Archive for mental health issues
Depression and Recovery from Mental Health Struggles
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I have talked a lot about taking a look at the truth in order to realize how I arrived with repeated depression, broken, exhausted and ready to throw my life away in my early forties. I had to look at what happened to me through new lenses. I had to realize that I was innocent of blame for the mess in my childhood that resulted in my adult life still being a mess. There is a gap between childhood and adulthood that I discovered is a very common place where many of us get stuck. We reach a certain age in our early twenties and we are told that we are adults and we are responsible for our lives. Stop blaming others, get over it and get on with it. But no one helped me sort it out when I was a kid. I had been treated like I was less important than the adults in my life. SO how was I supposed to suddenly know my value, get over “it” and get on with it? As a child I had this sense of having been abandoned ~ my feelings didn’t matter, I was not taken care of and I did not grow up “properly” as a result. No one helped me with this mess, a mess that I was innocent of creating, BUT nevertheless, it was still my mess. It was finally clear that no one was going to rescue me. It was clear that my family was not going to suddenly wake up and love me. No one was going to suddenly realize my value. It was up to me.
I did not realize that I was a victim. I didn’t like that word and didn’t really understand it. I thought it meant that I was a whiner. I thought a victim was someone who complained all the time about the world and it’s people and about what a tough hand of cards they had been dealt. I wasn’t a whiner. I grew up in a world where depression has a stigma. Deep down no matter how much I heard that depression was common, that many struggled, yada yada yada, there was a stigma surrounding it and I believed it was a weakness. I didn’t want to admit that I was on anti depressants; I would have been seen as weak, lacking in faith, and like everything else in my life, I must be doing something wrong. I tried positive thinking, affirmation, bible study, self help books and seminars. They all worked for a while, but nothing had a lasting effect. I was exhausted. The depressions that I had dealt with since I was ten years old were getting worse and more frequent. I was losing the fight. I felt like I was being held under water, struggling to breathe, fighting to have a voice and a place in this world. And I was losing.
It was time to step back and take a look at my life. I put all the puzzle pieces on the table. The mess was overwhelming. I didn’t think I could face it, I didn’t think that I could sort it out. There was so much confusion, so many mixed messages, so much that I had accepted the blame for and I was so tired. I had to go back to beginning and realize where my emotional growth was stunted. I had to face one thing at a time and break that one thing down. There was abuse that resulted in destructive coping methods. I had been focusing on the destructive coping methods, even questioning WHY I had depression as though that too was my fault and beating myself up for the way that I dealt with everything. I saw myself as a failure because I looked at my life through the expectations of the very people who held me under that water. I had to make my beginning and at first it was only a decision to try. I started with one thing and was willing to look at one abusive situation in my childhood. My therapist chose my first memory of an abusive trauma to take a look at first. I laid it out on the table piece by piece and looked at it the way it happened, bit by bit. I revealed every thought I had that I remembered including the baggage of self blame. I had not even been conscious that I had self blame. I dumped all the thoughts about how I could have prevented it, how I must have done something to cause it onto the table as I focused on this one event. I talked about the adults’ expressions, the eye movement, the secrecy, all of which helped me understand that I was innocent. I recognized the beginning of my dissociative identity disorder. I felt the horror of what had happened to me and for the first time I realized that it happened “TO ME”. I faced the pain of child abuse, and came to understand that I had been wronged.
One event at a time, one small snapshot of truth, one little breakthrough, one new way of looking at it, one little realization and then another.
This was the beginning of Emerging from Broken ~ I invite you to contribute to this post in any way that you wish.
Darlene Ouimet
Dysfunctional Relationship; My Parents Treat Me Like a Child
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When someone says that they are sick of being treated like a child, what comes to your mind? One of the commenter’s on my blog post Mother Daughter Relationship Lies said that she was sick of being treated like a child, and caused me to think about the meaning behind that statement. Such a familiar expression. What is being treated like a child like? What do we adults mean when we say that? Is it how a parent wipes your chin when you are eating a soft ice cream cone? Is it holding your hand when you cross the street? Is it being told to brush your teeth and get ready for bed? It would be pretty weird if our parents did that stuff when we were adults. So when an adult says that he is sick of being treated like a child, I get a whole different idea about what this statement means.
I have teen agers. My youngest teen doesn’t like it when I suggest things off the menu to her. She likes to read it for herself and make her own choice. My older teen says that I am treating her like a child when she feels like I am not giving her enough choice or freedom. My oldest teenager (who is legally and adult in Canada) doesn’t use this expression.
In my experience, when adults use this expression it means that a parent is treating an adult in similar ways to the way that both my daughters express this dislike above. Using voice infliction and innuendo, parents can make adult children feel like we are not capable or too stupid to make our own decisions ~ still having the mind of a child.
