Archive for behaviour modification
Illusive but Destructive: Belief System Inheritance
Posted by: | Comments
It was so subtle. And I was entirely defenseless to protect myself from it. I had no reference point in my youngest years to be able to say, “Hey, believing this will play out badly for me in the future. I’m going to decide to believe differently.” It was what I naturally took to be “normal” because it was my normal. It was the home I grew up in. It was the two most advanced human beings that I knew, modeling to me what it meant to be human. Being 100% impressionable, I watched and learned and without even thinking about it plugged what I saw into my first and most important belief system about who I was and what it meant to be valuable.
For so long I could not figure out why I struggled and struggled with depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. I had no traumatic event to point to in my childhood to explain it. When I thought about my past I just felt lost and hazy. In my present, I was anxious, quiet, afraid to assert my real self, not really knowing who my real self was. I grew to assume everyone else was better than I was , even though I was smart and talented. The common slogan of “just be yourself” always appealed to me, made me feel excited, but I never really got it. Inside I just felt empty. I habitually admired other people, and eventually I learned how to act like other people in an attempt to feel like I was somebody, that I had something, something in myself that I admired in them. I was always trying to be somebody else… because I didn’t know how to be me. Because I couldn’t figure out why I struggled so much, I really felt like there must be something wrong with me. I was weak, somehow faulty, just prone to be depressed. Later on in life I beat myself up for not believing enough that God loved me, that I really must be failing spiritually if I was so depressed. It must be true, because what other explanation was there? Somehow, I was doing something wrong.
The belief system that became such a powerful force in my life had a beginning somewhere… The beginning of this belief system, passed down to me like a bad kind of inheritance, was so hard for me to see because it happened so passively. The lies were never said to me verbally, like “Carla, you are worthless. You’re just one big screw-up. You have nothing to offer.” Nope. My parents never said things like that. How did it happen then that I grew up in a definite state of repression and eventually depression?
There are different pieces of the puzzle, as enforcers of the belief system cropped up in different areas of my life. But I’m focusing a lot on my parents now because they were my first teachers and therefore the most powerful ones. My Dad has his own story of brokenness. If you know my Dad you may feel angry or defensive reading my posts because he is a very nice man. But the belief system that caused brokenness in my Dad’s past is the very same one that caused him to contribute to my broken past. Exposing how the belief system was passed down to me leads to understanding, and understanding leads to healing and freedom. This is why I will write so candidly. In seeing how the belief system was implanted in me in my earliest years, I become free of the lie that I was just born faulty, born with the tendency to be depressed, born with a weak mind or weak soul. This is the truth: I wasn’t born with it, I was born into it. I wasn’t born to be depressed or to struggle with low self-esteem. I learned it from somewhere and just didn’t know how to get rid of it until now. The cycle of lies will only die if they are exposed to the light. I’ve already written about one aspect of the belief system my Dad passed down to me in “The Unengaged Gardener”. In my next post, I will expose another aspect.
In reading Paulo Coelho’s amazing book “The Alchemist” I was so inspired by the main character Santiago, on a quest to find his treasure. He reflects to himself that “he had to chose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. ‘I am an adventurer, looking for treasure,’ he said to himself.” We are adventurers on a quest for our treasure, the treasure of knowing the real truth about who we are and why it has been so hard for us to believe that truth. This quest will definitely lead us through painful territory. But the treasure is worth it. I’m excited to be on this journey with you!
~Carla~
The Process of Normalizing Abuse
Posted by: | Comments
Darlene Ouimet CTACC
Something happens that causes us to somehow live with abuse. Something happens either over time or because of one single trauma, that is not dealt with properly. If it is an abuse that happens in childhood, then it isn’t up to US to deal with it properly, it is up to the adults in our lives to help us deal. There are a few things that teach us to live with being abused, and even encourage us to accept it. It could be that we are not protected from it or that it somehow gets normalized; it could be that we are convinced that we deserved it, asked for it, or liked it. It could be that we were threatened and then slowly brainwashed into believing any of the above. Something happens that causes us to eventually accept abuse as part of life.
When I was a child, I learned through a series of behaviour modification techniques how to behave. I learned that when I was sweet natured or when I tidied my room, that I got a wonderful smile and approval from my mother. When I went to bed without a fight, there was peace. When I ate what was on my plate without complaining, I didn’t get yelled at. When I tried to skip eating the potatoes, I got forced to eat them. If I didn’t fight with my brothers, everything was fine, and if I did, I got in trouble. I learned there were different degrees of “trouble”. There was the kind that got me sent to my room and there was the kind that got me a spanking. There was also the rejection kind which I hated. My mother was proud when I was polite and courteous and smiled at people and she was displeased if I talked back. You get the picture. This is how most of us learn which behaviours are good and which ones are bad or wrong, and most of that kind of learning isn’t the problem.
