Archive for father daughter relationship
Passive Abuse and Emotionally Dysfunctional Relationship
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- Stone Cold and Distant by Azelinn
One of my mother’s complaints was always that my father was “the hero” in my eyes. She said that I never criticised him and I acted as though he was “perfect”; that he left our family and then he made a new life for himself, but that none of us kids ever found any fault with him; only with her. She said that he got off “scot free” and she got stuck being the “bad guy.”
And even here on my blog, “Emerging from Broken” I have been pretty easy on him. But recently, inspired by fresh pain that my father has caused me, I realized it is time to write more about my father and the lack of contribution that he made to my life.
My father never “saw” me. He never tried to get to know me. He didn’t seem to hate me, he didn’t seem to resent me, he never called me names like stupid or ugly and he didn’t hit me, but the thing is that he didn’t really do the opposite of those things either. He never saw me as a person. He was emotionally unavailable. It is as though I didn’t have a father. Read More→
The Fog of Dysfunctional Adult to Child Relationships
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- when darkness falls……
When I talk about the fog, I am talking about the state of confusion that has been created by the adults in my life which began when I was a child. The confusion was created in order to keep me from figuring out that what was going on in my life, was not normal. I was taught false definitions of love, false definitions of being cared for and being kept safe. I was taught that I was not as important as others. I was taught that I was wrong about my feelings. I was discredited in so many ways so that if I ever did figure out that I was not actually wrong, the emotionally abusive adults in my life could remind everyone that I had always been a bit “off”. And I didn’t correct anyone because from a young age I had begun to believe that I was the one that was a bit “off”. The fog hides the blatantly obvious truth.
In this state of confusion and with all these false definitions of love and respect, I had trouble seeing the truth. I had trouble realizing that a mother, who dress a 6 year old child up in her little black lace teddies to “dance for a visiting man), and a father who doesn’t do anything to stop it, are a little bit abnormal. A mother who sticks her tongue in a 9 year old daughter’s mouth, to show her the way men will kiss her, is not behaving in a normal way. I had trouble realizing that a loving mother would not take all the joy out of every single accomplishment that I had ever achieved. I had trouble comprehending that when a father shows absolutely NO interest in a child’s life or in that same adult child’s life, that is a strong indication that said father just doesn’t care. When someone doesn’t show in any way that they care, they don’t care. Continue…… Read More→
Emotional Abuse and Identity Hunger
Posted by: | CommentsCarla Dippel Co-Authored this blog with me for the first 6 months of its life. I am really excited to welcome Carla back again as a guest blogger! As always please feel free to contribute to this wonderful post by leaving your feedback and comments. ~ Darlene Ouimet, founder of Emerging from Broken
It is easy for me to understand the concepts of recovery on an intellectual level. What helps the truth in my head become real in my heart is action of some kind, and this is something I find really tough. Almost a year ago, I decided to sign up with a matchmaking service. My conscious reason was to engage in the process of finding a life partner. In the last few months, I’ve discovered a subconscious reason: to overcome some of my greatest fears through real life situations in an area that has been one of my greatest struggles: the realm of romantic relationships with men.
Please know that I’m not recommending everyone should approach their recovery in this way. It has its benefits and definite challenges. But this is one approach that I chose for myself. It’s a way that I have found that I “test” my new truth foundations.
A few months ago I met a guy and fell for him head over heels. He was intelligent, cute, confident, and successful. He drove a Porsche (yes, that was attractive to me too!) He was very polite and kind, considerate, not pretentious. He engaged in his world, knew what he liked and what he wanted. He was ambitious. He had stories to tell and goals and dreams to pursue. We dated for a month and a half. I believed I had found “the one.” As it had been some time since I had felt this way towards a man, I fell pretty hard.
All the while, I was absolutely anxious. I chalked it up to “my own issues” and tried to relax. But it never really went away. It’s difficult to be 100% honest with yourself in the midst of falling in love… It was in hindsight that I realized I had questioned from the beginning whether he was equally as interested in me as I was in him. I had gut feelings that I ignored, hoping I was wrong (because I wanted to be wrong). I over-analyzed and panicked time after time because, as much as I so highly admired him, at the very same time I compared myself to him and believed I came up short. I loved that he was ambitious, but was I equally so? I loved that he engaged with his world, but I couldn’t really talk about worldly things like he could… I loved that he was so kind and considerate, and subsequently put huge amounts of pressure on myself to be just as kind, and in the same way as him. I looked at him and believed he was so much better than me. My heart broke when I finally realized this, but in comparing myself to him, I looked at my own growth and emerging identity and felt it was worthless. My anxiety actually turned into mild arthritis in my right hand… And I could sense that I was turning myself off both in and outside of the relationship.
