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~ As a child at school I chose other kids who were withdrawn like I was.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

We are conditioned not to talk about family secrets. I was taught in so many ways that ‘some things are not talked about’ and I was so afraid of the consequences of bringing shame on my family that I ignored the solution to overcoming the mental health issues that I had. Rejection from my family when I was a little child would have meant death. I believed as an adult that it STILL meant death.  I had to overcome that fear.

Even when the family members are dead, the victims of dysfunctional family situations are very often STILL just as afraid to reveal the family secrets, which is very telling about just how deep this fear goes when it comes to the belief system.

People told me that they didn’t have a choice about keeping the secrets even when they became adults. I agreed with them because not taking my choice about telling enabled me to have an excuse to not have to do the work that it took to take my life back. I had to look more closely at what it meant for me to believe that I didn’t have a choice. I had to see that it wasn’t that I DIDN’T have a choice as much as it was just that I didn’t KNOW I had a choice.

This belief that I could not, must not tell was rooted in victim mentality and I had to keep in mind that this “victim mentality” is how I survived a childhood of abuse and emotional neglect. Victim mentality was my friend when I was a kid. It saved me. It was hard to understand that victim mentality was not my friend anymore. My mind warned me constantly NOT to see things differently, believing with all my heart that the only way to survive this life was to operate in that same child mindset that kept me “safe” from further harm.  Telling would have made things so much worse and I could not accept that telling (at least someone) was part of the answer now.

Victim mentality taught me to FEAR the consequences of honoring my choice to reveal those secrets. Victim mentality tells me that I am safer to keep the secrets and protect the perpetrator.  Victim mentality taught me to protect the person who covered up for the perpetrator, believing that I am less deserving than the perpetrator, BECAUSE that is what I was taught about myself through the actions of those who were in charge of me.  

When I first started this website I would have a fear related adrenalin rush when I clicked the publish button on certain articles especially if they revealed anything about toxic and dysfunctional family relationships. That was my childhood fear of going public with my past. It was not fear for what others would then know about me but fear of what the consequences would be if I “told” on the abusers and those that didn’t protect me or if I revealed the family secrets. I didn’t understand that fear based adrenalin rush then as well as I do now. I had to reassure myself that the consequences for talking would not kill me that I was no longer that helpless child anymore. I had to remind myself that hundreds of times.

Another huge fear that I had was that deep down I was sure that if I could love my mother the way she needed me to love her, then everything would be fine. Telling the family secrets was like giving up on the last thread of hope because I knew that if I told the truth about what had gone on in my life, I would burn my last bridge and ruin my only chance that my mother and possibly even my whole family would love me. “Telling” represented the death of that hope.  

I had to be willing to face the possibility of that rejection.

Today I see this so differently. Why was I willing to protect the people who never protected me? They taught me to believe that I didn’t have enough worth to have equal value to the perpetrators, the neglectors, the abusers, the withholders, the teachers and all the other adult gods in my childhood.  

I no longer care if the truth hurts someone else’s feelings. When I decided to heal and move forward with MY life, I had to stop taking care of other people’s feelings and finally validate MY feelings. When I finally put my own healing first, I began to see the dysfunction more clearly. I finally saw that I was contributing to the sick dysfunctional cycle by going along with it.

As I took those baby steps in the beginning and started to look at the dysfunctional family conditions that I had been raised with, I started to realize that in many ways I had in fact always been rejected. Not being heard is a rejection.  I had not been protected is a rejection. Not being valued and not having my human rights validated is a rejection.

When I began to see things through new eyes, I started to get a glimmer of hope that perhaps I could be good enough for me, and that if I could achieve that status, then others opinions including my own families’ opinions, would no longer matter. I began to realize that I had been agreeing with their rejection of me because I didn’t know anything else.  As I grew stronger I began to stop rejecting myself.

Perhaps the truth hurts, but does that mean that we should stifle the truth? I don’t think so anymore. It was important for me to look at who I was protecting and the truth about why I thought that they were more important than I was.

Please share your thoughts or feedback. I look forward to the discussion here.

Darlene Ouimet

NOTE: I did not reveal anything publically when it came to family secrets until I had several years of healing and I am not suggesting that you reveal your family secrets before you are ready. It would not have helped me to push myself too quickly and very few people choose to write as publically as I do. Please feel free to use a screen name. Only the name you use in the comment form will be seen by others.

Related Posts ~ Overcoming that Nasty Self Blame in Dysfunctional Relationships

I was 13 years old the first time I woke up hearing my mother having sex. My parents had been split up for a few months; I had never heard my parents having sex. By the sounds of it, I thought that the man my mother had in her bedroom with her was trying to kill her. And he could have been! How would anyone know? None of us knew him.

