Archive for dissociation
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
