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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what
Speaker 2:we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
Speaker 1:for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. I know it's been two or three months since we had to move and since I've had a chance to record anything. There's lots to share. And also, the whole point is to get back to work in therapy.
Speaker 1:We've had so many side quests, so many lessons, so much heartbreak and connection, so much growth and healing. And, also, it's time to pull all of that together and get back to weaving my own tapestry. And after I move, that starts with finding a new therapist, which took a lot of work and a lot of effort and a lot of talking to different people. But I think we have found her, and she's helping a lot. Just in the initial weeks of getting to know each other, we've talked about all of the pieces, and she understood so much that it only took a few weeks to get through talking about them, to feel like we were on the same page because I didn't have to explain anything.
Speaker 1:She just got it already. Like how being deaf but with cochlear implants means I've culturally offended myself, even if also giving myself access and choices I wouldn't have had otherwise. And also the making lace that that doesn't make me hearing. And so when I don't understand things or can't process things the same way or fast enough, it's really hard and distressing. We also talked about the LGBT community, things I'm learning, why I feel disconnected in some ways, exploring my faith and how to hold both and make lace of that when so many in the gay community have been so harmed by religion.
Speaker 1:And, also, my faith is real at the same time. And, also, my faith is still true, if not more real than ever before, because the things I've kept are mine, not what someone has told me or said I should believe. And questions I still have and navigating all of that. Things about recovery, we talked about that too, how to find safe meetings, how to know when they're safe. I don't need anything else, culty, and anything can go off track or work sideways.
Speaker 1:I just need help. And to have health or be healthy or practice health, I have to be safe. We talked about that being fundamental for anyone who's been adopted and what it's like to be an adoptee and also adopt and all kinds of adoption trauma, which I'll circle back to in another side quest another day. But she gets it. The biggest thing we've talked about for weeks and weeks, months now, is safety.
Speaker 1:Not just waiting to feel safe to talk in therapy, but explicitly together negotiating safety and talking about safety from the very beginning, and how to notice what it's like to feel safe, and how to notice when I don't feel safe, what it's like to feel courage, and what it's like to feel vulnerable. We talked about trusting my body and what that means, what it feels like, and what I struggle with. I said that I've learned enough to know that my body will always tell me the truth because it's been here the whole time. I don't remember where I heard that or learned that. Maybe at a conference or maybe a class, maybe someone said it, and in some ways, it's true.
Speaker 1:But there's lace with that too. She said that because of trauma and deprivation and dissociation. Sometimes our brains don't let our bodies talk to us, and we don't feel what there is to feel or notice what there is to notice. So it's like our brains changing the baseline of what our body can say to us, like turning down the volume. And so there may be times where our bodies are off or we need reassurance so that we don't ignore the whispers our body is trying to say.
Speaker 1:She said that's also impacted by isolation, which happens with trauma and deprivation, that we need people and community because we're mammals. It doesn't have to be a lot of people to be helpful, she said. We talked about all the ships. I talked about being in the ship trying to get to the other side all those years ago and how hard it's been to find a therapist and stay in therapy since then. And she said all the ships, relationships, friendships, work relationships, relationships with my parents even if they're dead, relationships with partners, with children, all the things, all the ships have to do with the demands and expectations.
Speaker 1:Like we talk about with social contracts in the complex therapy book, or what attachment theory talks about, or, like, how we reach for connection and how we avoid harm. She said it makes sense that parts of me don't want to connect with others because it hasn't been safe. Even if other parts of me really need it and have been trying hard, sometimes too hard. We talked about parenting, and what's beautiful about that, and also what's sometimes hard, like being overstimulated or wanting to be present to cuddle with them at the end of the day when they ask for cuddles, but it's not intuitive to my body. She says she calls that corporal cuddling, that it feels hard and intense, and also it is good and right for them and practice for me.
