As a child I was taught that there would be peace if I didn’t upset anyone.  I was taught that if I complied and if I did what was expected of me; if I was quiet and polite and if I didn’t stand up for anything that went against what the adult in the situation deemed the “right way” to do things, that I would be loved and accepted. 

My mother was fragile. She was prone to depressions and what she called nervous breakdowns. She made it very clear all of my childhood that if I upset her, she would have a “breakdown”. My mother ended up in the hospital when I was little with what was called “a nervous breakdown” back then. I am sure that this event had a major effect on me and that it settled somewhere in my belief system and added to my beliefs that if I upset someone they may end up in the hospital and everyone knows that people die in hospitals. Not only does a little mind wander all the way to “death” but think about the fear of abandonment and all that that implies. I could not survive without my mother. She was the source of all my basic needs.

And I was abused while she was away. So that added to the fear factor in my frame of reference about what happens when Mommy has a mental health breakdown.

Thoughts like “what would happen if my mother had a mental health breakdown and could never come home?” are not always conscious.  Well I didn’t want to find out what would happen; I had enough information already, so I tried my hardest not to upset her. She reinforced my fear of upsetting her by reminding me all the time of how fragile she was.  I can still hear her voice; “stop it Darlene. Stop pushing me. (Stop whatever it was we were doing that was upsetting her.)  Stop it or I will have a breakdown”.  And when I got older she told said “Stop it Darlene, Stop pushing me” whenever I wanted to defend myself or if I wanted to talk about the past. I never got to say anything that needed to be said in order for me to have value as an individual. I never got to have a side in anything. It was too dangerous; she might have a mental health breakdown and kill herself and it would be MY fault and on MY head forever.

Ultimately I believed that I would be responsible for her failure to cope as well as then my own failures and the demise of my entire family.

I can still remember my grandmother saying similar things and I remember my mother telling me that her mother threatened her with the same thing.  “Stop it, just stop talking about it or I will have a hissy fit”.  She had learned the same things from her mother that she taught me. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t mess with the consequences. Then when my mother grew up, she finally got her say ~ she got all her accusations or opinions in against me but I was not permitted to respond in case it rocked HER boat.

By the time I was a young adult, I had efficiently learned that I could not and should not tell my mother or ask her to face anything that she didn’t want to hear. I did not want to be responsible for her mental health breakdown. Even as an adult I was afraid of the consequences; that I would be to blame if she went back into her deep depression and worse than that I was afraid that I would be responsible if she committed suicide.

I was afraid that if my mother had a break down it would be my fault. She said it would be my fault.  She taught me that her mental health was MY responsibility. And I believed it.  That is why when she tore a strip off me when I was just out of the hospital with my newborn daughter, I took it. I sat there and took it although I had long since forgotten why I would sit through her accusations and judgements of me.  The conditioning to fear the consequences of standing up to someone had become so deeply ingrained that I just reacted with silence and compliance without even thinking about why. 

It was happening on my blog too.  Some of the comments were triggering my mother’s voice begging me to stop saying what needed to be said. I wanted to be the voice of peace, love and understanding.

I wanted everyone to feel safe even if it meant that the truth would be sacrificed. I didn’t want to upset anyone. I was afraid that I would be abandoned and rejected if the truth that they heard hurt too much. I would sometimes hear my mother’s voice…. “stop it Darlene. Stop pushing me or I will fall apart.” And the (unheard) message that always meant “I will fall apart and it will be YOUR FAULT”   My mother’s voice was still operating to dictate my actions and reactions to some of the comments and commenter’s in my website.

And I forgot how much the truth hurt in my own process and how valuable it was in spite of that pain.

PEACE and harmony do not always go hand in hand with the truth.  There have been many times in my process of healing and personal growth where the truth made me very angry and many times when I rejected it because it hurt too much.  Looking back many seeds were planted that I rejected and rebelled against at first. That is just part of the process. I am glad that I didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I am glad that I was (and still am) willing to persist seeking my recovery even when it scares the living daylights out of me.  

I had to learn that sometimes the truth hurts but in the end it heals; if I had successfully avoided the truth I would not be where I am today; NOR would I have the message that I have to deliver. I had to reaffirm that I did not heal from my past when the truth was sugar coated for me and no one contributed to my healing by covering up their truth. 

I had to realize that my mother’s voice was still interfering with my life (and in this case with my message) in a harmful way and in realizing this I have achieved another level of personal growth.

Please Note: It is important to remember that I had to learn the real truth first. Many people hurt me with their voice and their lies; there was a lot of sorting out to do before I figured out the real truth but when I did I began to soar, thrive and flourish.

Please share your thoughts with me and the readership here.  The comment discussions are always very good and insightful. I share my healing for the benefit of your healing.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time

Darlene Ouimet

Founder of Emerging from Broken

Related Posts ~ My mother doesn’t love me and the process of grieving

The Stigma of Depression

I believe that depression comes from somewhere and that it starts somewhere. I don’t believe that I was born with it, or that I was born with something missing in me that would later determine that I would struggle with depression.  I don’t believe that my mother, who struggled with multiple depressions, passed her condition down to me.  I believe that my mother had her own post traumatic stress and abuse that caused her struggles and break downs, and that because she didn’t have the tools that she needed to raise an emotionally healthy child, I too was placed at risk. I was not protected from the things that caused my trauma; both me and the trauma were neglected. My self esteem and personal value and individuality was never established.  