I felt frozen in my bed, terrified about what I was hearing and not knowing what to do about it.  Should I get a large object and go in there and club him over the head? Should I call the police? My frozen immobility and indecisiveness was making me feel guilty and then suddenly, those horrifying sounds stopped.  I heard normal murmuring sounds of conversation.  I must have gone back to sleep then.  Eventually, I figured out that what was going on in her bedroom was not murder or physical violence.

My toxic mother didn’t want to be a single mother. That was her answer to everything. It was even her justification for having very loud sex with men while three children slept in rooms very close by.

One of my brothers made comments about her night-time noise making sessions; she would respond “I never asked to be a single mother”.  I was left to assume the translation for that statement.  And I translated it according to my belief system.  My mother deserves to be happy. Men make her happy. I have no right to interfere with her happiness. I have no right to feel uncomfortable about hearing my mother doing this stuff.

I have no rights.

I translated her justifications into the belief that this situation was normal. I believed that I had no right to any judgements about my mother. I believed that I was wrong to feel scared, embarrassed and unsafe.  I believed that the uncomfortable feelings I felt when I came down to the kitchen in the morning to find those men sitting there at the table, were due to the fact that something was wrong with me. I thought I was different than other people because I thought I was having difficulty accepting a “normal divorced family” situation that I was unable to accept as “normal”. I thought it was just ME that couldn’t accept it as “normal.”  I thought I SHOULD be able to accept it. (As you can see, my definition of “normal” was dysfunctional and I was accustomed to accepting our dysfunctional mother daughter relationship.)

By the time I was seventeen I was calling myself prudish rather than accept that my narcissistic and self centered toxic mother was promiscuous. By the time I was 19 I suspected that I was “frigid” because I was not at all interested in sex the way that my mother was. I was always looking at the “what is wrong with me” part because my grid of understanding came from dysfunctional mother daughter relationship. My “normal” was not really normal at all. My toxic  mothers dysfunctional behaviour throughout my teen years messed me up a great deal and it took me a long time to realize that.

Understanding THIS truth has been one of the profound truths that set me free.

My promiscuous mother’s decision to have loud sexual relations with men was a decision made out of my mothers selfishness. Repeatedly stating that she “didn’t ask to be a single mother” was meant to justify her own bad behaviour while ensuring that her children didn’t blame her for anything. I didn’t know that and could not even suspect that back then.  I felt guilty and wrong that I was ashamed of my narcissistic mother so I turned it on myself.

When my toxic mother started taking me to the bars where she was picking up men, I didn’t know that was abnormal or dysfunctional mother behaviour either. Even though I knew that I was underage, and I had that adrenalin rush every time I ordered a drink for fear of being asked for I.D. I didn’t know that what my narcissistic mother was doing was wrong because she was my mother. She was the ultimate authority in my life. In my mind, my mother’s authority surpassed the authority of the law and I believed by then that my role in her life was to help her get through the terrible burden of being a single mother.  I felt the same way about her conduct in our home. It was my job, my responsibility to help her get through the terrible burden of having to be a single mother to me; I believed that I was the burden.

All of my mother’s promiscuous sexual behaviour and misbehaviour since I was about 6 years old had groomed me nicely to accept that my value was in sexuality, just like my mothers value was in sexuality. I was groomed to be ready to identify with sexuality as my value even though it scared me to death because of the abuse and trauma that I associated with it. This is one of the terrible conflicts these mixed messages cause that survivors of dysfunctional families face.

~And I wondered why I struggled with depressions continually.

~And I didn’t understand HOW I had become dissociated.

~And I constantly questioned why I had such low self esteem.

~And I beat myself up for my weaknesses with addictions and dysfunctional relationships with abusive men; when in reality I had been well groomed to accept dysfunction as “normal”. I had taught to reprimand myself when I had trouble accepting dysfunction as “normal”.

~I actually fought to accept that I was a failure in most areas of my life thinking the answer was in acceptance and surrender and never realizing that I was struggling to accept the wrong truth. 

These were examples of the type of damage that I had to face the truth about in order to overcome the ways that the results of that damage manifested in my life.

I HAD to understand that I was not the one that let me down.

The ideas presented in this article are not limited to the examples that I have given. This same “grooming process” producing other mixed messages can be applied to any dysfunctional behaviour displayed by a parent in order to see where you own belief system formed in a false normal way. I welcome you to share your thoughts on this subject.  

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time;                                          

Darlene Ouimet

For related posts click the coloured links in bold print

daggers of self blame

Looking back on my life, it is evermore clear to me how hard I looked for excuses to blame myself for the dysfunction in my life. There is a very good reason that children take on the blame: it was safer to blame themselves. Blaming “them” was fruitless. I could not “make them change” but “I knew” I could always “try harder”.  I believed that if I could “do good enough” that they would finally love me.

It was very hard for me to learn to see things through a new grid because I had been consistently taught things a certain way. The way that I was taught things became my grid of understanding. My grid of understanding was the way that I saw and believed that life worked.  Dysfunction was my normal. I believed things worked in life a certain way, because that is how I was “taught” life worked.  As I got older, outside influences added to those teachings, confirming them and cementing them firmly in my mind. This is what I call my belief system. 