Consider some of the following statements; these are meant to make you wonder about your thoughts and decisions. They are meant to make you question yourself.
~ You are not really going to do that, are you?
~ You don’t really believe that, do you?
~ You aren’t really thinking that are you?
~ You are not really going to wear that, are you?
~What were you thinking when you bought that?
~What were you thinking when you said that?
What were you thinking when you DID that?
The unspoken message is “are you nuts” or “you must be stupid”.
These questions are not designed to get you to think about what you did or said, they are meant to make you feel stupid. They are meant to make you question yourself. When we were children we depended on our parents to help us decide, to make good choices. This is what I think some of us mean when we say they are sick of being treated like a child.
My mother in law had a different way of trying to get me to do things her way. She would say “Well, you will most likely be ready to buy that next year. Well you will most likely breastfeed (my son) for six months. She seemed to have an issue with how long I was intending to nurse, and finally I told her that I would MOST LIKELY NURSE HIM until he or I was ready to stop. But I was really conflicted about it, and her words echoed in my head for years because I just didn’t understand her motive for trying to make me stop and I didn’t realize that she was constantly insinuating that I couldn’t decide, like I wasn’t capable of deciding what would be best.
Other questions are designed to control but even these still indicate a suggestion that you couldn’t possibly know what is best. Here are a few:
~ You aren’t going to eat that are you?” (I am talking about when someone thinks they are helping you with your diet, or insinuating that you need to lose weight.)
~You aren’t going to go there are you?
~ You aren’t really interested in HIM or HER are you?
~ Why would you want to do that?
~ Why would you want to go there?
If our adult / child relationships were conducted like this when we were children, we become accustomed to this kind of innuendo and control. It becomes part of how we do relationship. It is so familiar that we don’t really think about it. We don’t realize how devaluing it is. It has become part of our belief system, our false definition of relationship, respect and love.
When we fight this without really understanding what we are fighting, is it any wonder why we end up struggling with depression and other mental health issues?
Please feel free to contribute to this post with comments or share how this post impacted you.
Breaking out of familiar;
Darlene Ouimet
The Essence of Wholeness
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I received this message and question from a reader;
“Dear Darlene,
I love your blog, emerging from broken. I read it every day and I think it is the most ROCKING website going.
Okay, so you talk a lot about wholeness in your posts and it’s in your blog subtitle too. I think I have an idea of what wholeness is, but you seem to have this really rich, deep understanding of what it is. So I am really curious to hear you explain it in your own words. What is wholeness? What does it mean to you to be whole? Does it mean you don’t struggle anymore? Does it mean you have soaring self-esteem? Does it mean you’re never depressed and always happy? I am at the tail end of my own therapy, and peering into the world that waits for me. But sometimes I still have those little doubts that I’m ready, that I’m whole in the same way that you are.
Sincerely, 99% Sure I’m whole too”
Dearest Fellow Seeker
Thank you for your enthusiastic encouragement!
When I first read this question I wondered how the heck I was going to answer it, but then I decided to answer a small aspect of it. I am sure that other aspects will be covered in later posts.
I wanted to address your question asking me if I am never depressed and always happy. I rarely feel “depressed” in the way that I used to feel, but sometimes I feel down. Not every day is a perfect day and life isn’t always easy. I wouldn’t say that I am always happy, in the way that we think of as happy (although most of my friends would say that I am a pretty happy person).
What I would say is that I always have a sense of peace. I have an acceptance that I didn’t have before. I accept life in the way that it arrives each day. I know that I know how to DO life now. I don’t just “cope” anymore. I don’t disconnect or dissociate in order to deal with life. I don’t run to bed and pull the covers up over my head in the middle of the day if things get rough. I live. I face what is going on, I deal with it to the best of my ability, and I live.
Nothing changed overnight. It was a process of change and acceptance and getting used to the new way of living, and I continue to thrive and grow. I learned to trust myself by living in wholeness. There weren’t any shortcuts. In my process, I learned to embrace who I am, and stopped looking for approval from others. It stopped mattering to me what others thought. This is true even with my family and my husband. ~I don’t let them define me by whether or not they approve of me. (My son, at the age of 15, didn’t approve of me returning to work even though my work outside the home was only 2 days per week. His definition of love was that I stayed home and cooked all his favorite meals and focused my energy on him. He needed to learn a new definition of love, and it took me a while to help him with that.)
~ It doesn’t really matter what other people think. I don’t try to apply someone else’s idea of whole to my life. I wanted to be whole like ME, not whole like someone else. I don’t let anyone else define me either. No one gets to decide my worth.
In closing there is one other thing that I would like add that for me defines my wholeness. My life has purpose and I have a passion for my purpose. I wake up every morning excited to get into the day, sometimes way before I planned to get up! This feeling of excitement is consistent and following my passion and purpose is fulfilling and rewarding.
