Archive for emotional abuse
My Freedom ROCKS! Emotional Healing and Self Love
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- My Freedom ROCKS!!
I have decided to throw my Freedom Rock in the pond in our pasture right here on our farm over 1800 miles away from the child abuse that I suffered but where the emotional abuse of my childhood continued even as an adult and where my depressions increased until I no longer believed there was any hope for me. This is also the place where I did my healing. This is the land that I rode my horse on for hours and days on end, walked for hours meditating and contemplating what had happened to me and the false messages that I believed because of it. This is the land that I raised my kids on and the land where I took my life back.
My freedom ROCK is going to be based on the following quote by Alice Miller
“The way we were treated as small children is the way we treat ourselves the rest of our lives; with cruelty or with tenderness and protection.” Alice Miller
I made a decision quite a while ago that I was done treating myself the same way that I had been treated by others. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Enforcing that decision that I was “done discounting me” has been a whole other ball game. In the beginning I came to realize that I had put myself last so much and for so long that I never even considered what I might have wanted and when asked I didn’t have an answer. The learning curve on this one has been huge for me. Even in wholeness I didn’t listen to myself, just like I had not been listened to. I had to learn to listen to myself and validate what myself was trying to tell me. If I was tired, I had to learn to let myself rest. If I was hungry I had to learn to nourish myself with healthy foods. I had to learn to “catch” the con job that I was doing on myself, telling myself that something good, was not so good.
In the process of emotional healing I constantly had to reassure myself that I was on the right track. I had to validate that Read More→
What “Freedom Rocks” Means to Me by Lauralee Hunter Rivet
Posted by: | CommentsThis week I am excited to introduce a new EFB community event called “Freedom ROCKS” Today Lauralee shares her story about what Freedom ROCKS means to her. For more information about Freedom ROCKS and how you can participate see the Freedom ROCKS about page. The first global Freedom Rocks event will be held the weekend of May 12 and 13th. Darlene Ouimet~ founder of Emerging from Broken
What “Freedom Rocks” Means to Me by Lauralee Hunter Rivet
Freedom ROCKS ~ Lauralee
Nobody grows up wishing their life would be hell; we expect it to be normal. Well, mine wasn’t. Let’s just say I went to hell and back MANY times. My life was never normal; I grew up around drugs, alcohol and had an incestuous father who molested me. I remember wanting to die, and yes I did try to die but I guess God didn’t want me yet. I hated God at times for putting me in this situation, I blamed him. But that was wrong, because no matter how bad your life is and I can attest to this 100%, you CAN get out of it. There is ALWAYS a way. I never turned to drugs and alcohol, I got off the merry go round and so can you.
I thought of the throwing the rock idea one day after my brother died on October 30th, 2011. The “family” called me, hours later of course, to tell me about my brother. I met with my mother and sister first; after 10 years without any contact with them it was hard. I cried, went to the funeral home, paid for the funeral and then I was in “mother” role again like I had been all my young adult life. I took care of my mother, slept there with her, moved her to a new apartment and took care of her for a month. Then the drama started. My sister who likes to call me princess, I think she has a lot of jealousy towards me, (she is the eldest and I am the youngest one in my family) would talk about my mother and my mother would talk about her and I felt like I had just gone to a gun fight armed with a knife. I was back to the same crap as before. I couldn’t do it anymore; I was done with being talked about and used.
Finally I said to my “mother”; “if you knew I was dying would you come to my house this year for Read More→
I Avoided the Pain of Abuse by Altering the Truth
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I convinced myself of many things in order to cope with child abuse, emotional abuse and being defined as less important than others in my life.
I was unable to cope with the truth so I changed the truth to suit me. I learned how to view “unhealthy attention” as though it was healthy and validating in order to cope with my dysfunctional world the way that it was and by doing so I was able to pretend that my world was actually functional. I found a way to believe that I was special.
