60-How I'm Healing

GROUPS

I’m healing in so many ways. At this point in my life I feel the abuse is only going to make me stronger than ever. I work with my life coach every week and I’m getting a new counselor. I haven’t missed a session yet. I also talk to a social worker weekly and will be starting a women’s domestic abuse support group in January of 2019. I work with them on bettering myself, so that I never abuse anyone again like I did in the past or get abused. It is definitely a learned behavior and we have to want to change and break the cycle for a change to happen.

READING WRITING MUSIC

I do a lot of reading and writing. Writing this blog is actually my biggest form of therapy right now. I have spent so many hours on it that some nights I stayed up until midnight writing. When it is finished I am going to print all the pages and I’m going to actually burn it. That’s a very common technique to release the hurt that abuse victims have endured. I know it sounds like some crazy ass witch thing. I also made a vision board and continue to make more vision boards with my dreams and goals on them. Honestly, I’ve been slacking on it though and haven’t started another one since finishing my first one. When an issue pops into my head I will normally write in my notes on my phone, but I also post on Facebook a lot. That gives me a huge sense of relieve. It literally feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders when I post on social media. I know it's weird, but I guess a lot of abuse victims do. I have had to be quiet for so long, that I now have a voice again! I also like to listen to music and really load, but not music like Metallica. That’s not my thing. My favorite songs right now are “Just like Jesse James” by Cher, “Angels Among us” by Alabama, “Kill a Word” by Eric Church, and “(You’re The) Devil in Disguise” by Elvis Presley.

It also might be very surprising to some that I actually started reading too, ok well listening. I have never liked books, as it was always been hard for me to concentrate on them. Anyone that has a learning disability can relate. I actually love listening to my books now. I have already finished one and I’m in the process of reading another two. I read a lot of self-love books which has really helped me to love myself more.

TIME TO MYSELF

Another thing that has helped me heal has been spending time alone. Before all of this happened I hated being by myself. Now I enjoy working on things that I can do alone and I like staying home watching TV. It’s actually peaceful. I will go out with my friends once in a while, but not that often. I actually prefer just going to my friend’s houses and doing nothing besides hanging out. It has calmed my mind. I hope to get to the point that I can go out to eat alone and to the movies alone. It’s very important for me to become independent.

LIFTING WEIGHTS AND WEIGHT ISSUES

As for my issues with the way I view my body I do a few different things. I took over a month off from working out to focus on my mind. I have now gone back to lifting weights. I am a powerlifter and it helps to release a lot of my stress by lifting heavy weights and I think I’m pretty good at it! I also stopped weighing and tracking all my food. At the moment my eating isn’t the greatest, but I know once I get further into my healing process it will get better. The first week after I left my ex I lost 5 pounds in less than a week and wasn’t eating anything. I now am eating again, just maybe too many peanut butter sandwiches. I also no longer write my weight on my calendar. Instead my life coach and I came up with a better idea where I cut out a saying from a magazine every day and put it on my calendar. I also started writing something nice about my body on a post it note and put it on my mirror every day. It was a healing mechanism my life coach gave me to start loving my body more. She also reminds me that my body has been through a lot lately and I need to be nice to it, which is very true! She reminds me of things that I need to be reminded of quite often. I think my body image will still take time to fix, but I’m making tons of progress.

I also do know quite a bit about nutrition and fitness as I'm actually a personal trainer. After 3.5 years I know the right way to eat that is healthy for my body. My issues do not stem with that, but rather getting obsessive and the mental aspects of it. I have a professional coach that coaches me in powerlifting and will also watch over my nutrition. At the moment nutrition hasn't been my main concern, but rather to love my body without getting into obsessive mode.

