Archive for dissociation
Avoiding Feelings ~ The Root Cause
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A couple of days ago, I was just about to declare that I was having a bad day and as I heard the thought forming in my head, I got thinking about it. I was not actually having a bad day; I was feeling feelings that I don’t like feeling. All my life I was taught that my feelings were wrong. As a result of that, I thought my fear was misplaced and that I misunderstood whatever or whoever I was afraid of. I was told that if I didn’t stop crying that I would be given something to cry about. I was told not to be sad, not to be angry and the eventual result was that I tried not to feel. You could say that I was encouraged not to feel. You could even say that I learned not to feel. ~ I found ways not to feel. I used food, I used alcohol and I used drugs so that I would not have to feel. I used men, and “falling in love” so that I did not feel. I created drama and excitement; I used books and movies so that I could avoid feeling those feelings. When things got really tough, I used dissociation and depression, all so that I could avoid feeling and dealing and all because I did not know the truth in the first place. My moods depended on circumstances. I was emotionally immature because I learned to avoid feeling. There was no peace and no serenity.
And now I am feeling… and sometimes I am not comfortable with it. I have spent a lifetime trying to avoid certain feelings so it is actually understandable that it is still difficult, uncomfortable and unfamiliar to finally allow myself to feel them.
I decided to take a look at the feelings that were coming up and FEEL them. It was horrible. I decided to spend some time on the phone with a friend and TALK about them. I took a close look at what I was thinking and I looked at it from a couple of different angles. I like the view from the bottom of the mountain looking up and I also like to go up to the top of the mountain and look down. Both views are interesting and both reveal different information. I realized some thinking patterns that were left over from the old days. The old days were the days when I believed all the lies and blamed myself for everything that was going wrong in everyone’s life. If someone near to me was not happy, it must be something that I’ve done, and since I caused it, I should try to fix it.
In my victim mentality I had adopted the belief that I was the problem and it was familiar for me to go into a spin about why someone else was in a bad mood, or even just sad. Trying to figure out what was bothering them sent me into a spin trying to figure out all the things that I may have done, or neglected to do that might have set them off. I had to learn to recognize when I was in that spin before I could learn how to head it off. I learned how to head it off by realizing the truth ~ which is that I am NOT the cause of all struggle or strife. Learning to stay out of that spin was not easy for me. For years I said cute little sayings like “I am not powerful enough to wreck your day” or “I am not that important” but it wasn’t that easy to actually understand those kinds of sayings and I really did believe that I was the problem. The belief that I was the problem didn’t come from ego it came from abuse. It came from being told over and over in so many subtle ways, that the problem was me, so the only way that I could accept that I was NOT the problem was to find out where the belief came from, and change it. That process was long and involved.
I had to dig down to the roots of how I came to believe that everything was my fault and my problem to solve, before I could see that everything was not my fault and that I was not the cause of someone’s bad mood or difficult day. When I was telling myself that believing I was the problem came out of my ego, I concentrated on being less important, which actually was the cause of the whole problem in the first place! I was so busy being all things to all people that I never considered my own needs or feelings! It was only when I got all the garbage out of the way, and looked at one root at a time, that I was able to sort this stuff out and learn the truth about my value and how much power I do or don’t have in other people’s lives.
Because I was willing to feel these feelings, and work through this process, I was able to realize that once again had been willing to take ownership and responsibility for the feelings of an unhappy person in my life and I was able work through how much (if any) I had actually contributed to the distress. Once I sorted that out, the feelings that I was trying to escape from were no longer an issue.
In my next post I am going to expand on how all of this had such a big hand in letting other people define me.
Exposing truth one snapshot at a time,
Darlene Ouimet
I wasn’t Really Old Enough to Know Better
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My last post “The Twisted Accountability Tactic & How it Works” caused a few comments using the phrase “old enough to know better” or “I should have known better”. This is an interesting expression; one that I beat myself up with for a very long time. I didn’t understand my choices or why I made them. I did things that were destructive to myself, my self esteem; often they were dangerous and even life threatening. It wasn’t until my therapist explained to me several times what happens to a child who is taught that their value is not as high as the value of the adult that is devaluing them. This is what had happened to me.
