The Black Hole of Emotional Neglect by Pam Witzemann

Emotional neglect is largely, invisible. When one is emotionally neglected as a child, it is impossible to understand what is missing because it is impossible to understand what one has never known and can’t see. The emotional neglect of a child, places within them a black hole. It produces an insatiable loneliness that can consume the spirit, body, and soul of a child. As a child, I was a victim of emotional neglect.

My most familiar emotion as a child was loneliness. I was prevaded and often overwhelmed by it; but I also couldn’t name it. At the center of my being, was a darkness that often pulled me under and left me in such a state of depression as to paralyze me. I was filled with a deep longing for someone to notice my pain and help me. This core emptiness followed me into adulthood and ruled over the choices I made. Inside me lived death and I longed for the final consummation of death. In that deep night, I was made blind to happiness, joy, and life itself. I was a dark child who didn’t expect to live past fifteen. When I outlived my expectation, I was careless with my life and did everything possible to hasten my own demise.

I was a tiny girl. I was often sick and spent many hours, days, and weeks alone in bed. I spent the bulk of my fourth year of life sick, in bed recovering from Scarlet Fever that was left untreated for too long. I lived in a kind of nether world, suspended within my own inner darkness that enveloped my thoughts and dreams. All of my childhood memories are set within that dark void. I was sick so often that illness became the main feature of my identity. I knew myself as small, weak, and sickly. My demeanor was pouty and morose. My companions were books and paper to draw on(front, back, and every blank space so as not to be scolded for wasting paper) and the books I read were far beyond my years and suitability for my age. I loved Edgar Allen Poe as the black hole within me recognized a spiritual companion. I accepted the void inside as normal and never understood that I was lacking the interest, love, and nurture of my parents. I saw the problem as me. I was too small, too sick and weak, too clumsy, too mopey and pouty. No one could love or like me because I was unlovable by design.

I grew to be an angry and rebellious teenager. My rebellious acts were my desperate cries for help as the pull of the black hole, sitting in the place of my true, undeveloped identity, threatened to consume me, forever. I wrote poems with lines such as follows: “My souls illusion, Your souls illusion, Named love, The never ending dream…” because by my late teens, I was sure that love was only a dream. It was an illusion that taunted me and frustrated me as I moved from the emotional neglect and psychological abuse of my parents to the sexual abuse of men. By age eighteen, I had experienced so much personal destruction by those claiming to love me that I became as a dying, bitter, old woman with no hope for any future. The only comfort and relief from the constant emotional pain, that I felt physically in my chest, was my drugs. It seemed to me that my drugs loved me better than any human being because they relieved me of having to feel the emptiness inside that grew more powerful by the day. My drugs loved me and I loved them. My drugs closed over me in death and I welcomed the darkness as a refuge that empathized with my inner being; but also, as the final and eternal comfort that my empty, shriveled heart desired.

There are many theories about black holes and one theory states that when a black hole fully consumes a world, it emerges from the other side, whole and made new. That is how I also experienced my final consummation that came by my own hand in the form of suicide. When the doctors brought me back from death, I was sorrowful to find myself alive. I don’t know how many days I laid in that hospital bed but I do remember the tears I shed at the thought of returning to a life that was little better than being one of the walking dead. A junky’s life is lived as a vampire in constant pursuit of the substance of enslavement. When my systems stabilized, I was admitted to the mental unit for three days observation and then released back into the world that held no promise or future for me. I continued in the pursuit of my love until I weighed 75 pounds and became sick with hepatitis. This was my bottom and the moment when there seemed no way to go but up. I completed my passage through the black hole and began my rebirth on the other side.

There were so many things missing inside of me that even as I became a spiritual person and began to see life as a solution rather than death, I couldn’t name what was missing. The emptiness and aloneness were still the major markers of my character. No one, besides my grandmother, was ever interested in who I was, what my talents and dreams were, or what I thought about anything. As a child, I was to entertain myself and not bother. I was a big bother when I was sick and I knew not to expect anything more in the way of attention or nurture. I wasn’t encouraged in anything unless it was of benefit to my father. Then I was to perform, admirably, on cue. If I didn’t, I would displease him and displeasing my father was the household definition of wrong-doing. It was sin. There was no God, no outer authority to measure morality by but instead, the whims and pleasures of my dad were the moral code we lived by. The ranch I grew up on was isolated and my family was a world of its own with little connection to society. The world revolved around my father and no one else’s needs mattered. The mother I needed belonged to him and he jealously guarded her from me. I don’t remember my mother holding me; and she told me once that it made my dad too jealous. I have one sweet memory of her singing to me but mostly, I remember her disgust and disapproval of me. I remember the anger and disappointment that seemed constantly aimed in my direction. I ran away from home on a regular basis but there was nowhere to go. I would run the mile or so to the eastern gate and stop, and wait, but no one ever came. Tired, thirsty, and cried-out, I always returned home and no one ever cared that I had been gone or that I had returned. Sometimes, I felt as if I didn’t exist and wondered if my dreams were real and my life the true dream.

