I suffered the consequences
~ I didn’t know there was anything to tell
AND the threads of steel wrapped around each one of these things, each memory, each event, each invalidation and ALL the conclusions that we came to ~ all of which need to be looked at, examined, cut and then healed such as:
~The belief that I am the one that wasted my life. That somehow I should have been able to get over all of this by myself; that somehow I am a failure because of what happened TO me. That somehow the abuse done to me has suddenly become my fault, and I lived my life as though it was my failure ~ that my whole life was my screw up. But HOW was I supposed to move forward with no guidance? HOW was I supposed to “get over it”?
~No one validated me so that I knew how to validate myself
~No one ever helped me move forward.
~No one encouraged me to be who I am but everyone “told me” who I was and that was a lie too. No one knew me. No one SAW ME.
~And I carried the failure that was not mine to carry. I lived the identity that they assigned me.
Running from me but not realizing that it is in the running back to me that I find my true self. Running from the truth because I believed the lies.
Running until I finally realized that the running was killing me. Realizing just one truth was enough to set me on the right path. And then running again because the fear of the unknown was just too scary to actually stop running to face it.
Round and Round it goes… like a whirlwind that I was trapped in. I had to somehow find a way to step out of it for mere moments at a time. Picture being inside of a small tornado that is spinning you around so fast that everything is a blur. Now picture stepping back just enough that you can SEE the spin in front of you, but you are not in it, just for one minute. That is how it began for me. And I began by just looking at one thing at a time for those moments when I could step back from the spin. As time went on, I learned to love myself and fill the void in me for myself. This was not quick OR easy but it was possible and it is possible.
And we do have a choice.
And we can overcome.
And we can take our lives back.
And we can leave the pain behind.
And we can live fully in real happiness and freedom.
………..And I know because I didn’t think I could do it either, but here I am.
Please share.
More little snapshots of truth;
Darlene Ouimet
Related posts: “Tomorrow I will Start to Face the Pain”
“But HOW do I recover? Emotional and other abuse”
and most of the other posts on this blog.. 
Thanksgiving, Christmas and Dysfunctional Families
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Today I am thankful that I came out of the fog of victim mentality. I am grateful that I don’t live in the dysfunction that was my entire life for so many years. In honor of the American Thanksgiving, I am posting a story of a not so great family holiday incident which took place during the process of “emerging from broken;”
Several years ago now, when my husband Jimmy and I were going through the process of repairing the damage done in our marriage (which was after I had gone through my process of emerging from broken), we started to see the dysfunction in our relationships with our parents and extended family.
When we embrace ourselves as valid and worthy people, there are bound to be changes that take place within the family dynamic. Our families were no exception. Busting through the fog is not something that happens overnight, but as we started to stand up for our individual rights, over time we began to notice that Jim’s father was fighting back quite a bit.
The problems started to become more obvious to us when “grandpa” (Jimmy’s father) wanted our daughter to help him put a new roof on a shop, but he made it clear that he would pay her at the end of the job, and he would pay her what he thought that she was worth. As I said, Jim and I were coming out of the “fog” but we knew what his father’s idea of “what she was worth” was. It would end up being pretty much nothing. He kept bringing it up, this business of not paying her until later until finally I asked him for clarification. He got mad. Eventually he asked what minimum wage was, and when we told him he got upset and said that he had more time than money. Our daughter didn’t get asked to help with the roof again. The thing is that she would have done it just because but HE kept bringing up this whole money thing as though he would DECIDE her worth, and it was really De-Valuing to our daughter. Jim was having memories and realizations of his own about the lack of value his father had constantly put on him.
Then came the day when his parents demanded Jimmy help them with something when he was in the middle of some important farm work of his own. He finally said that he couldn’t do it because he had to get back to his own work, and his father was stunned… How dare he put his OWN work first? The truth is that Jimmy had never put his own work first before. AND he was constantly reminded by his father of how inefficient that he was as a worker, and that was a spin he lived in all his life ~ finally Jim said no to something his father wanted and things started to get tense.
It was because of the whole one sidedness of the relationship that we really began to realize that Jim’s father never once regarded anything that Jim (or I ) did as important. That he was only interested in his own agenda. We were in our forties with three children of our own but we were being controlled by his parents.
Then came the Christmas Eve that his parents came over to tell us off and attempt to put us back in our places. They tried to make us submit to them, to bow down to them as we had always done in the past. In front of our children, they reprimanded us, told Jim that his business was a disaster, that he had made a mess of things and that it was my fault because I was a bully who had dictated how the farm should be run and had been allowed to make all the financial and business decisions even though in reality, nothing was a mess at all, and the reason we were in marriage counseling was because I was not ever included in any of the decisions about the business OR about how we spent money.
We were really stunned and at some point during this lecture from Jim’s father, we fell back under the spell of his control and abuse. We got told off. I was stunned realizing that something really bad just happened although I wasn’t really sure what the heck it was. Even though we tried to put up a fight and stand up for ourselves, the fog surrounded us again.
