Archive for emerging from broken
Equal Value through the Grid of Truth ~ Then and Now
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Peace through Truth by Theodora MacLeod
I am an advocate for truth. I am an advocate for the truth that leads to freedom, wholeness and healing. I am an advocate for the truth that leads to healthy self esteem, the true definition of love and equal value for adults and children, bosses and employees, teachers and students because in the eyes of the truth, we are ALL people with equal value. Although we may have more authority in some situations, we do not suddenly reach a certain age or status which gives us more value than someone else has.
I will no longer do what “they” have decided is best for me to do or what “they” think I should do. I will do what I believe is right and best for me. When others tell me what to do or what I am doing wrong according to them, my ability to make decisions for myself is insulted and that kind of put down is devaluing.
I am not going to be who others say I am or who others want me to be. I am who I really am. No one else can define me. When I am defined by others I feel judged and unappreciated and it stifles my ability to be who I AM.
Taking my life back means that I am in charge of it now. I am the captain of my own ship. My happiness does not depend on someone else’s happiness anymore. In learning what was best for me and living in that definition, I empower all those around me to Read More→
Understanding Trust and Getting Trust and Love Mixed Up
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Trust
I found it easier to understand the concept of Trust, by looking at what I had been taught about trust. It was the experiences that I’d had to do with the word and definition of trust that were at the root of my understanding of the concept and meaning of the word trust.
I remember being scared half out of my wits while being yelled at “TRUST ME, I know what YOU need”. (which translated to me that I “needed” the spanking, the strap, the punishment)
I was told to trust teachers and leaders who were bullies and predators simply because they were “my elders”. Being taught to blindly trust only taught me that I was not worth much. Being “told” to trust people who were not trustworthy left me very confused about what trust really was.
I had a boyfriend who accused me of not trusting him when he was driving drunk. I felt shame and guilt even though drunk driving is illegal, I had been “groomed” to believe that questioning someone meant that I didn’t love him or her. He went to jail for impaired driving.
I didn’t make the connection that trust has nothing to do with love.
I had another boyfriend who accused me of not trusting him when I found a girls phone number on his dresser. Once again I felt guilt and shame because as I already mentioned, I had been taught that if I didn’t trust, I didn’t love. It turned out that he was cheating on me, just as I suspected. I didn’t find out for a long time because I was too busy trying to prove that I “trusted” and “loved him.” I had several boyfriends who accused me of not trusting them. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to admit even to myself that Read More→
Victims can become the Biggest Abusers ~ The Cycle of Abuse
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- The Glass House
My mother is a victim. In fact, she is the exact same type of victim that I was. She was a victim of her parent’s abuse and dysfunction and she learned to survive in that dysfunctional family system exactly as it was taught to her. She accepted it because she had no other choice and no other example. The cycle of abuse was “normal” for her. When she grew up, it was as though she couldn’t wait to have someone to pick on because she believed that’s how life works. It was “her turn”. Not her turn to ‘abuse’ or overpower someone, but her turn to be loved in the only definition of love that she knew; the false and dysfunctional one that she had been taught.
It was her turn to be right; her turn to have impact and her turn to be heard.
Abusers believe in the system and very often victims believe in the system too. The sick dysfunctional family system seems to have “worked for their parents” so why wouldn’t it work for them? It was the best that my (dysfunctional) mother had to hope for, but only because she didn’t believe there might be something better. She accepted the reality of the cycle of abuse, psychological abuse and dysfunctional family as “normal” and functional exactly as it was presented to her and the cycle of generational abuse continued.
She communicated to me that it was my job to restore her life and her self esteem; her mother had delivered the same message to her. I wanted to “save her” because I believed that if I could prove that I “loved her” then she would love me. This cycle of generational abuse stopped with me when I no longer accepted the role of victim but I also had to stand up to the myth that Read More→
Pathetic ways Controllers Make you Feel Guilt and Failure
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Darlene and Rocket
When I was a kid my parents got us a puppy! Although I only have one memory of playing with the German Sheppard puppy that one memory is a happy one.
I have very strong memories however of how much my mother hated having the puppy. Long after the puppy was taken away, I heard her complaints about it.
The reason that they puppy had to go was not because my mother hated it though. The reason that the puppy had to go was because both my oldest brother and I were allergic to it.
My mother had an uncle who was a dairy farmer in Quebec. I have a few memories of visiting the farm, of the cows, the milking barn, the orchards my great Aunt and Uncle and their two hired men. I remember the smell of the big kitchen, the fresh baked pies and the fresh garden food that we ate every time we visited.
My father LOVED the farm. He has spent summers there as a teenager. My mother hated the farm and didn’t make much of an effort to try to hide it. I think she went there out of family obligation and also because my father loved it there so much.
After I got so sick in grade 5 and developed asthma as a result of being so badly emotionally abused by my teacher, the pediatrician told my mother that I was too weak to visit the farm anymore because of my asthma and allergies. I was 10 or 11 when this news was delivered. I remember feeling really badly because Read More→
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→