If not for my grandmother, nothing that is me would ever have had opportunity to live. I wanted to live with her and no matter how long I was at her house, I never wanted to go home. With my grandmother, I was someone. I had substance but with my parents, I was mostly invisible as I felt the someone I was with my grandmother disappear upon entering my parent’s home. I lived in the make-believe world of, “Heidi” or “The Wizard of Oz” and other books I read. I found new definitions of me in assuming the roles of the main characters, who were strong, and loveable, and acting out their stories as if they were mine. What I experienced of the world outside of our ranch and school was through the characters I read about. Playing the roles of others became the way I dealt with life and the emptiness that was, me. There was never any thought given, by my parents, to introducing me to the world outside of our family to prepare me for adult life. My talents and interests were not worth developing. The only things that mattered about me were those attributes that would someday, please a man. My life didn’t matter and neither did I.

I no longer live with the void that I experienced as a constant pain in my chest; but now, as I write about it, I feel the memory of that pain. That empty place has gradually filled in and it began with the faith in God I found when the black hole consumed me and I was reborn on the other side; and I began to see life and not death as a solution to my problems. The light of life began to shine for me and lead me into a better way to live. It is common for people to say that we all have a void that only God can fill. That is probably true but the emptiness I lived with and inside of was greater than any natural, inborn need for God. It was the void that nurturing parents are assigned to fill as they love, protect, and encourage their child. By this they teach their son or daughter who they are, and of their importance, and place in the world. I didn’t have that and though I managed to survive, I had no fully developed identity of my own. I hid inside myself and assumed the role that best fit my current situation. I survived as a changling and when one role no longer served me, I discarded it, disconnected from everyone I knew, and assumed a new role to play while locking away, deep inside, any trauma connected with each act of my life. 

The filling in of the black hole of emotional neglect has been like the rebuilding of a faulty foundation beneath an old house. It began with God and has ended with my own identity developed and in tact. I played many roles as the real me was nurtured through the love of God, the love of my husband, children, and a few dear, old friends who saw something in me that was constant, no matter how many people I tried to be. I didn’t do this consciously but since I have confronted myself, my past traumas, and accepted the girl or girls and women that I was ashamed of, this pattern is clear to me. The people I’ve been don’t always agree and have little in common with one another, other than protecting me while I became. I am the constant that held them together. I am, Pam revealed by the power of truth and love. The black hole that once sat in the seat of my identity, no longer exists and the roles that I’ve adopted as a way to live life are falling away as I shed them and emerge fully, me.

Pam Witzemann

Pam Witzemann was born in Santa Fe, NM and is now 54 years old. She has been married for 33 years, raised two boys and has two grandsons. Pam and her husband have had their own business for about twenty years. Pam is a painter and a writer and hopes to make these pursuits more than a hobby in her later years. Pam authors the blog Boomer Back Beat; a place where baby boomers find inspiration in the process of aging.

Other posts by Pam ~ How I learned to Self Abuse ~ Profile of a spiritual abuser ~

Darlene Ouimet

It was so important for me to believe that my childhood had in fact been difficult. I had been brainwashed that my childhood was wonderful, normal and that I was one of the “privileged” people in the world.  I believed that something was wrong with me because I had so many struggles with depressions and emotional issues.  I felt guilty that I was so unhappy because I had been convinced that I was so fortunate to have grown up in the family I had. I believed that I had wonderful, hard working parents who did their best for me. I constantly looked to those “less fortunate” in order to beat myself up about how “ungrateful” that I was.

I bought their definition of “normal” hook, line and sinker.  No wonder I always felt like I was drowning.

The way that I was raised was not healthy nor was it “normal”.  But how was I to know that? It was my normal. It was all I knew. I had no frame of reference for any other way of life.  I had to face that although I had been “told” that I was a liar and an exaggerator, I did in fact know the truth about at least some of the things that had happened to me and that those things were wrong. I had to listen to myself. I had to believe myself. I had to validate the pain that being devalued, dismissed and treated as “not quite valid” as a person had an effect on me. A lasting effect. There was damage done. TO ME.

I deserved to heal, but first I had to believe that I had something I needed to heal from. I had to believe myself regardless of the lifelong message that I had nothing to complain about.  I had to validate my story. I had to validate my pain. I had to validate ME and stop waiting for someone else to validate me.

This was the beginning of healing for me.

I was in my early 40’s the first time I connected that the sexual abuse in my childhood had happened to me. I had effectively separated those events from myself.  I dissociated (hence the term “dissociative identity disorder) and dissociating enabled me to cope.

(Regarding Dissociative Identity Disorder and Multiple Personality Disorder ~ not everyone who has dissociative identity disorder or dissociative issues, fragments into alter personalities. Many people who have dissociative identity do just that ~ they dissociate from their identity. They disconnect from themselves without developing other personalities to cope “for them”. The dissociation in itself is the coping method.)

I also developed multiple personality disorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder), which means in my case, that I fragmented or split into multiple personalities as a method of survival. The first time I realized that it was MY body that was violated I sat stunned, repeating over and over again; “That happened to me… that happened to ME!”  I finally connected one horrible and frightening event to myself. I was shocked that I’d never realized that it happened to ME and in fact I was realizing it for the very first time.  I had effectively disconnected myself and my body from the feelings and the pain and even from the truth.

Furthermore I convinced myself that because I had split into “more than one person” that the abuse did not actually happen to me, but instead, I believed that it happened “to them”. I believed it happened to “those alter personalities” inside of me. I personally disconnected from it. I disconnected from myself. Although as a child, having dissociative identity disorder was what kept me alive and it was how I coped and survived, it was also what was in my way as an adult. 