The relationship ended, and I fell into some deep self-loathing and depression which was really scary. I hadn’t felt that depressed since before I started counseling. All the truth I had learned somehow seemed hollow. My friends told me that I ultimately deserved better and that it wasn’t my fault. In my head I understood what they were saying. But my heart only felt the pain of rejection. And the pain of something else… something even more important for me to pay attention to. I started to realize that I may not have been in love with this guy as much as I was desperate for him to fill a certain hunger in my soul. My admiration for him over-rode my gauge on whether or not he was actually a good relationship match for me. As I was subconsciously hoping to do, I came face to face with a belief still echoing from my childhood- that in and of myself I was not “enough.” Still struggling to turn this belief around, I began functioning in the hope that if I could attach myself to this man I admired, all of the qualities I saw in him that I wanted for myself would somehow rub off on me and I would finally become a person of equal value.
It’s like an identity hunger. Seeking this kind of “self defining” from a man makes a lot of sense to me. In my last guest post “Emotional Abuse and Anger” (click the title to visit) I described the nature of the emotional abuse from my childhood. I’ve also described the impact of my relationship with my Dad in older posts published here (check out “The Unengaged Gardener”). Ultimately, I would have grown up knowing that I was uniquely and wonderfully made. I would have learned to take pride in my strengths and consider my weaknesses with compassion. I would have been encouraged to pursue avenues, activities and dreams that really made me excited, rather than learning to perform and achieve for affirmation. I would have learned to engage with my world for enjoyment sake and not be entirely afraid or cynical of it. Though I lacked for little in terms of physical needs, this emotional aspect of my life was not cultivated and my Dad’s lack of involvement left the biggest hole. A vacuum was created in my earliest years that I have presented to many men (not always obviously) in an attempt to have it filled with something meaningful.
I am in the thick of the process of figuring all this out. I have started meeting other men and I am much more aware of this potential pitfall to have them solve any identity hunger. I am feeling excited… interestingly, not only about finding a life partner, but even more so about finding myself… Feeling empowered to do this brought me out of the depression I had sunk into. In facing some of my biggest fears, letting myself struggle with the truth and what I really believe about who I am, I am developing a deeper relationship with myself. I am seeing myself grow to own who I really am, without comparing my unique-ness to other people’s. I am learning to battle the lie of “you aren’t enough” that the emotional abuse/neglect left me floundering in. I am learning to tend to my own identity hunger, to accept exactly who and where I am at this point in my life, apart from what I do, apart from how other people might define me. No matter what the outcome of my dating adventures, I am confident I will emerge with a stronger foundation in the Truth about ME, tried and tested. Bit by bit, I continue on my path of emerging from broken.
With hope that my journey will inspire yours,
Carla
Bio: Carla Dippel lives in beautiful Alberta Canada. She loves to cook, dance, write and grow in knowing what is good and true about this life. As Carla has emerged from broken, she delights in being a distinct and adventurous woman, living her life to the full, exploring new possibilities and making her dreams a reality. Carla loves to share reflections of her journey with others and to hear the stories of others in return.
Note from Darlene: If you would like to read more posts written by Carla, please click on her name which is highlighted in blue, under the post title. This will take you to her “author archive” where you can access all the other posts that she has written for Emerging From Broken.
The Little Girl who cried Wolf; Belief System Development
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I was labelled as a story teller from a very young age. I remember my parents saying that I talked to hear myself talk. Although I don’t remember exactly what I used to do, apparently I was a little bit dramatic and I pretended that I needed help a lot and I was told that I would scream “help” for no reason. I remember when I was a little bit older in childhood years that I believed I was a liar and made things up, probably because I had been told that I was.
To put this in another way, I learned to question my memories ~ I learned to doubt myself. I learned to believe that I exaggerated and was a story teller. And I also remember embellishing the truth, nothing serious or life threatening, just kid stuff, but I think I did it for attention. I was so starved for attention and I think I did it because no one ever HEARD me. So mix a little truth in with a little false, and add the mind of an abused child to the recipe, and you have some understandable results.
I do remember being told the story of the little boy who cried wolf especially after this one event when I got in a lot of trouble but I really did need help that time.