I would even go so far as to say that my depressions were a coping method. They were a way for me to shut down and to get through the overwhelming circumstances in my life. They were a way that enabled me to survive. 

That is what I have come to understand now ~ that is my NEW belief system, and coming to understand this and all my other false belief systems greatly assisted me in overcoming my constant depressions and in living beyond depression. That is what I used to believe about depression, so now what about the old belief system that I broke out of?

The Stigma of Depression

There is a huge stigma in our society about mental health struggles.  There is a universal judgment about depression and about the people that suffer with depression. We pick it up from movies and television, books, our family’s belief systems and jokes about people who see therapists. Even the people that suffer with depression have belief systems about depression that have formed from society and from little things we picked up from others along the way and the false beliefs that were passed down to us from others. I had a belief system that had developed about depression, but I didn’t even realize that I had it; I certainly didn’t realize I had the wrong definition!  

Where did I get my definition of Depression?

My mother struggled with multiple depressions as I was growing up.  As I grew up, I thought she was “fragile” and unable to cope. Sometimes I resented that she had these dark times of struggle because she didn’t have time for me and I ended up on some level feeling as though her depressions wrecked my life. I was afraid of depression. I was afraid of having “it”.  My first serious depression began when I was ten years old.

I also picked up that my mother’s “condition” was not something that we should talk about. I learned that it was best to pretend that nothing was wrong. This was all part of how I learned the “stigma” that goes along with depression.  

One of the worst things that also contributed to my overall belief system is that I learned that somehow I could help her if I acted a certain way or didn’t get in her way and didn’t  upset her. She had to be treated with kid gloves, or there would be a price to pay. I learned by her actions and the consequences of my actions, that her depressions were somehow my responsibility and even my fault.

So, because of the beliefs that I had collected along the way, and how I saw my own mother being regarded as someone who suffered with depression as well as her often out of control actions, I had this idea that depression meant that ‘the depressed person’ could not handle life. Nobody wants to be seen that way.

How I applied the acquired beliefs to myself and to my own depressions

Subconsciously, I came to the conclusions that If I could not cope with life, (and this is a biggie) then I had to let other people handle things for me. I had to agree with their opinions of me, (because they could handle life) and I accepted that I could not possibly have a valuable opinion. I couldn’t be right, I couldn’t know my own thoughts and feelings; I believed that I was paranoid, that I was over reactive and always wrong. 

And isn’t that exactly what certain controlling people in my life would want me to think and feel? Because when I felt that way, when I believed all of that, I willingly comply to their wishes, accept their opinions and direction and I always believed and easily accepted that any difficulty that I have with others was MY fault. It was My defect. It was what was lacking in me and what was wrong with me.

When I was medically diagnosed with depression it even proved to ME that I was all those things, because of the beliefs that I had accepted about depression along the way. It was pretty easy for others to get away with treating me even worse than before.  I easily accepted blame and I had no trouble accepting that the burden of every relationship was mine, because I believed that I was the one that had the problem.

Can you see how the stigma of depression starts and how even I affected myself with it?

Can you see how those established beliefs are then used for the purpose of controlling someone else? People WITH depressions even use it against others with depression, because in our society we learned that the one with the most control over others “wins”. Depressions are used as PROOF that we are “Not Right” and that our opinions are not valid.

I had to realize this belief system, as far back as it went and change the very roots of my thinking.

Please share your thoughts.

Shining light in new places;

Darlene Ouimet

Great Article by Jonathan Rottenberg on Psychology Today about the Stigma of Mental Health Issues

Interesting Poll on Resistance to Admit ”mental illness”

I am pleased and excited to have guest blogger Susan Kingsley-Smith sharing about dysfunctional relationships within the mental health system while I am away on vacation.  Susan is my friend and fellow truth seeker, as well as the author of  “A Journey” and I’m also blessed to have her as a frequent commenter here on Emerging from Broken. As always, please contribute by adding your own comments and feedback ~ Darlene Ouimet

Dysfunctional Relationship with Mental Health Providers by Susan Kingsley-Smith

I’d have never imagined that in my healing journey I would find myself healing from not only the original trauma’s of my childhood but that I would also be faced with mourning the life I lost to a second trauma; that of becoming victim to those I’d turned to for help.

I’d been conditioned from an early age to not question authority. To do as I was told; and especially to view my doctors and other health care professionals as the authority over my health. In hindsight though, what I discovered, is that my early life experiences of abuse had set me up to become a victim to any relationship or system that was based on my sacrificing myself in order to appease those in authority. Continued..

At first I didn’t think anything of it when the psychiatrists would tell me, and the therapists would reinforce this message, that there was something “wrong” with me. That I had a chemical imbalance in my brain, that there was no cure. In hindsight though, this was just the beginning of a fifteen-year journey into, through and finally out of the mental health system.  This was a journey that would change me forever.

The mental health “professionals” had successfully stripped me of any hope when they informed me that my brain was broken. They had laid the groundwork for my lifetime dependence on them; telling me that they, and only they, knew the answers and in order for me to “get better” I needed to submit myself to their care.

My power was taken from me in the numerous drugs I was prescribed as the doses were adjusted and more drugs were added. Slowly, like a toad in pot of water coming to a boil, the drugs overtook my mind and destroyed my health. I found that I could no longer think or communicate coherently. I gained enormous amounts of weight on one drug; then lost it rapidly on the next. I had no energy, I was constantly fatigued yet I suffered from insomnia and couldn’t sleep. I developed irrational fears and began to isolate myself.