In order to move forward and out of survival mode, I had to face what caused me to go into survivor mode.  I had to face what caused me to fragment into multiple personalities. I had to shift my focus from being fascinated with my alter personalities, to realizing where they came from and that each of them was really me and that each of them held memories of things that happened to ME. Then I had to connect myself to the memories I had.  

I was afraid of the pain. I was afraid to “go there” and take a look.  I was afraid of the feelings. I thought I could just keep going forward and forget that stuff from so long ago. But my depressions increased. I was withdrawing from life more and more so my quality of life was poor. My children were beginning to suffer from my dissociation and dissociative identity issues and my children were getting old enough to realize that mommy was often “somewhere else”.

 Deep down I thought the “truth” might kill me. But when I thought about it, all my life I had been taught to deny the truth. I had been taught that feeling the pain was never an option. That is why I dissociated.  I was surprised that the pain of facing the past was never as bad as the pain that I had been living in for so long.  I was exhausted from the energy it took to avoid facing the past. My depressions were getting worse because of all that denial! In facing it all, I found my identity and I was able to overcome all mental health issues.

It is so important to talk about abuse ~ ALL abuse. It was so important for me to talk about what happened to me. In talking about it I was able to hear myself and realize that it had been wrong. It was important to talk to an understanding person.  Since my family had invalidated me all of my life, they were not the people to tell. I was careful not to talk with people that would tell me that I had to forgive. (because that was invalidating) I was careful not to choose people fond of expressions like “the past is in the past” or “just get over it”. (because that was also invalidating) The goal was to validate that what happened to me was wrong. The goal was to affirm that there was damage that there was a reason that I had been struggling. The goal was to realize that my chronic depressions came from somewhere. I found out and embraced the truth that my depressions and dissociative identity issues had a root cause.

By looking at the truth and validating myself, I affirmed that I needed to heal and that I had a right to heal.  I needed to validate that the things that happened to me did happen and to FEEL the feelings that I tried to avoid most of my life. It was in facing, validating and feeling those feelings that I found healing, wholeness, and freedom.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and feelings here.  I look forward to your feedback.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time

Darlene Ouimet

Click on the blue links in bold print to visit related articles

Several years ago, I excitedly told my Mother over the phone that I was going to write a book about my process of recovery from chronic depression and dissociative identity disorder.  She reacted with strange sort of hesitation.  She didn’t ask any questions; she didn’t actually acknowledge this information at all.  I was used to her acting this way and I was only a bit more then mildly disappointed that she wasn’t interested.  I had been noticing in my recovery that she sucked the joy out of everything I was ever excited about. A few days later however, she brought it up as a sort of “by the way” conversation.  She said that if she read anything in my book about her that she didn’t like, she would sue me. I was stunned. I was actually speechless I was so stunned.  Why did she think it would be about her? I was so confused about her statement, that I couldn’t think straight.  I called a friend of mine who is a lawyer and asked her for some legal advice about it. 

 When I got over my shock about her reaction and her threat, I was able to look at this in a different way.  My narcissistic mother didn’t ask me about the contents of the book. She just assumed it would be about her. Why would she assume that?   I hadn’t even thought about talking about her in the book yet.  Her reaction is what I call a truth leak.  Continued…..

 My narcissistic mother just assumed my book might be about her or would include things about her that she wouldn’t like to have published because of her guilty conscience. At first I just asked myself “why would she think I was going to write a book about her?”  Thoughts were sparking in my mind. Part of me was thinking about how conceited she is and those thoughts were mixed in with thoughts like “what the heck is she so worried about?” I actually had to think about what she might be worried about, although of course I know what she is so worried about.  I just hadn’t actually thought about writing in relation to that stuff yet.  It took me days to sort those thoughts and feelings out. I felt rejected, mistrusted, threatened, devalued and unjustly accused.  

Later I felt anger. Anger that she always killed my joy. Anger that it was always about her. Anger that I didn’t have a mother who loved me or even one that was interested in me.

 I eventually realized that her reaction was about her, not about me. She was reacting because of her own fears.  It was always her way to make it about me, doing something that was not acceptable to her.  I am not sure if that is true narcissism or just the way that she has always been towards me.

 Because she reacted as though the book was about her, eventually I asked myself if that meant that she actually KNEW that she was causing me a lot of harm? Hard to imagine that she might have known that she was doing some really wrong as a mother, isn’t it? Maybe half her energy was spent on making sure that I didn’t realize that she might have known that she knew she was a bad mother? Maybe that is what the purpose of her keeping me in the “spin” all the time was.  All so that she could be in control and so that I was so busy trying harder that I never realized that she was the problem.

When I think about all the things my mom said to me when no one else could hear I wonder why she made sure no one else could hear.  She said and did sick stuff in from of others, but some of it she never did in public. Doesn’t that imply that she knew some stuff was just wrong?

 A child molester doesn’t strip a kid down naked in a public restaurant. They groom the victim carefully, sometimes publically, but the actually molestation is done in private.  (except in cases of organized pedophile rings or in an abusive family where everyone is involved in the abuse) A physically violent parent doesn’t beat a kid in the middle of a crowded shopping mall. Doesn’t that imply that they know it is not legal? An emotional or psychological abuser will not always tear a child down when visitors are there. My mother could be all sweetness and light. Does that mean that she knew others would judge her if she tore me down in front of them?  It seemed to depend on WHO the visitors were.