My beliefs about myself and my self-worth and the lack of value that I felt about myself actually left me with limited choices as an adult. I didn’t really understand what it meant that I had a choice. I beat myself up for things that happened and choices that I made because I knew that some of those things were wrong, and yet… why the heck was I doing them? What was I thinking? These were questions that I asked myself regularly from the age of 15 or 16 and well into my adulthood.
How the heck did it happen to me? How did I get myself into the situation? I know this is very complicated to understand, but that is why I write what I write. ~ I believe that one of the keys to freedom and wholeness is in realizing why we “didn’t know better” when we “should have known better”. Why we seemed to do things even as an adult that made us feel so bad about ourselves and why we chose to do them even when we knew deep down that we would likely come to regret it.
I could not stop blaming myself until I understood the whole progression from childhood and how my belief system formed and how I came to place such little value on myself.
In therapy I started to reveal my history and talk about the things that had happened to me; things that that I had taken the blame for and believed that I had brought on myself. Since a big part of my coping method was dissociating, I spoke about my past as though it wasn’t me anyway, however somewhere deep down I knew that these things were about me and I started to have to connect to myself. This was very painful but it enabled me to almost look at myself through new eyes. Not the disconnected eyes of the alter personalities, but as though I was hearing my story for the first time, realizing that if it were not MY story, I would have been really horrified by it. So why wasn’t I horrified by it when it was my story?
My therapist really helped me to see that when a child is devalued and squished down to a level of non importance due to lack of attention, the wrong kind of attention or abuse, then that child will automatically place that little value on himself or herself. I was defined with little value as a child, therefore where was I going to learn my value as I grew up if not in the wrong places, wrong situations, which once again lead to wrong beliefs? (So the value that I placed on myself was actually not the true value!) This is learned behavior, as well as a coping method. How could a child blame the adults? We don’t have the frame of reference for that when we are young. So it is then very easy to grow up believing that we get what we deserve, and remember, we have been groomed to grow up believing that we deserve to be treated less valuable and even to believe that we are bad.
Because I came to understand that there is a direct connection to our childhoods and how we act in adulthood I was able to re wire my childhood beliefs. I realized why I had not been old enough to know better when I was an adult because my emotional growth had been seriously stunted. I had been defined by the actions of others.
I had to dig deep into that whole system, set the lies straight for myself, and then redefine myself this time with the truth. I had to own my value; my original value. It is a process, but it is amazing!
What say you? I would love your comments and feedback about this concept.
In Truth and Recovery!
Darlene Ouimet
Security Blanket of Coping Methods ~ My Survival Mode
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- Darlene at 21
Everywhere I go I have the privilege of meeting people and impacting their lives. Usually I can plant a few seeds that take root and grow the desire for wholeness and freedom from things that hold people back from being all they can be and all of who they are.
While I was in Mexico last month, I met an interesting man in his late twenties, who by his own admission, was not quite ready to let go. He reminded me so much of myself when I was younger that my heart was touched. Even though I found myself intently listening to his story, on another level I found myself reminded of things I had not thought of for a long time. He triggered intense memories about my resistance to recovery and how frightening it was to think of giving up my coping methods. I recalled the fear that I had of living in freedom and even where I still struggle in a few areas. I was reminded of the absolute terror of learning to trust myself, the fear I had of finding out who I really am and what it took for me to learn to live in that wholeness.
In the two weeks since I have been home, I’ve realized a deeper understanding of how scared that I was to get healthy; to face and deal with my issues and live a whole life in freedom from the chronic depression and dissociation that I lived with for so long. My dissociative identity, constant depressions and my obsession with my weight and body image had become like a blanket of comfort for me. They were the spin that I lived in. They were me; my identity. They were my survival mode and they made me feel safe. I believed that that these coping methods were the solution; how could they ever be the problem? Every time I tried to let go of the cozy blanket of survival, even to let go of one small piece of it, I felt naked, exposed, freezing, scared and way too vulnerable. I felt out of control. Control was essential if I was to feel safe. Deep down inside in my subconscious, I felt sure that I would die without the security blanket of coping methods that I had developed over the years.