I felt even more ashamed of myself. The professionals were validating what I’d been convinced of all along. That I was defective, something was “wrong” with me and I felt powerless to understand or change it.

The side effects I was experiencing were legitimate side effects of the drugs yet it was made clear to me that any negative effects were caused by a defect in my character and motivation.  I was told to eat better and exercise more.

Fear was used to coerce my compliance. The threat was always there that if I stopped taking the drugs that I would “get worse”. What I forgot was that before the drugs, I’d never been “sick”.

I had been conditioned to believe from the beginning of my entry into the world of mental health that when the “therapy” was failing that it was my fault; that something was wrong with ME not that the therapy or “treatments” were not effective or in fact abusive and oppressive – but that I had done something wrong to have cause this failure.

There was a fear that was always present that I would be rejected or that I might be “fired” by my providers if I was not compliant and cooperative. This often unspoken threat was often the thing that kept me in line. I saw these relationships as my only hope. This I’ve since learned is another way abusers control their victims in many different relationships; threatening the loss of the relationship if there is a lack of compliance.

Shame was never far away. In my time in the mental heath system I at first resisted. I insisted that something was wrong, I reported that the drugs I was being given were not working, that I felt worse. But instead of listening to me, my complaints were dismissed. I was told that I was being resistant to the therapeutic process, I was non compliant and difficult. In other words, these therapeutic relationships were telling me the same thing I’d learned in the original trauma and abuse: that whatever the problem was in this relationship, it was stemmed from me.

And when the biological approach did not prove to be effective is when I was told that I had “personality disorders”. Now, besides this chemical imbalance in my brain my personality was also defective, that I was broken through and through to the core of my being. There was no hope offered and because of my “defects” it was justified to treat me as “less than”. 

One of the most crippling things I was told was that one of the “symptoms” of this “disease” is an inability to see it for oneself. In other words – if I could see and admit my “problem” then I was a compliant patient. If I did not agree with the way others were defining me I was non-compliant, difficult and resistant and this was further evidence of this mysterious “illness” that even my own psychiatrist admitted there were no tests or true scientific evidence of. I was broken simply because she said so. In her own words; psychiatry is more an art than a science.

In hindsight after I’d escaped the drugs and left psychiatry behind me, I realized that what I had experienced was exactly like the other abusive relationships in my life; and that I was a perfect victim for being defined in this system because I had not yet learned how to define myself.

Thankfully, like Darlene, I had the good fortune to connect with a therapist trained in trauma who supported my hidden belief that it was possible to live beyond diagnosis. This was someone who was willing to show me a different way and offer true hope. Over the next 2.5 years I was shown a healthier therapeutic relationship defined by clear boundaries vs. control and compliance. Here is where I came to understand that by learning to recognize the original lies that said I was not good enough and changing the core beliefs that told me I was powerless over my own life this – is where I began to learn that I could learn to live far beyond that place of broken.

Susan Kingsley-Smith

**Note and disclaimer from Susan: It is very dangerous to discontinue these or any other drugs without a clear understanding of the process and what happens when we go into the withdrawal process. I discontinued them because I was forced into it and I had an understanding that I was dealing with a physical withdrawal. But anyone who doesn’t understand that process could be at risk for suicide. 

Doctors do not know how to go off these drugs safely and will use the withdrawal symptoms to say “see. You’re mentally ill”. 

There’s plenty of research and evidence on this issue but there will always be those who can’t get past this part of their belief system. 

Susan’s Bio: I am a trauma survivor…but I no longer live only to survive. In 1992 after a lifetime of trauma’s ranging from physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect as a child to two violent marriages, I entered the mental health system seeking help where my lifelong history of trauma was dismissed. For over 15 years I was given a variety of “diagnosis”, numerous mind altering psychotropic drugs and a routine of weekly “talk” therapy. In the fall of 2007 I was abruptly taken off of the drugs I’d been prescribed all those years and began to reclaim both my mind and my life.

Today, I no longer accept any labels for myself and live the life of my choosing, following my dream and passion to share a message of healing and hope as I write and speak about this journey that has been my life.

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…… When someone degrades another person, they don’t love that person.  When someone constantly tells you that you are stupid, weather with words or actions or by inference, they really DO think you are stupid. They really are telling you that you are stupid. But the fog hides the blatantly obvious truth.

When I was 16 years old I had to go on the birth control pill for medical reasons. Soon after that my mother started to tell men that I was on the pill, and therefore it was okay if they wanted to “sleep” with me.  When I was 16 she said this in front of all the people at an office party, to a young man that I actually had a crush on. I was so humiliated. Consequently, a 31 year old married man in the office grabbed me and shoved his tongue down my throat in the garden of the house where the party was. I guess he thought that since she was offering me, he could just take advantage of her generosity. When I was 19 she said those same words to my cousin at the rehearsal dinner for another cousins wedding. This was mortifying for me. It was degrading and humiliating.  But the fog kept me from confronting her. The fog kept me from realizing that there was something wrong with my mother, that she would treat me this way.  And these examples are only the tip of the iceberg but the fog hides the blatantly obvious truth.

