"Resistance" Is Not a Bad Thing

Often in the dysfunctional relationships from my past I'd been told that I was "making" someone angry, sad, disappointed...and so on.

In other words...

I was somehow responsible for making others feel ok about themselves

by changing who I was...

what I thought

felt

or did

in order for them to be ok...

and for me to feel safe.

I Didn't Know That I Didn't Know I was Abused is a post I wrote last year on learning to recognize that my "normal" - was not normal.

And as I entered the mental health system and having left it behind me...


I realized that those who needed me to fit the role of "ill"...

sick, disordered, diseased and so on...said similar things to me.

"You are resistant, difficult, lacking insight..." and so on.

In other words - I was responsible for why their "therapies"were ineffective. In order to make them, their position and their "treatments" somehow more valid...I had to learn to accept responsibility for their failure to find and apply effective therapies.


I was required to embrace the way they defined me - instead of them as the professional finding effective ways to meet me where I was and help me find my way to where they thought I should be.

What I have since come to understand...

is that this "resistance"

saved my life

and set me free

from being manipulated, controlled, shamed, shaped and defined by those who have not yet defined themselves and confirmed that they needed to define me

in order to validate themselves and justify the failures of their "treatments".

Power and control is never ok.


Resistance

is not futile.

:)


May is "Mental Health Awareness Month". Join the resistance; say "NO" to abusive and manipulative "therapies" and "treatments". If you have experienced oppression or abuse in your own therapy relationships the first thing is to understand it is not your "fault" that a therapy model or therapeutic relationship did not work well for you. 


It is only in no longer accepting this as "normal" in our healing journeys that it will ever be considered "not normal" by society. If your therapist or treatment provider has ever used a "power play" to enforce your compliance to therapies or treatments I'd like to hear your story. You can write to me at: nolongeravictim1@gmail.com 


There is a difference between being resistant to change and being resistant to being forced to accept that you are defective or somehow at fault for a therapeutic failure. We all learn in different ways and it is wrong for anyone to attempt to shame you into accepting their process as valid over your own. An ethical therapist will never discount you.


We are all capable to create and live our best life; no one is broken forever. 


Don't let anyone tell you any differently.


Especially if they have credentials behind their name. 

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

Photo Credit

I Held the Key to My Freedom...

Photo Credit

This healing journey is truly a journey; there is no "event" where we can stand at the threshold of our new life and say "I have arrived". It is a process, step by step, moment by moment of developing the conscious awareness and insight that sets us free and creates the change that changes our lives....

There came a day when I realized I was reacting to my life as if I was still the helpless child at the mercy of those who tormented me. It was in this day I realized I held the power to take my life back from my abusers by refusing to let what they did keep me prisoner in my mind any longer. 


It was in realizing that today's distress was caused by the meaning and story I told myself in my mind and that I held the key to open the door to freedom that had always been there...and only I could unlock. 


In the beginning, I'd have to unlock that door many times as it would slowly close again when I wasn't looking. But in time, I came to realize that when my today life was not working it typically was because I had let yesterdays life overtake me again. 


Bit by bit, one step at a time, day by day and with practice, I've learned to recognize when that door is slowly creaking shut on me again. The "tell" is often a sense of doom, depression or dissociation that overtakes me - or a feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness as I become frozen and incapable of moving forward...


Sometimes the "tell" is that my physical life has gradually gotten out of control again, I feel overwhelmed with the simplest of life tasks. Or I become needy and am seeking comfort or to be taken care of by others as though I was still that child in need of a safe place...


In these times I've learned to acknowledge my fears and phantoms, feel and express the anger....


I hate you because __________________.


And shed the tears, feel and honor the justified anger at being violated and embrace the sadness and grief at the loss of the life I never had and will never know...

It is in recognizing that I am no longer a victim and I am much more than a survivor where I begin to see myself as an adult full of hope and knowing that I hold the power to create this change that changes my life...

time and time again. 

~

Related: The Power Within

Cultivating the Power Within

When you Have Come to the Edge...

 Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth

~

Carla Realized her normal was not so normal

Not everyone can tell they've been abused - most abuse isn't even physical. So for someone who comes from a background that did not include physical violations of some sort they may not recognize that the source of their mental health issues could actually be some of the more subtle and unseen forms of abuse that often lead to unseen injuries....

This week at my friend Darlene Ouimets blog Emerging From Broken Carla Dippel shares her journey through depression and the realization that her "normal" upbringing wasn't so normal.

An excerpt from Carla's post...

"My childhood would have looked absolutely normal to most people. I was never beaten, deprived of physical needs, verbally or sexually abused. But at age 16 I knew for the first time that I suffered from depression. It wasn’t the kind of depression that took me through huge highs and lows. It was just this ever-present, cloudy feeling. I operated my life in a constant state of anxiety. I strived to conform to what I thought was the “ideal” or “perfect” way all the time. I had a chronically low self esteem. I see now that the nature of my depression was exactly the same as the nature of my abuse."