One of the things that I have discovered about my belief system is that although when I got older I was taught that I can change my thinking by practicing a new thought or belief over and over again, (positive affirmations or positive thinking) the truth was that until I found the original false belief and dispelled it, the original belief was there underneath whatever new thought I was trying to implement.  Furthermore the original belief was still my default mode.  So until I found the original belief, where it came from and what was untrue about it so that I could change it to the truth, I could not find the freedom and wholeness that I have now. All the “positive thinking” in the world did not change my “default mode”.

The belief system begins to develop early. Not only are we taught in words but we are taught by the actions of others and the consequences to us if we don’t comply, if we rebel and even if we misunderstand non verbal communication. When it comes to family, it takes real effort to make these changes in our belief systems because of all the fears related to them. Fears that have their roots in our child hood thinking. These fears are connected directly to our survivor mode. 

*Some children react differently to the teachings; in the opposite of compliance, they act out and rebel against all the wishes and rules the parents set out. The results however, are very similar. It is even easier for them to believe that they are to blame for any “lack” of love or nurturing in their lives.

There are a few really important things to consider if the changes in the way we believe life works and changes in the belief system are going to stick. 

~ I had to be willing to face the consequences of drawing my boundaries.  The fear of the ultimate and final rejection from my family was huge. I had to find out where that fear came from and what exactly I was afraid of and when I discovered the truth about that fear it turned out to be another false belief based in more lies that had to be dispelled. The first thing I realized is that when I was a child if my family rejected me that would have meant certain death.  That was the truth then. It is no longer the truth now.

~ Because of this fear and because of how I had been taught to take the blame for whatever happened to me, I had to constantly remind myself that what I was really healing from was the damage. I had to look at the damage by itself and not try to figure out why the person who hurt me had hurt me or what was missing or wrong with them.  I had to stick to the fact that they hurt me and there was damage. Sticking with looking at the damage was the key when it came to looking at the dysfunction in my family. (Mostly because of the fear of the consequences of disloyalty and again that ultimate rejection.) Unravelling the belief system is complicated.

Because I have been doing this work with others for a few years now, I quickly see when people are making excuses to excuse fault for the damage done. This type of thinking kept me stuck for many many years.

There are lots of ways that people avoid placing any blame on family.

This one is popular; “They didn’t mean to do any harm, they just didn’t have the tools they needed to be good parents.” To which I had to remind myself that first of all, they had the same opportunity that I did and I am not a disrespectful careless parent and second, in order to heal from the damage I had to strive not to get caught up in their excuses of why they failed me. (you may want to read one of my all time most popular blog posts at this point “My Parents Did the Best they could According to Who?”)

I hear this one a lot; “it is my own fault that my life was so messed up. I made the mistake of trying to do everything that my parents wanted instead of turning to God and seeking his guidance. I sought my parents for every decision instead of seeking God and that is why I got so messed up.”

In my case my parents WERE God. It was up to my parents if I lived or died. They represented God in my life and when I understood that, things became a tiny bit clearer.  I was a child when the dysfunction began. When kids are raised in a dysfunctional home, they are not ever taught to depend on anything outside their parents. Words about faith and a loving God are not comprehended even when taught by someone else when the child is living in chaos because there is NO example of how faith or love works.  I believed that my parents held my life in their hands and rejection meant death.  This childhood teaching is not easily undone. I didn’t just “grow out of it.” For one thing, I had to realize it was even there before I corrected that false belief!

Children are taught things through actions and reactions.  The difficulty in recognizing only the damage is in the fact that we are so brainwashed to submit to this ‘loyalty’ to our parent “gods.” This system did not start with my parent’s generation. My parents repeated the dysfunction in their own lives that they learned from controlling and manipulative people too. They passed on their dysfunctional belief systems to me and taught me the same false teachings that they themselves had been taught.  

~I was quick to take the blame for all the problems. I believed I should have been able to prevent them or that I was exaggerating them. That was my survival mode.  I was willing to take the blame for my mother’s emotional and violent outbursts, because I was taught to. I believed that if I had been “a good girl” she would not “have to” hit me.  I believed that I caused her anxiety or whatever ever her issue was at the time.

~I was willing to never expect any attention from my father, because I believed from all those other events that I was undeserving in the first place. And it doesn’t matter if my mother learned it from her parents and if they learned if from theirs.  That makes no difference when it comes time to face that it happened and that it was wrong.

My willingness to take the blame resulted in low self esteem, depression, dissociation, addictions and all sorts of other things. The results of blaming myself for the lack of interest my father showed, the carelessness and emotional neglect that had become “normal” for me was that I put myself beneath almost everyone because that treatment had defined me as unworthy. My needs, in my eyes and through the grid of my belief system, ALL of my needs were LESS important than the needs of others. 