 I thought about those points when I was deciding if the adults in my life actually knew better, or if they really did not. If she truly has narcissistic personality disorder, wouldn’t she have been the same in front of everyone? Wouldn’t she come first in all her relationships? Wouldn’t she treat everyone else like they were “nothing” too?  I thought about those things a lot.  She was really great at telling me how to act but when I started to look at her actions, she never lived by her own standards, at least not when it came to me.  

 I will tell you something I realized years into recovery.  Abusers remember more about what they did then we remember about what they did. And they don’t know how much we remember. Imagine sleeping at night with that on your mind? Not knowing what the other person actually remembers about what they did to us or what we saw them do to others or even if the brainwashing was good enough to hold forever.

Was her concern about my writing a book about what everyone would think about her because of her narcissistic self-centeredness, or was it about her fear of being exposed for the kind of mother she really was?  Although my mother fits the description of narcissistic personality disorder, I think it was the later of the two.

Please share your thoughts. I look forward to the discussion on this post.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time,

Darlene Ouimet

Beauty in the Ruins

Sometimes I get a comment that is bursting with questions that I just HAVE to talk about in more depth than just a comment back. In my last post “coping methods ~ trying to escape myself” I got one of these comments from Susa.

 Susa wrote: “Interesting perspective and I really appreciate reading your experiences with dissociation.  I suppose I could refer to switching as escaping myself, but the only problem I have, is what part of me is actually me?  Who is really “myself”?  I have always spontaneously deferred to a part of me who can more easily handle the specific task at hand, and have never had any control of that process.  At this late stage of the life game, I am finally starting to almost be co-present with some parts of me… and yet I, Susa, still struggle with the question of who, or which part is the real me, or the original me?  I know that I am not the original birth person, and have only been the CEO since 2006.  I suppose the real me would be a sum of my parts, but hard to pinpoint any specific part of me.” Susa ( To read the post and the rest of the discussion read “coping methods ~ trying to escape myself“)

As I read this comment from Susa, several things were going through my mind. One of them was that although I am frequently asked to talk about my experience with dissociative identity disorder, (the multiple personality kind) I rarely do talk about it other than to say that I had it and I recovered from it. I tend to stay away from the subject because there are so many different beliefs about what it is, and how it operates. My opinion is that it was one of the ways that I coped; first with the trauma and then with life, and that in the final analysis, it was no more or less important than any of my other coping methods. All of my coping methods were tangled together to form a huge armoured tank around all my issues, protecting me from the outside world, but in the end also shielding me from the freedom and wholeness that I wanted so badly. All of my coping methods served the same purpose; survival.

Switching was an effective escape; it was a necessary coping method that in the past I had come to understand was about escaping the trauma, pain and or emotions that I was experiencing at any given time. As I grew up I learned to switch at any perceived danger. It became automatic. Anything that was even remotely familiar to the feelings surrounding childhood abuse or trauma, caused me to “switch”, becoming the alter I most needed to be in order to handle the situation. This was necessary as a child. It was not so necessary when I became an adult but I had no way of knowing that. Dissociative Identity and switching alters had become the way that I did life. As an adult, the switching personalities seemed to become more about me becoming whoever someone else wanted me to be, but was still a survival method or coping method due to the fears that I carried with me from childhood into adulthood.

When I came face to face with my dissociative identity disorder, I had those same questions. Who is the “real me?; Which one is in charge?; how will I ever know?”  Will I ever find out which one of “me” is the original one? And I got really invested in thinking about all of that. So much so that you could say it became yet another escape. The “original me” quest however became very important to me as I began this healing journey.

I found out that all of them were me. Each fragmented self had arrived to protect me or to take the feelings and handle the fears for me. Each one held its own memories and had its own triggers. Each one had the job of protecting me from the memories, pain and trauma so that I could survive. Some alters were male, some were children, one was much older then I was. They took care of me. That was their job. And I had only even had or been glimpses of the original me or the core because the core of me was the sum of all parts.

I had a lot of fears about who I really was and about which alter was going to be the strongest one in the end. I was really afraid of one of them as I had gotten into most of the trouble in my life with her in the front. I tried to shut her down and one time when I was in intensive therapy I dreamed that I tried to kill her. I woke up from that dream with the profound realization that I had tried to kill myself in a dream. Through that dream I realized that I could not ditch one of “them” and  that I had projected most of the self hate, blame and shame onto that part of me. My therapist had a less known method of treating dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) and the method he used was instead of concentrating on which alter had which memories and emotions, we concentrated on the trauma events themselves and we began with the earliest ones that I remembered. I had lots of alters popping out in therapy, and my therapist just let it happen without giving too much attention to the individual alter. It was more like he treated me as though I was only “one” and then I came to realize that all of this trauma actually happened to me and not to the alters whom I believed were separate from me.

Dissociative identity disorder allowed me to separate trauma events and view them as though they happened to someone else.  Because more than one alter personality  would come out at each trauma event, I was able to detach from the event on many levels. I saw each tiny moment as separate from another moment. That was how I was able to deal with them. But I did the same thing with the lies that I learned. With all the memories fragmented, it may have been easier to cope, but at the same time I accepted the lies, shame and self blame because I separated those memories too. I believed that I must have done something to deserve what happened because I didn’t have one whole memory. So if someone indicated that it was my own fault or that I deserved it or that I was the problem, I remembered that as a single event too.