But what happens when a child lives with mixed messages about right and wrong? What happens when there is abuse which is wrongly justified? What happens in the mind of a child when something like this happens? I get this picture in my mind’s eye of a huge circuit board (the belief system) with the wires getting plugged into the wrong spots and the sparks just start flying as everything begins to break down. That is what happens to a child’s mind. That is what happened to my mind. There are mixed messages, wrong messages, lies, confusion and pain. I am told that I am imagining what happened. I am told that I am exaggerating. Sometimes I am ignored. Other times I am made fun of. Eventually living with the mixed messages, the devaluing and being told that I am wrong becomes my normal. Eventually the abuse also becomes “normal”.
My world became familiar and even comfortable in the sense that the way things were was what I was used to. My belief system was formed, but it was full of false truth.
Any kind of abuse or devaluing behaviour can lead to leaning how to accept being treated indecently. This normalization process is not caused only from sexual or physical abuse; learning to accept abuse as deserved can happen from ANY type of abuse inflicted on a child and that will set the stage for ANY other type of abuse to be accepted later on.
Darlene Ouimet
Psychological and Emotional Abuse ~ How Self Doubt Grows
Posted by: | Comments
Do you ever wonder how we arrive at a place where we don’t trust ourselves? Why do we doubt ourselves? Why do we think that someone else must know better than we do, what is best for us even when we are grown up? And before we get to that place what happens that causes children to so easily accept that they deserve to be treated badly?
This is a story that I hear every day in the lives of others who struggle for freedom and wholeness. This is just one example of how I learned to doubt myself. I guess you could say that I was encouraged to doubt myself from a very young age by the way that I was raised.
I was a very quiet, compliant and sweet kid. I never caused trouble or got into trouble. But for some reason I was completely ready to believe that I was indeed a problem and I carried this belief with me into adulthood and into every relationship I ever had. When I was in grade 5, which would have been when I was 10 years old, I had a teacher who hated me. I don’t remember thinking that she hated me back then, I was too busy trying to please her.
This teacher humiliated me in front of the whole class. She regularly threatened to cut my long braids off if I so much as touched them. When my homework was correct, she told the class that my father must have done it. She said that she didn’t know why I was so slow. I disgusted her! She said a lot of horrible devaluing things that damaged my self esteem and I was deathly afraid of her. She seemed to just spit her venom out at me.
When I told my parents, I was told that I must be exaggerating; that I should respect my teacher. They accused me of lying! There was no protection OR validation to be found from my parents. I didn’t try very hard to get them to listen to me. They had been telling me for years that I was overly dramatic and that I liked to talk to hear myself talk, so I knew that I was wasting my time. Furthermore, I was willing to accept that it must be my fault. Somehow I had done something to make this teacher hate me. I was causing her stress somehow. I believed it.
I was taught to respect my elders by being told that I was lying, that I was exaggerating, that I was dramatic. Worse yet, these statements were made by my parents in smiling gentle tones so I could be told that I misunderstood those reprimands. Respect came to mean that everyone else is right; I am wrong. I believed that I was less valuable then others because I was not heard. I was dismissed. There was no equality. I didn’t even get a say. These things defined me, they became about who I was; a liar, dramatic, an attention seeker.
I got very sick that year. I suppose the stress affected me physically, but there were some things about my illness that caused the paediatrician to gently pry into my emotional life. He asked my parents to leave the room and I remember that he talked to me; he wanted to know about me and he listened to me and it came out about my teacher. I don’t remember all the details, but it resulted in him ordering them to take me out of the class that I was in. He said that if they didn’t, or if the school would not co-operate he would get a lawyer. The teacher was emotionally and psychologically abusing me.
I felt guilty that he stuck up for me. I felt unworthy. Deep down I was pretty sure that I was the one that was causing the problem and that now I’d caused my parents embarrassment; they would have to go to the school and get me out of that class. This was a horrific time for me and my dissociation took a different turn that year. I can still remember the internal fight, I constantly questioned myself about whether or not I had made the whole thing up and then in the same breath consoled myself with the fact that my parents told me the teacher confessed everything in a meeting.
I learned to doubt myself way before this teacher abuse thing. I had learned to doubt when I was being abused and where the blame lay by the actions, reactions and teachings of the adults in my life.
Darlene Ouimet
A Good Kind of Effort
Posted by: | Comments“Now hold your hand onto the plow
Work your body till the sun goes down
What’s left of death is more than fear
Let dust be dust and the good lord near”
(click on link above, then press the orange play button at the top to hear the song!)