I was about eight years old and my cousin was being baptised and we were all gathered at my grandparents for a big family after party. My grandmother smoked cigarettes and she had a lit cigarette in her hand and the kitchen was really crowded. I was small, and I looking up and I remember seeing her cigarette as she held it above her head and navigated her way through the crowd, BUT she bumped into my grandfather; her cigarette hit him in the forehead, and as I was looking up at both of them, the burning embers fell into my eyes and onto my eyebrows and face. I screamed. I was no longer able to see, but I remember my father grabbing me by the arm and very sternly saying “that’s it”. I was about to get spanked for screaming, but someone explained to him what happened, or he saw my face and eyes, I am not sure about that part, but I didn’t get spanked. He had to go to the pharmacy to get something for my eyes. And that is when I got the lecture. I remember being told that this was a prime example of why I should not scream for help when I didn’t need help because my father admitted that he was going to spank me for screaming for what he assumed was for “no reason”.
All my life I remembered having the embers falling in my eyes as a shameful event. It was the time when something bad happened to me, but because I was so naughty and always screamed for help when i didn’t need help, that this bad thing, which was an accident, became a reaffirmation that I was a bad girl who screamed for attention (help) when I didn’t need it.
It was very hard for me to sort these particular things out, because there were a few other significant memories that added to the cigarette accident, and intertwined with it forming an even more solid belief system about myself. This is about how the foundation formed and about how I regarded myself ~ how I was able to end up blaming myself for the sexual abuse, neglect, physical abuse and the resulting depressions, failures, and so many other things.
I will guess that I was between 7 and 9 years old when I did this horrible thing. I faked a nightmare. I had SO much trouble sleeping as a child, it seemed like I laid awake in bed for hours every night and in the daytime I tried so hard to get my father’s attention and I must have gotten some attention at one time from having nightmares (I do recall that I had a lot of real ones) so I screamed and cried and my father came in and he held me. Instead of that being a wonderful memory however, it was something I remembered for the rest of my life. It was an embarrassing memory filled with guilt and shame because I pretended to have a nightmare for attention ~ proving to myself that I was a liar and a faker. It was just one of the “things I did” that proved in my mind that it really was me that was the problem, that I brought it all on myself.
That time I lied, I was attention seeking, I was making something up, I was exaggerating, I was a bad girl and it was no wonder that my parents didn’t love me, didn’t want to listen to me, didn’t want to protect me from monsters that they told me only existed in my head. When I told the truth, I was ignored; I was told that I must be wrong, so I linked those admonishments to the times where I had been lying.
So let’s do a quick recap; (click on the sentence to see the related blog post)
~My first memory of sexual abuse was at the age of a little over two. I don’t know if I told or not, but I was left to deal with it.
~We have a story about how my mother dressed me up in a black lace teddy at the age of 6 and sending me out to dance in front of my father’s business associate, which I relate to being the beginning of learning that my value was sexual.
~We have the story of me telling my parents that I was being emotionally abused by a teacher and they didn’t believe me.
~In the present post we have a story of my being under a little shower of burning embers and getting heck for it, because it was a great way to “teach me” that I should not tell stories.
~ In the present post we have the story of an actual lie that I did tell. Yes there were others.
~ Then when I was 14, when my mother said it was in fact my fault that I got sexually assaulted in the night by her boyfriend… I accepted that.
If you keep in mind that as children we can’t blame our parents, because we believe they have the power to allow us to live or die, which means that our only choice is to change and be good enough to be loved ~ then do you see how these combined events worked together to help form my false belief system? Can you see how they led me to believe and accept false things about why I was not protected from emotional harm, and from sexual abuse? Can you relate to how I was convinced that it was me? That I was bad? I was unworthy of love, protection, and even simple affection and comfort?
It was in breaking this all down that I was able to understand how I came to those conclusions about myself. It was in understanding how the false belief system formed, that I was able to take it apart, re-wire it and put it back together in truth.
Please share anything you want to share, or if this post triggers memories in any way you are welcome to share them here if you wish.
Darlene Ouimet
Announcement:
Therapist John Wilson from ~ Online Events ~ presents ~ Emerging From Broken – Interview with Darlene Ouimet on Sunday Nov.03 at 12:00 Noon Pacific, 3:00 pm EST and 1:00 pm Mountain time. London: 8:00 pm, Sydney: 5:00 am. Please visit the following link in order to reserve your ticket. Click on the first box ~ there is no charge for the live event. Hope to “see” you there. http://emergingfrombroken.eventbrite.com/
The Body Disconnect: A Journey to Self-Love. By Kim Vazquez
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A few weeks ago I wrote a post called Foundation of Eating Disorders and Body Issues and I mentioned using a technique mentioned to me by life coach and Author Kim Vazquez. I am excited to have Kim as a guest blogger today! Please help me welcome Kim and feel free to leave your comments for her. You can visit her website at www.kimvazquez.com or join her author facebook fan page ~ click here.