As I looked at the memories, and started to connect the fragmented pieces, I realized how many false beliefs that I had accepted about myself in the course of my childhood. As I uncovered those lies and exposed the truth (to myself) I began to come together. As I realized how many lies that I had accepted about myself and corrected them, I began to calm down. As I calmed down, I became more comfortable. I felt like I was growing up. In the calming down, I felt like I was coming together. I was able to become conscious of when I had switched and soon I was conscious even before I switched and found ways of talking to myself that enabled me to stay one.

The trauma happened to me. The memories were all mine. Each personality was me and I was restored, by connecting, facing and accepting the truth about the past.

Please share your thoughts. We always have a wonderful discussion in the comments section!

Darlene Ouimet 

Note: It is important to understand that it was not the recall of the events that restored me. I do not have all my memories, and I still remember only fragments of certain events, but I remembered enough to realize how my belief system had formed and why. The key was in realizing how I had come to believe so many lies about myself, and was not about remembering all the events.

**This is an example of my personal journey. All processes are different. Many people need to dig really deeply into the personality of each alter; I am not discounting other ways of recovery. I am only sharing how it worked for me.

Related Post ~ D.I.D. and the Essence of who I am by Carla Logan

Staying with Me

No matter which coping method issue that I look at within myself I have determined the core of it to be related to trying to leave myself. There is a disconnection from myself that I developed when I was a child; it was my way to escape and I became attached to it. Every time I examine one of those “still tangled threads” I keep coming back to this disconnection that it seems I actually seek; escaping myself. I am convinced that at least one of the reasons that I am attached to this “leaving myself” is because when I was a child, dissociation is what worked for me.

Now I have to remind myself that any form of coping method, although it may have worked at one time, is an escape from me that doesn’t work anymore.

I used to have dissociative identity disorder. I had the kind that was once called multiple personality disorder. The name of it was changed to dissociative identity disorder because lots of people leave themselves or dissociate from themselves and from their identity without actually becoming someone else or having alter personalities. Although I did have alter personalities and I did switch, I have found many similarities to others with dissociative identity disorder that were simply just “dissociated”.

Recovery for me has been about coming home to myself. It is a journey back to me and it is not an easy journey because for about 43 years I tried my hardest to get away from me; dissociating was the way that I did life.  Somewhere between leaving me and coming back to me are the actual steps that I took to get the wholeness that I have today and that is what I write about.

As I take this recovery journey, I become more and more aware that the answers are within me, but when I forget that I start looking for answers outside of me.  I mistakenly think that validation from others is going to help me. I think that having more friends is going to help me. I think that having the most popular blog on the internet is going to help me or losing weight and getting fit is going to help me and I chase those things for a time and come up feeling disappointed and not knowing why. I have to remember that that my validation does not come from outside of myself.  

When I stay totally present it is as though I become “too aware” of myself. Life without coping methods means mega increased self awareness. When I become really aware of myself, I am subconsciously afraid that I might find out that I’m a disappointment, a failure and just plain not good enough.  In the past I took on all that self blame and shame and I needed to keep dissociating because I was too scared to be me, because I thought “me” was so bad. Deep down I am afraid that with too much self awareness, all those memories about being unlovable and unworthy might come rushing up to the surface. The fear has always been rooted in being afraid to find out that the beliefs I adopted about myself as a child, the beliefs that were “taught” to me through actions, abuse, and the behaviour of others, might be true.

I have not switched personalities for several years now and I rarely dissociate the way that I used to either. I have found myself and my purpose. I live my life with passion and conviction and go after my goals with determination. I love my children and I work on my relationship with each of them and on my relationship with my husband almost daily.  I love life. I love the freedom that I have found but sometimes I get going the wrong way too and I suddenly realize that I am facing something I haven’t faced before. And usually when I take a closer look I realize that I have tried to disconnect from myself again. I find myself, and then I get scared and try to leave myself, all the while trying not to admit that I am trying to get away from me again.

It is as though I believe that I can leave myself, in order to deal with myself, without having to feel anything myself. It never works, but I still try.  So for me, this journey is about remembering to STAY with me and that is about self love, self acceptance, self validation and self empowerment.  

 “They” said it was me… But they were wrong. And I have to keep reminding myself that they were wrong, because none of this leaving myself or trying to escape awareness of myself, is conscious. It happens without thought.  And so becoming more conscious is actually the goal. The more I face the fear of being present with myself, the more I realize that the fears are not real. I am afraid of lies; lies that I have spent years undoing and replacing with the truth.

I long for connection, freedom and peace but it is only in coming back to me that I find the freedom and peace that I long for and it is only in self connection that I get to keep it so that I can give it away. The good news is that the more often that I connect to myself, the more I remember that the keys to freedom are within.

And it is key for me to catch myself when I try to leave myself.   

What are your thoughts about this topic? Have you ever related a coping method to escaping yourself?

Darlene Ouimet

Founder of Emerging from Broken.

Related Posts ~ Keys to Living in the Present

Tomorrow I will start to face the pain

But HOW do I Recover?

“The best way to keep relationships happy, healthy, and supportive can be summed up in one word: appreciation. What you appreciate, appreciates. When we demonstrate our appreciation for the support we receive from others, it reinforces that behaviour and deepens our connection to them.”   Marci Shimoff

This is a beautiful quote. I tried to live my life by these types of quotes in the past, never realizing that they were extremely conflicting for me. Today, this quote works for me in the relationships that I have now but in the past a quote like this actually caused internal, subconscious, harm.