New foundations give me strong footing to start taking positive action in my life, to start working out who I really am, to put “feet” on my truth and walk it out. I have always worked hard at things; I like to do things well. But now that I have this true foundation of knowing who I really am, effort is taking on a new meaning for me.
I used to hate effort. This was the lie at the root of my hatred of effort: if I have to work or try hard to do something, then that something musn’t be part of the REAL me; therefore, I won’t be being a “genuine” person (because if this desired action was part of the REAL me, then it would just naturally happen without me even thinking about it). This lie was fed by my fear of being judged by others as a fake, as pretending to be better than I really was. It made my attempts to change or grow in certain areas very uncomfortable and twisted; it created a self-made prison that limited how far I would go with my gifts and talents or how much I would pursue my dreams. Mixed in with that was my belief that if I could change enough outward things about myself, then my inside things would get better too. It didn’t work that way.
Doing the work of getting true, strong and deep foundations in place has freed me from these lies. I don’t have to be afraid of not being “genuine.” The more I trust myself, my heart, my good intentions, the more I see how good my heart really is. Rooting myself in this truth does a couple things. First, it frees me to see all parts of myself in the light. I am less afraid to see both my weaknesses and my strengths. In wholeness I give all the parts of myself permission to exist and to be as they are. Some parts need a bit more attention than others; some parts are ready for action and exercise; some parts are still in the early stages of healing.
I also see the roots, the beginnings, of my true potential more clearly. I understand that any kind of thriving requires a process of growth, which will at times require effort. The effort that I take now to grow and change is really different. It’s more like “tilling the soil” kind of effort, working with the good stuff that’s already there to encourage it to grow and flourish. I see that it will involve making mistakes, tweaking this or that, and trying again. What motivates me is not a ruthless drive to “fix” myself. I am motivated to become all that I truly am because I know it is good and worthwhile. I know there is reward and fulfillment for me in doing this work, and I also know that in exercising the real stuff of me, others will benefit in one way or another. I believe this is true for every single person.
I hope you find freedom in your foundations and take joy in putting your hand to the plow~ what you have to offer this world is worth the effort!
~Carla
Self Value Disengages Reactivity
Posted by: | Comments“Nothing can give it to you because you already have it… And not only do you have it- you are it, you are what you’re looking for already… the ‘I am’ that is stripped of all this and that, the pure experiencing of knowing yourself as… life itself; I don’t have a life, I am life.” – Eckhart Tolle
When I relate to others from a hungry heart, there is this feeling of intense neediness, of strong reliance on them to keep me “together”. This is why I’m so passionate about being whole in and of myself, of valuing myself as I am, for who I am. It’s not self-centered. I want to be whole in relationships too, and that all starts with the sense of my unique and worthy self.
I used to react to others who treated me poorly. There was always things “stringing along” feeling… this anxiety that I had to be just the right way around them in order to be treated well. For the subtlest reasons I would cower inside or adjust my behavior in order to win their favor. Sometimes I would get very quiet. Or other times I would be verbal and defensive, spilling all my emotions and putting myself in a very vulnerable place. For me, the heart of my reactivity was to try to correct their behavior so that they would treat me as valuable. I was trying to correct the “mirrors” to keep telling me I was “okay”. I relied on their treatment of me to define my worthiness. By attempting to correct their treatment of me, I was attempting to keep my small sense of worthiness intact. I gave a lot of my power away and opened myself up to be hurt time and again.
Building on a new foundation of beliefs about who I really am sets me up for a different kind of relating. I don’t need to depend on others to define me anymore. Inside, there is this growing sense of my own value. Just as I am, now. I exist in this moment with all my strengths and weaknesses, my personality, my hopes and quirks, my unique perspectives. I’m not defined by other people; my past reactions and hungry heart behaviours don’t define the real me either. It’s just a simple unalterable fact that I exist as a valuable part of this world. When I enter interactions with others from this truth, everything changes. I don’t have to hop around inside, adjusting myself to someone else’s requirements. Most importantly, to summarize Eckhart Tolle, I’m not relying on someone else to give to me what only I can give myself.
*Special Note!: My article Contexting Geese (click to visit) was published recently on the multi-author blog, Wisdom a la Carte. I found this blog via facebook, and it’s another great resource for thought-provoking insight! I’ll be writing more on that theme here, in coming weeks!*
The Flow of Receiving
Posted by: | CommentsDo you ever watch those renovation shows on TLC or a home and garden channel? Do you find it difficult to only watch the first half? I don’t spend a lot of time watching TV, but if I see the beginning of one of these types of shows, I HAVE to watch the entire thing, or at least flip back to behold the dramatic transformation at the end. I’m struck by our human thirst for transformation. There is something so moving and exciting and hopeful about seeing the before and after of a home or room or garden being redone, or a makeover where personal beauty is revealed in a new unexpected way.
