There is Only One Hero: And its You

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

There are some things I AM powerless over but one of those things...is NOT me.

One of - if not THE key issue for survivors of childhood oppression, abuse and neglect is that of feeling powerless.

But for me - I didn't know I felt powerless AND I'd been told by well meaning, albeit unhelpful, folks and programs of the past that I was powerless...

to let go...

let god...

and wish, pray and hope that life just kind of worked itself out and...

that there was nothing I could do.

That I was simply an observer and had to stop trying to "control" things. 

The thing is and was that this never helped me to escape the pain that drove my misery. 

Accepting being mistreated is not acceptable. 

Accepting a life of "less than"...

is not acceptable. 

In this frame of mind - that I was powerless over my life and the things that left me feeling abused, unhappy and generally discontent and 

miserable

I was stuck. 

After all - if I am powerless...what is there for me to do? 

If I cant "make" others treat me well and life be fair...

well, what the hell? 

This was that place where my focus was on what was going on AROUND ME...

instead of what was going on within me. 

It was in understanding the difference between what I was truly powerless over...

People, places and things outside of myself

And what I DID have power over....

My beliefs, thoughts, feelings, emotions and choices...

that enabled me to shift from feeling powerless to understanding the meaning of...

being empowered....

from the inside out. 

From the Archives

Be Your Own Hero

Have to's, Shoulds and Can'ts....I felt Powerless

I Held the Key to My Freedom

"story"? Or "Story"?

The Power Within

I. Am. Not. Powerless.

“Sometimes we get stuck focusing on the maltreatment and wanting what’s fair before we move on. Waiting for justice distracts us from doing things that are beneficial to us--like healing. We can’t change what already happened, but we can change the way we respond to those things. The abuse taught us to think like a victim waiting for rescue, but as adults, we’re empowered to rescue ourselves.” ~Christina Enevoldsen from www.overcomingsexualabuse.com

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It Wasn't Me

This morning I tweeted this little ditty...


Understanding that there is a reason why I/my life was f**d up is different than when I make it an excuse that it is still f**d up.


Whaa at?


Heres the thing...


When I thought the problem was ME 


ie that I was sick, disordered, bad, wrong, defective, a bitch, a (fillintheblankdad)...


I lived in that place where I had to justify myself, my existence, my thoughts, feelings and choices.


Why?


Because I had a really difficult time shouldering the burden that something was WRONG with me was the "why" behind my life being a shipwreck.


And why did I carry this burden of proof of my f****ed-upedness?


Because I was taught from an early age that whatever was wrong was my fault.


That I was not and never would be "good enough".


That I never did, never could and never would do anything "right enough".


I was being blamed for what was wrong by those who modeled the world and how to view it to me. 


I was taught that its not nice to blame mother and father for what they did to me but rather


that what they did to me I caused it, was responsible to fix whatever it was that made me do whatever it was that I did that made them do what they did.


So naturally I grew up believing that blaming was "normal".


Well, as I grew up and started my own life I of course engaged with the bigger world from that perspective.


There was always someone or something or some reason why I did what I did or didn't do.


This was that place where I was stuck in "story" and could not yet get to my "Story" in my healing journey.


It was when I gave back that burden and realized that the state of the union was NOT my fault...and it was not my responsibility to fix it that I was able to understand that my "normal" ie blaming things outside of myself for the crappy state of my life was not really "normal" aka "healthy"...nor helpful.


So...


When I was able to let go of feeling responsible for everyone and everything else that was wrong in the world and my relationships...


I was able to understand the difference between understanding that my past life experiences were the reason my life was f***ed up and...


using my past as a reason why it is still f***ed up.


Learning to live beyond broken, learning to live beyond trauma, pain and past wounds came down to understanding that someone WAS responsible for why my life was f***ed up...


And that it wasn't me.


Learning to let go of that burden of proof allowed me to learn to let go of the pain of the past and begin to see that while I could not change the past...


I could learn how to live beyond it. 


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 Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

The Issue is not the Issue

Its in the struggle that we find our strength.

"Stress" is an emotional response to external stressors. Understanding this helped me to understand the difference between being able to bounce back from life issues vs breaking under the weight of what I'd carried as a survivor of really bad things. (SRBT:))

Its like my emotional resilience is a rubber band that balances the events called "life". 

