Hey Dana Jane

Tag: Therapy

  • The Rage Phase

    The worst part about suffering emotional, psychological and/or spiritual abuse is that most people don’t believe you. You don’t have visible scars or bruises. People can’t see the internal trauma. My own brother publicly shared on Facebook that I was not abused. It hurts to know that your siblings, people who grew up in the same house as you, and experienced similar things, choose to deny what you endured.

    For so long I felt the need to prove that I was right. I thought that I had to prove to others the pain I experienced, and still feel today, to justify my anger or sadness. When your own family calls you crazy and continues to mistreat you, because that’s all they know, and because this type of abuse is cyclical, it makes you feel devalued.

    Yesterday I finally asked myself, “Why do you care so much about what others think?”

    I contemplated for most of the day about this. Why do I need to be believed by the very same people who invalidated me? These are people who refuse to acknowledge my pain, yet I still feel as though I have to prove what I went through.

    I’ve come to realize how brainwashed I was, and it started when I was very young. I was taught that everyone else knew better or was smarter and that they had the ability and the right to define me. I didn’t belong to myself because they owned me.

    And now as an adult, I realize that I have the power to stop this never ending spiral. As long as I continue to fight to be heard my abusers have power over me.

    I’m no longer comfortable believing they are always right and I’m always wrong. That may have worked when I was younger; it doesn’t work now.

    I no longer believe this lie that I have to prove my worth. In my adolescence I was brainwashed to believe that love had to be proven through obedience, compliance and service. But I was never loved the same way. My dysfunctional family didn’t prove they loved me they same way they taught me to “love” them. They have a false definition of love. The rules are different for the abusers. Everyone always believes the one with the most power over others.

    I’m no longer powerless. I don’t have to give away my energy to people who have no intention of changing. I have learned to validate myself. Just because my parents and siblings invalidate me does not mean I’m invalid. Just because they don’t believe what I endured does not mean it didn’t happen.

    They love to tell others that I’m lying, that I’m exaggerating or that I’m dramatic. But the reality is they know I’m telling my truth, and it makes them look bad. They are living in denial. And I understand it. I lived in denial, too. I didn’t want to believe that the people who are supposed to love me unconditionally treated me with disregard. It’s painful. It hurts.

    I protected them for decades. No one wants to admit that their parents only show love when their children meet their expectations. I’m not hiding anymore.

    All the lies I believed about myself have surfaced. I had to dig deep into the cracked foundation of my dysfunctional family to see what really happened and how badly I was manipulated. I didn’t know any different.

    I can’t pinpoint the moment I realized the truth. It was an ongoing process but the catalyst was having an emotional and mental breakdown last year. I was blind with rage over being blamed for every problem in my family. My body shut down and I couldn’t function for several days. Then one day I decided I needed help. I went to therapy and began unraveling the knots of my past.

    It was brutal. Therapy messes you up when you begin to face the things you’ve repressed for decades. All the excuses I made to cover it up, all the times I accepted blame to keep the peace, all the times I was “the bigger person” – which usually meant opening myself up for more abuse – I faced it all.

    Denial came first. “No, that didn’t happen to me,” I remember saying out loud.

    But it did happen. I had to acknowledge it. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Yes, you were emotionally and spiritually abused.”

    Grief came next. Crying for days. Remembering every incident that I pushed to the darkest corners of my mind. Grieving over the lost parts of my childhood. Crying about past traumas and acknowledging that I didn’t deserve to be treated that way. That was hard.

    Then there’s anger. Pure unadulterated rage. That’s were I am right now, in the rage phase.

    But this time I know that it will dissipate. I know that I don’t have to prove my pain. I know that they don’t have to believe me. This abuse happened to me, I have accepted it, and I’m working through it.

    I don’t have to prove my worth. I know my own worth. I don’t need anyone’s validation. I validate myself.

  • Enmeshed Families, Emotional Abuse and Cutting Off Contact

    To heal from emotional and spiritual abuse, I learned to set boundaries. Setting boundaries is important. It helps me set basic guidelines of how I want to be treated. It helps me establish guidelines as to how others can behave around me.  This helps ensure that relationships are mutually respectful, appropriate, and caring.

    Setting boundaries also helps eliminate opportunities for me to be abused. I have used two methods: no contact and limited contact.  No contact means I have no communication with the offender: no phone calls, text messages, emails, or visits.  Limited contact means I determine the frequency and duration of all communication. I like to call it “small doses.”

    It’s not easy to cut someone out of your life.  Even after enduring emotional abuse, I often struggle with self-doubt, especially when the holidays are approaching.  It seems to trigger questions as to whether I’m doing the right thing. I start to wonder if I’m the actual problem for the strained relationships with members of my family. When your family is enmeshed, it’s difficult to develop a sense of self, or trust your emotions, and not having any contact with each other is unfamiliar and foreign.