It is necessary to develop these coping methods especially when we are children however a huge part of my recovery process was about realizing that I was no longer a child, and that so many of my coping methods were developed to protect myself as a child. They did evolve into adult coping methods, but the problem was that they were based in childlike thinking. I had to recognize that these problems were indeed coping methods, recognize the lies I believed which gave them their basis, replace those lies with the truth, and then realize so much of the protection I developed was no longer necessary. Then I had to re-parent myself with my new grid of understanding.
It wasn’t that the abuse or that I was so devalued was a lie; it was that I thought I had some control over it or that I should have been able to have some control over it; that I thought I deserved it and that I brought it on myself ~ that was the lie. I developed my survival methods for protection in two ways. The first one was to be able to deal with and live with the abuse itself. The second was to protect myself from further abuse.
In my process through therapy, on my journey to wholeness, I threw off the security blanket of coping methods one layer at a time and learned a new way to live. Some days I do feel exposed and sometimes I still get scared, but I find that as time goes by, I get more and more comfortable with my new life.
~Darlene Ouimet
The Longing for Family, Love and Self Love
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What is that longing for family and love? Is that real love? Is it a longing for something that is missing or for a belief in something that doesn’t exist?
All my life, in my mind’s eye, I saw a small child, looking through the curtains of a huge picture window at a family of happy people who all loved each other and longed to be together. She could see how happy they were to be with each other. They were laughing as they gathered around the dining room table, smiling at each other and paying attention to each other. The mother always looked at the children when they talked to her, and she smiled and listened intently and with interest. They mattered to each other.
But the little girl was on the outside looking in. She was not welcome to be part of that warmth and love and total acceptance that they had with each other. Would her mother ever look at her like that? Would her family ever be interested in her? Would her father ever want to know who she is, what her gifts and interests are, who her friends are?
Who was that child standing in the cold and rain, shivering cold, hungry and in need of a bath, all alone outside at the age of around four? Why have I had this image in my mind for as long as I can remember? This child longs for love. This child longs for acceptance from the people that don’t even know she is out there in the cold. She might as well not exist. She didn’t feel loved, accepted, valued or even valid. She felt invalid, devalued, insignificant, and lonely.
I remember when I was in my early forties and realized that child was me and those were the feelings that I had about myself, growing up and well into my adult hood. I truly believed that I might as well not exist and that I didn’t matter and that I didn’t deserve to be part of a wonderful life of any sort. (Especially not the image of life that I saw in my imagination inside that house.) I believed that it (my life and unhappiness) was my fault; I was not good enough, and I grew exhausted from my efforts to be good enough.
Growing up with such negative beliefs about myself led me to relationships with others who also treated me with little significance. My value was mostly in how well I could serve others. My approval came from doing the cooking and things like that. No one really noticed me as a person. No one really cared about my dreams or desires and I didn’t care about them either because I had lived so long without being encouraged, and without being noticed. I lived so long without being loved in the true definition of love ~ how on earth was I to love myself?
I had a tough week and was visited by my old belief system. Suddenly I saw the little girl standing in the rain, on the outside looking in, in need of a bath and shivering cold, so utterly alone. I realized that I was feeling those old feelings; that longing for something that I think is missing some days. In the past, I think that this longing was to be seen as valid and significant and to be regarded as though I could contribute to my world. The mistake I made is that I thought that this feeling of affirmation would come through others. I thought that others had to validate me. I believed that if others finally noticed my gifts, and acknowledged them, that I would finally BE. This is the lie that held me back for a long time. It is nothing more than the false belief that if others see me as valuable then I am good enough; then I am loved.
My family of origin does not know who I am and it is their loss. It is not my handicap anymore. When I saw the little girl in the rain on the outside looking in, I knew that my old belief system was visiting; that is all it is.
It is hard to sort the truth from the false, but it is worth every effort. Today I define my worth and I love myself.
May you love and celebrate yourself today!
Darlene
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.
Accomplishments~Emerging from Broken is off to a Great Start!