Without realizing it, I was trying to appreciate people who were treating me badly. I didn’t think that I deserved support; I don’t think I even knew what it was so I didn’t see that key part of the quote. Instead, I kept trying to see the positive in abusive people and overlook the negative. That was how I viewed quotes like this one. I thought it meant that I should just ignore the mean stuff. But trying to overlook someone’s ill treatment of me was the same as agreeing with them that I wasn’t really worth being treated properly.

Trying to appreciate a person who devalues you is conflicting;  it’s like putting a band-aid on top of a severed limb that requires surgery, stitches, recovery time and then rehabilitation. 

I am one of those people who fought against depression all my life.  I was bi-polar, likely from a very young age and depressions were connected to my dissociative identity disorder issues. I began seeking solutions in self help programs, seminars and self help books when I was eighteen years old.  I started in 12 step meetings when I was eighteen too.  And for reasons that I could never understand, no matter how much I tried to work those steps, they too were like a band-aid when I needed surgery.

In the past when I read a quote like this one by Marci Shimoff  I tried to focus on appreciating the people in my life that were devaluing me, defining me as not good enough, controlling me and squishing me into the ground.  I tried to concentrate on how wonderful they were and thought that if I was more appreciative ~ which in a victim mindset means more compliant and more subservient, that they would finally reciprocate and appreciate me.  This was all part of my victim mentality which whispered in the deepest part of my mind and belief system, that if I could just find the magic secret recipe for how to make them LOVE me, that they would stop hurting me and love me.

Today I understand and appreciate quotes like this one. I had to get the victim mentality (that I lived in and survived by) sorted out and set right first though.  I had to clean up the old foundation ~ which was rotting and full of gaping life sucking lies and build a new strong and sturdy foundation before quotes like these could serve me.  Trying to implement positive thinking quotes in the past added to my already low self esteem. Subconsciously I just jumped to guilt, shame, self blame and failure thoughts.

Having realized my own value and truly embraced it has enabled me to appreciate the people in my life today from a more truthful and equal viewpoint and THAT has deepened the connections. Appreciation is no longer a one way street. Now that I know my own value, it is easier to appreciate others for who they really are too.

Please share your thoughts about one sided appreciation or about how this article resonates with you.

Darlene Ouimet

Marci Shimoff ~ Is the Best Selling Author of “Happy for No Reason” and “Love for no Reason”

Also see ” Keys to Living in the Present ~the passwors is “the past”

another year bites the dust

Today is a new day and we are close to beginning a whole New Year! In the past I liked New Years because it always seemed like a new chance for a new beginning, but the past couple of “New Years” my thoughts are different; I thought that 2009 was the best year ever, and now I think 2010 was the best year ever so this year I am celebrating that I had a GREAT YEAR, and celebrating that I know 2011 is going to be the best year ever too. =) I am not thrilled to say good bye to 2010 but yet I’m super excited to welcome 2011.

Emerging from Broken was born out of my life long quest for recovery from depression, abuse,  (sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse, spiritual abuse) and from mental health struggles and from the resulting dissociative identity disorder and other coping methods that I had been using and trying to overcome my entire life.  I had been told that depression was not curable, only treatable. For some reason, I didn’t believe it. Both my mother and grandmother had suffered chronic depressions and my mother had prepared me for a lifetime of that struggle too, but I kept seeking a solution.  I remember this little flame of hope ~ this tiny voice within me that said “NO” I don’t believe that. I am SURE there is a cure ~ a permanent solution, a way to live in fullness in the way that I was sure we are meant to live ~ like a birthright. I almost gave up before I found it but I am happy to say that I persisted just long enough. (the key was in finding the truth)

To be more accurate, Emerging from Broken was born out of my victory over all those things. When I finally knew that I was free, that I had found a new way to deal with depressions, addictions and coping methods, I wanted to share the message of hope with you all.  I wanted to tell the world that healing and recovery is possible, freedom from depression in all its many forms, is possible, that living in fullness and purpose is really possible because I live there now. (the key was in finding the truth)

Recovery from abuse of any kind is a journey of many levels, twists and turns. There are hills, valleys, scary caves, dark forests, bright clearings, majestic mountains and dark creepy forests. There are rivers to be forged, and oceans to be crossed and there are peaceful ponds to rest by on lovely sunny days, after stormy nights filled with thunder and lightning. 

Today I like it all. I see the beauty in the journey. I see the progression to wholeness takes all of this and sometimes even more.  It takes willingness and courage. It takes determination and decision. It takes resolution, strength and stick-to-itiveness. It takes hope and belief.

I didn’t think I had any of those things! I didn’t think I had courage OR strength; I didn’t even think I had WORTH ~ but I did. I had all of them ~ some were weak and buried deep but they budded, blossomed and grew and they continue to grow and flourish as I keep going forward..  Deep down I had all these qualities and you have them too.  

So it is with excited anticipation that I say good bye to 2010 tonight and welcome 2011. I do things differently today; I live differently. I live in the truth. I like myself and I believe in myself. I am on the journey with myself and no longer dissociated and I am enjoying getting to know the real me. This is my hope for you too.

As I reflect back on the past year, and anticipate this New Year, I am grateful. I didn’t have community in the most difficult part of my journey and wished I had had that so I have created it here in Emerging from Broken for all of us; it helps me stay the path also. I am grateful for each one of the readers, guest post bloggers, commenters and contributors because my life is enriched by each of you. You give me a reason to share. You help me fulfill my purpose. You inspire me and encourage me. I thank you.