And then his father was happy again. He got his authority back because we submitted to him. His order was restored. He was in charge again, he was on the throne. And we all went into the living room and opened Christmas presents. I felt like I was dreaming. It all seemed so horribly wrong and yet it was so familiar. I watched my husband relax as though the whole world was restored back to order. And in so many ways, it was. Familiar, safe, comfortable; according to the way that we live under the reign of an abuser Jim was safe, as long as his father was not upset with him. It was as though Jimmy believed that his father could still decide whether or not Jimmy lived or died.
After all the present opening and gift giving was done, and everyone was” oh so happy” we revisited the plans for the Christmas family get together (which had been planned but had never been confirmed because Jim and I were not being compliant) and we were told “No” they were going home. They informed us that they were going to let us “think” about what they said to us and then they left. It took us a few hours to realize that we had just been punished, but it didn’t take us long to realize that this is the way that it had always been. We started to remember all the other punishments. We had to do exactly what Jim’s Dad wanted, we had to submit to his authority, we had to be who he wanted us to be and do things the way he said we should or we would pay the consequences.
No equality or equal value, no respect. His definition of love (obedience and compliance) did not apply to him. It was all about power and control. His control.
And we were great victims; we were always compliant and even PERFECT victims
but when we said no more……
They said goodbye.
But that was their loss. You may think that this story doesn’t have a happy ending, but think about it. What did we lose? What did we gain? We don’t have to live in that nightmare anymore.
Today I am grateful and extremely thankful for the fact that no one dictates what I do and don’t do. No one tells me who I am or who I should be. I am grateful for my freedom and wholeness, emotional recocery and for the fact that I no longer struggle with depression or dissociative identity disorder. I am grateful that we live in the truth. I am grateful that my husband wants to live in the truth with me, and that in our marriage I have equal value, respect and our children know the real definition of love. I am grateful that I got my life and my voice back. I am grateful that I got my identity back and that the fog is gone. I am grateful for each one of you.
Happy Thanksgiving! Please feel free to share.
With love and gratitude ~
Darlene Ouimet with thanks to my husband Jimmy B for contribution to this post.
Related post; The beginning of Emotional Recovery
Unfriending my Abuser ~by Patty Hite
The Truth about Abuse and Reconnecting to Myself
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- I’m Innocent
“It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.” Thomas Jefferson
I was dissociated. I grew up having dissociative identity disorder which means that I effectively disconnected from myself and from the events that happened to me. That is what dissociative identity disorder is. That was how I protected myself, how I survived, how I coped. In recovery it was extremely important that I eventually connected those events BACK to me. I had to realize that those things really happened and they happened to me.
This isn’t as easy as it might sound. For one thing I didn’t realize when I talked about certain abuse situations, that I didn’t connect them to me. The first time I connected being molested as a child, to myself, I was stunned. Shocked actually. I had had the memory for years. But I didn’t actually relate it to something that happened to me as a person or to me as an individual or to me as someone who was violated. So when I talked about it in therapy this one day, it was just like I was talking about something slightly uncomfortable, like driving in bad weather. Like I was talking about an event that was slightly awkward but not the devaluing and terrifying sexual assault that in truth is what actually took place.
It doesn’t help if you are told constantly while growing up, that you are dramatic, that you talk to hear yourself talk, that you exaggerate. Or if you are told statements like “we don’t talk like that” or “we don’t talk about things like that”. It doesn’t help if you are brainwashed to believe that your memories are wrong. That your memories are false, because the memory is horrifying enough. It doesn’t help if you are told that you deserved it, that you asked for it, and the worst one of all ~ that you liked it. It doesn’t help if when you got older that you have become so sexualized that your body responds to something awful. It is really confusing when you are told it didn’t happen AND you are told you deserved it and to forgive. (If it didn’t happen why are you told you deserved it or to forgive?)
It might be nice to believe that it never really happened. Like witnessing a fatal car accident. Your mind will often try to tell you that it didn’t happen the way that you saw it happen. Your mind will try to figure out all sorts of ways that it might have happened differently and with a different outcome. I could have done this or that differently. I could have stopped it. Your mind will try to protect you from the horror of what you saw. Well my mind tried to protect me too, so it split into different memory banks and separated one memory from another. My parents gladly assisted with this process by not validating me and by convincing me that my dramatic personality was full of shit.
When I finally connected that first event to myself, I was able to connect other events too and accept that these things happened to me. I had to accept more than just that certain abuse happened to me, I had to accept that I was not validated at the same time. I was not heard, I was not protected. And although my parents were not my sexual abusers, they didn’t listen to me, my mother had a violent temper, my father was emotionally unavailable, completely detached and disinterested in me and all of those things are also abusive. I had to realize that. All of this was part of the picture of who I was and what happened to me and how I dealt with it or didn’t deal with it.