I overcame the labels of unworthy, unlovable, invalid, less important and not enough. I overcame the manifestations of all these types of abuse when I looked past that learned behaviour of self blame and did the work to face the truth about where those thoughts began and the lies that were connected to them. When I knew how self blame got there in the first place, it naturally fell away.

Please share your thoughts. Emerging from Broken has a facebook page but this website and the comments here are NOT connected to that page. Your comments will not show up on facebook. I do not have this blog connected to that feature. Your identity is safe as long as you don’t use your full name in the comment form.

Another snap-shot of Truth;

Darlene Ouimet

For Related Posts click on the bold printed coloured words

Darlene and Jim

My parents split up and eventually divorced when I was just turning 13 years old. After my mother went through her suicidal phase she started dating. She had not been separated from my father for very long when she started dating. Men and dating became her priority.

Through her behaviour she communicated to me that attracting men was the way to cope with low self esteem and pain. Looking back on what she taught me and how she impacted my belief system, she herself believed that men and having a man in her life was what she needed more than anything else.  She believed that she needed a man in order to survive. She needed a man in order for her to feel complete or even good about herself. Men defined her as worthy and good enough.  Her self esteem came from them. Their attraction to her identified her. Having a man meant that my mom was okay.

I had learned from my mother’s actions, words and teachings that men were the most important connection or relationship a woman can have. Because belief systems grow from layers of information, add to that teaching what I learned from the media (movies and books)  and from observing dysfunctional relationships in the la la land stages of love and there you have how I came to believed that the right man was the answer for me too. I thought that having a man (boyfriend) would mean that I was okay too.

When my parents split up, I was at the stage in life where I was noticing boys.  I wanted one for myself.  I wanted to be validated and cherished and good enough.  If men could sooth my mother’s hurts, then they must be able to sooth mine too. If men were the answer to all life’s problems for my mother, then they must be my answer too!

And at the age of 13 who knows anything about what “right one” would look like other than from the relationships that have already been modeled for us?

I believed that men were the answer, NOT because I saw the belief work, but because my mother believed it so deeply she communicated it to me in 100 ways; when she was in the beginning stages of a new romance she was so happy.  She would sing and play records. She did her hair and dressed a little more special.  She seemed to have higher self esteem. She seemed to like life more. I wanted her to be happy and not be in so much pain and it seemed that men were the answer to overcoming that pain and sadness, and like I said, if it worked for her, there was every reason to believe that it would work for me too.  I really wanted to be okay and I thought I would be is only someone said that I was!

I learned this false belief; that other people could define me as worthy. In fact I learned and believed that the ONLY way that I could be defined as worthy was through other people. Because of the example my mother set for me however, I thought that being defined as worthy by men however, was the “ultimate form of worthy”.  

I learned from all the people in my life that other people could validate me or invalidate me. This had been what had happened to me since I was born. I was rewarded (validated) when I did what was expected of me and I was punished (invalidated) when I disappointed.  Behaviour modification techniques can be a dangerous practice that results in teaching a child a false understanding of their own self worth and identity.

The foundation had been laid for me to for me to conclude that men were the answer to my low self esteem when I watched the positive effect that a man could have on my mothers demeanour. 

My mother rarely got hurt by a man so that was not my fear. My fear was not being loved. By the age of 13, I thought men were my last chance at ever being loved.

In that sick dysfunctional relationship system, the men that I was attracting were also looking for someone to define THEM as worthy too.  The false definition of love took over; I tried to prove that my man was lovable by my devotion and compliance to him. I tried to make HIM feel like HE was OKAY. That was what I had been taught love was. Ultimately in the false definition of love in these dysfunctional relationships, the more I sacrificed myself, the more I thought that I “proved” my love. Those men constantly asked for more devotion and compliance and I believed (as I had in my dysfunctional relationship with my mother) that if I found the right KEY to show him how wonderful and lovable HE was (especially at my own expense and by putting myself and my needs aside) then HE would no longer believe that there was anything missing in him and when he knew that, I was sure he would love me in return.

In the false definition of love, I had my ideas about what “proved love” and it was always about sacrifice because that’s what I was taught about love. I will give up my personal style of dress because he wants me to dress differently and that will prove how much I love him. I will give up my favourite TV show because he doesn’t like it and that will prove how important that HE is to me.  I won’t have certain friends because he says that they make me act differently when I am around them and if I walk away from them and choose him that will prove that I love him.  I will stop talking on the phone when he is home and I will watch sports with him or let him do things to me in the bedroom that made me feel sick and that will prove that I love him. In that false definition of love and in those dysfunctional relationships, I believed that if I could be who he wants me to be then he will love me. And when I am finally loved, I will be okay.