But in order to feel loved and to believe that I had at least some degree of self worth, I had to change my understanding of the word “special”. I had to warp my definition of that word in order to fit it to the actual circumstances. The things I accepted as “proof” and validation that I was “special” became pretty sick and unhealthy.
I remember when I was about 13 or 14 years old, my mother started 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→
To Heal from Emotional Damage Know what the Damage Was
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If there is ONE place that I recommend starting the emotional healing process, it is starting with the damage. That might sound easy, but I had to actually find out what “the damage” to me was.
I had to find out how I got broken. What happened to my self esteem in the first place? How did my self esteem get so low? What happened to me? That was where the keys were and those were the keys that led to freedom.
I remember when I realized that my depressions and dissociative issues came from somewhere; I sat stunned, repeating to myself over and over ~ What happened to ME?
I had to look at the roots. I thought that I was born depressed. But the more I thought about it, how could that be?? There were actual events that caused damage and my depressions were in fact related to those events! I just had to see it. I had to finally SEE it.
The biggest obstacles in my way were avoiding looking at how I used by others, how I was objectified and not considered to be equally human, and how I was failed by others. By avoiding looking at the truth about that, I was able to excuse the damage they caused. I excused them because I had to. As a child, survival is of the utmost importance and if we start complaining about the people who are failing us, but are also in charge of our welfare, it is a pretty sure fact that we are not going to survive.
When I tell stories about teachers who were bullies or outsiders who devalued or abused me, I get a huge response. It is much easier to face the truth about someone outside of the family that hurt me and damaged me than it is to face the truth that my parents let me down, but the truth is that my parents knew about the bullying and the way it was effecting me, (I was sick in bed for months) and they avoided doing anything about it until I was so sick that the Dr whose care I was under, figured it out and MADE them do something about it. As I have written before, my parents tried to resist the Doctor, but he threatened to get a court order on my behalf.
If the damage, (including the emotional damage) is excused and ignored… there is further damage. I am saying Read More→
Not Being Heard and Finding My Voice
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- “Alive” photo credit ~ Theodora MacLeod
I was not heard for most of my life. My voice was silenced in many ways. I was sexually abused from a young age. I don’t remember if I “told” or not in those young years, but there were signs. There were physical and mental distress signs that went unaddressed. That is a form of not being heard.
My mother used violence to vent her anger and frustration. My father either didn’t notice or didn’t care; he never tried to stop it. Who could I tell? The way things were in my family was “my normal”. In my survival mode, I only knew to keep trying harder to be “good”, to be what those manipulative people wanted and to be quiet because it seemed to me that I was causing a problem for them.
I don’t know how I kept going.
I know I told about a teacher who was emotionally and psychologically abusing me in grade 5. I told but I was ignored. I was shushed. I was silenced. I was lectured about “respecting my elders.” I was not heard. When I finally got so sick that the pediatric specialist asked to speak to me alone (without my parents) he ordered my parents to take me out of the class I was in. My parents didn’t want to do it and the Dr. said he was going to get a court order if they didn’t remove me from the presence of that teacher.
That doctor heard me. But my parents did not hear me. I felt I was “wrong” for telling. I knew that I had caused Read More→
Psychological and Emotional Abuse; I was Dying my Whole Life
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Pondering Freedom
I was dying my whole life; I just didn’t know it until I started living.
The fog that I grew up with was almost completely transparent. I didn’t know that I didn’t know. I lived in a false normal and growing up like that was the way it was. It was my truth and my “real”. I didn’t know that there was any other way. I didn’t know that I didn’t know there was indeed another way; most of my life, my reality and my truth were dysfunctional. The adults, the reality all malfunctioned.
And therefore so did I.
That is what living in a dysfunctional family was like for me. Those were the effects of psychological abuse emotional abuse and trauma. That is the effect of being groomed and being trained in silence, compliance, obedience and obligation. That is what happens when a child is taught that their value as an individual is not the same as the value of others. There are consequences and negative results when we are raised in a false normal.