If I was to recover, if I was to heal, I had to put myself first for once and really look at this as a whole picture. And I had to realize that I had been abused, mistreated, not valued, heard or protected, and that those things happened to ME, that it was wrong, and that I didn’t deserve it. I also had to realize that I deserve recovery; that I deserve to have a full life. That I deserve to know what love is and to be loved and to know my own value. I had to stop comparing my life and my past to everyone else’s and I had to stop believing that how other people defined me was TRUE. I had to realize at the depth of my entire being, that I WAS NOT who “they” said that I was and that they don’t get to define me anymore.
I fought for my life when I was abused, but I fought even harder to get it back. and THIS truly is “the good fight”.
Please share.
Written with more love then I ever knew I had or imagined that I could ever feel;
Darlene Ouimet
related posts: Mother Daughter Relationship Nightmares
Facing and Speaking the Awful Truth ~from the blog “you can fly with broken wings ~ by Fi MacLeod
Emotional Healing ~ The Courage to Tell
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When I decided to tell the Chris Story ~ the story about how Prince Charming was a Murder Suspect, I intended to write one post. I intended to keep the focus about my belief system, and highlight the fact that I missed and or ignored the red flags because of learned unworthiness issues resulting from child abuse and child sexual abuse and invalidation. That was the first post.
But the commenter’s and private e-mailers wanted more. They wanted to know what kinds of red flags exactly. I could see the benefit of sharing more of the details and highlighting the actual red flags, and for sharing a bit about my rational for disregarding the danger signs. So that was the second post.
As I write this post, I have not yet published the second post “Dangerous Men, Red Flags, Victim Mentality”. When I finished writing that post and did my final read on it, I felt stupid. I thought I was really lame for missing so many of those blatant red flags. And worse than that, the way that second post reads I didn’t really miss them; I just ignored them. I considered not publishing the post. I felt insecure. I felt “dumb”. I felt like no one else would have EVER been so stupid as to stay with that guy knowing everything that I knew. This is exactly the type of thinking that kept me in the cycle of abuse and in victim mindset, covering up for the things I think are MY fault instead of exposing HIM and telling my truth.
I questioned myself, “what the heck was wrong with me back then?? How could I have let that stuff go? How could I have gotten into that relationship and then left myself, in that situation? What was so great about “that guy” that I didn’t dump him? What the heck did I think was going to happen?
And I heard the thoughts behind the thoughts ~ “I didn’t think, I didn’t care, I didn’t know; he could have changed, he had been damaged and he needed me, what if I was wrong about him? What if he killed me if I tried to dump him? What if he was the best that I could ever do? What if I dumped him and found myself alone for the rest of my life……. Sometimes he was sweet, sometimes he was tender. He was charming. He looked like a movie star… he called me “baby”.
And the even deeper thoughts~ playing detective was exciting. It was a way of proving to myself that I really DID have a brain. Being afraid of him was thrilling. Getting away with knowing that he didn’t know that I knew…. (When danger has been a part of a sexual abuse history, sometimes danger is a turn on; danger is familiar. And in this particular story I find it interesting to note that I was NOT at all sexually attracted to this guy, so the thrill of danger had more to do with validation.)
Sometimes I tell myself that I am just making excuses for myself. (which also comes from upbringing) During that time with Chris I had dissociative identity disorder. Since I have recovered from DID, I look back and see it differently now then I used to. One of the things that I did that is common for anyone who dissociates, (not just dissociative identity with multiple personality) is that I “separated incidents”. I did not put all the incidents and red flag events concerning Chris, in my mind at the same time. In a way I put them through separate filters. I believed that each one was separate and had nothing to do with the other one. I disconnected each red flag from the prior red flag. Think of it this way; each event or red flag had its own sealed envelope. In my mind, none of the red flags were related. That was how I learned to cope with child sexual abuse. I broke off from myself, and left my body. And I learned an intricate system of coping; disconnecting and separating related events, too scary to look at, too scary to stop, too powerless to stand up for myself. That is how I learned to deal with life; by separating incidents and by disconnecting. And so ~ there I was, all grown up in a dangerous relationship with a dangerous man, disconnected and ignoring all the red flags.
(And it is by reconnecting first with myself and then with the events that I discounted and ignored and eventually blamed myself for, that I became whole again.)
The desire to make excuses for myself has its roots in the same belief system that I write about all the time. As a child I believed that I could change, and if I changed then I would be loved. So I felt insecure about telling the story because I grew up being told (Not always in words) that I was wrong; that I had a faulty memory and that I was the real problem. I was trained to keep the secret; don’t bring any shame on the family and I was told (not always in words) to find a way to cope with it myself. I was also pretty young when I believed if there was a problem that I caused it, made it up or exaggerated it or misunderstood it and I learned that the best coping method of all was to disconnect myself from it.
But I have learned that I am not the problem. I am not the one that made things up or twisted the truth around, (other than in my own mind in order to cope with it); I did not exaggerate, and if anything I diminish the stories; I do not have to keep any secrets; I am NOT wrong and there is nothing wrong with my memory. So I published that post. And I am publishing this one too!
Thanks to everyone who has shared these posts on facebook or other sites and to everyone who has participated in conversations here and on the Emerging from Broken facebook page.