My parents divorced when I was around 13 years old. If I ever complained to my mother about anything at all she would tell me that if I didn’t like it, that I could go and live with my father.  One day I asked my father if I could come and live with him.  He said no. I was not given any explanation. I thought it was because I wasn’t worthy of his love. But in reality I know today it was because he couldn’t be bothered with me. He couldn’t be bothered being my father. He couldn’t be bothered with me when he lived with us so why would that have changed? I was in my forties, still trying to get my father to notice me, when I realized that I never really HAD a father. But the fog hides the blatantly obvious truth.

The fog is exactly that. It makes things foggy and misty and unclear. Emotional abusers create a fog through mixed messages, inconsistency, and by indicating that the person with the problem is not them. They are the model of normalcy. As for ME, however, they say that I have some obvious “issues”. I need to get my head together. I need to change. I need to smarten up. If it weren’t for me and my problems, everything would be fine.  And the message is always, if it weren’t for me, then even THEY would be fine.  This is the grooming; the training; a process of damaging the self esteem until there is no chance that I would ever get the strength to rise up or stand up to the lies and break through the fog that hides the blatantly obvious truth.

And the reason that I didn’t want to believe that it wasn’t me that was the problem, that it was in fact them, was because they had convinced me that I was not worthy of love and acceptance AND I believed it. I worked harder and harder for their unobtainable love and I believed that it was my defects that prevented me from having it.

I believed them for so long because I was afraid that they were right about me, and if they were right about me and I stood up to them anyway, that they would reject me and then my only chance of being loved would be gone. If they were in fact right about me, then no one would EVER love me. So therefore, the relationships that I had with those dysfunctional people, including the false hope and fantasy that I had for so long that one day they really would love me, were better than no relationships at all. I thought that dysfunctional family was better than no family. “Blood is thicker than water” “Family is everything” And those statements and beliefs turned out to be lies too.  

So I busted out of that deathly fog that hid the blatantly obvious truth and instead of the death that I thought the ultimate final rejection from them would bring, I found life. And I found it to the fullest.

 Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time,

Darlene Ouimet  

Founder of Emerging from Broken

Related Catagories ~ Father Daughter Relationships

Mother daughter Relationships

Sometimes I get emails and comments like the one that I got this week on the post “Mom and Grandma had a Dysfunctional Mother Daughter Relationship”  expressing feeling overwhelmed about sharing stories of the past. The comment said: “I am feeling lost right now. I feel like I have shared way too much here, and I’m feeling very vulnerable. It hurts.”  

Sharing feelings, our pain, our abuse and rejections and stories and sharing about our families makes us feel really vulnerable.  This comment got me thinking about how I felt so vulnerable and scared that I never told anyone about my first blog. There were very few comments, it had very little traffic and even though I was already speaking in mental health seminars, I never gave the name of that website out to anyone.  I was afraid of something.  I didn’t really think that much about what it was. 

Sharing in the first few months of this blog was also scary but it gets easier all the time although  once in a while, sometimes pressing the publish button still makes me feel a little uneasy.

Sharing some of my deepest and darkest moments makes me feel exposed AND it makes me feel like I am in danger. Continued……

In my healing journey I’ve learned to ask myself questions as a way of digging down into my belief system to find the roots of where these feelings and fears come from on any given subject because in doing so it usually helps me to understand why those fears and feelings are still there. 

Incest survivor, Patricia Singleton from the blog “Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker”, also shared her view on this topic. Her  comment came in when I was almost finished writing the first draft of this post, so I thought I would take it as a “hint from the universe” and share it; it is amazingly similar to what I was believe about this particular topic.

Patricia wrote: “When I share something new like I did here yesterday, I face some more of the fear that the abusers put into me to not break the silence of what they did to me.  I think, at least for me, that is why I feel overwhelmed with what I share sometimes.  I will continue to break that silence and share more and more of my story if it means that it might help another survivor to feel not alone.  When we share, it gives someone else the permission to share their stories too.”

For many of us, both as children and as adults, we were not allowed to tell the real truth. We may have had some family secrets that somehow we just knew that we were not supposed to say anything about to anyone else. There were all kinds of things that we just didn’t talk about. I thought that was being “loyal” to my family.  The mere thought of saying the wrong thing was very very scary.

There were a few things outside of family secrets that I did try to tell. Like when my grade 5 teacher was emotionally abusing me. But when I told just a few little things I was discounted, unprotected, called a story teller, and exaggerator and a liar.  I was not protected because I was not believed. Finally a medical doctor had to step in.

Then there was the time that I told about my mother’s boyfriend sneaking in my room that night. I only told because my Aunt caught him and she told first and still I was discounted and then later accused of doing something to have caused it to happen.

Sometimes I said things and I was ridiculed, sneered at or glared at.  Those were warnings. I was afraid of what might come after those sorts of comments and looks.

When I cried, I was told that if I didn’t stop crying, that I would be given something to cry about. (Do children really cry for no reason? I don’t think so, but when I was told that l cried for no reason enough times I believed that I did cry for no reason.)  What that taught me was that my feelings were invalid. That my pain was invalid and that I was not allowed to have feelings or pain. My tears were wrong.

So when I decided to share my life and my past with others, it triggered fears. It triggered fears of rejection; fears of being called a liar, story teller and an exaggerator. Sharing secrets triggers fears of being humiliated, discounted, dismissed and laughed at. Fears of being proven that maybe I am not valid. Maybe I am not worthy. Maybe no one will love me or even like me.  Maybe the abusers were right about me.