The truth is that when I finally loved me, I was okay. When I found me and embraced me, I was okay. When I realized that putting myself last is the same as agreeing that I am not worthy, and that I am not as “important” as they are, and when I stopped doing that; I was okay. When I found out that putting my needs last was not ‘selfless” and in fact it communicated that even I knew that my needs were actually less than anyone else’s and when I stopped doing that and I embraced the truth that my needs are just as important as everyone else’s, I was okay. When I said no to proving I was worthy of love, I was okay. I don’t have to prove it. It is already true. I was born worthy. When I realized that other people don’t define me as worthy, good enough, valuable or lovable and that I don’t need others to validate that in me, THEN I was okay.

(But first, I had to learn a whole new definition of love.)

Please share your thoughts.

Another snap shot on the journey to wholenes;

Darlene Ouimet

Related Posts ~ (The words in the post in coloured bold print are also related posts)

 My parents did the best they could according to who? 

~You Reap what you sow ~ what about child abuse

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As a child I was taught that there would be peace if I didn’t upset anyone.  I was taught that if I complied and if I did what was expected of me; if I was quiet and polite and if I didn’t stand up for anything that went against what the adult in the situation deemed the “right way” to do things, that I would be loved and accepted. 

My mother was fragile. She was prone to depressions and what she called nervous breakdowns. She made it very clear all of my childhood that if I upset her, she would have a “breakdown”. My mother ended up in the hospital when I was little with what was called “a nervous breakdown” back then. I am sure that this event had a major effect on me and that it settled somewhere in my belief system and added to my beliefs that if I upset someone they may end up in the hospital and everyone knows that people die in hospitals. Not only does a little mind wander all the way to “death” but think about the fear of abandonment and all that that implies. I could not survive without my mother. She was the source of all my basic needs.

And I was abused while she was away. So that added to the fear factor in my frame of reference about what happens when Mommy has a mental health breakdown.

Thoughts like “what would happen if my mother had a mental health breakdown and could never come home?” are not always conscious.  Well I didn’t want to find out what would happen; I had enough information already, so I tried my hardest not to upset her. She reinforced my fear of upsetting her by reminding me all the time of how fragile she was.  I can still hear her voice; “stop it Darlene. Stop pushing me. (Stop whatever it was we were doing that was upsetting her.)  Stop it or I will have a breakdown”.  And when I got older she told said “Stop it Darlene, Stop pushing me” whenever I wanted to defend myself or if I wanted to talk about the past. I never got to say anything that needed to be said in order for me to have value as an individual. I never got to have a side in anything. It was too dangerous; she might have a mental health breakdown and kill herself and it would be MY fault and on MY head forever.

Ultimately I believed that I would be responsible for her failure to cope as well as then my own failures and the demise of my entire family.

I can still remember my grandmother saying similar things and I remember my mother telling me that her mother threatened her with the same thing.  “Stop it, just stop talking about it or I will have a hissy fit”.  She had learned the same things from her mother that she taught me. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t mess with the consequences. Then when my mother grew up, she finally got her say ~ she got all her accusations or opinions in against me but I was not permitted to respond in case it rocked HER boat.

By the time I was a young adult, I had efficiently learned that I could not and should not tell my mother or ask her to face anything that she didn’t want to hear. I did not want to be responsible for her mental health breakdown. Even as an adult I was afraid of the consequences; that I would be to blame if she went back into her deep depression and worse than that I was afraid that I would be responsible if she committed suicide.

I was afraid that if my mother had a break down it would be my fault. She said it would be my fault.  She taught me that her mental health was MY responsibility. And I believed it.  That is why when she tore a strip off me when I was just out of the hospital with my newborn daughter, I took it. I sat there and took it although I had long since forgotten why I would sit through her accusations and judgements of me.  The conditioning to fear the consequences of standing up to someone had become so deeply ingrained that I just reacted with silence and compliance without even thinking about why. 

It was happening on my blog too.  Some of the comments were triggering my mother’s voice begging me to stop saying what needed to be said. I wanted to be the voice of peace, love and understanding.

I wanted everyone to feel safe even if it meant that the truth would be sacrificed. I didn’t want to upset anyone. I was afraid that I would be abandoned and rejected if the truth that they heard hurt too much. I would sometimes hear my mother’s voice…. “stop it Darlene. Stop pushing me or I will fall apart.” And the (unheard) message that always meant “I will fall apart and it will be YOUR FAULT”   My mother’s voice was still operating to dictate my actions and reactions to some of the comments and commenter’s in my website.

And I forgot how much the truth hurt in my own process and how valuable it was in spite of that pain.

PEACE and harmony do not always go hand in hand with the truth.  There have been many times in my process of healing and personal growth where the truth made me very angry and many times when I rejected it because it hurt too much.  Looking back many seeds were planted that I rejected and rebelled against at first. That is just part of the process. I am glad that I didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I am glad that I was (and still am) willing to persist seeking my recovery even when it scares the living daylights out of me.  