WORKING ON MENTAL HEALTH

My mental health is definitely the most important thing for me to fix. I have been reading a book called “You are a Badass.” It is really helpful with empowering me as a struggling female. Although, I know my ex read the book because he one times made a post saying “Who wants to go surfing with me in Costa Rica,” something that is straight out of the book, along with the daily affirmations part of the book. He likes to right daily affirmations like, “I will be a millionaire. I will own a jet. I will have a compound.” I’m sorry, but those aren’t affirmations, those are ego driven goals. I didn’t know what affirmations were until reading the book and then I had to Pinterest ideas. The types of affirmations I write are, “I am loving, I choose to be positive, I deserve love and empath, God knows my journey and he will get me through it.” I write my affirmations based on what I’m going through and what I have been through in the past. I also write my goals which include, “I hope to be a mother, I want to expand Lefty’s, I want to start more businesses, I want my mental health to get better.” I also write a gratitude list that consists of, “My family, my Nephews, my dogs, the live Pinky was given, God, my ability to heal, my ability to be honest, Lefty’s and my Lefty’s family.” Now I don’t write these lists every day, but when I do I fill the entire page in my notebook. These are just a few example of what I write. Writing these things really made me realize how grateful I am and they make my mind healthier!

DISABILITY

The issues with my learning disability have always been something I work on. I am now really focusing on my confidence that is associated with my disability. My mom actually bought me a book called The Miraculous Dyslexic Brain, and in the book is states, “Dyslexia is considered as a persistent and unexplained difficulty in achieving accurate and/or fluent word recognition skills, despite adequate intelligence and opportunity (Lyon, Shaywits and Shaywitz, 2003) (Milne, The Miraculous Dyslexic Brain). One thing that has helped me to not feel stupid and boost my confidence is that everyone is different. Somethings that I am good at other people aren’t. My younger brother and my older sister are very smart, they never struggled through school. My older brother and I both have dyslexia and have always struggled through school.

To be diagnosed with dyslexia you have to take an IQ test. Both my older brother and I have higher IQ’s than the “normal” person. This makes me realize that people with learning disabilities are not dumb, but it’s the school systems that aren’t teaching to the children’s specific needs. This makes children feel like they are dumb or worthless when they can’t achieve the same things as other kids. Every child is different; some might not be good at tests while others are really good at tests. Some children might be hands on while others can read something one time and it sticks with them.

An IQ test is weird. You have to do a lots of different things that work the brain, reading, math, puzzles, etc. I got my IQ retested when I was in college, so that I could be put back into the learning disability program. If I wouldn’t have been put back in I would have failed out of college. For me, reading is really difficult. I can read something 700 times and I can't comprehend it. IQ testing takes multiple days of testing sessions. The reason that I was placed back into the program was because the people administrating the tests could see how long it took me to process information. I can get answers right on a test, but what takes a person without a learning disability 3 minutes to figure out would take me 20 minutes to figure out or sometimes not at all. For me, I can't comprehend what I am reading without an example or explanation. On my testing I was very good at puzzles though, not like cardboard ones, but the mind game ones. They said for most people those are challenging. I can’t do math if my life depends on it though. I still count with my fingers and have to count in my head for “easy” multiplication problems. I’m also 26 and still get confused with my left and right. Dyslexia is not curable; this is the way my brain will forever work. I’m different just like every other person in this world; no two people are the same and I had to realize this just like a lot of other people do!

Being in the dyslexia program I would get my tests read to me and extended time, so I had time to figure out problems. I’m not stupid, actually far from it, but my brain is physically wired differently than someone who doesn’t have a learning disability. I always felt like I was dumb though because my mom would take me to sylvan learning center and Alverno College to get extra help. I was placed in different classrooms, and I would do homework every single night for hours when my friends and siblings didn’t have to. In my opinion, I feel school systems should be based on a child’s needs and how they learn best. For example, children that struggle with processing things like I do should do more hands on things. For people like my brother and sister that can read something once and it sticks, they should be in classes where the structure of learning is more reading based. Maybe if we didn’t segregate the “special kids” and instead placed all kids in classes based on the way they learned then we wouldn’t have people with such low self-confidence and issues with their self-worth.