It also brings up feelings of being in danger. That danger is close. As I child I learned to guard against danger and not to bring punishment upon myself.  Feelings of being in danger bring up specific fears; that I might be punished; I might get hit, hurt, sent away or all of these things at once. These were the consequences of telling when I was a child.   

And all those fears and thoughts can flash through my memory very quickly. Familiar feelings from the past, flashing, terrifying and tearing down my self esteem, all in a few split seconds and until I really began to understand where those fears were born and raised, I was not able to stop them.  

Please share your thoughts about the fear sharing or the feelings of being exposed. Were there consequences in your childhood for telling the truth?

Exposing truth, one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

Note: Click the blue highlighted sentences within the body of the post to read the stories I am refering to.

Hope in the Darkness of Rejection

All abuse, weather it is emotional and psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse or spiritual abuse, is abuse and that these articles that I write on Emerging from Broken apply to ALL kinds of abuse.  I intentionally make a connection between depression, dissociation, multiple personality, eating disorders, addictions and other mental health struggles and abuse. It is my experience that my difficulties and struggles were birthed in how I learned my value or rather my lack of it. The following article is not just about mother daughter dysfunctional relationship. It is about ALL dysfunctional relationship. How it starts in childhood, how it goes from there. How it ends up in coping methods that although necessary for survival, become self destructive.

The subject of not wanting the abuser to leave me and wondering why they did is SO complicated! For me, one of the things it has to do with is compliance and how much of my life that I spent trying harder for them. The deeper that I look at the roots of my belief system, the more that I can figure out where things got off the track.  First of all there are the tons and tons of mixed and conflicting messages that we get both from right sources and wrong sources. They all kind of go into the same pot and they mesh with each other. Remember the story of how when my mother declared that it was my fault that her boyfriend came in my room in the night to sexually assault me because I had a crush on him. Well because my self esteem was already so damaged that I believed her, I added that self blame to everything that ever happened to me before that event. Then there were a few things in my past where I was not such a perfect child, like the time I faked the nightmare for attention, and when a child is a mere child, it doesn’t take much for things to get really mixed up in the memory, the mind and then in the belief system. The grid that we try to process things through, gets damaged.

I had to look at the “foundational foundation” to start with.  That is the belief that we need and depend on whoever our caregivers are for our very lives, protection, security, the things that children need to grow into healthy adults. And when something happens that alters those basic needs, we have a problem.  We get this split belief about love somewhere along the way and we start to believe that love is something that it isn’t. My mother taught me my value, she taught me the version of LOVE that she believed, but it isn’t real love. So I think that what she is doing is love, and I used to say “I know she loves me, I know she is doing her best”.. but today I know differently.  She doesn’t love me at all. She uses me to make her feel better about herself. But it doesn’t work and it isn’t good enough and it hurts me every time.  Where is the love in that? Part of my recovery was realizing what love is and what it is not.  

When I told my mother that I was not willing to have a relationship on her terms, she finally asked me what “my terms” were. I told her that from now on she could no longer say that I had a crush on her boyfriend when I was just a kid and that was why he came in my room in the night. AND I told her that I was sick of having to prove to her husband that I liked him. I guess my terms were too high.

She was silent. She did not respond to any of the “terms” I stated. Then she told ME to think about our talk and get back to her and I said no mom, you can think about it and get back to me. I could write a whole other blog post about how everything was always up to me but that particular time I had given her MY terms, what the heck was I supposed to think about?  That was the last time that we spoke.

And the message that I got from her withdrawal was that I was not worth her trying for. If I was going to draw boundaries and demand equal value then forget it. She said NO. The message was that I was only good for kicking around. If she had to respect me, then she didn’t want to be bothered with me at all. And that message meant to me that I am NOT worth it. After all the years of loyalty and compliance. After keeping my mouth shut about her boyfriends ~  I wasn’t worth her effort. I had never stood up to her all those years. I didn’t dump HER. I put up with all of the degrading in front of the whole world. I stood silent when she told men they could sleep with me because I was on the pill even though I was only a teenager! I didn’t even tell the family therapist (we had to go because my brother got arrested) what was really going on in our home or how she treated me. I let her take me to bars as a man magnet when I was 17 and I never said a word; I followed HER one sided definition of love and loyalty and I kept thinking that one day it would pay off ~ AND she dumped ME! It was incomprehensible! This was just the most unbelievable “thing” for me to try and comprehend. I was such a GOOD VICTIM and it was all for NOTHING? Because when it came right down to it, I was not worth her effort.

And it feels like rejection, because IT IS REJECTION.

As the months went by I felt more and more shock and disbelief as these truths sunk in. But something else was happening. I realized that I didn’t miss the abuse. I didn’t miss having to constantly do damage control and make sure SHE was okay. I didn’t miss having the joy sucked out of every single exciting moment in my life.  I didn’t miss the put downs, the insults, the sexual innuendos or the family problems that she caused with her gossip and trouble making. I didn’t miss the anxiety.

And I started to grow. I started to come out of the fog in a much bigger way; I had so much more clarity about the truth and realized how many lies about myself that I had accepted.

This whole story does not just apply to parents; I had a couple of boyfriends who fit this same pattern. Oh and a few friends too. And employers…………. well you get the picture.

Please share your journey, struggles or victories or whatever you need to share for your recovery.