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Happy New Year!
~On January 1st, this blog was officially one month old and I am really pleased with the progress we have made. Here are a few highlights this past couple days.
~Google is picking up our posts the same day we write them, which means that we are getting searched frequently by the search engines.
~We got listed! Have you seen the blog Third of a lifetime, by Sarah Olson? She has a new Dissociation Blog Showcase and Emerging from Broken made the list!
Sarah has compiled a great resource here if you are looking for reading material or information about Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder or Multiple Personality Disorder. There are some great mental health blogs listed whose focus is on other mental health issues too, so be sure to check it out.
~For those of you that have websites and blogs, have you ever checked your ranking with Alexa? Alexa is a website that ranks websites in order of popularity. For instance Google is number one, Facebook is number two and You Tube is number three and the list goes on.
There are over 5 billion websites on the internet and Alexa ranks them in order of importance. I have no idea how this works, but I am excited to tell you that this blog, Emerging from Broken, is ranked at 4,304,599 in just one month.
Thanks to all our readers and to those of you who have used social media to share our blog and tweet our posts! Without all of you, these accomplishments would not have happened!
I am excited about 2010. I am passionate about living in wholeness, equality and truth. I am excited about the message that complete recovery from mental health issues and living life to the fullest is possible. I am looking forward to meeting you on the journey!
Wishing you all great mental health in 2010
~Darlene Ouimet
Christmas Gratitude, Turkey Soup and Great Mental Health
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Each year that I continue to pursue living in truth and wholeness, Christmas just gets better. This year I am filled with awe and gratitude for how wonderful our family Christmas time was. When I went through my process of emerging from broken, my family got dragged into it too. There were a few tough years; many things had to change. As a broken mother, I had some hurt children to help heal after I healed, but I have made this my priority and I am committed to the process. This Christmas, everything was exceptionally marvellous and we celebrated with all the people that we love and the people that love us back. No obligation, no false definition of love, no bull. I could not have dreamed a better 3 days then the ones that we just had.
As it seems to be with celebrations, I ate too much rich food, so today I decided to make turkey soup and serve a lighter supper of homemade soup and fresh baked buns. I love to boil the leftover turkey bones in a big pot of water and chopped onion, simmering them for hours, into a deep rich broth. It takes time to make great turkey soup. There is a process involved. If I try to rush it, or get impatient, my soup will end up mediocre and not fantastic. I find a fantastic soup more satisfying, and always worth the extra effort that I put into it. Later on I will strain the bones and boiled onions out and I will add fresh onions, chopped veggies, leftover gravy and barley and continue the process of creating something special for our evening meal.
As I stirred the broth and thought about the process of cooking from scratch, it struck me how similar my personal recovery process has been. I set some goals, and made myself a priority. I didn’t rush it; I was willing to put the time and effort in. With expert guidance from my gifted therapist, I searched for the truth and the other components that I needed to get me started solidly on the road to freedom and wholeness. I discarded the lies that I had believed my whole life; that my feelings were wrong, that I was crazy, that my expectations were too high. I discovered my value and owned it. I learned to love myself, and that same love is where my love for others grew from. I kept going forward, confident that I would get a fantastic result one day if I stayed in pursuit of my desire. And the day came when I knew that I would not struggle with chronic depression and dissociated identity disorder anymore. I knew that my efforts had paid off and I am a fantastic result.
Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas Season! May all your dreams come true.
Love Darlene
Relationships based on Wholeness and Truth
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From my last post, “The Decision to Wake up and Live” Carla asked:
“Darlene, I can relate to a lot of these fears and am also starting to feel gratitude for difficult decisions I made in my past that make for a much more fulfilling present. I’m interested in what you say about being “afraid of how I would have to relate to others if I was to embrace wholeness.” Can you expand on that? What’s it like to relate to others in wholeness now?”
Here is my answer;
Carla, I was specifically referring to not dissociating when I wrote that part of the post. I was so afraid of facing people and facing my fears of them. When I used dissociation, as a way to deal with situations and a way to deal with others, as soon as someone said anything that made me feel unsafe, I just disconnected. Since I was working on my dissociative identity disorder and working on becoming one, I knew that when I was no longer dissociating I would have to actually be in the moment, face the fear, reassure myself that I was not in danger and actually deal with people.