If I only have life experiences that allow me to develop minimal emotional resiliency I won't have the ability to bounce back from normal, let alone abnormal, life experiences. 

In essence I have a very thin, weak rubber band instead of a bunch of rubberbands that I'd gathered through many different life experiences that would hold heavier burdens of life.

My thin rubber band will easily bend and bow to the weight of the burden it is holding and in time become frayed or even snap. 

As a survivor of childhood nastiness and parents who did not have their own healthy, strong emotional bunch of rubber bands developed from extended and consistant use of their emotional muscles, they passed to me not only the burden of being responsible for making their emotional stress levels easier to manage but they also modeled this way of managing - ie not managing via avoiding - levels of stress.

In other words - I learned that my survival depended on my ability to do the dance and "make" my adult parents "ok" and that I was safe only when I eased their emotional stress by not allowing myself to experience any of my own emotions in response to my own life stressors and experiences. 

Because -  of course - a child's emotional needs become a stressor to parents who don't understand that emotions are normal and that their child isn't doing anything "to" them.  

My parents modeled "stress management" by the way they engaged with life through avoidance/control coping instead of embracing life experiences and learning from them.

I did did not learn of or that I was capable of developing emotional resilience because my parents modeled emotional avoidance and punished emotional expression.

So as a child, then teen and finally adult - when I felt powerless over my thoughts, feelings and emotions I saw the stressors of life - the people, places, things and circumstances outside of myself as the problem and - avoidance of stressors the solution.

Life was my problem. 

Avoidance in any way, shape or form was the solution.

The downside?

Trying to control how I feel by controlling things outside of my control created a very tight and limited life experience.

I could not tolerate the downside of life but whats more - is I typically could not engage in the positive life experiences or emotions either.

And this became overwhelmingly exhausting - to the point that eventually I completely shut down and wore myself out physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

I could no longer cope because I had exhausted all of the coping skills I had access to.

My rubberband was stretched to the max and quickly being stretched beyond its limited capacity.

The other downside?

My efforts to avoid things I couldn't control often left me feeling even more powerless.

When I could no longer control people places and things to be "ok"....is when I created ways to avoid this stress through


acting out...

where I attempted to control others by blaming them for causing my distress and demanding that they adjust so I could continue to avoid my feelings of powerlessness or escape by running away from situations that were less than my ideal.

I blamed life circumstances for the state of my miserable life.

I could not see that I held the power to change my circumstances by changing my choices - because I did not know I had any other choices or the power to choose.

And acting in...

where I went when I was overwhelmed with trying to do this dance.

It was when I learned to see these life experiences as life lessons

that I learned that I could grow.

It was in embracing the emotional responses to past stressors that I began to live beyond the pain of the past.

My magical thinking from a childhood that required me to adapt to those who controlled my survival had left me ill prepared to understand the very grown up understanding that 

Life Happens. 

When my focus became learning to be ok in spite of what was going on around me is when my need to act out, lash out, run away or freeze...

simply ceased to be an issue.

When I began to see the life issues that could send me spinning...were really 

not the issue.

But that the issue was how I'd learned to see myself as powerless...

is when I began to see that I was no longer a victim and that I could learn to live far beyond survival, coping, managing and in general - avoiding life and the feelings my today life could trigger from my past life where I truly was powerless. 

What I've come to understand is that my expectation that life be perfect in order for me to be ok is a normal response to living in and coming from an environment that told me I was less than, incapable, defective, broken, never enough AND if life wasn't perfect -it was because of something I'd done; it was my fault.

This healing thing is a journey and sometimes I used to think that because I wasn't perfect I was therefore not enough; I wasn't good enough, couldn't do anything right enough to finally be accepted.

I dried up; I didn't know who I was or how to find "me" in the mess that had become my life; I'd been stuck in that dance of dependence for so long I didn't know if I'd ever find my way out. 

I was still waiting for someone to pat me on the head, toss some holy water over each shoulder and announce to the world that I was no longer broken; I was waiting for permission to exist.