The Body Disconnect: A Journey to Self-Love. By Kim Vazquez
I was only eleven when my dad married a woman who was closer to my age, than his. It seemed to me that his young, second wife and I were in competition. As my dad became less and less available to me, I felt she was winning the competition. When he left my life altogether, I was eighteen. Game over. She had won, and I was officially the loser. A woman discarded. Unloveable. Without value. And I had my whole life ahead of me. I’d have to face it without self-esteem.
During the years that followed, I believed in my worthlessness. It was easy to find a multitude of people who helped me keep that story going—employers who didn’t pay me fairly, abusive boyfriends who hurled more than insults at me, friends who just didn’t seem to care enough. The energy of my pain worked like a magnet, pulling toward me evidence that the world at large agreed with me that I was irrelevant. I was so busy looking outside myself, so stunned and distracted by the unkindness of others that I was unable to see what my own actions were doing to me.
During those tough years, a spell was cast over me by a dark voice in my mind. Not the voice of a separate personality, but the voice of my ego, which promised me that if I pushed myself harder, I’d eventually achieve enough to force the world to acknowledge my worth. I thought this voice was trying to help me. I called it a motivator. It wasn’t until much later that I came to understand that this voice, the one I now call the Taskmaster, was really teaching me self-abuse.
When the Taskmaster said, You don’t need to eat yet, finish your project first, I learned to resent my body for having needs that interrupted my time. When the Taskmaster said, You don’t need to rest. First, let’s get your to-do list done, I learned to push through fatigue. Ignore that migraine, the voice in my head told me. You have one every day. What are you going to do, lay around and never get anything done because your head hurts? I learned to push through pain, no matter how severe. You don’t have time to be sick. We’ve got a lot to do, the voice would say. So I began to feel disappointed in my body for failing me when I was already stressed out by my busy schedule. I resented the body for holding me back when I had too much to do and not enough time to do it in.
Don’t worry about drinking six cups of coffee a day, the Taskmaster murmured. I learned to have no regard for the body’s need to be hydrated with water so it can function optimally. You don’t need anyone’s help. The Taskmaster urged me to be independent and reminded me that I couldn’t count on anyone else, anyway. I never gave my body a break. Okay, the voice said, you can take a bath, but if you do, we’ve got some endless thinking to do while you’re in there. The Taskmaster encouraged me to spend every moment of so-called downtime chasing my tail around my mind so I never had any real peace or rest.
The Taskmaster also took charge of my social life. You’re too busy to meet up with your friends. Forget about sitting on the couch with your husband. The voice encouraged me to do only things that were task-oriented. It—and I—ignored any activity that might bring joy or balance to my life. Buy another rental property. Buy a new home. Get a new car. Buy a vacation home in Tahoe. Open your own business. Open a second business. I learned that my happiness was in my future when I achieved (fill in the blank).
At age thirty-seven, I hit bottom. My body was failing. Seventeen pounds fled from it in just nine days. My organs ached. My mind was fried. I was put on disability and was forced to change my whole life.
My body had let me down again.
Will the real offender please stand up?
While I was recovering from that episode, it began to dawn on me that I was the problem. I had taken a lot from my body over the years and had given it very little in return. I was mad at everyone around me because I thought they should take better care of me, but I couldn’t see that I was The Queen of Self-Abuse. Five-year-olds probably knew how to take better care of themselves.
From a new sense of compassion for my body, I decided to look back to see where I’d gone wrong. Where could I make some changes? I found that in the past when I was sick, I was always impatient and basically demanded that my body dare not inconvenience me. Forget that I didn’t eat nutritious food, get any rest, exercise or drink water. Talk about a disconnect.
When my body had physical needs, I had just thrown whatever I could into it to get it to shut up. Here’s some Nyquil. Here’s an Ambien. Here’s a Vicodin. Here’s some fast food. Now, hurry up and quit bugging me with your needs.
When my body had felt emotional pain, I’d berated myself for having needs and for being weak. If I couldn’t chastise the feelings out of myself, I used work as Novocain or went out for cocktails.
Yes, it was clear. I was the person who had harmed me the most. I was ready to make amends. With pure gratitude, I began a conversation with my body. Please teach me to speak your language, I said. It responded with joy, and a beautiful source of wisdom and guidance opened itself up to me. Our new relationship began with my commitment: Body, I said, I will listen to you. I will care about your needs. I will love you.
Today when I don’t feel well, I get quiet and ask my body, What do you want me to know? How can I meet your needs? Just like a whole person, a body responds to love and acknowledgment. It will heal so much faster when it’s spoken to with kindness. My body works with me to reveal the areas of imbalance in my life that need attention. Sometimes, through malaise or a touch of funkiness, it will gently remind me that there’s unresolved emotion lurking. I thank my body for letting me know this.