Click here to read the rest of this post.


Related...


Abuse Disguised


I Didn't Know that I Didn't Know I Was Abused


 Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!


Photo Credit

Grief is an Emotion, Not an "illness"

Photo credit links to story on Oprah.com

I don't often watch television since I've left behind "illness" for this new, full life of "wellness"...

I don't watch a lot of television but one day earlier this week I got home and flipped on the tv to a program on Oprah. The story was heart-wrenching - when he was just 9, Aaron's twin brother died of a brain tumor.

Aaron told his Mom that he "didn't want to be here anymore".

Aaron's Mom of course, calls the pediatrician who saved Aaron's life in more ways than one.

First, instead of labeling him "mentally ill" with "suicidal ideation" and "clinical depression" and so on....

she listened to him and heard his pain, saw his grief.

Then she helped Nate to make meaning from this horrendous loss and honor his brothers memory by using his pain to fuel his passion for cooking.

Grief is a normal human emotion....

a normal human response to loss

not an illness.

Aaron missed the "magic bullet" and the drugs that would have changed him and his life forever.

Three cheers and a whole bunch of hurrahs for a doctor who listened and allowed this boy his tears instead of labeling him "disordered" and giving him that lifetime membership to "Club MI".

You can read the entire story here.

When you have come to the edge...

This week I posted I am...NOT powerless. Why? Because for too long I "felt" powerless.

Where did that "feeling" come from?

Well, I suppose it started when I was trained to not speak up for myself as a child. In "normal" healthy families, autonomy is encouraged...even insisted upon. But in a dysfunctional or abusive situation this is typically not the case.

In a healthy environment we are encouraged to speak up when something hurts or feels uncomfortable. We are encouraged to learn to set our own boundaries and to respect the boundaries that others set for themselves. (Click here for a summary of autonomous v. controlling relationships)

In other situations where parenting is viewed more as a "do as I say" situation often with serious consequences if we dare to buck the authority of our parents. Often we are not given the choice to say "no" to hurtful words or actions of those around us. We develop a tolerance for being mistreated that becomes the blueprint for other relationships in our lives.

We may become dependent on first our family to give us an identity and give us "permission" to speak, to think to live life. In some situations we can incur much wrath if we dare to speak up about what we want, believe or think if it is different than what our caretakers believe we should have. Then as we grow we come to depend on external forces and others responses to define who we are and if we are ok.

I remember the day I came to this realization - that I could not exist unless the world around me and those in it "validated" my existence with some sort of acknowledgement that I was "ok" or had done or said the "right" thing.

I was well into my journey of self discovery... (I hesitate to use the word "recovery" for the simple reason that I have not had anything to "recover" as I truly had no sense of self or life situation that I wanted to repeat or regain).....

...I had learned to be mindfully aware of my thoughts and was slowly becoming aware that I had feelings that were influenced by my thinking and thus behaviors Ie choices I made, actions that I chose that were directed by my internal communications system of thoughts and feelings.

In other words I was starting to listen to "me".

What I found was that even in the simplest of circumstances that overwhelming feeling of anxiety and the emotional torment I experienced when around others was fueled not by anything other than the fact that I was looking to any external response that could tell me that I was doing it right....that I was ok to exist in the space that I resided.

I had for years experienced severe anxiety in public. I did whatever I had to do to avoid dealing with people. Having a car was not only transportation for me but it was a form of armour, a shield to hide from the greater world.

But my car had recently "died" and I was forced to either walk or rely on public transportation; a nightmare for me.

On this particular morning I was walking to get somewhere...I became aware that I was feeling anxious, as though I was exposed and naked to the world around me. I kept my eyes down and my shoulders curled up around my neck. I walked on in shame as though I had done something wrong by simply existing.

Yet I was determined to understand why I felt this way, why it was nearly impossible for me to venture outside and be a part of this bigger world.

I stood at the corner, waiting for the light to change so I could cross the street. A car approached and as it came nearer I listened to myself; my thoughts, my feelings.

As this car with a single man inside it approached I felt a small surge of anticipation as I looked not at the light or the crosswalk but I searched out the face of this anonymous person. And I suddenly realized that I was searching to be acknowledged, I was craving that my existence be confirmed by the smile I received as this person drove by.

Yet I also became painfully aware that to not be acknowledged by this stranger would reinforce the misnomer that I was not "enough"; that I had no right to exist.

As I stood there on the corner that warm spring morning, the sun warming the pavement and fueling the rebirth of spring I realized that if I could become aware of this conection between my thoughts and the way I felt - then I could learn to be and be ok.

I - was no longer powerless.