    My decision to have no communication with members of my family was one I needed to make to find peace. I was emotionally and mentally exhausted from fighting to be heard. I cried every day because my feelings were not validated.

    My parents treat me with disregard. Sometimes they are dismissive, sometimes they are verbally abusive, and when I attempt to address the issues or give examples of past bad behavior, they gaslight me, or use guilt and shame to silence me. 

    My parents feel entitled to treat me however they want, and they feel entitled to having a relationship with my children despite their bad behavior toward me.  My children have witnessed the way my parents dismiss me and disregard me. The terrible part is I tolerated their behavior.  I wasn’t strong enough to stand up for myself.  Because I accepted the way that my parents treated me, my children received a specific message about me: Mom’s feelings don’t matter.

    My kids saw their grandparents, and their aunts and uncles, treat me like I was not important. They saw that my feelings were invalid; that it was okay to treat people with disregard.  My kids got the message that it was acceptable to treat their mother this way, too.

    What I’m most ashamed of is that my kids witnessed me trying to please these people despite the way they treated me. I showed them it was okay to accept poor treatment. Why should I be surprised when my kids disrespect my authority? I allowed their grandparents to do the same thing. Why should I expect my children to be able to set boundaries, or respect my boundaries? I didn’t set any with my parents or my siblings.

    Why would I want my kids to be around people who treat me poorly? 

    I want to believe my parents would never hurt my children. But I find myself asking why I think they would be so wonderful to everyone else and that I, as their daughter, was the exception to the rule. When it comes to the truth about who my parents truly are and how they treat people, I find myself facing contradictions.

    I know exactly why I believe that my parents would never hurt my kids. 

    When I was a kid, I was convinced that I was the problem. I was brainwashed to believe that I was deficient, or somehow defective, and that if I wasn’t so “worthless” my life and my parents’ feelings towards me would have been different. I was convinced that if only I could have been the daughter they wanted, then I would have been loved.

    I believed that my parents would have loved me if I was good enough. If I had been the daughter they dreamed of; smarter, prettier, more loving, more compliant, less of a burden, then I would have been treasured, loved, accepted, and secure.

    I don’t see my children the way my parents regarded me, so I can’t imagine that my mom and dad would ever treat my kids the way that they treated me. I see my kids as wonderful treasures, so it’s unfathomable that my parents would ever judge my children in the same ways they judged me.  Of course I wouldn’t see the danger of my children having a relationship with their grandparents, even if I decide not to have contact with them. It was ingrained in me to think I was the problem; that I was always at fault.

    In enmeshed families there is a lack of boundaries.  When I began to set boundaries they weren’t respected.  My parents feel entitled to step around me to gain access to my children. Sometimes they contact my husband instead of me. Sometimes they enlist my siblings to have a talk with me to “set me straight.” 

    My siblings have said they fear that I am using my children to punish our parents, and them.  They tell me that Mom and Dad love their grandchildren and I don’t have the right to cut off contact. This infuriates me.  What is loving about treating a child’s mother with disregard and disrespect? Where is the example of love in that treatment?

    Some parents and grandparents are narcissists. Let’s be clear: a narcissist is a narcissist no matter who they are dealing with. They are only interested in themselves and their interests. In that regard, what is their interest in a relationship with your children? I’ve thought about this for quite a long time.  I believe that they want to be right so badly that they will try to discredit you when it comes to your children.  Their sole purpose is to prove that they are right about you (and that you are wrong); so right that your own children have turned against you.

    When making decisions about my children I cannot be blind to the truth. I am the parent. I have a choice, even though I had been brainwashed to believe that I didn’t. I have power even though I was convinced that I was powerless. I reject those lies. I’m taking control of my life. I’m taking back my power. I’m taking control over my choices.

    I’m not obligated to do anything just because the word family is involved. People who don’t care about me are not good role models for my children. People who treat me as though I am nothing and call me crazy don’t have a place in my life or the lives of my kids.  These people are going to communicate their judgments about me to my children, even if those judgments are non-verbal. I’ve experienced this before and sometimes these people are very convincing.

    We might be accused of seeking revenge when we decide to have no contact, but when it comes to me, my husband and my kids, we are a package deal. If you can’t deal with me, you can’t deal with my kids. Accusations are not truth. Whose fault is it, truly, when we decide that it is best for our children not to see our parents? What situation or behavior caused us to consider this decision in the first place?

    My decision wasn’t made to seek revenge. I sought peace. My motive for finally standing up for myself was to demand a relationship that is mutually respectful and kind, and to set an example for my kids as to how they deserve to be treated. The cycle of abuse stops with me.

  • Catholic Guilt, Spiritual Abuse and Breaking Free

    I grew up in a small Wisconsin town. Many of its residents are of Polish descent, and my family was no different. I was raised Catholic. Catholicism defined my identity long before my personality and character traits were developed. Every milestone of my life was rooted in Catholic teaching.