Exposing Truth one snapshot (or two) at a time

Darlene Ouimet

Founder of Emerging from Broken

Related Posts: The little girl who Cried Wolf  ~ Belief system development

Sexual Abuse ~ Devlaued, Discounted, Unprotected

More on Mother Daughter Dysfunctional Relationship (and the comments)

another year bites the dust

Today is a new day and we are close to beginning a whole New Year! In the past I liked New Years because it always seemed like a new chance for a new beginning, but the past couple of “New Years” my thoughts are different; I thought that 2009 was the best year ever, and now I think 2010 was the best year ever so this year I am celebrating that I had a GREAT YEAR, and celebrating that I know 2011 is going to be the best year ever too. =) I am not thrilled to say good bye to 2010 but yet I’m super excited to welcome 2011.

Emerging from Broken was born out of my life long quest for recovery from depression, abuse,  (sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse, spiritual abuse) and from mental health struggles and from the resulting dissociative identity disorder and other coping methods that I had been using and trying to overcome my entire life.  I had been told that depression was not curable, only treatable. For some reason, I didn’t believe it. Both my mother and grandmother had suffered chronic depressions and my mother had prepared me for a lifetime of that struggle too, but I kept seeking a solution.  I remember this little flame of hope ~ this tiny voice within me that said “NO” I don’t believe that. I am SURE there is a cure ~ a permanent solution, a way to live in fullness in the way that I was sure we are meant to live ~ like a birthright. I almost gave up before I found it but I am happy to say that I persisted just long enough. (the key was in finding the truth)

To be more accurate, Emerging from Broken was born out of my victory over all those things. When I finally knew that I was free, that I had found a new way to deal with depressions, addictions and coping methods, I wanted to share the message of hope with you all.  I wanted to tell the world that healing and recovery is possible, freedom from depression in all its many forms, is possible, that living in fullness and purpose is really possible because I live there now. (the key was in finding the truth)

Recovery from abuse of any kind is a journey of many levels, twists and turns. There are hills, valleys, scary caves, dark forests, bright clearings, majestic mountains and dark creepy forests. There are rivers to be forged, and oceans to be crossed and there are peaceful ponds to rest by on lovely sunny days, after stormy nights filled with thunder and lightning. 

Today I like it all. I see the beauty in the journey. I see the progression to wholeness takes all of this and sometimes even more.  It takes willingness and courage. It takes determination and decision. It takes resolution, strength and stick-to-itiveness. It takes hope and belief.

I didn’t think I had any of those things! I didn’t think I had courage OR strength; I didn’t even think I had WORTH ~ but I did. I had all of them ~ some were weak and buried deep but they budded, blossomed and grew and they continue to grow and flourish as I keep going forward..  Deep down I had all these qualities and you have them too.  

So it is with excited anticipation that I say good bye to 2010 tonight and welcome 2011. I do things differently today; I live differently. I live in the truth. I like myself and I believe in myself. I am on the journey with myself and no longer dissociated and I am enjoying getting to know the real me. This is my hope for you too.

As I reflect back on the past year, and anticipate this New Year, I am grateful. I didn’t have community in the most difficult part of my journey and wished I had had that so I have created it here in Emerging from Broken for all of us; it helps me stay the path also. I am grateful for each one of the readers, guest post bloggers, commenters and contributors because my life is enriched by each of you. You give me a reason to share. You help me fulfill my purpose. You inspire me and encourage me. I thank you.

Happy New Year.

Wishing you a year filled with Truth ~ then Love will follow

Darlene Ouimet

Related Posts ~ “Before I faced the pain, I had to face the lies”

                            ~ Getting to the Turth ~ an audio by C.Enevoldsen and myself

                            ~ I held the key to my freedom ~ by Susan Kingsley Smith

Healing and Holidays

Throughout the years of trying to change, I tried many things; in fact I tried almost everything that was suggested to me to try. Seminars, self help books, 12 step programs, I tried holistic medicine, cleanses, meditation, medication, vacations; I tried diet plans, fitness plans, naturopathic medicine, homeopathic medicine, you name it I likely tried it. Most of them became another obsession and another way to escape. And I am not saying that any of it was useless, just that none of it got me that much farther ahead. ALL of it was pointing me in the right direction towards emotional healing, but it just wasn’t the entire answer.

(NOTE: Something I noticed in the editing process of this post is that I opened this post with; “Throughout the years of trying to change” ~ See how deeply it goes? I never considered that I was trying to HEAL, just that I was trying to “change” as though I needed to “change” in order to be “okay” when in reality I was trying to give up coping methods without understanding why they were born.)

I was thinking about all the things I had tried attempting to enhance my recovery because of the quote I posted as a mental health tip on the emerging from broken facebook page. This is the quote: “Do not wait; the time will never be “just right”. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”  Napoleon Hill

I thought about this one thing that I told myself when I was trying to stay out of this coping method that was escaping into a fantasy life that I really loved to live in. The fantasy world was what I thought to be a “safe escape” but I was spending so much time there that I knew it was becoming self harming and destructive and that it wasn’t really helping me get where I really wanted to go.  I tried very hard to notice when I was going into that fantasy world, trying to catch myself before I was immersed in the depth of disconnection from reality. And I remember that for a long time I would tell myself “just this once more”.  I would promise myself that I would only escape there one more time.  I would plead and convince myself that it was not harmful, that it didn’t hurt anyone… that one more time would not really change or damage anything.