What I've since learned is that in finding my power by learning to recognize why I felt so broken and how it showed up in my life is how I've come to realize that I'm not broken at all.

Just wounded.

And in finding this truth I found the power to find and heal myself by learning to recognize that when I'm lost in life's issues....

thats really not the issue.

In other words...the issue is not that life is my problem...

but in how I've learned to engage with life as it happens.

Learning to live beyond that place of broken is the hard work of this healing journey.

Its where I learned to fly.
~


The Story of the Emperor Moth tells of a man who desperately wanted to "help" this magnificent being to escape the bondage of its chrysalis. When we try to avoid the struggle is when we are most easily crippled.

This is how we do it... talks about how I discovered what the "hard work" was and how I came to understand that to go through the pain was the only way out of it.


 Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

Ambivalence As A Survival Skill

I like looking for solutions.

But - part of looking for a solution - means that a problem has to be identified.

This past week over at Emerging From Broken Christina Enevoldsen, founder of popular website and private forum, Overcoming Sexual Abuse, shared part of her journey at our mutual friend Darlene Ouimets blog, Emerging From Broken, and how she learned to identify the dysfunctional family relationships that had shaped both her sense of self and the way she viewed and interacted with the world. 

There's tons of great information in this post (and any other of her posts at her website) but one thing I wanted to point out is how she identified that push/pull that can be so damaging to our relationships as survivors.

Here's an excerpt on this issue of ambivalence in her relationship with her mother; what it looks like and the purpose it serves:


As long as I saw her as all bad, there was nothing to grieve. 


I’d only seen her goodness when I was a child and I was seeing only her badness now.  

I was terrified that if I allowed myself to see her good side, I’d want a relationship with her and I would be exposed to more rejection.

As a child, it was normal to compartmentalize my relationships this way. It was safe; it kept me from more disappointment and pain. 

And it was normal that this would be how I would view ALL of my relationships: through the lense of expectation that others would cause me pain.

It was normal that my adult relationships looked so much like the ones from my childhood and that conflicting feeling of

I love you so much. (I need you to feel safe, to be ok)

and

I hate you, leave me alone, go away. (Usually with a few choice names thrown in:))


It was NORMAL for me to view the world in 


black


and


white.


Because that is how it was in the dysfunction that I came from. 

I was seen as good or bad based on if I'd done whatever I was expected to do and did it right enough or good enough, based on the ever changing rules that were arbitrary at best. And no matter how hard I tried 

it was never 

enough.

I was taught that I was either right enough or good enough based on someone elses determination but for some reason known only to those who modeled this way of engaging with the world as "normal"....I was never

just enough.

Raise a child in the way he should go

and when he is old

he will not depart from it. 

So

the problem was that I was stuck in that dance of seeing my relationships

and myself

through the dark lense of

all bad

or the blinders that let me see it as all good...

aka denial

and nothing in between. 

In this post by Christina over at Emerging From Broken she takes us into the process of how she was able to reconstruct her view from black and white to that place where she was able to see her past, her relationships and her life 

in living color.

~

zebras

polka dots

and plaids:)

You may also like....

The Relationships That Shaped My Life...and What I Learned From Them


Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

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It is Never Too Late...

Here's something I wonder about...


We know and have acknowledged that emotional and mental distress is a normal response to abnormal life circumstances. 

Research shows the correlation of distressful environments and trauma to mental health diagnosis. 

Yet - those who suffer are labeled as "ill", "sick", "diseased" and "disordered"....while those who are the cause and source of the trauma, oppression, abuse and neglect are often not and if they are - they often use this as an excuse to continue to perpetrate this dysfunction in their families instead of as a reason for their own pain and to find a path to wholeness and healing.

Then as we enter the healing journey we are perhaps classified or identify ourselves as victims. 

and this is true - I was a victim

but I am no more.

We have learned to survive...

but often not how to live beyond that.

Diagnosis is used as an end all; a reason for

"this is why I'm messed up"

instead of the beginning of a map to take us beyond "messed up".

We are taught coping skills and avoidance tactics to manage symptoms of these diagnosis that are said to be ingrained, inbred and unchangeable.

How do I know this?