Please feel free to add your thoughts, feelings and stories.
Keep striving to move forward!
Darlene Ouimet
Self-Worth Gives You Ability To Say No by Patricia Singleton
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- Patricia Singleton
Today I am pleased to welcome guest blogger Patricia Singleton from the blog “Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker” writing about the importance of improving Self Worth on the journey to wholeness. Please help me to welcome Patricia and feel free to leave your comments and contributions. Hugs, Darlene Ouimet ~ founder of Emerging from Broken
Self-Worth Gives You Ability To Say No by Patricia Singleton
Darlene recently wrote a post called Low Self-Esteem And Relationship Disasters. Someone else posted a link to the post on Facebook where I left the following comment:
“When you are taught self-worth, you can’t be controlled by the abuser. You will say, ‘No’ which they don’t want to hear. You will tell others what is happening to you because you know you don’t deserve to be treated badly. The abuser doesn’t want you to do that. Abusers don’t abuse children who might talk.”
The first time that I said “No” and meant it was when I was 17 years old. That is when the physical part of the incest stopped. I knew, in some small part of me, that I didn’t deserve how my dad had treated me for the six years before that. I had said “No” so many times before that day but wasn’t strong enough or courageous enough to stick with my decision. I really wanted the incest to end but didn’t know how to make my dad honor my decision and leave me alone.
I didn’t know it at the time but that small burst of courage came from the survivor hidden deep inside of me. All I knew was that I had just about reached my limits of how much stress I could handle without totally losing who I was. I knew that I couldn’t be pushed any further and continue to hold on to my sanity. I didn’t say it out loud but I had reached the point that if my dad hadn’t left me alone, I believe that I would have told someone about the abuse. I was that desperate, feeling an emotional break near the surface of my control. My dad must have sensed what I didn’t say. He accepted my “No” finally.
At that point in my life, it wasn’t self-worth that gave me the courage to say “No” to the incest. It was a need for self preservation. Sometimes I think that self preservation was the only thing that kept me going through the fog of pain that was the incest. Some part of me simply refused to quit.
I was still many years away from feeling my own self-worth, from really knowing that I didn’t deserve to be abused, from knowing that I didn’t cause the incest. Finding my self-worth was a long, gradual process that didn’t really start until I got into 12-Step programs starting in January of 1989.
In those 12-Step meetings, I met other survivors. I met people who were talking about growing up in alcoholic homes and its effects upon them as an adult. I learned about healthy boundaries, co-dependency and the disease concept of alcoholism. I learned that the control that I thought I had to have in my life was me being out of control and so afraid of life and people. I was able to recognize and step away from people who just wanted to abuse and control me. I learned that I had done some abusing of my own with my weapon of choice—sarcasm. I also learned that I could stop the sarcasm when I recognized that it was an unhealthy and destructive way to release my rage. I could make amends to those that I loved.
Probably the most important thing that I learned was that the only way out of the pain was to go through the pain. I could feel and I wouldn’t die from it. I could love myself and take care of my needs which I had never recognized that I had before. I could be the real me as soon as I found out who she was and people wouldn’t hate or blame me for the incest. People could love me for who I was. Being authentic was not only okay but preferred. I could trust people and they wouldn’t hurt me. I could trust myself. I could trust God. The abuse wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t God’s fault.
Patricia Singleton
Self-worth starts with learning to take care of yourself and learning to love yourself. How did I learn to love myself? Respect myself? I built a support system of people who loved me until I could grow to love myself. I stopped questioning their love for me as I saw that their actions followed their words. I learned to trust my own intuition or gut feelings that told me who was safe to be around and who wasn’t. To love myself, I had to learn to feel all of my feelings. I had to learn how to let go of all of the rage, hurt and sadness. I had to let go of it because it was hurting me, causing me pain and health problems.
I learned that I had inner children in me who were wounded by the abuse and needed healing too. I had to learn that I could nurture and love those inner children instead of hating them for causing me so much pain. You see I had blamed them for their own abuse—my abuse. I found out that I was so afraid of others blaming me for the incest because inside I blamed these inner children who were me for our own abuse. It was easier to blame them and me that it was to blame either of my parents because I depended upon my parents for my survival. I had to work with and talk to each of these inner children. I had to get them to trust me which wasn’t easy because I had abandoned and hated them for so long. In learning to love and nurture them, I learned to love and nurture the adult me.
I had to grieve. I had to let the tears flow freely. As long as I was carrying around all of the rage, hurt and self-hatred, I had no room for self-love. Grieving was the longest part of the process of recovery from incest. I had so many tears hidden inside of me—tears of rage, tears of hurt, tears of sadness, tears from abandonment, tears from neglect, tears from the physical pain of incest, tears from the emotional abuse, tears of hatred, tears of self-hatred. My fear of allowing myself to grieve was that once I started to cry, I would never stop. I went to 12-Step meetings and cried for over a year before the tears started to slow down. Looking back, I don’t know why I was so afraid to cry. As a child, I was told that crying was a sign of weakness. I was determined to be strong so I couldn’t cry, at least not in front of anyone else. The truth that I found out was that tears are cleansing and healing. The flood of tears that came out of me left room for joy and laughter to come back into my life.