Having my learning disability has definitely been a challenge, but also very rewarding. Although it has given me confidence issues that lead me to get involved in abusive relationship, I wouldn’t change it for the world. If I could go back in time and decide to have a learning disability or not, I would still choose to have one. I am a very organized person because of my disability. I also have excellent worth ethic. When I was in middle school I was 1 or 2 kids that got the work ethic award out of my entire grade, roughly 300 people. I would work on my homework for hours every night until it was perfect. I pushed and pushed, busting my ass through school so I didn’t fail. That led me to always want to work to make money to buy my own things. I kicked ass through college and finished in 4 years. I took summer and winter classes just so I could finish on time.

I graduated college in May of 2014 and bought my own business in September of 2014. One of my college professors told me that it was horrible idea to buy a restaurant because they fail, but I bought it anyways. I love my business. It’s definitely a challenge sometimes, but for the most part I love it. I bought my business will all of my own money. The only thing my parents loaned me money for was my licensing and inventory. I have since paid that back. If I wouldn’t have struggled through school I’m sure I would have never bought my own business, especially at 22 years old. A lot of people thought because my parents had money that I got everything handed to me. That is definitely not true, my siblings and I were definitely spoiled, but we were still like other kids. We got disciplined, we had to have jobs, and we had to pay for things that we wanted.

My learning disability has also helped me to be very helpful and understanding towards kids that struggle in school. I am not a patient person, but for some reason I am very patient with children who struggle in school. I remember working with Dick’s niece and nephew on homework. His nephew was struggling and Dick wanted to just give him the answer. I made Dick make all the other children leave the room so his nephew and I could work on his homework together. It’s very hard for the dyslexia brain to comprehend things let alone having a bunch of noise in the background. It’s December 24th today and my nephews are yelling in the background making it hard for me to even write this. Anyways, after figuring out the problem myself, that Dick had to help me understand, I worked on explaining in to his nephew. It is very hard for someone who doesn’t have a disability to help a child with a learning disability. My mom doesn’t have a learning disability, so when I was a child and I didn’t understand my homework I would start crying. She would get so mad that she couldn’t make me understand it that she would scream. She wasn’t mad at me, but she knew I was struggling and she didn’t know how to make things easier for me. Growing up like that, it is now very easy for me to explain things to struggling children with patience. You can’t just give a child an answer because when they have to do it at school they still won’t understand how to do it. My life coach actually wants me to go help tutor younger children as part of my healing process. I have been in contacted with a few different schools, but have not helped out yet. Coming to terms with that fact that I have confidence within myself and that being dumb was just a lie has been amazing towards my healing process.

JOURNELING TO 7 YEAR OLD DYSLEXIC KARLEE

As part of my healing process with my learning disability I had to write a journal to my 7 year old self. It is a healing process that therapists use with a person who is grieving the loss of someone close to them. They either said things that they regret saying or didn’t get to say things they needed to before the person passed. It is supposed to help the person to heal and let go of the anger they have towards the situation, so I am told by my life coach. For my therapy, I had to find a picture of myself when I was 7 years old, I had to light a candle, get a notebook that my 7 year old self would buy and a pen that my 7 year old self would buy. For 7 days straight I had to look at the picture and write down a question as my 7 year old self and answer it as my 7 year old self, The questions had to do with my learning disability. For example, I would write “Why does it make you so uncomfortable to go to school,” and I’d respond with, “Because I feel people are making fun of me for having to go into special classrooms.” Surprisingly, it answered a lot of my unanswered questions from when I was 7 and it helped me to heal that 7 year old self within me. After I was done with my 7 days of journaling I had to go back and tell myself how everything I wrote was not true and what actually was true. It was very beneficial for my healing process.

By realizing all of these steps with my learning disability it has opened my eyes to letting go of the hurt that has come with thinking I was stupid. I’m glad that I struggled because it has gotten me where I am today. I do believe that I made stupid decisions like dating abusive boyfriends because of my low confidence levels, but it has actually made me stronger in the long run.