Because I've BTDT. :))

Thats been there, done that :) 

I resided in the mental health system that for nearly 2 decades told me that I was my problem; that my brain was broken.

I was also told that I was the problem why "therapy" and the drugs never worked.

I was "resistant"

"difficult, diseased, disordered and finally - dysthymic"...meaning I would never be "better". 


That forever I would have this heavy cloud and fog overshadowing every moment 


of every day. 


And because I did not know any different 

I accepted this as my "truth".

It was my "normal" to allow others to define me and direct my life and how I viewed my reality.

Today though?

I no longer accept or identify with the idea that I am sick

or ill

or diseased, defective or disordered.

And I am most definitely not

"dysthymic". :))

Instead

I've chosen a different path

one that leaves me feeling empowered and enabled.

A path that has brought me to my "best life"....

The one I choose for myself and create

every day. 

So today...

I no longer wish for a miracle

because I am one. :))

My passion is to share a message of hope, healing and self discovery that it is completely possible to learn to live far beyond that place of broken and 


that it is never too late to learn to create 


and live 


our best life. 

Every day. 

Check the archives...

To Thine Own Self Be True (links to this 3 part series is in this post as well:))

I Am Not a Can of Soup (talking about labels:))

I've Got a Feeling! (this post talks about the language we use that defines our reality:))

Def:empower-empou-r-verb (this post discusses what it means to "empower" ourselves:))

And my wish for you.....I Hope you Dance... :))

The purpose of this blog....

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Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

Def: empower |emˈpou(-ə)r| verb

Every now and then a catch phrase comes along that it seems like everyone starts tossing around.
Sort of like the Charlie Sheen thing going on lately....
Winning!
In the self help and personal development sites one of those catch phrases that I've seen being tossed around and often tossed out as having no real meaning is Self Empowered.
Yet, when I found my way out of that dark place and began to make my way to the light that I live in today - the only word that could describe how I felt was
empowered.
So today I thought I might just suggest that if this catch phrase self empowered is one that has lost some meaning to you that it might be helpful to take a look at the literal meaning of it that perhaps we can reclaim some of the real meaning behind this journey and the hope that is our fuel that pushes us to continue when things are the darkest before the dawn. 
empower |emˈpou(-ə)r|verb [ trans. ]give (someone) the authority or power to do something : nobody was empowered to sign checks on her behalf.• enable (someone) to do (something) : cryptography will empower individuals to control their information.• [ trans. ] make (someone) stronger and more confident, esp. in controlling their life and claiming their rights : movements to empower the poor.DERIVATIVESempowerment noun
In the verb tense of the word empower we can see that the word empower on its own is to give someone authority; to enable someone to do something, to make someone stronger...
which is great if someone could give us healing, peace of mind and a sense of well being.
So when we look for the missing link from someone else to give us what we are looking for to make that shift we are dependent on other people, places and things to fall in line to provide us with our healing...
then we add the word that makes this that catch phrase that gets tossed around and if we don't look at it in its full context can lose its meaning...
Self empowered.
So if we look at creating and living a self empowered life - what we are really doing is saying that we no longer must depend on someone else to give us the authority to find our answers and create our solutions and instead can say...
I have the power, the authority to enable myself to feel stronger and more confident and...
I am taking the power that is already mine to create and live the life of my choosing.

Being self empowered to me then means many things like...

knowing my resources and using them... instead of waiting for someone else to figure out what I need and give it to me.

Being self empowered to me means learning about the tools and life skills that can help me overcome the past and create the future that I want for myself....instead of waiting for someone to tell me what to do to help myself. 

Being self empowered means learning how to recognize where I'm weak and the steps to take to become stronger in my life, my sense of self and my journey.

Being self empowered to me means taking back my life, asking for what I need, being responsible for the outcome of my journey instead of blaming or making excuses for why I can't ever have the life I want for myself...

Harsh...I know; but honestly, this is what it came down to for me. 

Being self empowered means taking the action and asking the questions to move myself from where I am to where I want to be. 

Questions like, whats missing? What don't I know how to do? Where can I get this knowledge? What actions do I need to take to obtain this knowledge? How can I apply this knowledge to my journey? 

Finding my own answers is where I found my own power.

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!


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