I did this with almost every coping method that I ever tried to give up.  I did it with binge eating. I did it with purging when I was bulimic. I did it with skipping my fitness programs when I was finally doing them for the right reasons. I even did it when I was going into a self berating spin and trying to learn to stop myself from beating myself up. I told myself that I would start tomorrow. Tomorrow would be the first day of my new life. Tomorrow I would make the necessary changes.

I did almost anything I could to avoid progressing into “better mental health”.

And when I finally noticed that I was doing this avoidance technique, I finally started looking at what I was avoiding. Why was I so afraid to STAY in reality? What was I avoiding taking a look at? What exactly was I trying so hard to escape from? WHY did I have so many coping methods?

And the answer, (or at least the root of the answer) of course was ME ~ I was trying to escape me. I was trying to avoid facing me but NOT for the reasons that I thought; 

Deep down I really truly believed that I was the problem and that was why I could empathize with you and see your value ~ I could validate you and try to convince you that you didn’t deserve whatever happened to you, but I could not see that for me. The reason I was so afraid to face reality was because I was afraid that I would find out that I HAD NO REAL VALUE and I was avoiding finding that out.

I had to stop running from that fatal lie and when I did, that is when everything began to change. That was when I began to emerge from broken. That was when I finally turned that corner and began to progress into the new life that I live now.

How does this resonate with you? I find this stuff MUCH harder at holiday times of the year. Please feel welcome to share your thoughts and comments.

Darlene Ouimet

p.s. this is a process and I am not perfect.  When I was almost but not quite finished writing this blog post, I jumped up and grabbed some crackers out of the pantry. I got some raspberry jam and cream cheese out of the fridge and proceeded to make myself an afternoon snack. When I thought about what I had been doing when I decided I needed the snack, and that I wasn’t really hungry, I realized that for some reason sharing this post with you made me want to escape. And that is very much what it looks like for me ~ I suddenly feel like “running”.

Do I worry about it? No….. well at least not nearly as much as I used to… it is all part of the process of emotional recovery. I often feel insecure about writing the things I write and lately I have been looking at some of the unhealthy ways that I deal with those thoughts and insecurities.  And so today I decided to actually tell you. =)

Due to the depth of the comments on this post I wrote a follow up post which you can read by clicking the post title: “Before I faced the Pain I had to face the lies”

What makes love real love?

Everything had a double meaning in my mind; almost all definitions that had to do with relationships had two opposite meanings to me and when I found this truth at the roots of my belief system and began to sort it out, I found some real freedom. I found out that I had learned to accept a lot of false truth about a lot of word meanings.

Take love for instance;  I believed in fairy tale romance, and believed that there would be a prince charming saviour type guy ride in on his trusty steed and sweep me off my feet and then life would be good. Then I would be good enough. I would be loved. Life would begin! Maybe I got that idea from fairy tales, I am not really sure, but I certainly held the belief inside me somewhere. The belief that I could be rescued and that love would be the cure for everything.

But there is another side to what I believe about “love.” For the trauma survivor or the person who suffers with depression, we also have a whole other different belief system about “love”.  Some of us have been taught (in words or in actions) that love is dangerous, frightening and hurtful.  Some of us have been taught (in actions or in consequences) that love is physically painful and terrifying.  Our personal reaction to being loved by someone else largely depends on what our belief system has become about the words and the emotion of “love”. And about how we feel about ourselves as a result of our past experience with it.

In my case I had polar opposite belief systems about love. In my fantasy world, love could cure all evil, love was the answer, love was all I needed. Songs like “If I had you…; you’re the only one that I would ever need “ or “I can’t live is living is without you”; “you are the sunshine of my life” or “All I need is the air that I breath and to love you” oh yeah baby, he (his love) would be the answer to everything.

In reality however, at least in my reality, love hurts, love is mean, love means nothing. I love you means obligation, ownership, disrespect, putting up with being devalued, manipulated and accepting that I am not as important and my needs are not important, but only the person who says that they love me, is important.  This is quite a mixed message and makes love a word charged with many different feelings and fears that are triggered just hearing the words.

My therapist told me that he loved me. I felt extremely uncomfortable and wanted to leave. I thought love was physical. I was sure that I had no choice about it. When I was very fragile, I felt powerless to say no to physical love. In many ways and for many years I didn’t know that I had a choice. I also believed that if someone loved me (even in the wrong definition of love) it was my fault. So good or bad, I believed that I brought everything on myself. Quite an illusion of control, which I thought kept me safe, but also quite a burden of responsibility which was not safe at all.

There was so much really bad stuff around the word love. My mind had been conditioned to believe that love was the most wonderful thing and the answer to everything, but the truth was that most bad things had happened to me under the disguise of love and “I love you” and “because I love you” and “I want what is best for you”. I also thought that romantic love had a lot of physical obligation attached to it. Sex was the price that I had to pay for love. (but was it REALLY love)

I love you is a phrase that is thrown carelessly around; When a child wants love and acceptance so deeply it becomes easy to ignore the red flags from some people and it is also very easy to accept the wrong definition of love.

It helped me immensely to realize that I had the wrong definition of love all along. It also helped me to realize that controllers and abusers NEVER love you with the same definition of love that they want you to follow when it comes to them. 