KIDNAPPING HEALING

I am also going to start journaling to the 10 year old Karlee that dealt with her grandmas kidnapping. This is something new my coach and I are working on as we work on things in steps. I will also have to do more trauma therapy with a licensed therapist on the topic. As a start though, my coach is having me go to dinner alone. I also am not dating and don’t plan to date for a long time. I want to heal all my wounds and know that I can survive on my own. I have to make small steps which will eventually lead to big steps like moving out on my own. This will definitely take a lot of time and patience to overcome as this is a traumatic event that I have been mentally fighting for 16 years.

LIFE COACH

Working with my life coach and a counselor are definitely needed in my healing process. I don’t have much to say about my counselor as I am getting a new one, but my life coach is awesome. She has definitely been one of the best forms of help. She gives me homework that I work on weekly. We talk about the issues that are most troubling for that week and we figure out ways to overcome them. We also work on overcoming the big issues, like I have stated above. She is actually the one that made me realize we have to find the stem of the problem to heal all problems. Small steps make long term progress! I am also very excited to start my support group too because it’s very helpful talking to people who have been through similar situations. As for the forms of abuse, psychological, sexual, and physical, I will have to work with my counselor in detail on all of those things too. I have been working on fixing those things every week since September, but now I will be working on them with someone new. It will definitely take a long time for those things to heal, but I have faith that everything will get better with time!

PSYCHIC AND HOROSCOPE

Another coping mechanism I have used is calling my aunts psychic and reading my horoscope every morning. I don’t know if I completely believe in these things, but they have been super helpful, so I feel they have some truths. Plus, God makes everyone different, why wouldn’t he make people have that power. Anyways, the first time I called my psychic she was spot on. She told me that I had just got out of a narcissistic relationship and that he sees no wrong with what he does. She said that he believes everyone else has an issue and not him. She also told me that I have to be very careful because there is a chance he could come back and I need to not let him back in my life. He will destroy everything in my life, even my business. I told her that I outed him on Facebook because I knew it would keep him away from me and that he had a new girlfriend. She said, “That doesn’t matter he’s cheated in the past. That’s not going to stop him.” That is very true! Even if all these things weren’t to happen, I was ready and guarded if necessary and still am.

My horoscope has also been very helpful. The day after I left my abuser my horoscope said, “You should by now be feeling quietly confident that the worst is over and that the best is about to begin. What happens over the next two or three days will confirm that Lady Luck is smiling on you again. You’re about to move up in the world.” I felt it was so accurate and because of that I have checked my horoscope every day since. Some days it isn’t as accurate, but it’s helpful and I like being prepared!

WORKING ON LEFTY’S STUFF AND KEEPING BUSY

I own a seasonal business and during this healing process I have been in my off season, so I’ve had a lot of time to think. It’s not always that great because I sit here and think about stuff that isn’t healthy for me. At the same time I am very thankful I am off work because I have got to spend a ton of time working on myself. That wouldn’t be possible during my work season. Although, I have been trying to keep myself busy and I have been working on a lot of Lefty’s stuff, my end of the year books, and stuff for expansion! I do things to try and keep myself busy, so one day I cleaned the storeroom. I redid my bathroom which took a few days. I try to travel every month because that makes me super happy. I spend a lot of time with my nephews, family, and friends and of course I do work stuff. Keeping me busy has been helpful, but at times it still gets difficult.

EDUCATION ON NARCISSISM

Reading and education on narcissism has been one of the most beneficial things for me because it makes me never want to go back to him. The book I listen to has explained every single thing I have been through. I follow a lot of stuff on social media sites that have to do with narcissism and they have also been spot on. If I wouldn’t have read and educated myself on the mental health disorder I would have never understood how someone could be so evil. There would have also been a lot greater chance of me going back to him too, so as part of my healing it has been very necessary to educate myself.

HELPING OTHERS

As part of my healing process I like to help other people heal. My life coach told me that is one of the most beneficial and rewarding ways to heal. I like to send my family and friends texts reminding them how much I love them and how special they are in this world and to me. I also like going out of my way to help those that are struggling. If I can change one person’s day then it has also changed mine. I struggled for a long time without anyone knowing. It made me realize that someone else might be struggling and we know nothing about it, so just encourage and love everyone. Something so simple could turn someone’s life around, so help others heal. One day I was having a hard day because I had a nightmare and I was going through the Starbucks drive through when the person in front of me ended up buying my order. It made me so happy that it actually changed my entire day, so just be nice and help others!