I had to learn that sometimes the truth hurts but in the end it heals; if I had successfully avoided the truth I would not be where I am today; NOR would I have the message that I have to deliver. I had to reaffirm that I did not heal from my past when the truth was sugar coated for me and no one contributed to my healing by covering up their truth. 

I had to realize that my mother’s voice was still interfering with my life (and in this case with my message) in a harmful way and in realizing this I have achieved another level of personal growth.

Please Note: It is important to remember that I had to learn the real truth first. Many people hurt me with their voice and their lies; there was a lot of sorting out to do before I figured out the real truth but when I did I began to soar, thrive and flourish.

Please share your thoughts with me and the readership here.  The comment discussions are always very good and insightful. I share my healing for the benefit of your healing.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time

Darlene Ouimet

Founder of Emerging from Broken

Related Posts ~ My mother doesn’t love me and the process of grieving

I had a tough time with anger. I had problems with feeling anger. I didn’t think I felt it. I denied to myself that I ever had it. I didn’t want to feel it.  I was proud that I wasn’t an angry person. 

And the truth is that I totally misunderstood anger in the first place. I had a different kind of anger problem.

I related anger to self pity. I thought that if I was angry with someone who treated me badly that I was just feeling sorry for myself. I detested self pity; I had been taught that self pity was the “worst” emotion, so I certainly was not going to engage in it. I believed that anger WAS a form of self pity; therefore I didn’t allow myself to feel anger.

Because of the way that I had been raised, my belief system was all wrong. I had love mixed up with obligation. I had respect mixed up with ownership and compliance and the list goes on from there. In the same way that I had the definitions of love and respect mixed up, I also misunderstood my own emotions, labelled them as “other emotions” and dismissed the real emotion.  That was part of how I survived. 

Labelling certain emotions as other emotions was how I dealt with many emotions, not just the emotion of anger. Like my definitions of words like “love”, “respect” and “relationship” I misunderstood emotions like anger and self pity and traded them for other emotions so that I could shut them down.   

Anger would not have been safe for me to feel or express and in my mind self pity was pathetic, so I could deny anger, quickly identify self pity, jump straight to “oh Darlene you are pathetic, get off the pity pot” and that was how I effectively avoided the whole anger problem thing. 

I could get angry for other people. That was okay. I sometimes briefly wondered WHY I could feel anger in relation to someone else’s life, and why that was different, but I didn’t think very hard about it. If someone told me they had been sexually abused, or beaten or sold for adult amusement, I could feel all the appropriate anger; I could feel hatred for the people who had abused them and disgust towards the people who had let them down; I could defend them and tell them that what happened to THEM was wrong. I knew it was wrong and I could passionately express my feelings to them as long as it was about them. But when I looked at my own life, I disconnected because anger (like so many other emotions) was not safe for me to feel in relation to myself. Today I realize that getting angry for others didn’t put me in danger, but when it came to my own life I had to stay in “survivor mode”.  Anger was too dangerous.  

Think about it. What would have happened to me as a child if I had screamed or expressed in any way that I was ANGRY because someone was sexually abusing me? How would it have gone over if I expressed my anger that my mother hit me? She was already in a bad mood. I was already getting hit. What would have happened to me if I had screamed my anger at the teacher who was emotionally abusing me when I was ten years old? I don’t think it would have gone well for me. I had been taught to submit. I had been taught by the events in my life that I had no rights. So I suppressed it. I stuffed it down and I never felt it, never faced it. Anger was not something that I was allowed.  And I learned to deny anger the same way that I learned to deny all the rest of the emotions and feelings and human rights that I had.  

Since I had been taught that self pity was pathetic, and I believed that lie with all my heart, it is easy to understand that if I could convince myself that anger was self pity, I could move off it so much quicker.

I didn’t think I had a RIGHT to be ANGRY.  When I was a child I didn’t have a right to much! I was constantly told how to act, how to feel, how to dress, to smile, to say hello, told that I was NOT sad, that if I cried that I would be given something to cry about, accused of being an exaggerator and overly dramatic. I had no reason to think of myself as an individual with valid thoughts OR emotions. Why would that change just because I got older? The beliefs that cement themselves within our own minds do not necessarily change because we grow up.

When I finally realized that what happened to me as a child actually happened to me, I also began to realize that it was really wrong. As I began to understand the lifelong effect that it had on me, I began to feel ripped off. I began to realize how much of my life that I had lost. I began to realize that I was not loved or protected and that I had been objectified as a person. I realized that I had been mistreated and devalued by people who never thought about me long enough to realize that I not only a person, but a CHILD! And then I began to get angry.  I began to feel anger.  And at first it scared me. I had to give myself permission to feel it. I didn’t like it. I felt like something BAD was going to happen if I allowed it. I felt wrong and I felt dirty. But I knew that it was time for me to face anger. It was part of the self validation that I always talk about.