As a child, I wasn’t taught any of the things that I learned in those 12-Step meetings. I wasn’t taught self-worth by my parents. I doubt that they were taught self-worth either. I have found out with a little bit of genealogy research that abuse in many different forms has been a generational thing in my family. Rage, domestic violence, alcoholism, incest, family secrets have all come down my family lines for several generations. The present generation can stop the abuse from damaging any more children.
I was easily controlled by my abusers when I was a child because I wasn’t taught that I had any value except as a sex toy for men. My dad wasn’t my only abuser but he was my main abuser. Because he was my parent, he is the one that I have the most issues with. His betrayal was the worse.
I never learned, as a child, that I had the ability or the right to say “No” to my abusers. They were adults who had all the authority to tell me to do whatever they wanted. My parents told me to respect all adults and to do as I was told. Please teach your children that they can say “NO” to anything that doesn’t feel right to them, to anything that feels uncomfortable to them. Children can say “NO” to any kind of touch or attention that they don’t like. And tell them you will believe them.
I was afraid to tell anyone about the incest when I was a child and even when I was a young adult. I was afraid that I would be blamed for the incest or called a liar. I know many of you can relate to this fear. I was also afraid that my mother would shoot my dad and kill him if she believed me. If she shot him, she would be arrested and my siblings and I would be left without parents and it would have been my fault. Today I know none of this was my fault but as a child, I believed that it was all my fault.
Because I didn’t have any self-worth, I went along with what my abusers wanted and kept the secrets of incest. I was silent until I was 38 years old and found 12-Step meetings. When I heard other Adult Children talking about the abuse of alcoholism and drugs, I decided it was safe for me to talk about the incest. In talking about my own incest issues, other Adult Children felt free to start to talk about their own issues from sexual abuse.
In opening the door for myself, I opened the door for other incest survivors to be able to speak about and heal their own issues with incest. Now I share my experiences with incest and with healing and recovery on my blog “Spiritual Journey Of a Lightworker”. Talking about your abuse and your healing from abuse is not only okay but it is a necessary step to take if you are going to stop any more children from being abused. I have taken this step in my own life. I hope you will take this step in your own life. Secrets can harm you and your children.
Patricia Singleton is a 58 year old incest survivor who chooses to share her journey through incest and recovery by writing the blog Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker and by participating in the blogs of other survivors. She calls herself a Lightworker due to the healing that she has accomplished in her own life and because of the ripple effect that her healing has on others. By sharing, she hopes to light the way for others in their own healing. She has a passion for others to know that healing and recovery is possible and necessary if we are to protect our children from being abused.
Patricia is a wife, grandmother and so much more. Today, Patricia loves life and is thriver, which is so much better than just surviving.
Sexual Abuse, Bulimia and Eating Disorders
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- Darlene at 21
There was another specific outcome to being sexually assaulted when I was barely fourteen that had a very big impact on my belief system and was part of the results I realized as I took the memory apart. As I have already written about, my mother taught me that my importance and value was sexual so looks and weight were very important. Being attractive to men was very important and I believed that was my only true value or power, so I was very aware of my looks. At the same time I had a deep belief that it was my looks and body that caused the man to come into my bedroom and sexually assault me so I had this polar opposite belief system about sexuality and body image. I had been raised to believe that my looks and sexuality would get me through life; it was all good, all powerful and all important that I be attractive and sexually appealing to men. I had a killer body and long beautiful naturally curly hair. But I hated my body and was afraid of it at the same time. It was never good enough and it was always too good. I agonized between needing to be safe by being appealing and dressing in a sexual attractive way, and being terrified that I was going to be hurt ~assaulted, sexually abused, raped or ignored and rejected because of my looks. I was equally afraid of NOT being attractive as I was of being attractive. I had a bi polar belief system going on when it came to my physical appearance and I was never comfortable either way. For me, physical attraction was love. Physical attraction was also dangerous and hurtful.
I had to be attractive to men, I had to be perfect. As I got older I wore provocative clothing which made me feel both good and bad. I had to be noticed, I had to appeal to men, lots of men, ALL men. That is where I got my validation. BUT at the same time, I was terrified to be attractive.
After my mother’s boyfriend came into my room that night and sexually assaulted me, I gained 30 pounds in about three months. I was so terrified of the weight gain that I was suicidal over it. (and remember that I became obsessed with suicidal thoughts after I was sexually abused and while I was gaining this weight, so there is a chance that the root of the suicidal thoughts was actually about having been sexually abused but I ate the food and I gained the weight so I was responsible for being fat) When I was fifteen I went to weight watchers and lost 33 lbs. I was the star, being the youngest in the class, and I loved that too because now I had a little attention and approval. I was so scared to gain the weight back however that as soon as I started the maintenance program, I also started bingeing and purging out of fear. I had never even heard the word bulimic or of the disease bulimia when I was doing this but somehow I found out about it.