TALKING TO ABUSE SURVIVORS

The most beneficial part of my healing process has definitely been talking to other abuse victims. When I came out with my story I had a ton of people messaging me supporting me. It also got me in contact with other people that have been abused that I had no idea about. My aunt, Lucy, has walked me through the entire process. She can basically tell me every step before it comes. She is my mentor! She was married to and also dated a narcissist. She forewarned me that I’m going to have people sending me pictures of my abuser and telling me things that he was doing or saying. It happened! She told me to ignore it, that those people aren’t my true friends and if they were they wouldn’t be doing things to hurt me. Lucy also told me that I am going to go through every single emotion and they are going to come and go for many months. She said, I will probably not be ok with everything until about a year prior to everything that has happened. She reminds me that every day I will think about him and what he did to me a little bit less, and it’s so true. She told me that if I need to run 10 miles, then run 10 miles. If I need to eat a whole cake, then eat a whole cake. If I need to scream and cry, then scream and cry. When I’m done though, I better pick myself back up and be the strong woman that I am because we will not let any man destroy us.

When everything went down with my counselor her and my mom went in with me and backed me up. She literally made him admit to everything that he did which I’m so thankful for. She will call or text multiple times a week and I go to her house quite often to update her on my progress. If it’s 11pm and I’m balling wondering how I’m going to get through this, she’s the one to walk me through it. She’s the reason I have my awesome life coach. She is the reason I get up every day and stand tall with confidence. She has helped me in more ways than I could have ever imagined and I have no idea what I would have done without her. She is literally the angel God sent me. I hope to one day be the strong badass women she is. I strongly believe that anyone coming out of an abusive relationship needs a mentor. I was beyond lucky for her to reach out to me and help me as much as she has.

SUPPORT SYSTEM

My mom and sister have also been huge support systems for me. I can share everything with them without them judging. They only want me to get better and they do everything in their power to help me. My sister was also abused by a narcissist, so she can relate. My mom reads on narcissism to try and better understand. Again, they didn’t know the extent of the abuse because I tried to hide it, but since they know now they help in all ways possible.

My friend Al has also been very supportive. He is a recovering alcoholic, so he can see right through my ex’s bullshit and helps me with that. He reminds me that if Dick relapses it will never be my fault. It’s not my decision for him to pick up the bottle, a needle, or to abuse people. That’s all on him. Al was also abused, so he can help me with some of the steps with that. With abusive relationships causing a bio chemical addiction in the brain Al has helped with educating me on overcoming an addiction along with a family friend. Al has checked on me every single day since getting out of my abusive relationship. It’s been a month and a half and he hasn’t missed one day. I am beyond thankful for him too and don’t know what I’d do without him. He reminds me of my progress and also lets me know that I’m not in this alone. He definitely came to me in my darkest days!

I also am very thankful for all the people that have reached out to me on social media and have continued to help me on my journey. You will never know how much it means to have the support of others until you’re in a position you never thought was imaginable. The support helps me on my hardest days.

HEALING PROGRESS

My healing is definitely a process. I work on it every single day, but I’m doing a lot better than I was a month ago, even a week ago! Every day without my abuser is a step in the right direction. A lot of the abuse victims tell me that they will still have flashbacks or nightmares of the abuse, but it will get better. It will eventually get to the point that it’s like he doesn’t even exist. I am choosing to heal properly so that I NEVER abuse someone or get ABUSED again. I choose not to date to get myself right. I don’t want to attract another type of person into my life that isn’t good for my mental health nor do I want to be bad for someone else’s mental health. I also like being by myself as it is giving me time to learn more about me because I don’t have to worry about anyone else. Although, I don’t believe a person will ever be the same after traumatic experiences or abuse I do believe that we can be stronger than we ever were before and I am getting there.

This is my vision board I created. It hangs up in my bathroom, so I can see it every day!