Once I got through that part, then I moved on to the fear of standing up for myself and I think that is what your question is about. There were people in my life that disrespected me and disregarded me. There were people that didn’t ever consider my feelings and I began to realize that it was up to me to set the boundary in order for that treatment to stop. I only wanted to be treated as equally valuable, which is not really a lot to ask, but I also knew that this request would be hard for people who had devalued me my whole life. So I was afraid that I would be rejected again and that I would be laughed at and looked down on if I stuck up for myself. I imagined that I was so worthless to them, that they would say that I was not worth the effort for them to care about my feelings. I thought that rejection would kill me, and although a few people in my life did react this way, it didn’t kill me. It made me stronger. It made me more determined to move forward in my recovery.
The bottom line is that I had let others define me. I had let others decide that I was not worth much, and they treated me that way, and because I believed them, I let them. When I began to live in wholeness, I began to redefine myself, to own the truth about myself and embrace that I am not worthless, I am worthy. I am worthy of life, happiness, respect, love and I am valuable. I have something to offer others in relationships. I am not just a servant. I don’t deserve to be the fall guy for everyone else’s unhappiness. With that redefining of myself, I learned that in those situations where I was being discounted as a person, I could ask questions such as “why are you talking to me like that? Why do you think you can treat me like that?” and these questions were empowering for me. (they also caused people to pause…as though I had slapped them.. lol)
Just because someone treats me as though I don’t matter, doesn’t mean that I don’t matter. Just because someone thinks I am stupid or unimportant, doesn’t mean that I am. It is one thing for me to know that, but a whole other thing for me to draw the line against being treated like that. Living in wholeness and relating in truth has a lot to do with this kind of understanding.
Oh and one last thing; although most people didn’t like this new me at first, (the one that refused to be treated like dirt) I have flourished in the true definition of myself and have wonderful relationships today, based on truth and equality.
Darlene Ouimet
The Decision to Wake up and Live
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After a few hours of Christmas shopping the other night, my husband and I went out for dinner. There was a young Japanese couple at the next table and I was drawn to watching their small child who kept looking over at me while he was waiting for his meal.
I noticed that the whole family spoke Japanese to each other, and I could tell that they had not been in Canada long because of how much trouble they had with the English language when speaking to the waitress.
When their food came, I also noticed how much trouble the parents had with the knives and forks. They were obviously uncomfortable with them and both adults used them in different ways than I had ever seen before. I realized that they were not accustomed to using these instruments for eating and how self conscious they were, even with each other about this fact.
Watching them reminded me of how scared I was to learn a new way of living. When I realized that all my coping methods were just that, only coping methods, and that if I was ever to be fully alive, I would have to get to the bottom of my mental health issues, I was frozen with fear; I was just as afraid to let go my coping methods to learn how to live a new way as I was of staying in the depths of depression and dissociation forever. I was afraid of how I would have to relate to others if I was to embrace wholeness. I was afraid of the unknown. I was afraid to stick up for myself, I was used to things the way they were, even if they were not comfortable for me. I was afraid that I would be even more deeply unhappy then I already was if I tried to learn how to live without dissociating. I was afraid to give up the long bouts of sleeping that characterized my depression. I was afraid I might have to stand up to the people in my life that disregarded me. I was afraid to own my value. My life was comfortable in a bizarre way; depression and dissociated identity disorder worked for me.
But just as this young couple was embracing new ways, I decided to learn new ways too. The process was long and difficult and worth every painful moment. Living in wholeness and fullness is something that I never imagined would be so fantastic. How could I imagine something that I had never experienced? How could I have ever known what I was missing?
These are the questions at the root of my passion to spread the hope of healing and wholeness to others. If you like my post, and would like to help me spread the hope, please click on the share button below and share it on your favourite sites. If you would like to post comments or ask me a question, I welcome you to click on the post title which will open a new page and reveal the comment box.
~Darlene Ouimet