The bingeing was about the belief that I would be safer if I was heavier ~ falsely believing that NO ONE would ever want me (or touch me) if I was “fat”. The purging was about the fear of being nothing and no one without my looks and body and that without my perfect body I would be invalidated and unlovable. Bulimia was the answer for me; I could eat all I wanted and then just throw it up. This was an absolutely 50/50 polar opposite belief system which tore me in two directions until very recently, but there are still a few leftover beliefs and fears that I still work on.
I discovered and started using amphetamines to take my appetite when I was 16. The only time I didn’t binge and purge and live a bulimic lifestyle at that age was when I was using these illegal drugs to control my desire to eat. I was addicted to amphetamines until I was 23 years old at which time I sought help for my addictions.
This behavior took me down a new path with my belief system. Now I had chosen to use both drugs and alcohol as a coping method, and this was more proof to myself of how “bad” that I was. I stopped looking at the fact that I had been devalued, mistreated and unprotected most of my life, and used this new behavior to reinforce the already deep belief that I was unlovable, unworthy and undeserving of love. Now I was participating in something really bad. I knew I should know better. I didn’t consciously think about why I was doing it. I remember feeling so guilty and ashamed of using drugs and sneaking alcohol. I also remember sticking my finger down my throat and eventually choking and looking in the mirror, bloodshot eyes and vomit on my chin and feeling like the lowest of the lowest and using the drugs to suppress my appetite was somehow better than that. It was a lesser shame. I stopped considering what anyone else had or had not done to me or for me.
When I was fully over my alcohol and drug addictions and after all the dynamics that pregnancy has on someone with body issues, I sought help for food addictions, compulsive overeating and eating disorders ~ I learned all kinds of useful tools and sayings. I learned and eventually believed that it wasn’t about the food, and while it was a huge relief to learn that, until I took this whole memory apart I never understood what it really WAS about.
And remember ~ bulimia, drugs, alcohol and suicidal thoughts and plans, were just a few of the things that resulted from the impact that sexual assault had on me. This was just one thread that I followed in order to take apart a memory and get a glimpse into how my belief system formed.
Please feel free to share about anything to do with your own discoveries because this blog isn’t about the symptoms as much as it is about the pathway to freedom from those symptoms.
Hugs, Darlene Ouimet
Sexual Abuse and Belief System Development
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In my last post “Sexual Abuse ~ Devalued, Discounted and Unprotected” I talked about one incident where I was sexually abused and the damage that I became aware of. In this post I talk about some of the other events in my life that actually groomed me to believe that I had something to do with this incident of sexual abuse and some of the things that I realized about this particular sexual assault later on in my recovery process. I hope to illustrate how the belief system formed in me and how I was able to take it apart by looking at how it formed in the first place.
It took me several hours in therapy to dig through all the details so this is just the quick version to hopefully give you an idea of what I am talking about.
~When I was six years old my mother began teaching me that my value was sexual. It is important that you read the post about this in order to understand how my belief system formed. Click: The Progression of Mental Health Breakdown
~I had already learned not to bother expecting to be protected via previous events that I had been ignored ~ I highlight this in the post about the teacher who was picking on me so much that I developed a serious illness and the Pediatrician figured it out. Once again it is important to understand how a belief system forms even before the abusive or trauma event takes place. This was key in my recovery from abuse ~ to realize it began in several different places. This post has nothing to do with sexual abuse, but is about emotional abuse and how my parents failed to take care of me. Click: Psychological and Emotional Abuse ~ How Self Doubt Grows
~Regarding the sexual assault when I was 14~ it wasn’t me that told, it was my Aunt who told. I didn’t realize how key this was in why I gave up hope after this particular sexual assault. This is a huge point because I think deep down I believed that if someone ELSE told my Mom that she would actually do something ~ I was just so sure it was because I had been labeled as a “story teller” (and therefore my own fault) that that was the reason no one would believe me.
~My body responded. I woke up and my body had responded to his touch. I blocked this out and I didn’t acknowledge it for many years but deep down I knew it and it made me feel very guilty and ashamed. In my young mind I believed that I must be very bad for having that reaction.
~My mother denied that it happened. She said that I was mistaken. She never for one minute gave any indication that it might have actually happened. Which at the time made me feel discounted and eventually it made me question my own memory. This had happened in the past too, but what was different this time is that my Aunt was a witness which helped me to at least partially accept that it was a true memory. I hoped that this time I would be heard and validated.
~although my mother denied that it happened, the fact that she added at the end that I had a crush on him, indicated not only that she believed it happened but that it was my fault. I didn’t realize this fact however until I was well into my late thirties.
~the fact that he was drunk was used as an excuse and it was HER excuse for letting him stay in the house that night. She had broken up with him because she found out he was married, and he showed up at the house drunk, and she didn’t want him to drive. SO she let him have her room and she slept downstairs on the couch. She also kept repeating that he didn’t remember doing it. (which in my mind meant that if he said he didn’t do it, then he didn’t ~ but that is like saying it isn’t raining when it is, makes it true) If she had believed and defended me, this would not have been such a big deal, but the way she handled it made HIM more important than ME. And I concluded (what choice did I have?) that my value was less than his value.