I thought about the things that I had to do to prove my love and thought about it “they” ever “proved theirs”. I thought about this a lot. If love means that you do what they want, then when will they do what I want? The truth is that love isn’t about doing what someone else wants. It isn’t about being who someone else wants either. I had to learn about what love really is in order to sort myself out. This was one very damaged area in my belief system that was full of lies.  At the root of this was the KEY fact that I did not love myself at all.

I started to ask myself; If love is doing what is best for the one loved then what would that look like in practice? (Remember that self love is a key part of the healing process. Remember that you may also have to think about the definition of “best”.)

 Looking at these complicated and yet logical viewpoints got me a long way out of the love fog I was in and really helped me to realize who loved me and who didn’t. It also gave me some practical application tools when it came to my relationships and with my children.

And when I was able to apply the true definition of love to myself, everything came together.

Please share your experience with the false definition of love, or how you came to feel about the concept of love.

Another little snapshot.

Darlene Ouimet

Related Posts: emotional abandonment, rejection and recovery

                             Invalidation ~ when the truth is not true

                              The problem with Love ~ Fi MacLeod from “you can fly with broken wings”

When I decided to tell the Chris Story ~ the story about how Prince Charming was a Murder Suspect, I intended to write one post. I intended to keep the focus about my belief system, and highlight the fact that I missed and or ignored the red flags because of learned unworthiness issues resulting from child abuse and child sexual abuse and invalidation.  That was the first post.

But the commenter’s and private e-mailers wanted more. They wanted to know what kinds of red flags exactly. I could see the benefit of sharing more of the details and highlighting the actual red flags, and for sharing a bit about my rational for disregarding the danger signs.  So that was the second post. 

As I write this post, I have not yet published the second post “Dangerous Men, Red Flags, Victim Mentality”.  When I finished writing that post and did my final read on it, I felt stupid. I thought I was really lame for missing so many of those blatant red flags.  And worse than that, the way that second post reads I didn’t really miss them; I just ignored them. I considered not publishing the post.  I felt insecure. I felt “dumb”. I felt like no one else would have EVER been so stupid as to stay with that guy knowing everything that I knew. This is exactly the type of thinking that kept me in the cycle of abuse and in victim mindset, covering up for the things I think are MY fault instead of exposing HIM and telling my truth.

I questioned myself, “what the heck was wrong with me back then?? How could I have let that stuff go? How could I have gotten into that relationship and then left myself, in that situation? What was so great about “that guy” that I didn’t dump him?  What the heck did I think was going to happen?

And I heard the thoughts behind the thoughts ~ “I didn’t think, I didn’t care, I didn’t know; he could have changed, he had been damaged and he needed me, what if I was wrong about him? What if he killed me if I tried to dump him? What if he was the best that I could ever do? What if I dumped him and found myself alone for the rest of my life……. Sometimes he was sweet, sometimes he was tender. He was charming. He looked like a movie star… he called me “baby”. 

And the even deeper thoughts~ playing detective was exciting. It was a way of proving to myself that I really DID have a brain. Being afraid of him was thrilling. Getting away with knowing that he didn’t know that I knew….  (When danger has been a part of a sexual abuse history, sometimes danger is a turn on; danger is familiar. And in this particular story I find it interesting to note that I was NOT at all sexually attracted to this guy, so the thrill of danger had more to do with validation.)  

Sometimes I tell myself that I am just making excuses for myself. (which also comes from upbringing) During that time with Chris I had dissociative identity disorder. Since I have recovered from DID, I look back and see it differently now then I used to. One of the things that I did that is common for anyone who dissociates, (not just dissociative identity with multiple personality) is that I “separated incidents”. I did not put all the incidents and red flag events concerning Chris, in my mind at the same time. In a way I put them through separate filters. I believed that each one was separate and had nothing to do with the other one. I disconnected each red flag from the prior red flag. Think of it this way; each event or red flag had its own sealed envelope. In my mind, none of the red flags were related. That was how I learned to cope with child sexual abuse. I broke off from myself, and left my body. And I learned an intricate system of coping; disconnecting and separating related events, too scary to look at, too scary to stop, too powerless to stand up for myself. That is how I learned to deal with life; by separating incidents and by disconnecting.  And so ~ there I was, all grown up in a dangerous relationship with a dangerous man, disconnected and ignoring all the red flags.

(And it is by reconnecting first with myself and then with the events that I discounted and ignored and eventually blamed myself for, that I became whole again.)

The desire to make excuses for myself has its roots in the same belief system that I write about all the time. As a child I believed that I could change, and if I changed then I would be loved.  So I felt insecure about telling the story because I grew up being told (Not always in words) that I was wrong; that I had a faulty memory and that I was the real problem. I was trained to keep the secret; don’t bring any shame on the family and I was told (not always in words) to find a way to cope with it myself.  I was also pretty young when I believed if there was a problem that I caused it, made it up or exaggerated it or misunderstood it and I learned that the best coping method of all was to disconnect myself from it.

But I have learned that I am not the problem. I am not the one that made things up or twisted the truth around, (other than in my own mind in order to cope with it); I did not exaggerate, and if anything I diminish the stories; I do not have to keep any secrets; I am NOT wrong and there is nothing wrong with my memory. So I published that post. And I am publishing this one too!

Thanks to everyone who has shared these posts on facebook or other sites and to everyone who has participated in conversations here and on the Emerging from Broken facebook page.

Please feel free to add your thoughts, feelings and stories.

Keep striving to move forward!

Darlene Ouimet