Darlene and Jim

My parents split up and eventually divorced when I was just turning 13 years old. After my mother went through her suicidal phase she started dating. She had not been separated from my father for very long when she started dating. Men and dating became her priority.

Through her behaviour she communicated to me that attracting men was the way to cope with low self esteem and pain. Looking back on what she taught me and how she impacted my belief system, she herself believed that men and having a man in her life was what she needed more than anything else.  She believed that she needed a man in order to survive. She needed a man in order for her to feel complete or even good about herself. Men defined her as worthy and good enough.  Her self esteem came from them. Their attraction to her identified her. Having a man meant that my mom was okay.

I had learned from my mother’s actions, words and teachings that men were the most important connection or relationship a woman can have. Because belief systems grow from layers of information, add to that teaching what I learned from the media (movies and books)  and from observing

When I finally drew my boundaries and make it clear to my mother that I was no longer going to accept her devaluing treatment of me, she walked away. She never called again. Oh she played her usual manipulative tricks including telling me that I could contact her “when I have thought about it” but I quickly told her that I it wasn’t up to me anymore. It was now up to her to decide if she was going to have a real relationship with me based on love, mutual respect and equal value, OR if she was going to continue to abuse me. (An option  I would no longer tolerate)

She wanted to just put the whole thing behind us and “start over” I said no and that this time I wanted to deal with it. This time I wanted my say.

She said “Oh Darlene, we have always had our differences but we have always worked them out in the past” and I responded “No Mom, in the past I have always backed down and let you have your way”. 

Always her way. Always a one sided relationship. Always her side.

That was the last time I spoke to her. I left it with her and she refused to bend. She refused to meet me half way.  She turned me down. My mother abandoned our relationship.

When I realized that she wasn’t going to contact me again, it cut me to the core.  I was rejected all over again.  By walking away from me she was saying “you are not worth it Darlene. I can’t be bothered

one step closer

I had a hard time with self love as long as I saw myself through the eyes of the people who defined me as “unworthy”.  I saw myself through their actions and through the way that they treated me. They treated me as though I was “not good enough” and not important.

For instance when I was in a crowd of family and trying to be part of the conversation but no one heard me. I would say something and sometimes I would be ignored. Sometimes I would get a cold blank look as if to say “you have nothing to contribute here”.  At least that is the message that I got.

Imagine a young child. The child is trying to get the attention of his mother. He is trying to tell his mother that there is a kite in the sky. But the mother won’t look.  She won’t acknowledge the child’s pleas for her to share the moment with him. He keeps trying; he keeps tugging her sleeve or patting her arm… “Mommy, look! There is a kite in the sky! Mommy LOOK!” The mother brushes him off. She is reading a book and doesn’t care about the kite. She shrugs him off at first, but as he becomes more persistent, she pushes him

I had to learn to value myself ~ enough to call them on it. I had to realize that they were wrong to treat me that way and if I let it go, they were likely to keep doing it. I had to care enough about me to reject that kind of treatment. I had to realize that when people talk down to me, it doesn’t define me as beneath them.  On the other hand I also had to learn that when people fall all over themselves to be with me, that doesn’t define me as worthy either. That was the false definition of love and acceptance that I had to come to understand in this process of emotional healing.

This was a huge part of my recovery process.

First I had to own my anger at this injustice towards me as a person.  I had to own my equality and believe in myself. Instead of constantly asking myself what was wrong with me and searching my heart for how I could be worthy of love and respect, I started to ask myself why people felt they had permission to

Darlene Ouimet

But yesterday I suddenly thought about how abusive this statement is when I think about it through the eyes of myself as a child! You reap what you sow, you get what you deserve. I was raised with this expression. I was raised to believe that whatever was in my life or NOT in my life was my fault. That if I had problems in my relationships with people then it was because I cultivated incorrectly and I had sown bad seed.  I was willing to take that responsibility because I had been taught that it was all up to me in the first place.  I believed that I deserved to be picked on because I thought I was dislikeable. I believed that if I could be likeable, that people would

Some days are very difficult for me. I am always filled with sympathy and understanding for the victims and survivors of child abuse but on some days the whole subject just makes me see red. It makes me angry that so many children have suffered at the hands of manipulative, controlling and abusive adults. Every day I hear tragic stories from people who have survived very dysfunctional childhoods at the hands of horribly sick adults.  I get really angry at what so many children are enduring even as I write this and at what so many (now adult) children have had to endure.

And these same adult children have been expected to grow up “normally” after having a dysfunctional childhood like that. I was expected to function normally, and have high self esteem to the degree that was manipulated and convinced into believing that the low self esteem that I experienced was my own fault! And this expectation that I should “snap out of it”, “grow up,” “get over it” and take charge of my life, was often communicated by the very same people who abused and controlled me in the first place. First I was mistreated, devalued and manipulated and then I was blamed for having depressions and other difficulties in life!

As Survivors of this manipulation and abuse we learn to accept those expectations and turn them on ourselves, believing that we SHOULD just grow up and be fine and dandy without ever

I talk a lot about realizing all the lies that were in my belief system.  I realized that I believed I deserved to be treated the way that I was. But that was a lie.  I believed that I was not good enough, and that I was unlovable. Those were both lies.  I believed that I somehow attracted the abuse and even that I asked for it… and that was also a lie. Because I believed that I had done “something” to either deserve it or attract it, I lived in fear of doing whatever it was that I was doing that was causing me to be hurt!

As you can see, this belief system stuff is complicated and takes some detective work to unravel.

A big part of the problem was that I was addicted to proving

It dawned on me a while back that this statement implies that if I am unhappy, then I am deciding to be unhappy. When I was unhappy and depressed, I tried everything I ever heard about to get myself over it. I tried to “decide to be happy”.  Oh I had brief success with it, yes, but not the enduring happiness that I sought after for so long. I got a little relief but never a permanent result. I tried self help; I tried books, affirmations and seminars.  I took vitamins, changed my diet and exercise, bought new clothes and said “I love you” to myself in the mirror and did other affirmations.  I quit coffee, quit drinking alcohol and quit smoking and I improved my lifestyle.  I WANTED to be happy. I wanted to believe that life was worth living. It just didn’t seem to be that easy! If happiness is merely a decision… then

The last few blog posts have covered how our feelings can get shut down, but what about our thoughts? Have you ever thought about how you were taught to think, or taught not to think?

In recovery and emotional healing, I hear people say all the time that when they are asked the question “what do you think?” they just jam up.  That they don’t know how to respond to that question in the same way that people freeze when asked how they are feeling.

Just as we learn to shut down our own feelings as a result of being told over time that they are “wrong” or that we don’t actually feel them”, learning to doubt our thoughts and opinions and to shut them down also happens in a very similar way. The details are different, but the damage is very comparable.

I have heard children trying to contribute to the conversation with the statement “well I think …” and the adult (or the bully) in the situation will respond by saying;