~with each boyfriend that my mother had after that, she acted like I was her competition. She said inappropriate things about me in front of her boyfriends which I had no idea was strange, I just thought it was hurtful. I didn’t realize until much later that this was because she really believed that I had done something to invite her drunk boyfriend to come into my room. (I had a LOT of trouble accepting that she really truly blamed me and I preferred to make excuses for her in my own mind. I felt sorry for my mother for years and years.)
~Because I believed that my mother was right ~ that I had a crush on him and therefore I had done something to invite him to my room, psychologically, I believed that I had done something very wrong that somehow invited him to come into my room and I didn’t know what it was, so I spent YEARS living in fear that I would do “it” again and invite or cause another assault. I also spent years trying to figure out what the heck “it” was that I had done, believing that if I figured that out I would not repeat the mistake.
~Instead of being able to talk about the assault, to tell my mother how terrified that I was, what went through my mind, what he said, what he did, and how I tried to get away, I was caught in a second nightmare of defending myself to my mother. She never once asked me what happened.
This kind of self blame stayed with me until I got help re-wiring my belief system, and it had a effect on the way that I lived the rest of my life, the choices I made, my self esteem and my self image and the way that I did relationship. I also had to learn to re-parent myself and I had to start going back to that young age where I really needed a parent but didn’t really have one. I had to validate myself and stop believing that if she finally heard me and said that she believed me now ~ that I would finally be okay.
The complicated thing here is that the post about Phillip coming in my room was only ONE event. Mix a few more in there that are equally mishandled and add the other events that teach us that we don’t really have much value and guess what happens. Well I think you already know.
I welcome comments, feedback, stories or whatever you would like to share.
Exposing Truth ~ one snapshot at a time!
Darlene Ouimet
Overcoming Depression ~ Getting Past the Pain
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I got a comment the other day from Cassie and it has been haunting me ever since so today I am going to answer one of the questions in her comment.
Cassie wrote an in depth and pain filled comment about being stuck in depression and feeling guilty about not being fulfilled as a Mom. (to see the entire post and comment please click here) and her comment ended with this question:
“How do I get past the day-in- and day-out pain that haunts me with memories that wind inside my head like a foggy, black memory monster?” Cassie
It was in looking at the events through different eyes and putting it through a different grid of understanding that I was set free from the daily pain and increasingly difficult memories. I learned to take apart a memory. The next step after that was to keep going forward righting false beliefs about who I am “supposed to be” in favor of becoming who I really am.
Honestly looking at a memory;
Taking apart a memory has a lot of aspects to it. The biggest part of the problem with the memories I had was the way that I understood them. That was a problem because I understood them “wrong”. I understood them the way that the abusers wanted me to understand. I was trained to take the blame, taught that I was a bad girl, that I was unworthy of better and that I was a problem. I was also taught to doubt myself and told that I remembered it “wrong” and sometimes even told that it didn’t happen or couldn’t have happened. Sometimes I never told because I learned that I didn’t matter.
These teachings that become part of our beliefs are not always taught to us in words, sometimes they are taught by actions, or results. Sometimes they are taught to us by the way that we get looked at, a disapproving frown, or being ignored and pushed aside. Sometimes our feelings and our fears are completely disregarded, and we are given answers that make NO sense but we try to make sense of them. Answers such as “well you know how she is” a father might say when we tell him mommy hits her. OR “well just try to be a good girl” and we take that to mean that IF we can be a “good girl” then we won’t get hit. Adults will tell children who are being emotionally abused “you have to respect your elders” or “I am sure it didn’t happen that way”. Looking at the truth of these things meant realizing that they were wrong to have given me these answers, NOT that I was wrong to have had those problems.
I didn’t realize that abusive events can piggy back on each other when it comes to how the belief system is formed. Not being believed or protected when someone beat you up at school can have an impact on the next trauma that you experience. It was very important for me to look at the things that happened AFTER the trauma. For instance, after my mother’s boyfriend came into my room at night when I was a young teenager, my mother acted like she didn’t trust ME anymore. I didn’t question whether or not I deserved her lack of trust. This was a result that went on for years but I had not thought about it when I processed the event itself. In my next post I am highlighting this whole event, how I processed it and the beliefs that developed because of it.
I had all kinds of mixed up beliefs that I didn’t know I had because my experiences and the results of those experiences had become my truth, so I didn’t know any different. I had to be willing to learn a new truth. I had to realize that the way that I was raised was not right, and that some of the things that happened to me had actually resulted in serious depressions, post traumatic stress and dissociative identity disorder either because they were never dealt with or because I was falsely convinced that these things were normal, that I deserved them or brought them on myself, that I liked them or that I was lying about them. And this is not a complete list; there are many more ways that we can be falsely taught and convinced that mistreatment was not “wrong” or was no big deal. Each one of these things however, contributed to the way that I formed my world view and each had to be looked at through a new lens. I had to take apart one memory and look at all the aspects of it. I had to try to remain neutral as I looked at it; trying to put aside all the baggage that came with it or as a result of it until I had the details on the table. I had to believe myself. I had to be willing to take a look at the possibility that people who “loved me” didn’t do right by me. I didn’t have to accept it right away, but I had to be willing to just look at it.