    Being Polish, my parents and grandparents felt a special connection to Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła) and pictures and paintings of him, in addition to Jesus and the Virgin Mary, adorned the walls of my childhood home. My grandmother had rosaries hanging from the corners of her mirror, my mother recited prayers aloud when passing roadside shrines in the car, and my dad touted Catholic teaching at the dinner table.

    Mass was mandatory every Sunday and on Holy Days of Obligation. To skip Mass was a mortal sin. Because Catholics believe that both the body and the blood of Christ are contained in the Holy Eucharist, in the form of the consecrated host, it was unacceptable not to receive communion. Even if I was sick, I was expected to be well enough for church. No one explained that I could be excused from Mass that day. There was no exception to the rule.

    Eating meat on Friday was a violation during Lent. Sometimes I’d forget it was Lent at school and eat meat. When I’d realize my mistake I’d feel horribly guilty for the rest of the day. Guilt was a staple of my religion. I always felt guilty, even when I didn’t do anything wrong. To be continuously reminded of my Original Sin, and that I’m constantly in danger of being sent to hell, I never felt good about myself.

    Going to confession was traumatizing. Sometimes, I certainly had sins to confess. Other times I didn’t, so I’d make up sins to tell the priest, because surely I was bad and had to confess something. So, I lied to the priest, breaking the eighth commandment, then waited for absolution and penance. To me, confession was an exercise of fear and punishment, not a proclamation of my faith and salvation.

    My religious beliefs didn’t belong to me. They were developed by my parents and other adults in my extended family. Some of their beliefs were flawed. Not attending a Catholic wedding ceremony was considered improper, but you were never obligated to attend a wedding ceremony of two people not marrying in the Catholic church.

    Having non-Catholic friends required extra caution. I might be tempted to sway from my faith, they posited, if I socialized with Lutherans, Baptists, or even those practicing Judaism. It was implied that I was to somehow “convert” these friends to Catholicism, the “one, holy, apostolic faith.” Having an atheist friend was taboo.

    My family sought moral righteousness by attending Sunday Mass, blessing themselves with holy water, and praying in public for the entire congregation to see.

    However, their moral righteousness was non-existent after the closing prayer. Going to the family tavern was the ritual after church. The alcohol flowed as freely as the cursing, name-calling and insults. I couldn’t understand the hypocrisy, I didn’t even know the word. I only knew that my siblings and I were obligated to stock coolers, wash ashtrays and sweep floors, and ignore the double standards that were on display.

    What I witnessed while “growing up in a bar,” the tavern that was my father’s livelihood, are things no child should see. I wasn’t equipped as a teenager to deal with unruly patrons who disrespected me. My family disregarded the way I was treated because these customers put money in their pockets.

    I quickly learned the hypocrisy of the spiritually abusive adults in my life. I learned that it wasn’t acceptable to associate with “deadbeats” but it was absolutely okay to take their money and feed their vices. After all, it was their choice to spend their income by drinking, smoking and gambling.

    Holidays were displays of moral superiority in my family. Adults had lengthy debates on the morality of politicians, educators and anyone, really, who didn’t share their beliefs. If you didn’t agree you were shamed, called a demeaning name, and bullied into changing your opinion.

    The worst part of this is that I yielded to their rules because I feared going against them. Compliance was a requirement to belong to this family. Conformity was required to be a member of the “One True Religion.” You believed, no questions asked, or you were cursed with eternal damnation.

    I believed for too long that my soul was unworthy of any place other than hellfire and damnation. I had no self-worth, I had no capacity to make decisions for myself. If I tried to do what was best for me I was coerced into doing what my parents felt was better. If I put up a fight, the fifth commandment was used as leverage.

    “Honor your father and mother!”

    “Don’t you love us?”

    “Why are you being so foolish?”

    “You’re acting crazy!”

    Discussing real issues, or sharing a different opinion, was met with anger or being told I was crazy. I couldn’t understand why my point of view being different meant that I was not of sound mind.

    I can’t tell you how many times I was told I was crazy. When you hear it that often, you start to question yourself. Am I crazy?

    This led me to therapy. And therapy led me to question everything; not just myself, but the people around me, and the religion that has been a pillar of my identity since birth.

    In religious education I learned that guilt is a productive measure to keep us from veering too far from our morals and values.

    In therapy I learned that non-productive guilt is a pervasive guilt that serves no good purpose; it’s counterproductive. For most of my life I suffered from false guilt. Guilt that was passed down from generations before me. Guilt that wasn’t mine.

    Love is given unconditionally, not out of guilt or coercion. There’s no list of accomplishments to achieve or expectations to meet to be deserving of love. Love is freely given. There is no room for guilt, which makes way for peace.