I have a right to be angry. Anger is not evil. My anger is justifiable. And in my mind even just writing that I want to duck! I was taught as an adult that Anger is NEVER justifiable. I had that all mixed up with the “lack of self control” For me, skipping the anger was the same as how I tried to skip straight to positive affirmations before I did the work involved in order to facilitate my emotional healing. I owe my emotional healing and personal recovery to the efforts that I made not to “skip those steps” anymore.

Anger is healing. Until I acknowledged my anger and until I felt it and affirmed my right to it, I could not let go of the past. 

Please share your thoughts about Anger.

Lighting the Path on the Journey to Freedom;

Darlene Ouimet

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For Related posts ~ visit the blue links in bold

I talk a lot about realizing all the lies that were in my belief system.  I realized that I believed I deserved to be treated the way that I was. But that was a lie.  I believed that I was not good enough, and that I was unlovable. Those were both lies.  I believed that I somehow attracted the abuse and even that I asked for it… and that was also a lie. Because I believed that I had done “something” to either deserve it or attract it, I lived in fear of doing whatever it was that I was doing that was causing me to be hurt!

As you can see, this belief system stuff is complicated and takes some detective work to unravel.

A big part of the problem was that I was addicted to proving that I was worthy by doing things that would prove to others that I was good enough and that I was lovable. But I was addicted to proving it to others.  Add to that the fact that although I didn’t consciously KNOW it ~ I didn’t believe that I even had self worth. Deep down I believed that I was all that they communicated to me that I was.  Their words and their actions had defined me as unworthy, unlovable and not good enough. I thought that my worth would come when THEY validated it.  I thought that when other people agreed that I was actually worthy, that I would believe it too. I especially wanted to be worthy in the eyes of the people who controlled me and defined me the most.  I invested so much time trying to change ME so that I would be validated by others.

It didn’t occur to me to convince myself that I was already good enough. It never dawned on me that I didn’t need anyone else to validate me!  I had always been defined and invalidated by others ~ I was who they said I was… which was NOT good enough, unworthy and all that devaluing and discounting other stuff. When I began to realize all the lies that were at the bottom of my low self esteem, realizing that they were lies wasn’t enough. I had to change them to the truth.  That might sound easier than it really is though because those lies are so deeply rooted in the belief system and because I’d developed and accepted the belief SO DEEPLY, that I was the one that had to change and try harder to make everyone accept me.

This belief had its roots in the belief that their worth was greater than my worth.  I had no concept of equal value when it came to myself, which was also part of my false belief system.

The only way that I could unwind all this was to see it for what it really was by looking at the individual events that defined me as unworthy and that had convinced me that “they” were more worthy.  (I only had to look at a few of them) There were actual reasons that I had accepted guilt and shame that was not mine to carry.  There was a reason that I believed that I was responsible for the emotional welfare of everyone else. I had to dig down into my belief system in order to discover where the roots of those beliefs had their foundations.  Then I needed to clear them out and build a new foundation.  This was where my emotional healing originated.

I wasn’t born depressed. I wasn’t born broken.  I wasn’t born dissociated and with multiple personalities. I wasn’t born with low self esteem.

The truth is that I don’t need to be validated by others. The truth is that I was born valid. The truth is that I was born equally valuable to everyone else. I was born whole and emotionally healthy. That is the absolute truth. How could it not be the truth? I had to look at both sides; why I thought the lies were truth, and why these new healthy truths HAD to be true.

It was in finding out where I lost that knowledge (the knowledge that I was born with self esteem, that I was worthy, lovable and deserving,) that I found the keys to having that knowledge again. I took my life back. I found my true identity and I live in it today.  I found freedom from depression and low self esteem and I embrace my life and my individuality.  I am equally valuable to everyone else.

I live in that truth.  You can too. There IS emotional healing from abuse. There is life to the fullest. There is freedom and wholeness on the other side of broken!

Please share with the other readers and with me, anything you wish to share.

Exposing Truth one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

~ For more information on Self Esteem Recovery see the Category above for “Self Esteem”

P.S. ~ I am a contestant in the “I CAN ACHIEVE” contest put on by Canesten and City Line T.V. and I am asking my Canadian friends and readers to vote for me once a day for the next few weeks and for the rest of the world to pass this message on to their Canadian friends!  Please help me! Here is the link ~ “I CAN ACHIEVE” There is a daily prize draw for the voters too!

I am guilty of saying similar things to my own kids when they were small.  I cringe with horror at the memory of it today. I know exactly what I communicated… that the bully was only defending themselves. I was inferring that the one who was complaining or reporting an offence must have done something to deserve it in the first place.  (This is psychological abuse)

I can comfort myself that usually I said this to two of my kids who were fighting with each other at the time and that I was trying to get to the bottom of it. I was trying to find out what really happened from the beginning.  Although it is bad enough to say this to a child who is having some sort of sibling rivalry crisis; “he stole my tractor” ~ “she hit me with her toy duck” and the adult is really just trying to get to the bottom of who really started it, it is a whole other story and a whole other accusation when you say this to a child who comes home from school with a black eye. This statement implies that the victim is really to blame for the abuse.