I know this sounds overwhelming but remember that I only took apart one memory at a time. I didn’t have to look at every single incident in my life; I only had to look at about 3 big events where I was mistreated, devalued, unprotected or traumatized, in order to begin to see the pattern that formed my belief system. Once I began to see that pattern, I saw where all the breakdowns for me began; I was able to identify the roots of my serious depressions, post traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder and I was off and running towards healing and wholeness.
Freedom is on the other side of broken,
Darlene Ouimet
Stay tuned for part two ~ I take a look at one abusive event and take apart the memory step by step and talk about the pieces that I understood at that time. In part three I will look at the pieces that I didn’t look at.
Mother Daughter Relationship ~ My Poor Mom
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- Cold Hearted Love
This comment came in from Cyndi on my last post (click to view Standing up to Dysfunctional Family Relationship ~ Part two) and it prompted me to write today’s post ~ another little snapshot of how messed up I was in the mother daughter relationship that I had with my mother.
Cyndi wrote: “I went about telling the truth in a different way. My mother grew up with a volatile abusive father just like mine. In my initial efforts to face my childhood and change the way I dealt with her, I mistakenly believed that if I could just talk to her calmly she would explain herself, apologize for her shortcomings and we’d ride happily off into the sunset. HA! Instead she denied everything, said I exaggerated, focused on only the bad things, blatantly called me a liar and said my childhood was much better than hers…I was lucky” Cyndi
My mother was really good at making me feel sorry for her and it was a very hard trap to crawl out of. My mother did have a way worse life then I did; we heard the stories all of our lives; her father was a bigamist and her mother found out when she was pregnant with her 6th child and that resulted in the marriage being annulled. The 6 children were split between both parents. My mother lived with her father for a time. He put locks on the cupboards (restricted food) and hired a housekeeper (a live in girlfriend). My mother never tasted chocolate until she was 17. She begged for orange peels at school. Her father took the money she made running errands for the neighbor lady. She had to go to work so she was only went to school until grade 8. There was worse abuse too. When she was able to live with her mother again, there were scary men. Then there was a drunken step father added to her burden. You get the picture ~ and the list goes on. It is absolutely true that my mother had a very tough childhood and it was true that it was worse than mine. I never even thought about whether or not it was true. Her mother, my grandmother was mean and nasty and still had the drunk for a husband. I didn’t need proof. My mother had a terrible mother daughter relationship with her own mother. The last time she saw her father she was 15. So I felt sorry for her. It didn’t take much for me to believe that I was a very ungrateful child. I felt so guilty because I was so unhappy. If you heard my mother’s story, you would feel very bad for her, I am serious. In so many ways her life WAS way worse than mine. “I was so lucky…”
BUT what does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with ME? Is that an excuse for her behavior? Should I discount my own feelings and struggles because hers were worse? Should I be happy that my life was not as bad as hers and therefore be grateful for what DIDN’T happen to me?Well I sure thought so.
Believing this would be like accepting and agreeing that if one kid was beaten bloody and another kid was beaten bloody and a few bones were broken, and the one kid says to the other kid “well at least none of your bones were broken, “you were so lucky”. WHAT? NO WAY. Abuse is abuse.
I didn’t think I had a right to be depressed. I didn’t think that my life had been as bad as hers. I thought that the abuse that I suffered was my own fault, in fact that belief was so deep in my belief system that when I finally dealt with the sexual abuse that I endured at the hands of a babysitter at the age of around two ~ I told the therapist that I knew I should have been able to STOP IT. I was two! And that belief ~ that I brought things on myself or should have been able to stop them, permeated through every event, big or small for everything that I felt bad about, from then on.
This is all part of the brainwashing that goes along with being less important than someone else. This is how the control is established. They weave some loyalty stuff into it, and add some guilt and tell you how ungrateful you are… and say things like “after all I’ve done for you” and… well you know the outcome.
This kind of communication in a mother daughter relationship is really manipulative on the part of the ADULT. AND this began when my mother was the adult and I was the child in the relationship and when I was an adult I was still regarding my mother through the eyes of HER child, the way that she trained me to think about her.
So yes, my Mother had a terrible time, and I feel deeply sorry for her and I wish more than anything that she could be free too but that isn’t up to me, it is up to her and I am adamant that I will not be pushed around and devalued or treated like I am less than equal in the meanwhile. If we are going to have a mother daughter relationship, it is going to be a functional one based on the true definition of love.
I found that looking at these situations through a different grid ~ a more truthful grid ~ is the beginning of freedom. Please contribute in whatever way you wish.
Life is so much better with the truth,
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