My body is an ally that is willing to work with me and guide me to optimum health and joy.
For me, it works out best if I listen to my body, not the voice of the ego in my mind. I am only a work in progress. Due to the many years’ practice of being disconnected from myself, I must be patient with myself as I learn new behaviors.
My intention is to honor myself and live the way of self-love.
Today I see my body as a gift. It’s an honor and a privilege to have this physical vehicle that I use to navigate through my life. My body is my own personal miracle. Have you ever thought about how truly amazing the body is?
What day is better than today to begin a loving relationship with your body, with your SELF? For me it started with gratitude: Thank you for all you’ve done for me. And then the question: What can I do for you?
Peace & Love~
Kim Vazquez
Kim Vazquez is the author of two books: New From the Inside Out: How to Transform Your Mind and Your Life and Living in the Rear View Mirror: From Substance Abuse to a Life of Substance. Kim has found her true calling helping others connect to their divine guidance. She offers Transformational Life Coaching, Workshops, and Sacred Healing Circles through her practice in Placer County, CA. For more information, visit: http://www.kimvazquez.com/
Parent Child Relationship What a Confusing Mess
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I wrote a blog post a few days ago called “Parent Child Relationships ~ When Loyalty costs too much, about parent child relationships and when my parents split up, that triggered a few new things in me. I intended to write about how my mother leaned on me when I was 12 years old, because my Dad left us and my intention was to focus mostly on her actions and how they affected me and how dysfunctional our mother daughter relationship was. BUT I found myself getting really angry at my father. In some ways I feel like I never really had a father and I’ve known for a long time that whatever smidge of a father daughter relationship we had, it wasn’t much. Writing that post however was emotionally draining and I knew that I needed to process the feelings and anger that was coming up for me. Memories and feelings were coming at me from all different directions and so as I have learned to do, I sorted them out and separated them from each other in order to get a better understanding.
Here is how it played out;
~I was angry at my mother (in that instance) because she made me feel responsible for the outcome of her. But the anger at her self centeredness and selfish behavior came up too. I have always felt guilty for feeling that way.
~I was also angry at my father for moving her and us so far away from everyone that could have supported my mother. I had not really thought about his part in it to this degree before. With the anger came many other memories and flashes of memories that I had never thought about in this depth before either. Sometimes I tend to think I only have to look at the “REALLY” bad stuff in order to move on but this is not true.
Mixed in with both of those realizations was the deep down suspicion that I might have been able to save their marriage… that maybe if only I had been a better kid ~ and all that type of stuff. I felt like I had failed my mother somehow, and my father never noticed me anyway, which I thought must have been MY defect. I thought that if I had been “different” or “good enough” he would have noticed me for sure.
Right away I reminded myself that the defect in our father daughter relationship was HIS. He didn’t try. His lack of interest in me had to do with him as a father. Not with me as a daughter.
Next thing I did was get the “my fault stuff” out of the way by looking at the truth about the marriage breakup itself and assure myself that I have nothing to feel guilty about. I asked myself these kinds of questions:
~What was MY part in the event? ~ Well actually it had nothing to do with me (other then my pain of my parents splitting up and getting a divorce) and this was a truth that I never considered before. I had NO failure or responsibility in it at all.
~What could I have done differently? This is a question that I heard in 12 step programs since I was 18 years old. I took it out of context though and used it to hurt myself, reprimand myself, and reaffirm the belief that I always had a choice and the outcome was always something to do with me. In this case, there WAS nothing I could have done differently. I could not say to my mother when I was at the age of 12 ~ “MOM, do not make me responsible for your life. I will not support you in this way, you need professional help.” I didn’t understand any of that back then; I didn’t even have any context to put it into. But in the mind of a child, I thought there must have been something that I could have done, and I somehow failed to figure it out. I believed that this was my downfall, my defect ~ that I could not figure out how to fix things or stop things that really I had NO control over, but when you are made to feel like you are always responsible for the outcome of everything, and if that outcome is a beating or sexual abuse or being ignored, your ideas of what you can “do differently”~ get warped. I carried that old belief with me into my adulthood. I had to start taking this information into consideration and I had to become aware of it, in order to change my belief system.
It’s like there is this missing space between childhood and adulthood that needs to be looked at. And this works to the controller or abusers advantage too. We don’t fight them when we are kids, and as soon as we are in our twenties, (sometimes younger) they start preaching at us that we are adults now and our outcomes are our choices. Our messes are ours. It is SO dang hard to sort out!
