Overcoming Neglect, Childhood Trauma and Abuse Through Careful Self-Improvement

Hello! Who are you?

Hi, I’m Dora (or DO). I was born in Sliven, Bulgaria, and currently live in my hometown. Happily semi-separated for the third time, I live 500 meters from my mother, but in a rented apartment. My 10-year-old three-legged cat, Mr. Grey, keeps me company.

I work on contract as a back office for the largest online retailer in the world. I am also a freelancer. Creator of an author’s system for discovering, organizing, planning and living our dream reality, K-Power instructor, and intellect trainer. My biggest wish is that there are many more consciously happy people, and women in particular.

What is your struggle and when did it start?

I have no idea if my struggle has a special name. But certainly, everything that has happened in my life is a consequence of this struggle.

I have a brother and a sister younger than me. When my brother was born I was 7. That was the first time I felt the separation from the family. I was sent to my grandmother so as not to disturb him. Even though we all lived together, it left a deep mark on me. I started to disobey, just to get attention from my parents.

Accordingly, I created a lot of nonsense that even at that tender age I realized did not come from my essence. So over time, I was marked as the odd one out and different in the family.

When I was 12 years old, my parents moved into their own place, along with my brother and sister. They left me with my grandparents. I could only see my family on weekends, and on Sunday evenings I would go back home. I was not able to build a normal relationship with my brother and sister. I even thought at one point that I was adopted, which was against all logic. This led to another wave of strange behavior on my part, inappropriate friends and finally expulsion from school.

In the meantime, I experienced the first rape, which refused me to study at a university. My desired major was psychology/psychoanalysis. I had become so disgusted with human beings that I closed in on myself. I don’t know where I found the desire and strength to be interested and read about the psychology of the human mind, but it gave me answers to many questions that were bothering me at the time.

But my struggle did not end there. I needed someone to love me so badly, but I always went about it the wrong way. My first husband was my way of “running away” from my family. Our marriage lasted only 6 months. It was over after the first slap from him. My second husband, who is the father of my only child, could not skip a woman, lest St. Peter bring him back someday.

This was definitely not a life for a family and after 9 years I was divorced for the second time. I had a brief third relationship that ended due to jealousy. The fourth man in my life was a combination of the previous three – physically and mentally abusive, cheating, and jealous. Our relationship lasted 20 years with some very action-packed parts.

How did this struggle make you feel at your worst moments?

Everything that was happening in my life made me ask myself questions like: Am I really that bad? Why me? What did I do to deserve it?

I felt really strange, and very often misunderstood, like a black sheep in a flock of white ones. For 4 years and with two husbands, I could not get pregnant for no apparent reason. I deepened my study of psychology and at some point, I went to a slightly different level.

I began to focus on energy, gender ties, imposed beliefs, toxic environments and people, narcissism, selfishness… It kind of opened my eyes, but it took 45 years of my life until I realized that happiness comes from inside me and not from the outside.

Perhaps I have intuitively known it all my life because I never for a moment lost my smile and positive mood. I was strong and never panicked about anything.

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Was there a moment when you started to turn things around?

In 2018, after many twists and turns and dissatisfaction with my last partner, I decided that I had to change something radically. I lived with the thought that he was my atonement for something, that I should learn something from him and he from me. Maybe that was the moment I realized that we have nothing more to give to each other, and that I don’t have to put up with his attitude anymore.

In 2019, I ran away once again. Yes, a mistake. Running away solves nothing. He found me and I came back. But from that moment I began to build my world, separate from everyone and everything.

I started to study my emotional intelligence, to accept my emotions, to express them always and not to keep them inside. I found out why my reproductive organs and thyroid were removed. My inner world began to improve at a rapid pace. I became calmer, more confident, more self-sufficient. I created my first solo project to help others in 2020, during COVID. And in 2022, I gathered the courage to start telling how I managed to achieve everything in my life and be everything that I am. DO Moments was born.

What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?

I joined a COVID challenge – 100 days of happiness – which challenged me to look for the good in this incredibly depressing situation. It helped me grow personally even more.

I also started journaling again. It is an incredible habit to discover who we are, why we are, where we are, and where we want to go.

After all these reflections and discoveries, I also realized that planning is the foundation of a happy life. As we plan our purchases, we can also plan our happy moments. It has become much more fun to live. I also created a personal planner for 8 areas of life and a business guide for small startup businesses. The latter was born from my ability to learn, absorb and transmit.

As I began to change, new people began to appear in my life. People who became my friends. People who offered me help and support simply from the heart. That’s how I discovered and mastered K-Power, which is how I became an Intellect coach.

Have you shared any of this with people around you in real life?

All my life, I was ashamed to share. I thought it was my fault. I kept everything inside and this led to many irreversible problems on a purely physical level. Fortunately, they have been only benign tumors.

Only after 2020, did I start sharing my problems, only with my closest, chosen friends. After I was able to process some of my traumas, I started to speak more openly. And to tell my parents how I felt the whole time.
It happened late. Unfortunately, I repeated this family pattern with my own child. We had lost contact with him and it weighed heavily on me because I understood why it had happened.

If you could give a single piece of advice to someone else that struggles, what would that be?

Look for someone who will listen to you impartially, who won’t judge and blame you – just so you can pour it all out. It can be a specialist, a therapist, a psychologist, a friend, or a stranger on a train on a long journey…

Don’t be ashamed and don’t be afraid to do it. Not only your life depends on it, but also the lives of your children.

We are never alone in our suffering, we never know if another person is going through the same struggles or has already managed to deal with them. The world is big and salvation is lurking everywhere. We just have to look for it.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, YouTube channels, or other resources for you?

Some books that I found valuable are Everything Is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo and The Fear Cure by Lissa Rankin.

Where can we go to learn more about you?

You can read more about what I do on my website and connect with on Instagram here.

💡 By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here. 👇

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