Archive for emerging from broken
Dysfunctional Family Christmas and Giving the Wrong Gift
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- the wrong gift
The Ghost of Dysfunctional Christmas Past ~ Part 2
How come I could NEVER find the right gift for my Mother? I never seemed to be able to make her happy. My Christmas gifts as well as any other gifts I found for her never had the desired effect one wants when giving a gift to someone.
There was always this disappointment she showed when she opened a gift from me. Her face would fall. She would look uncomfortable. She wouldn’t say much about whatever I had chosen for her. I agonized over what I would get her, and then I worried about it until the day I gave it to her. I dreaded her reaction. I guess I was hoping that her face would light up. I was hoping for approval.
I got so that I HATED thinking about what she might like for a gift and what I should get her. There was so much anxiety around gift giving that I couldn’t actually concentrate on the celebration itself. There was so much “obligation” around all these events that I didn’t understand back then.
My mother never made it easy for me by pointing out or mentioning a specific gift she wanted. It was as if my “guessing what the right gift would be to get for her” was part of what would make her happy. It was a though if she “told” me what she wanted, that would ruin it. In order for the gift to be “special”, I had to Read More→
Overcoming that Nasty Self Blame from Dysfunctional Relationships
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daggers of self blame
Looking back on my life, it is evermore clear to me how hard I looked for excuses to blame myself for the dysfunction in my life. There is a very good reason that children take on the blame: it was safer to blame themselves. Blaming “them” was fruitless. I could not “make them change” but “I knew” I could always “try harder”. I believed that if I could “do good enough” that they would finally love me.
It was very hard for me to learn to see things through a new grid because I had been consistently taught things a certain way. The way that I was taught things became my grid of understanding. My grid of understanding was the way that I saw and believed that life worked. Dysfunction was my normal. I believed things worked in life a certain way, because that is how I was “taught” life worked. As I got older, outside influences added to those teachings, confirming them and cementing them firmly in my mind. This is what I call my belief system.
One of the things that I have discovered about my belief system is that although when I got older I was taught that I can change my thinking by practicing a new thought or belief over and over again, (positive affirmations or positive thinking) the truth was that until I found the original false belief and Read More→
Standing up to Damaging Advice and Overcoming Trauma Directives
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- unhelpful directives
People always told me things like “deal with it” and “get over it” and “put it behind you” They always seemed so impatient with me and even exasperated that I was still “there” and not over it.
Has anyone ever given you instructions on HOW to “deal with it”? Have you been giving information about HOW to get over it, that didn’t include statements to which you have to keep asking “how do I do that”?
Just get over it (HOW?) Just put it behind you. (HOW?) ~ “give it to God”. (HOW?) To which the answer was “Have faith” (HOW?) well you get the picture.
I was told to accept things with statements like “nothing happens by mistake” And while I totally love that expression when I was in the right place at just the right time and suddenly met the person who was going to change my life, what about when someone uses that expression “nothing happens by mistake” when you are trying to comprehend the leftover emotions from child abuse? That expression becomes a way to try to make you grateful for having been abused!
What about people who tell me that I would not be the person that I am today if I had not been abused; that the abuse made me a stronger person. (again that I should be grateful that I was abused) But the truth is that I will never know how I would have turned out. I don’t know how strong I would have been if I had never been abused. Perhaps my brilliant mind would have been capable of Read More→
Three Keys to Breaking the Chains and Facing Emotional Pain
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Sometimes facing the pain seemed so overwhelming that I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to face what I had to face in order to get on with my life. I didn’t want to feel anything. I had survived by shutting down my feelings and by shutting down my needs. I didn’t want to feel or be aware; it was much too frightening.
This was the spin; the vicious cycle.
But I must have wanted to live. There was a tiny spark in me that didn’t go out. There was a tiny flame that belonged to me and a determined little flame it was. That spark was determined to live. The “how to go about doing that” was the problem. I wanted to be free but there were certain chains that had to be broken. Certain things held me back and because those chains formed when I was so young, I didn’t realize they were even there. They were familiar; they were part of me. I thought they helped me, and even thought they were “saving me”. I was afraid to break them and emerge into the sunlight. That was the spin that I was caught in. I had lived in “survivor mode” for so long that it was all I knew.
Survivor mode is the shut down place; not feeling, not needing, not facing the truth. Survivor mode is the only way to get through any kind of childhood trauma. But as an adult it was in my way. It became one of the road blocks to freedom.
Victim mentality believes that being compliant will keep me safe. Being compliant means Read More→
How I learned to Self Abuse by Pam Witzemann
Posted by: | CommentsPlease help me welcome guest blogger Pam Witzemann as she shares about Self Abuse and how she realized that it was in fact, learned behavior. Pam is a frequent guest blogger here at Emerging from Broken and contributes her voice to the comments in almost every post here on Emerging from Broken. Darlene Ouimet
How I learned to Self Abuse by Pam Witzemann
I was a self-abusive person. I wasn’t born as a self-abuser. I was taught to abuse myself by the way I was devalued as a child and the behavior that was modeled for me.