That is a very small glimpse of what wholeness is to me, but I hope that it gives you some idea. I would love to have other peoples comments on what wholeness means to them.
Bright Happy Squishes,
Darlene Ouimet
Where Does Self Worth Come From?
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I received the following question from a reader;
“Darlene, I wish I would wake up one morning with this deep sense of my own self worth. How did that happen for you? Was it something you had to think about enough before you felt it, or did you just feel it right away? This is where I’m struggling. I still so easily cave in to someone else’s opinion of me. And I see that valuing myself is at the heart of my entire future of healing and thriving.”
Dear Reader;
This was a long process for me; in fact this might be the definition of the 2nd process. ( I have come to see my process in two parts: the first part where I got the help I needed for my mental health issues and became a whole person and the second part where I learned how to live in that wholeness)
I certainly didn’t wake up one morning feeling a sense of my worth and identity and resolving never to be defined by anyone else ever again! As I have written before, after digging deeply into the root causes of my dissociative identity disorder and chronic depression, I began sorting out the truth from the false about myself with the help of my therapist. This was what I call part one of my recovery.
Next I learned to listen to the little voice in my head that caused me to doubt myself all the time.
In one of the self help programs that I used to be in, I had been taught to ignore the nagging self doubts and little messages of fear in my head. In my process of permanent recovery, I learned to listen to that voice and even respond to it. This was very frightening in the beginning because I was afraid that the voice was actually true!
First of all, I identified whose voice it really was. When I first started to learn how to do this, the voice I would identify would not be my own, but would be my mothers, or brothers, or an ex boyfriend. I would ask the voice what else it had to say to me, and I would keep listening to it until it had nothing else to say. The deeper that I went with this process, the more illogical and childlike the things that would come to my mind (the voice) would sound.
This process made me realize where my low self esteem and limiting beliefs came from in the first place, and also made me realize that most of my fears and beliefs were no longer valid. The more that I repeated this process, the more I realized that I was the one in my own way and that underneath those other voices, was my own voice telling me that I was not really valuable, or loveable or capable etc.
I realized soon enough that this was the core of my survival system and that I had used it since I was very young. My inner world was so rooted in self protection that deep down I was afraid to define myself as worthy, capable, confident, beautiful, and smart- all those true words about me- in case my new life of wholeness was going to be dangerous! Those voices and beliefs were a form of protection, but they were also counterproductive to my new life of freedom and they were holding me back in the past where I was unhappy, and broken.
This is a hard question to answer in one post, but I am sure I will be expanding on it in the future. I thank you for asking and welcome anyone that wishes to remain anonymous to either use a fake name or nick name in the comments section, or use the contact page and your questions will be answered this way.
~Wishing you the best of mental health!
~Darlene Ouimet
Investing in Your Mental Health
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- Dreams Tulum, Mexico
In the profession that I am in as a mental health advocate, I often hear the complaint that therapy is too expensive and not accessible to everyone. Therapy can cost hundreds of dollars per hour and many places in the world have no insurance coverage or health care supplement allotted for mental health issues.
I spent thousands of dollars for therapy. It was something that I made a commitment to do, and I didn’t care if I had to spend the rest of my life paying it off because I was so sick of being sick. For me it was just like the decision to go to University; if I wanted to live in wholeness and fullness, then I had to do what it takes to get there. I felt that I was making an investment in myself but more importantly, making an investment in my family.
Here is one of the ways I look at making the decision to pay for therapy or not to pay for therapy; a holiday for a family of 5 for two weeks costs between $12,000.00 and $18,000.00 depending what you do on the holiday. Several years ago our family went to Disney Land and the whole trip cost us $13,000.00 by the time we paid airfare and hotel, theme park admissions and restaurants, but here is the kicker. I came home exhausted because my coping methods had to kick into high gear in order for me to get through it. New things, new places, new people all caused me to go into emotional nightmare. Spending that much money and coming home exhausted and needing a holiday was a bit disappointing.
Last year we went to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic for our first all inclusive resort vacation, and it was really wonderful! I came home refreshed, I did not go into any “emotional spins” while away and the whole family, myself included, enjoyed every day of the 14 days we were away. Now that I have learned to live without coping methods, I don’t feel as though I NEED a holiday but rather I go and enjoy a holiday! The whole experience of vacation was so much better in wholeness then it was before. It was certainly worth giving up a couple of vacations in order to have this freedom that I live in now, especially since the vacations are so much better now!
Tomorrow we head off to Dreams Tulum, an all inclusive resort in Tulum Mexico for a couple of weeks! I am really excited!
Wishing you all good mental health! ~ Darlene
Accomplishments~Emerging from Broken is off to a Great Start!
