{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation","title":"Guest: Valerie Sinason","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3440,"description":"We talk with ISSTD clinician Valerie Sinason (UK) about \"infantacidal attachment\".\nThe \"still face experiment\" video on YouTube is HERE.\nThe poem we referenced, which we wrote in 2020:\nIn the last week,\nI watched my 5 year-old daughter's butterflies be born.\nThey came home with us\nfor quarantine,\na gift of hope and peace\nwhile she herself is dying,\nwhile my children miss their friends\nand watch their sister fade away.\nThe caterpillars crawled\nin the grime\nas they learned to spin,\nthen hung themselves\nfrom the top of the cup.\nI know the feeling.\nThe metaphor did not escape me,\nthis therapeutic process\nof freeze\nwhere transformation is required -\nquarantined\nin a glass house\nhanging by a thread\nnothing the same as it was.\nBefore the chrysalis\nthere was a shedding of skin\nI recognized as a shedding of me.\nFor all I have learned the last four years\nabout integration,\nI thought the debate was between\nbrownies\nand fruit salad,\nas if I would get to choose my last meal.\nBut all of it was grime.\nSo I pretended to grow wings\nwhile you locked me away.\nI wrapped myself in dissociation\nlike a cocoon of worlds inside.\nI never invited you in here.\nNo one warned me how sticky it was.\nI watched their backbone start to form\nlike scales\nthat fell away\nlike therapy\ntalking away.\nTherapy was taking away my dissociation\nwhile I fought to lock myself in it.\nIf you have any heart at all,\nyou want to reach out\nto reach in\nto touch\nto help them free the hardened shell.\nBut you cannot.\nBecause that wriggling work\nis what makes them strong\nis what sets them free\nis what makes me\nMe.\nAnd I know\nhow cold and lonely it is in there,\nin here,\nwhere I am,\nwhere no one goes\nno one sees\nno one knows.\nYou promise wings.\nYou promise freedom.\nYou promise flying free.\nBut all I remember\nis the grime.\nAnd all I know\nis the crawling through filth.\nAnd all I see\nis that I have hung myself here\nvulnerably\nto be stared at\nand gawked at\nand not touched\nwhile I am frozen\nand cold\nand hanging here\nnot who I...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/wmlKj1g185xk5j2G6GThXtq1GaxQujP_19yX0BfS3uo/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9hMjgy/N2NhYWQxMTA0ZDI1/MDI0MTdhZjk3Mjdk/Y2E5Mi5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}