And this is only the beginning of the damage that statement causes.

I can’t begin to tell you how many grown women have told me that when they told their mothers that their husbands were hitting them, that this same expression was the mother’s response! “What did you do to provoke that reaction from him? What DID YOU DO to deserve it?” (this is psychological abuse)

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Like I could have done something to deserve getting hit? Like there is really something a person could do to deserve getting beaten? There is NOTHING that someone can DO that would deserve to be given a beating from another person.

Think about what happens in the belief system over time. Think about how these questions posed to a child could have a long term effect. What started off as a process of determining the truth, (in the case of myself with my kids although in many cases this is purely about placing the blame in the wrong place in order to confuse and undermine emotional health) becomes the process of training the victim to question what they did to cause bad things to happen to them and contributes to the destruction of  self esteem.

When I was about 19, I worked with a woman who was getting knocked around by her boyfriend.  We were all trying to convince her to leave him. Domestic violence is a chargeable offence!  One day she came into work with a swollen eye. We were all saying “Okay that’s it ~ you have to get out!” and she said that this time it really was her fault. She explained that she hadn’t put all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher before running it. I was dumbfounded. But my point in telling you this story is that she believed that she deserved it.  She believed that she had provoked the physical abuse.  And here is what I have learned; she didn’t get to that point of believing that she deserved to be beaten by her boyfriend by having been treated properly her whole entire life.  She may not have come from a home where there was domestic violence or physical abuse, but somewhere along the way she HAD learned that her value was less than it really was. Somehow, she learned to accept less then acceptable treatment and somehow or somewhere along the way, she thought she even deserved it. She justified someone hitting her for forgetting to put a few dishes in the dishwasher.  Somehow she was brainwashed to think that this was part of a loving relationship and that this was “normal” ~ that her action caused his reaction.

People at work said some strange stuff about this situation.  They were angry with her. No one understood her reasons for not leaving. No one realized that her acceptance of this kind of domestic violence and physical abuse was part of her damaged self esteem. And her self esteem didn’t end up that low when she met that guy.  It happened way before that.

People said things like “and they are not even married” as if being married would have somehow made the domestic violence and the beatings less offensive or more acceptable. People told her that if she wasn’t going to leave him, that they didn’t want to hear her whine about it anymore.  And to my way of understanding now, that was just one more rejection that she had to accept. That if she didn’t do what they said, she would lose the tiny bit of support that she had with her co-workers. As though really, ultimately, the situation that she was living in was really her own fault. And what these people are saying is another aspect of psychological abuse.

When adults ask children “what did you do first that “caused that reaction” they communicate that no one gets bullied unless the receiver of the mistreatment (the child) did something to cause it. When a child is held accountable for everything that happens to them that child will begin to accept that they are doing “something” to deserve the treatment. After a while, we become so accustomed to looking for what we might have done to “cause” the abusive treatment that we take over the questioning and ask ourselves those questions.  “What did I do to cause that reaction? What did I do that made him so angry? What did I do (or not do) that put him in such a bad mood? What did I do (or not do) that caused him to cheat on me? ” And without realizing it, as children we try harder to please, and we accept the blame because we have no choice and at the same time we get “brainwashed” into believing that we really are the cause of all our own problems. When you grow up being treated that way, and learning to try harder and harder, after a while it isn’t so hard to find the answer to the question “what did I do to cause that”.

The answer was that “I didn’t put all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher before I ran it”.  The answer for me was that I had a crush on the man who came in my room and I must have somehow giving him permission to come into my room.  The answer was that I was not enough of a woman to keep my boyfriend from sleeping with other woman. The answer was that my mother didn’t love me because I was such a disappointment and that I just didn’t deserve anything better. The answer was that my husband was angry because I didn’t realize what he really wanted for supper.  And those answers are no less of a lie then my co-workers answer about the dishwasher.

I realize today that my co-worker really was powerless because her belief system was so cemented in self blame.  (And so was I) That because of whatever her belief system was at the time, she really didn’t know she had a choice. (And neither did I) She really didn’t realize that he didn’t love her, that beating someone does not come from love. (And I didn’t know what love was either) That living in the chaos and unpredictability of domestic violence (or emotional abuse) has nothing to do with love.

We live in a world where statements and questions like this one are readily accepted, but think about why that is. (Because we are so used to them from such a young age) That doesn’t mean that they are fair questions though. That doesn’t mean that they any less damaging or manipulative.  It doesn’t mean that there is an actual ANSWER to questions like that or that I did actually do something to cause the reaction! I spent half my life trying to answer these kinds of questions. WHAT did I do to cause……? I found so much freedom in realizing that I didn’t “CAUSE” or deserve any of it.

Please share your thoughts;

Darlene Ouimet