In this case there were several things that I needed to look at separately; the anger and disappointment in my mother, the anger and disappointment in my father and what I believed to be my failure. In looking separately at the mother daughter relationship stuff and the father daughter relationship stuff and separating it all out from my failure stuff, I was able to get a clearer picture of all three and where my belief system worked against me. This helped me to get a clearer picture of the whole truth, the real truth and it also exposed the false truth that I had accepted all those years since I was 12.
I hope that I have been at least semi clear in illustrating how confusing this whole thing is to unravel. This has been just one snapshot of how I take something apart in order to see the truth, and how many other things get in the way of doing that. Please share your thoughts.
Exposing Truth, one snapshot at a time.
Darlene Ouimet
Note: I had these same deep down beliefs about the sexual abuse, emotional abuse and parental neglect; that I should have been able to figure out something to STOP them. Up until about 6 years ago, I never believed that I had “no choice”. As an adult I was taught and accepted that I was accountable for the events and the results in my life. I applied that teaching to my childhood and to the past without realizing it and it automatically reinforced the belief that I had since childhood that it was my fault, that I had a choice and that I was responsible. Several years ago I realized all my adult struggles resulted from the child hood events that molded my belief system and that I HAD to figure out the missing pieces of the puzzle in order to recover!
Foundation of a Dysfunctional Mother Daughter Relationship
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Today I’m highlighting a snapshot of where the dysfunctional mother daughter relationship began between my mother and I. The emotional abuse and dysfunction began before this event, but this was the point of no return.
Just a couple of months shy of my 13th birthday, my parents separated. That in and of itself isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a kid, but as in everything else in life it all depends on how it is handled. Kids need a little help handling that kind of a thing and neither of my parents was very helpful. For my mother it was all about her. For my father it was all about him.
My father had just been transferred and we had to move from Montreal Quebec to Mississauga Ontario and away from all the friends we had. My mother didn’t have any support. Even long distance phone calls back then were an expense that we couldn’t afford. I am not sure why my Dad picked that time to leave, but that is the way it was. My mother had a serious breakdown and since my mother was susceptible to having mental health breakdowns and serious depressions, it wasn’t surprising.
I was the only girl in the family. I am not sure what my brothers went through. I don’t remember if I ever talked about it with them or not. As for me though, my mother leaned on me. I became her confidant her support and her friend. It might not have been so bad if she had not been suicidal.
We lived in a newly developed neighbourhood in a beautiful new house. It was so new that many of the homes were not finished being built and there was no grass in yet. We were living in a construction site and there were huge holes, wooden ramps and plank sidewalks. The ground was uneven everywhere. My mother would go walking in the dark of night and because everything was so new, there were no streetlights yet. I pictured her weeping and stumbling around the neighbourhood alone in the dark. I pictured her that way because she told me that wandered around in the dark and she was hoping she would fall in one of those construction site holes and die. I felt so sorry for her. I wanted to help her; I wanted to be the friend she needed to support her through that time in her life. I believed that the whole burden of whether she lived or died was on my shoulders. I was only 12 years old.
This one incident impacted me and the rest of my life in such a huge way. What 12 year old would refuse this burden? How was I supposed to deal with this? What choice did I really have? Looking back my father was not exactly the kind of dad that I believed would have taken care of me if my mother died, I mean if you think about it, he was the one who moved her away from all her friends just a few months before he left her and I don’t recall even one time when he talked to me about how difficult this was or even asked me how I was doing. Why didn’t he see how distraught she was, and why didn’t he realize that I was staggering under the burden of her dilemma and thinking that it was up to me if she made it or not? What would have become of me if my mother did commit suicide especially if my father didn’t care? And finally, why did my mother forget that I was only 12.
This incident laid the foundation for the rest of the dysfunctional mother daughter relationship my mother and I had to play out. I suppose that this laid the foundation for the nonexistent father daughter relationship I had with my father too. Things might have been tough before, but now they were disastrous.
If you are interested in more history regarding my mother daughter relationship stuff, please visit the mother daughter category button under the header graphic. This story is an example of emotional abuse by both my parents. Stay tuned; I will continue.
Please feel free to share your viewpoints or your experiences. As always I truly appreciate your comments.
Darlene Ouimet
Controlling Parents and the Questions Abusers Ask
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The post “Psychological, Physical and Sexual Abuse Why Questions” generated a lot of interest, so I decided to do a follow up post asking the questions that controlling and abusive people ask us. The response on the Emerging from Broken facebook page was huge.
These types of statements that controllers and abusers use are designed to keep us in a fog of confusion. Remember that this type of grooming begins when we are very young and becomes part of our definition of love. We are taught “if you love me you would not fight, argue or even disagree with me”. We may also be taught that compliance is respect and respect is a demand not a choice. The problem is that so often we end up respecting abusive behaviour and we are not sure what abusive behaviour is because it starts when we are so young.