Happy New Year.

Wishing you a year filled with Truth ~ then Love will follow

Darlene Ouimet

Related Posts ~ “Before I faced the pain, I had to face the lies”

                            ~ Getting to the Turth ~ an audio by C.Enevoldsen and myself

                            ~ I held the key to my freedom ~ by Susan Kingsley Smith

Success is a series of small accomplishments

I wanted to know HOW I would recover from emotional abuse; how do I do it? What do I do?

As though knowing HOW would make it possible.

I wanted to know HOW the healing would take place, as though knowing how would make it real or as though knowing how would enable me to make the decision on whether or not I was willing to go through with it.

But the truth is that I didn’t ever get to know how. I didn’t ever get prior knowledge as to where the journey would take me.

I was held back on some aspects because I thought the pain would kill me, but the pain of recovery was never as bad as the pain of living broken. Unfortunately, we don’t know that for sure until we are on the other side of broken.

I thought that if I ventured forward but didn’t succeed, that the pain of another failure would kill me; so I hesitated about moving forward.

I hear this question all the time; “But how does it work? How will I do it?”

I didn’t know, I never knew, and looking back I don’t see how I could have even been told. Because it is different for everyone. Because it is a step by step process that takes time. Because on breakthrough builds on another.

What I remember is that I believed it was possible. That belief came because my therapist told me that there were others that had overcome and recovered from chronic depressions and dissociative behavior. I had not actually met anyone that had overcome, but when I started to trust him, I started to believe him and after I began to believe him and when I had my first little breakthrough, then I believed that I could do recover too. I finally had hope. I finally believed that if someone else could overcome ~ if someone else had recovered from dissociative identity disorder, sexual abuse, and a lifetime of psychological abuse, then maybe I could recover too.

I finally believed that I was worth taking the chance on.  I was worth the effort. And I also realized that the reason that I had not considered that I was worth it prior to this was because from a very young age I had been treated as though I was not worth it. As a child I had no choice but to believe that lie.

I dug my heals in and went for it. I just put one foot in front of the other and took my time looking at the reasons that I had been in this state of difficulty and struggle with my mental health for so long. All I had was hope and it turned out that was all I needed. Each little success, each little breakthrough no matter how tiny was what kept me going forward after that. My breakthroughs became my motivation and hope was my foundation.

Blind faith I guess you could say.  

I realize today that success is not the end result but rather a collection of accomplishments.

I took someone else’s word for it; that recovery was possible and it ended up being the truth. This is my biggest inspiration for writing this blog. I want to inspire hope as it was inspired in me.

I made the decision to face the pain. I made the decision to go forward but I didn’t know the answer to the HOW question. And in the end, it didn’t matter.

What are your thoughts on the “HOW” question? Please share them with us in the comments.

Exposing Truth ~ One Snapshot at a Time

Darlene Ouimet

I’m Innocent

“It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.” Thomas Jefferson

I was dissociated. I grew up having dissociative identity disorder which means that I effectively disconnected from myself and from the events that happened to me. That is what dissociative identity disorder is. That was how I protected myself, how I survived, how I coped. In recovery it was extremely important that I eventually connected those events BACK to me. I had to realize that those things really happened and they happened to me. 

This isn’t as easy as it might sound.  For one thing I didn’t realize when I talked about certain abuse situations, that I didn’t connect them to me. The first time I connected being molested as a child, to myself, I was stunned. Shocked actually.  I had had the memory for years. But I didn’t actually relate it to something that happened to me as a person or to me as an individual or to me as someone who was violated. So when I talked about it in therapy this one day, it was just like I was talking about something slightly uncomfortable, like driving in bad weather. Like I was talking  about an event that was slightly awkward but not the devaluing and terrifying sexual assault that in truth is what actually took place. 

It doesn’t help if you are told constantly while growing up, that you are dramatic, that you talk to hear yourself talk, that you exaggerate. Or if you are told statements like “we don’t talk like that” or “we don’t talk about things like that”.  It doesn’t help if you are brainwashed to believe that your memories are wrong. That your memories are false, because the memory is horrifying enough.  It doesn’t help if you are told that you deserved it, that you asked for it, and the worst one of all ~ that you liked it. It doesn’t help if when you got older that you have become so sexualized that your body responds to something awful.  It is really confusing when you are told it didn’t happen AND you are told you deserved it and to forgive. (If it didn’t happen why are you told you deserved it or to forgive?)

It might be nice to believe that it never really happened. Like witnessing a fatal car accident. Your mind will often try to tell you that it didn’t happen the way that you saw it happen. Your mind will try to figure out all sorts of ways that it might have happened differently and with a different outcome. I could have done this or that differently. I could have stopped it. Your mind will try to protect you from the horror of what you saw. Well my mind tried to protect me too, so it split into different memory banks and separated one memory from another. My parents gladly assisted with this process by not validating me and by convincing me that my dramatic personality was full of shit.

When I finally connected that first event to myself, I was able to connect other events too and accept that these things happened to me. I had to accept more than just that certain abuse happened to me, I had to accept that I was not validated at the same time. I was not heard, I was not protected. And although my parents were not my sexual abusers, they didn’t listen to me, my mother had a violent temper, my father was emotionally unavailable, completely detached and disinterested in me and all of those things are also abusive.  I had to realize that. All of this was part of the picture of who I was and what happened to me and how I dealt with it or didn’t deal with it.