As a child, I was medically, emotionally, and spiritually neglected. I was psychologically and emotionally abused. I was given alcohol as medicine on a regular basis from the age of six months and also allowed sips of beer and other adult drinks. On holidays, I was allowed to drink hard eggnog and wine. As a toddler, I was allowed to eat only candy and drink coffee with the adults. I use the term toddler as an age descriptive term but I was never actually a toddler. I was what is now called a schoocher. Because I was born premature, my brain didn’t know where my arms were and I used my legs instead. I sat on my bottom and scooted. I tried to walk at about one year but fell like an egg, unable to catch myself, and didn’t begin walking until I was three. I never had any medical help with this disability. I don’t know if there was any help available but I do know that my parents never investigated any further than Read More→
Bullies and Bullying ~ Where Bullying Really Starts
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“It all starts with disrespect. Let someone disrespect you — don’t stand up for yourself right away — and it escalates to teasing and rumours or even physical abuse. But it all falls under same category: Bullying. By organizing Students Against Being Bullied (S.A.B.B.), I along with S.A.B.B. members hope to change the culture of bullying in my High School and across the state of New Jersey by stopping it before it starts.” Ashley Craig from the website Students Against being Bullied (S.A.B.B.)
Bullying is a huge problem in our society. I love what Ashley is doing here, especially since she is a student herself. Don’t get me wrong; my issue is not with bully programs. My issue is with the origins of bullying and whether or not those origins are being addressed.
My first concern is with using the word “LET” in the sentence “let someone disrespect you ~ don’t stand up for yourself right away.” I didn’t LET anyone bully me. I didn’t have a choice in the matter and using the word “let” implies that I could have stopped it. Please keep in mind that my bullies were adults’ way before they were other kids. I think that bullies learn to bully. Bullying is “modeled to them before they use bullying against others. Does it seem reasonable that a happy and well adjusted child just decides to Read More→
The Purpose of facing the Past and Childhood History
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In my blog post “Take the good with the Bad or the Bad with the Good?” I talked about my feelings regarding not sharing anything positive about my childhood. The post itself was inspired by a reader on facebook who commented that the conversation was too negative and that I/we should be able to say something good, specifically about my father.
It got me to thinking about what emerging from broken is all about. EFB is about emotional healing from the damage caused by people who did not have my best interests at heart. This site is about facing the truth that we have never been allowed to face, such as childhood history; how we were discounted, mistreated, devalued and not heard and the problems that manifested because of those things. Emerging from broken is about the process I went through as an adult. It’s about how I found my voice and Read More→
My Mother Finally wanted to BE My Mother
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When my second child was born, my mother said that she wanted to “be there for me”. She said that she wanted to really do something FOR ME and she offered to make the seven hour drive over the mountains to our home to help me in the final days before labor, and help me to take care of my 21 month old son.
I was thrilled. Finally my mother wanted to BE MY MOTHER! I felt closer to her in those phone calls planning her visit then I had ever felt before that time.
I started to have some complication with my hips. My legs were giving out from under me and I needed more bed rest. I was confident that my mother would agree to come a bit earlier then we had planned and I called her up with the news and my request. She hesitated. Her familiar voice, the one that I had come to hate as it was laced with disappointment, responded Read More→
Missing Self Esteem? It Happens in Childhood
Posted by: | CommentsAfter I wrote my Mother’s day post, the comments and emails inspired me to write this additional post. It is not my usual style; more of a collection of snapshots, but I believe it gets the point across.
~Why didn’t you hear me when I told you I was being abused?
~Why didn’t you see me as a person?
~Why didn’t you fight for me?
~Why did you disregard my feelings, my pain, my existence and my right as a human being?
~Why did you hit me?
~Why didn’t you care?
And the question that I never dared even think about, much less ever say out loud ~
Why didn’t you love me?
So I changed the question in my head to “why am I not lovable, not worthy, not good enough?” It seemed easier to face if it was something that was wrong with me.
These were all the questions that I had for the adults in my life; my teachers, my family, my parents. And I tried to deny that I had these questions. I tried to disregard them. I tried to shove the pain back down into the dark where I had learned to keep it in order to survive.
I learned to discount myself, just as I had been discounted. The way they mistreated me was my example of love. It was the only example that I had. It became my teacher. And I learned self love and self worth by the examples of love and worth that I was shown. And since the examples were so faulty and Read More→
Coaching with Darlene on My Definition of Love
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I am really excited to welcome my friend and guest blogger Carla Dippel. Today Carla is writing about a coaching session we recently did. This post is an excellent example of how to dig down and discover your belief system about a specific concept; in this case “love”. As always please feel free to contribute to this wonderful post by leaving your feedback and comments. ~ Darlene Ouimet, founder of Emerging from Broken
Cocahing with Darlene on my Definition of Love by Carla Dippel
A few weeks ago, I was freaking out about love. I felt anxious, confused, and stuck. I had this sense that I was missing something, that I was scrambling in the surface of myself while there was much deeper stuff going on beneath that I couldn’t get at. I described this “freaking out”-ness to Darlene. In her masterful way, she asked me a couple simple questions that changed everything. I really cared about working through this struggle because I really cared about the part of my life that it was affecting. So I decided to be open and reveal the truth as honestly as possible. I had hope that in doing this I would find better answers than the ones I was working with at the time.
First Darlene asked me to reveal my definition of love. She added, “Don’t worry about sounding silly or trying to have the RIGHT answer. Just write what naturally comes out, what you believe off the top of your head.” I had this sense of taking my focus off the leaves of the tree that were sick and shifting it to the soil. What was really down there?… I felt afraid to be so honest. I don’t like feeling vulnerable or sounding stupid (especially). But I went to work. Here is what came out, un-edited and un-analzyed: Read More→