The following ‘why questions’ abusers ask can be used to control and to cover up any type of abuse. They are used to guilt and shame us into looking back at ourselves and to question ourselves, instead of them. They are used to keep the victim in a spin ~ trying to figure out the truth and never quite putting a finger on exactly what the truth is. These questions are used to control. These types of questions are abusive. They don’t make sense but we so often don’t realize that because we have been groomed to accept these false definitions of love and respect since we were very young.
Here are some of the comments that came in on EFB Facebook, about typical questions and statements that are used to control, guilt and shame, force compliance, or cause to shut down.
~ “why don’t you just get on with your life and get over that? Why do you insist on destroying our family? Why can’t you let me forget that happened?
~ “Why don’t you spend time with me anymore? Why do you look so serious all the time?”
~ “Why can’t you forgive and forget? And I am told I SHOULD love them.”
~”After all I’ve done for you why are you treating me this way? Why can’t YOU just move on?”
~ Why don’t you like me? Don’t you remember all the fun we had when you were a kid? (along with an answer ~ “no, I don’t remember all the fun and even if there was some fun does that make up for all the other abuse?.. NO”)
~”Why don’t you respect him? He was a good provider. (Is that what a father is?) You are going to have to live with the way YOU are treating your Dad.”
~ “If you loved me you would… or If you loved me you would not….”
~”You SHOULD be grateful”
~” Why can’t you think of somebody other than yourself for a change?”
~ “Why can’t you grow up and start acting like your Mothers daughter?”
~ “You MAKE me do this to you. If you would do things right the first time I wouldn’t have to….”
~ “Why can’t you see this from my point of view?”
~ “Stop acting like a spoilt brat”
~ “What is WRONG with you?”
~ “Why do you keep talking about this? Why do you blame me; your father did it. What the hell are you thinking, writing a book about it? Why are you so selfish? Do you think you are the only one that matters? What about ME?”
These questions are full of the twisted communications and insinuations hurled at people for the purpose of control. Love is not disempowering and it does not support lies. This system is very backwards and extremely devaluing. Most of these questions are what controlling PARENTS said to their own adult children. We are called selfish, because we want to expose the abuse? Because we want our lives back? We are reprimanded for wanting to have a voice, for wanting to have a chance, for telling the truth? It is more important for them to keep up appearances and to protect the abuser or the secret than it is to validate a child or adult child? Therefore we are the ones with the problem because we want to be heard? In this system there is no hope. When we do as they ask everyone stays sick. And the most difficult part to comprehend is that they would rather us comply, cover up and obey, then become the flourishing healthy adults that we were born to be. We are told we SHOULD love them but we are not taught love by them. Love has not been modeled for us. They do not love by their own definition of love; the same definition of love that we are expected to love them by.
When I went back into my past to examine the events that originally caused my depressions and dissociative identity disorder, it became apparent that there were a lot of lies involved. There was justification by the abusers, there was blame towards me, when I was an innocent victim, there was covering up, ignoring, and “that didn’t happen” and “shush let’s just forget all about it”. This is where the mental illness accelerated for me ~ with the twisting of the truth; the not being protected and the misplaced blame. The illness accelerated because one lie breeds another lie. And when this type of control works, the controllers keep upping the ante. They want more control, more compliance.
We grow up and we are often attracted to controllers and abusers… it’s familiar; it’s what we know. By the time I was in my late thirties the confusion and the fog was so thick that I couldn’t see the truth at all anymore; I easily bought the lies, I conformed to the requests, I complied and I tried harder. My mental health grew increasingly worse. I had no idea what love was. This is how my belief system got so messed up. And it was in sorting it out; realizing the false from the truth that I recovered.
Please feel free to contribute any of your own stories or the questions used on you.
Busting through the fog,
Darlene Ouimet
How a “Leeching” Belief System Creates Havoc
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Sun breaks through over a Canmore mountain
A belief system that says, “I am a nobody, I can’t do anything right, I’m just stupid” wreaks havoc in a few different ways. I believe we were born with an unconscious sense of our own value; deep down, in each of us, there “dwells a beauty”, a person who is loved and can love. But trying to function with a totally opposite belief system creates a swirling, anxious situation inside, as if two rivers are colliding head on into one another and the water is all confused. In my last three posts (1, 2, 3), I’ve been describing my Dad’s belief system and how it was passively handed down to me as a child. His belief system also created havoc in my family, just not the really obvious easy-to-see kind.