Along my own transformative journey, I desire less and less to receive help (though there is a time and place for that) and am now seeking new habits of thinking, new ways of talking to myself, “parenting” myself, and interacting with life and others- essentially, I’m seeking better ways of helping myself. In true freedom, I can see that change does not fundamentally involve changing the outer things. It’s easy to get stuck trying to fix all the outer things in an effort to change the inner things. And this has a place too, but at the deepest root of change there lies a decision to believe differently about a thing, to believe differently about myself, to believe differently about others and my interactions with them. The outward transformation ripples out from a change at the root.
I open myself up to receive new definitions of love and what is “best”. And what I’m discovering is that in order to receive the new, I have to let go of the old. It’s a continuous flowing process. Old comfortable habits of reacting to mistreatment, or trying to feel valuable by defining myself with outward things are cumbersome. They take up too much inner space, and they rob me of having the clarity and the receptivity to receive what is better, more alive, more life giving. Sometimes embracing the new feels like going over a jump on a snowmobile at 120 km/hr. Thrilling and scary at the same time. But the more I make room to receive the new, the more familiar it becomes to me. The more I see my new habits improving my life, the more I inclined I am to seek out even better ones.
For Christmas I wish you whatever amount of courage, vision and desire you need to let go of that which holds you back from thriving in the life you were created to live, to engage in the process of continually receiving and letting go. Merry Christmas.
~Carla~
My Hungry Heart ~ Part 3 of 3
Posted by: | CommentsI grew up striving to find proof outside of myself that I truly was okay. This was my addiction. It was 2 fold: one part of it was constantly trying to figure out what other people thought of me, and the other part involved modifying my “outsides,” morphing myself, to try and fulfill what I believed other people’s expectations of me were. Like all addictions, it was extremely burdensome, but I did it to help myself survive.
My family life created the vacuum, let the big question “am I okay?” go unanswered. The church that I grew up in contributed to my dis-ease, creating bars that held me back from finding the answer. Church introduced me to self-examination. I fully value being self-aware, but the purpose of this examination was to create guilt and shame.“Examine your heart before doing this or that… Make sure your motives are right… Man looks at the outside, but God looks at the inside [so make sure your insides are good]…” Constant, heavy, suspicious examination. This became one of my biggest slave masters and I became a master at doing it. I was striving desperately for the answer to my question, but if an answer felt “too good to be true” I doubted it. I doubted myself all the time, because how could I know whether my “insides” were good or bad, whether I was on the right track? This self-doubt was the root of my depression and angst.
At age 26 I was so weary. A friend recommended a counsellor to me and I was willing to try whatever it took to find relief. This counsellor was able to help me discover the real truth about myself, for myself. He was a light, already fired up, someone I could spend some time with to get my own light burning again. He was a master not at “fixing me”, but at fanning into flame the truth that was still burning deep down inside myself. The truth he helped me to discover was that my heart is good. Fully and completely good. No questions asked, no proof required, in all its ramifications and outward actions, uniquely beautiful and good intentioned. It was the kind of truth-discovering that’s hard to explain. It just feels really good, like Christmas morning… Deep down, unabashed, grinning ear to ear truth. For someone like me, it was easy to doubt at first, to be suspicious of. But after awhile, my hungry heart couldn’t get enough. For a time, I needed this source outside of myself and outside of the church to tell me this truth, over and over again. Now that my own light is burning brighter, I’m getting the hang of it for myself. I’m rebuilding my foundation, setting myself up for a life of living as my true self, fulfilled and excited to be alive.
Survival
Posted by: | CommentsI lived in survival mode for 27 years of my life. What was survival for me may not have looked like what most perceive “surviving” to be. I was good at holding it all together, appearing confident and happy. People liked me. I succeeded at the activities I was involved in. But all the while, on the inside, I lived in almost constant anxiety.
I survived by developing hyper-awareness. In any situation with people, I was alert to the dynamics going on so that, if necessary, I could tweak my behaviour in order to be accepted and not rejected. I also became an artist at comparing myself to others, constantly. How am I better? How am I worse? If I could feel better than the other person in at least one way, whew, I was fine. Being a naturally deep feeling person, I was very sensitive to how people treated me and what I thought they thought of me… At the root of it all, I was walking around like a big question mark. A HUGE question mark. My antenae was always peeked, looking for the answer: “Am I okay?”
Survival was necessary because I didn’t know a better way. I was doing the best with what I had, in ways I had learned since I was very young. The old ways are too painful and cumbersome now. They helped me get by, but they didn’t help me fly! I’m welcoming new and better ways.