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Happy New Year!
~On January 1st, this blog was officially one month old and I am really pleased with the progress we have made. Here are a few highlights this past couple days.
~Google is picking up our posts the same day we write them, which means that we are getting searched frequently by the search engines.
~We got listed! Have you seen the blog Third of a lifetime, by Sarah Olson? She has a new Dissociation Blog Showcase and Emerging from Broken made the list!
Sarah has compiled a great resource here if you are looking for reading material or information about Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder or Multiple Personality Disorder. There are some great mental health blogs listed whose focus is on other mental health issues too, so be sure to check it out.
~For those of you that have websites and blogs, have you ever checked your ranking with Alexa? Alexa is a website that ranks websites in order of popularity. For instance Google is number one, Facebook is number two and You Tube is number three and the list goes on.
There are over 5 billion websites on the internet and Alexa ranks them in order of importance. I have no idea how this works, but I am excited to tell you that this blog, Emerging from Broken, is ranked at 4,304,599 in just one month.
Thanks to all our readers and to those of you who have used social media to share our blog and tweet our posts! Without all of you, these accomplishments would not have happened!
I am excited about 2010. I am passionate about living in wholeness, equality and truth. I am excited about the message that complete recovery from mental health issues and living life to the fullest is possible. I am looking forward to meeting you on the journey!
Wishing you all great mental health in 2010
~Darlene Ouimet
The Decision to Wake up and Live
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After a few hours of Christmas shopping the other night, my husband and I went out for dinner. There was a young Japanese couple at the next table and I was drawn to watching their small child who kept looking over at me while he was waiting for his meal.
I noticed that the whole family spoke Japanese to each other, and I could tell that they had not been in Canada long because of how much trouble they had with the English language when speaking to the waitress.
When their food came, I also noticed how much trouble the parents had with the knives and forks. They were obviously uncomfortable with them and both adults used them in different ways than I had ever seen before. I realized that they were not accustomed to using these instruments for eating and how self conscious they were, even with each other about this fact.
Watching them reminded me of how scared I was to learn a new way of living. When I realized that all my coping methods were just that, only coping methods, and that if I was ever to be fully alive, I would have to get to the bottom of my mental health issues, I was frozen with fear; I was just as afraid to let go my coping methods to learn how to live a new way as I was of staying in the depths of depression and dissociation forever. I was afraid of how I would have to relate to others if I was to embrace wholeness. I was afraid of the unknown. I was afraid to stick up for myself, I was used to things the way they were, even if they were not comfortable for me. I was afraid that I would be even more deeply unhappy then I already was if I tried to learn how to live without dissociating. I was afraid to give up the long bouts of sleeping that characterized my depression. I was afraid I might have to stand up to the people in my life that disregarded me. I was afraid to own my value. My life was comfortable in a bizarre way; depression and dissociated identity disorder worked for me.
But just as this young couple was embracing new ways, I decided to learn new ways too. The process was long and difficult and worth every painful moment. Living in wholeness and fullness is something that I never imagined would be so fantastic. How could I imagine something that I had never experienced? How could I have ever known what I was missing?
These are the questions at the root of my passion to spread the hope of healing and wholeness to others. If you like my post, and would like to help me spread the hope, please click on the share button below and share it on your favourite sites. If you would like to post comments or ask me a question, I welcome you to click on the post title which will open a new page and reveal the comment box.
~Darlene Ouimet
Learning to Live Life Fully
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I am amazed at the brokenness that surrounds me each day in the lives of others. Surrounded by pain, so many people live day to day without knowing what it is to fully live, to flourish and thrive. Some have recovered from mental health issues, addictions, and serious illness such as chronic depression or bi-polar disorder, but have this nagging question; now what?
When a person has been shut down or broken for a large part of their life, how does one learn to live again? How do you go from dealing with depression and struggling to cope with whatever life throws your way, to living full time? It might sound easy, but in my experience it isn’t. It is difficult because it is not familiar. Coping is what is familiar so there is a new learning curve to deal with now.
When I started to get on with my life, I felt like I was re-learning how to live, almost like growing up at warp speed. It was crazy but exciting because I had some support and because I was aware of how much I had missed prior to living in wholeness. I was developing new familiarity. I learned to listen to the little voices that whispered to me that I should not move forward, that it was too scary, too risky and I learned to reassure myself. I learned new ways to avoid sliding into depression. In some ways I became my own parent, going back and parenting myself in the areas that were missed when I was growing up.
Recovering from depression, multiple personality and dissociative identity disorder has been the most exciting and worthwhile thing I have ever attempted. Learning to embrace life fully and live in wholeness and freedom is something I never imagined I would ever achieve. Sharing my journey and hope with others is my passion. Today I am thriving.
Darlene