If I was to recover, if I was to heal, I had to put myself first for once and really look at this as a whole picture. And I had to realize that I had been abused, mistreated, not valued, heard or protected, and that those things happened to ME, that it was wrong, and that I didn’t deserve it. I also had to realize that I deserve recovery; that I deserve to have a full life. That I deserve to know what love is and to be loved and to know my own value.  I had to stop comparing my life and my past to everyone else’s and I had to stop believing that how other people defined me was TRUE. I had to realize at the depth of my entire being, that I WAS NOT who “they” said that I was and that they don’t get to define me anymore.

I fought for my life when I was abused, but I fought even harder to get it back.  and THIS truly is  “the good fight”.

Please share.

Written with more love then I ever knew I had or imagined that I could ever feel;

Darlene Ouimet

related posts: Mother Daughter Relationship Nightmares

  Facing and Speaking the Awful Truth ~from the blog “you can fly with broken wings ~  by Fi MacLeod

The little Girl who cried Wolf ~ belief system development

When I decided to tell the Chris Story ~ the story about how Prince Charming was a Murder Suspect, I intended to write one post. I intended to keep the focus about my belief system, and highlight the fact that I missed and or ignored the red flags because of learned unworthiness issues resulting from child abuse and child sexual abuse and invalidation.  That was the first post.

But the commenter’s and private e-mailers wanted more. They wanted to know what kinds of red flags exactly. I could see the benefit of sharing more of the details and highlighting the actual red flags, and for sharing a bit about my rational for disregarding the danger signs.  So that was the second post. 

As I write this post, I have not yet published the second post “Dangerous Men, Red Flags, Victim Mentality”.  When I finished writing that post and did my final read on it, I felt stupid. I thought I was really lame for missing so many of those blatant red flags.  And worse than that, the way that second post reads I didn’t really miss them; I just ignored them. I considered not publishing the post.  I felt insecure. I felt “dumb”. I felt like no one else would have EVER been so stupid as to stay with that guy knowing everything that I knew. This is exactly the type of thinking that kept me in the cycle of abuse and in victim mindset, covering up for the things I think are MY fault instead of exposing HIM and telling my truth.

I questioned myself, “what the heck was wrong with me back then?? How could I have let that stuff go? How could I have gotten into that relationship and then left myself, in that situation? What was so great about “that guy” that I didn’t dump him?  What the heck did I think was going to happen?

And I heard the thoughts behind the thoughts ~ “I didn’t think, I didn’t care, I didn’t know; he could have changed, he had been damaged and he needed me, what if I was wrong about him? What if he killed me if I tried to dump him? What if he was the best that I could ever do? What if I dumped him and found myself alone for the rest of my life……. Sometimes he was sweet, sometimes he was tender. He was charming. He looked like a movie star… he called me “baby”. 

And the even deeper thoughts~ playing detective was exciting. It was a way of proving to myself that I really DID have a brain. Being afraid of him was thrilling. Getting away with knowing that he didn’t know that I knew….  (When danger has been a part of a sexual abuse history, sometimes danger is a turn on; danger is familiar. And in this particular story I find it interesting to note that I was NOT at all sexually attracted to this guy, so the thrill of danger had more to do with validation.)  

Sometimes I tell myself that I am just making excuses for myself. (which also comes from upbringing) During that time with Chris I had dissociative identity disorder. Since I have recovered from DID, I look back and see it differently now then I used to. One of the things that I did that is common for anyone who dissociates, (not just dissociative identity with multiple personality) is that I “separated incidents”. I did not put all the incidents and red flag events concerning Chris, in my mind at the same time. In a way I put them through separate filters. I believed that each one was separate and had nothing to do with the other one. I disconnected each red flag from the prior red flag. Think of it this way; each event or red flag had its own sealed envelope. In my mind, none of the red flags were related. That was how I learned to cope with child sexual abuse. I broke off from myself, and left my body. And I learned an intricate system of coping; disconnecting and separating related events, too scary to look at, too scary to stop, too powerless to stand up for myself. That is how I learned to deal with life; by separating incidents and by disconnecting.  And so ~ there I was, all grown up in a dangerous relationship with a dangerous man, disconnected and ignoring all the red flags.

(And it is by reconnecting first with myself and then with the events that I discounted and ignored and eventually blamed myself for, that I became whole again.)

The desire to make excuses for myself has its roots in the same belief system that I write about all the time. As a child I believed that I could change, and if I changed then I would be loved.  So I felt insecure about telling the story because I grew up being told (Not always in words) that I was wrong; that I had a faulty memory and that I was the real problem. I was trained to keep the secret; don’t bring any shame on the family and I was told (not always in words) to find a way to cope with it myself.  I was also pretty young when I believed if there was a problem that I caused it, made it up or exaggerated it or misunderstood it and I learned that the best coping method of all was to disconnect myself from it.

But I have learned that I am not the problem. I am not the one that made things up or twisted the truth around, (other than in my own mind in order to cope with it); I did not exaggerate, and if anything I diminish the stories; I do not have to keep any secrets; I am NOT wrong and there is nothing wrong with my memory. So I published that post. And I am publishing this one too!

Thanks to everyone who has shared these posts on facebook or other sites and to everyone who has participated in conversations here and on the Emerging from Broken facebook page.

Please feel free to add your thoughts, feelings and stories.

Keep striving to move forward!

Darlene Ouimet