Someone with a “I’m a nobody” belief system still wants to be valued, because they are human. Because my Dad didn’t value himself he sought to find his value in other ways. One of these ways was to put a lot of responsibility on his family to do the work of his own failing self-esteem. He believed that he was loved if his wife cooked and cleaned and took good care of him. He believed he was loved if we didn’t say a mean word towards him or be upset with him in any way whatsoever. If he put himself down, we would disagree with him and try to tell him that the opposite was true. Because he didn’t communicate his thoughts and feelings, my Mom, brother and I were forced to try and read his mind. If he was in a bad mood we ALL could tell- we became so skilled at reading his subtle signs and passive communications at the expense of learning to communicate for ourselves. If we sensed he was upset, we would do the work to try and make things better. Though my Mom would try and encourage better communication, he was so extremely uncomfortable and uptight about trying that things would end up more anxious than before. He was the passive King in our home and we learned to treat him with kid gloves. In living this way, my brother and I learned that love was all these things. Love meant compensating for someone else’s poor self esteem. Love meant not making the other person upset. As children who did not know this was so backwards, it also meant sacrificing our own needs to be built up and paid attention to in order to build up our parent. So the cycle continued. My brother and I grew up with this huge sense of lacking and low self-esteem of our own. We naturally lived to please other people. And all the while, the pain was brewing deep inside.
The last five years have been a process of seeing these things as the truth of my story. In learning the truth that all these subtle “leeching” dynamics between a parent and his children can have just as much damage as more physical or obvious kinds of abuse, I was exposed to a whole new world. I learned that these things were not my fault. I learned that my depression and anxiety has definite reasons and weren’t just symptoms of a messed up person.
Of my two parents, my Dad’s belief system had the most impact on me. Deep down I believed I was a “nobody” as well and I relied on other people to tell me that this wasn’t true. This wreaked havoc in its own kind of way, testing relationships and causing me to miss out on great opportunities that I felt I just wasn’t worthy of. As an adult, the responsibility to live differently is now in my own hands. Now that I know that this belief system is not my real inheritance, not the one I was meant to have, I can choose to embrace a new one. I can choose which river to follow. Today I am working to change my belief system. Today I take on the primary responsibility of nourishing my own self-esteem. Today I am taking another step into freedom and living in the truth.
~Carla~
Unintentional but Destructive: Belief System Inheritance
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At the heart of the devaluing belief system (click here to 
read Part One) is the lie that as human beings, we are not valuable in and of ourselves. We exist to be used by others. Our own desires aren’t important. Other people’s desires trump our own. Our feelings and thoughts can’t be trusted. We are not capable of living our lives to the full. We don’t deserve to live our lives to the full. This belief system manifests itself in all kinds of ways. But the lie at the heart of it is the same.
Today I will describe how parents teach their children this belief system even simply in how they treat themselves. My Dad never told me I was a nobody, but he lived like he was one. He is also intelligent and talented, but he never believed that about himself. In my childlike observance, I saw repeatedly how he was uncomfortable accepting compliments and also giving them, how he did jobs and favors for others even if he didn’t want to because he didn’t believe he deserved to say “no”, how it was safer for him to spend hours watching TV or reading the paper instead of engaging with us, how he put himself down, even calling himself “stupid”, how he always took someone else’s opinion to be superior to his own. He didn’t offer his true self to his family, rarely sharing what he really felt or thought about something. I got this message from how he lived his own life: don’t flourish, don’t attract attention, don’t fly too high, don’t shine too bright. If other people were successful or happy he was quietly critical or suspicious of them. Be wary of the world because it’s a scary place. This may sound like the wrappings of a humble, unassuming person. But it was not so innocent. How a parent treats their own self is a huge message to their kids about what it means to be human.
As an observant and impressionable child, I grew up in this “lowly soup”. Even though it was never spoken to me, I naturally believed that because my Dad thought so little of himself as a human being, I must be little too. Even though I excelled at school, learned to play the piano, won awards, and succeeded at being popular, there was always this deep deep down feeling that I really had nothing to offer, nothing from my true self would be good enough. I didn’t even have practice in knowing what my true self was! In squishing himself, my Dad’s belief system squished down the spontaneous buds of my own real self. And as a child I had no way of knowing this was happening- I accepted it as the normal reality. As an adult, I have to acknowledge that it DID happen, that I did receive a passively given faulty belief system from my Dad, in order for me to be free from the lies that entrapped me.
Thankfully today, I can choose a different kind of inheritance. I love what Darlene wrote on our facebook fan page the other day: “I am not defined by who they think I am. I am not defined by who THEY say that I am. I am not defined by what happened to me. I am defined by my heart; my tenderness and compassion for others; by my purpose. I am an individual, worthy and valid. ~ Darlene”