Psychological abuse is at the root of all forms of abuse. It is part of the grooming process. Emotional abuse and neglect makes a statement to a child. Abuse in any form makes a statement about human value. It teaches things that to the child that no child should be taught. It teaches the WRONG thing.
Sexual and physical abuse leave a child living in fear every day of their lives. It doesn’t make “sense”; abuse is incomprehensible and as a child I had to try to understand. Trying to understand something that is incomprehensible as a child is impossible. So, I “tried” to understand “them” for the rest of my life and as I was slowly dying I didn’t realize that my life was being extinguished by the very people who Read More→
I Thought my Mothers Dysfunctional Behaviour was Normal
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I was 13 years old the first time I woke up hearing my mother having sex. My parents had been split up for a few months; I had never heard my parents having sex. By the sounds of it, I thought that the man my mother had in her bedroom with her was trying to kill her. And he could have been! How would anyone know? None of us knew him.
I felt frozen in my bed, terrified about what I was hearing and not knowing what to do about it. Should I get a large object and go in there and club him over the head? Should I call the police? My frozen immobility and indecisiveness was making me feel guilty and then suddenly, those horrifying sounds stopped. I heard normal murmuring sounds of conversation. I must have gone back to sleep then. Eventually, I figured out that what was going on in her bedroom was not murder or physical violence.
My toxic mother didn’t want to be a single mother. That was her answer to everything. It was even her justification for having very loud sex with men while three children slept in rooms very close by.
One of my brothers made comments about her night-time noise making sessions; she would respond “I never asked to be a single mother”. I was left to assume the translation for that statement. And I translated it according to my belief system. My mother deserves to be happy. Men make her happy. I have no right to interfere with her happiness. I have no right to feel uncomfortable about Read More→
Put Down Statements Designed to Burst your Bubble
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Have you ever had fantastic exciting news and when you went to tell family, co-workers or perhaps your friends, you were met with a put down or some version of a put down?
Have you ever walked away from telling your exciting news feeling somehow defeated or dejected or feeling disappointed and rejected; as though your good news somehow wasn’t that good anymore?
I have had major issues with this in my lifetime.
People who were “supposed to love me”; family, boyfriends and people who were “supposed to be my friends” said things like;
“Well it can’t be that great”. What’s the catch?” Or “how did YOU get that award or offer?” What about; “Why you? Why would they pick you?”
These types of statements have a clear message attached to them. The message is “WHY would anyone see value in YOU?” Those statements communicated to me what the speaker THOUGHT about me and how they defined my value and worth.
There were often really devaluing questions about the motives of whoever was acknowledging me; Questions like “are you Read More→
Are there Excuses for Emotional Abuse and Child Neglect?
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Sometimes it strikes me that my blog may not be “fair” to my mother because I had two parents and the truth is that my father did as much damage in my life as my mother did. Although I want to write about my father, there just isn’t much to write. My father was emotionally unavailable and emotionally absent and by definition my father was emotionally abusive.
My father didn’t contribute much to my life at all. He didn’t pay attention to me, he didn’t affirm me, he didn’t communicate with me in fact I don’t know what role he did play in my life other then financial support while I was growing up.
I think that my father is dissociated. The “disconnected from the world and from himself” kind of dissociated. Perhaps he has dissociative identity disorder and since that is what I had, I know a lot about it.
My father is passive and apathetic as though nothing matters and nothing impacts him. He refers to himself as easy going. I think that he is passive abusive and as I said emotionally abusive.
Why was my father so apathetic when it came to me? Why did he behave as though I didn’t matter and communicate that message to me through so many of his actions and inactions? Growing up, I didn’t think that it was about HIM. I thought that it was something that was wrong or missing in me. Realizing that he was dissociated at first made me say “OH YA that makes sense” BUT it didn’t go any distance towards my freedom from the pain I had always had in relation to my emotionally unavailable father.
People say things like “well at least he didn’t beat you.” And I never knew what to say to that. That statement is a guilt trip. It is like saying … Read More→
