Archive for belief systems
Breaking the Cycle of Automatic Self Blame
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“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being” Hafiz
Have you ever noticed that when you are driving a vehicle, some of the things you do are automatic? I don’t really think about using my turn indicator when I am about to turn a corner; it is so automatic that I often find myself indicating when I come to the corner in my own laneway. When the brake lights come light up on the car in front of me, it is automatic for me to touch my breaks too.
When you are making the bed, or doing the dishes do you think about what you are doing, or are you thinking about something else? These types of mundane everyday tasks become habitual and automatic.
It is the same with the way that we think about ourselves. It was habitual for me to think that I was not as valuable as others; it was so deeply inside of me that I was not at all conscious of how I viewed myself or how deep my belief was. My mother often told me that I was selfish and I believed her. When I went to a 12 step program, it was very easy for me to agree that the root of my problem was selfishness and self centeredness, but it was not positive for me to believe that because my view of myself was wrong to begin with. Because my belief systems and my view of self were so skewed, even self help books and programs were not helpful for me in the ways they were meant to be and very often had a negative effect on me. I did not realize this until I stepped back and decided to take a deep look at the beginning and where the confusion started.
Getting back to the beginning was kind of like navigating a deep dark cave with long winding tunnels and scary obstacles. Carrying a flashlight that only worked some of the time made it even more frightening. I was afraid that I would get lost in the dark and that I would end up hurting even more. I was afraid that I would get stuck there and be forever in the painful part of the process. I was so afraid of the repressed memories; I was almost positive that I would remember something that I could not deal with. I was afraid that I would discover that it was my fault after all; that I deserved what had happened to me, that I had indeed brought it on myself and even asked for it. I was afraid because I thought the lies were the truth and the truths were lies.
In my mind’s eye, there lived a little girl who was about two years old. She lived alone in an attic; it was very cold and dark with only one broken window letting in a bit of light. She was filthy dirty, wearing a sleeveless and tattered little dress, which barely covered her bottom. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears, her hair a tangled mass and she was cold. She was unable to speak, and she clung to a broken dirty dolly. I had no idea why I had this image of this little girl in my mind, but eventually I knew that she was me and that was the self image that I had deep inside of me. No one cared; no one even knew she was there. No one was coming to rescue her and she knew it. That hope had died years ago. When I realize that she was me, I had to rescue myself.
The key is to keep going. Keep navigating that cave. Find your beginning and go from there. Have the courage to keep striving towards the goal, believing that freedom is on the other side. Keep going. On the days that you doubt with every fibre of your being that you can have this too, come visit me here for little bit of encouragement. As always, I welcome your feedback and comments.
Darlene Ouimet
Love, Respect, Relationship and Equality ~ Is Self Help Selfish?
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When I reach out my hand to yours, what do I have to offer you but my own experience, strength and hope?
Sometimes I go on rants. Everyone who knows me well enough knows this truth about me. I like to go on regarding what I feel strongly about, backing it up with all sorts of examples and insightful new ways to look at things. My rants are always truth based, but I base my truth differently than a lot of other people do. My truth is based on my new definitions of love, respect, relationship and equality. I have learned these new definitions over the years of my own process and journey to wholeness. My favorite rants are around the topics how do we learn to love, how do we learn self love and how our experiences determine our belief systems.
I was not taught to love by being loved. I was taught by empty words. There was an obligation ticket attached to the love. I was guilted, and shamed with statements such as “after all I have done for you” and “you think you are so hard done by” and “you are so ungrateful”. Throw a bunch of other false beliefs in the mix along with all that and what you have is a disaster waiting to happen.
My definition of relationship based on the examples that I had, was no better. Then I got married (to someone who had similar false definitions of love and relationship) and had kids of my own. How was I to teach them when my own foundation was so faulty!
My kids used to believe that my love was proven when I baked them cookies or pie, or bought them the DVD they desired. They thought that I loved them if I drove them to their friends’ house, let them have a sleep over and didn’t make them clean up their own messes.
My husband used to believe that I proved my respect for him by putting all his wishes and desires ahead of mine, and supporting all his needs as more important than mine. Our relationship ran smoothly if I never questioned his decisions, made sure that I did not confront him about anything, didn’t interfere with his 12-16 hour per day work schedule and well… the list goes on. If I was running things at home the way that he liked them ran, then I loved him. I had no idea what equality meant. It was just a word that I didn’t give much thought to.
It didn’t occur to me but by this definition of love, my husband and children rarely loved me. By my own definition, I was a good wife and mother because I gave and gave of myself and never expected anything in return. ( I was a slave disguised as a loving servant.) However, I could not understand why I struggled with chronic depression if things were so great in my life. I was exhausted, and didn’t really know why. I constantly dreamed of going on a long vacation all by myself. I longed for more out of life and felt guilty for it. I had to learn the right way to lead by example. In taking care of myself, my children and husband were introduced to my real value and therefore they learned something about their own real value.
There is an even worse statement then “self help is selfish”, and that is the statement that counseling therapy is selfish. When I loved myself enough to get some help for my mental health, myself, my husband and our children were saved from the destination we were headed towards. We didn’t know that we were on a destructive path, we only thought that I was. (This sounds funny now, but it is true) My husband will tell anyone he meets today that by my decision to get help, I have impacted him and our children in such a deep way that our lives are 100% better than they were before.
And to think that it all started with self help
From my heart to yours ~ Darlene Ouimet
Valued and Devalued for my Looks and Personality
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Every morning I spend ten minutes or more journaling and listing all the things that I am grateful for. This is a powerful way to begin the day and helps to focus my mindset in a positive direction. Since I was a child I had this side of me that was excited and enthusiastic but that side of me was always squished (not appreciated) by others.
That part of me seemed to always get me in trouble, and I began to associate being happy with getting in trouble. And worse than that, I associated being happy with being attractive, which also led to abuse. Children form their belief systems by the results they get. If I am happy and excited and I get slapped, or if I am pretty and attractive and get slapped (or sexually abused), then I start to think that happy and attractive are dangerous things to be. We learn our survival methods by the results that we get and we go from there.
I was valued for my looks and my personality and at the same time I was devalued for my looks and my personality. This fact created many opposing belief systems, the need for dissociation and the need for alter personalities.
When I emerged from broken, I had to learn a whole new way to live without my previous and now unnecessary survival system. One of the challenges was that I had had this system for SO long that learning a new one was no small accomplishment. Over the past few years, I have found a few things that I do daily that really help me to reinforce my new belief system and one of them is practicing gratitude by writing about all the things I am grateful for each day.
I found out about a great website, The Gratitude Log, where you can post your gratitude as many times a day as you like, and give appreciation gifts and send notes to your friends there. It is kind of like Facebook only exclusively for gratitude. Each of these little positive things I do help me to keep striving to go forward and not look backwards.
Bright Sunny Blessings! ~Darlene Ouimet
Note: I think it is important for me to say that I tried all kind of positive thinking and self help books and seminars before I got the right therapy and my lack of permanent success with them actually gave me more reasons to feel like a failure and beat myself up with the guilt and shame of not even being able to be positive, so please understand that I am suggesting some of these things as support methods when you are getting good results with changing your belief system.