Speaker 1:We talked about how the yelling or bickering can be activating and exhausting and how it's okay to take breaks or be creative with how to be present in healthy ways so that I can do my best parenting my children and also care for me. It's more lace for safety. She started calling it safety lace. I even talked to her about the drowning whales and said that I don't actually want to harm myself and don't have any plans to. And also, sometimes it feels like I don't know how to keep breathing or can't get enough air.
Speaker 1:And she said that feeling unsafe makes that harder. We talked about shiny happy, and how I'm exhausted from jumping through hoops that are on fire. She said having to do so isn't relational, and performance isn't relational even with God. And, also, to keep making lace as if we're knitting together a whole blanket now. She said, we don't have to throw out all the good because of what's hard.
Speaker 1:One week, I got the assignment to think about ways I could meet people for friends. And I tried some of the things on my list. I went to a protest without my kids. I went to another protest with my kids. I went to a grocery store that has a little diner inside where people hang out and chat.
Speaker 1:I've gone to walks by the river and clamming in the bay and run at the Ocean. We went to a local festival, and I did a painting party at a garden center. But I haven't talked to anyone yet. Next week, I start going to a meeting that's online, still not in person, but they are local people. So people I will get to know even if slowly.
Speaker 1:My therapist says we will feel more safe when we have things in common and did this silly, ridiculous role play with me about what it would be like if I met a queer person at a park when I was there with my kids, how I would know they were queer or not, whether I would talk to them or not, and how I would want to know if I wanted to be friends or not. When I said I wouldn't talk to them at all because I'm too scared, and I wouldn't even be able to breathe. She said that she could teach me how to breathe so that my body was connected to my brain again, so that my body would have accurate information, and I would be able to hear my body accurately. And then I could trust safety. And she said, funny enough, about the drowning whales, this is called whale breathing.
Speaker 1:And she had me take a deep breath, deeper than I ever have before, and then even deeper after that, still holding. And then counting to four, slowly holding my breath. And then this loud guttural exhale that kind of has a growl to it that she said somehow resets my vagus nerve. I don't know that she used the word reset, but I can't remember what she said. It was silly at first, and, also, it worked.
Speaker 1:She said, remember, you can't swim if you can't breathe. Let's start with breathing. She said, anytime when we aren't safe or when we experience fear or shame, we shift from attuning to ourselves and our own bodies to attuning to our environment and relational dangers because ruptures feel life threatening to our brain. But when we focus on repair in a way that is problem solving or trying to fix it or attune with others instead of ourselves, then we abandon ourselves. And let others be our punitive parent, like in reenactments, of tending to ourselves or little ones or younger parts in healthy ways.
Speaker 1:She says we can't start off with shiny, happy dynamics and add unsafe conversations and end up being safe. That the math just doesn't math. Instead, we need to pause and listen to our bodies, pause long enough to ask and long enough to listen to the response, as if we even have enough safety for a conversation. That's when she got pokey, talking about my autoimmune disorders and how my pain in my Sjogren's have flared up for the last year because my body was trying to say stop when I couldn't. And when I didn't hear the whispers, it got louder to get my attention.
Speaker 1:I almost threw up when she said that, and I told her so. She said it's because we have nerve endings in our stomach, the same as nerve endings in our brain. Do you know what my homework was? To take a bath, but to stay in it and watch it drain, to invite my body to let things go, to recognize what's mine and what's not, to envision it leaving my body going down the drain, to remind myself that I always have a choice. I can accept what's coming at me, or I can say, no.
Speaker 1:Thank you. And we talked about how when we were little, we couldn't say, no. Thank you. And even when we did say no, our boundaries were violated and disrespected. Our bodies were violated and disrespected.
Speaker 1:Whether that was blanket training, trauma, deprivation, college exorcisms, bishop interviews, my website being hijacked, online gossip. It's not mine, and I don't have to absorb it. I can just say, no. Thank you. And this last week was the symposium, and it was beautiful and good in lots of ways, hard and challenging in other ways, but it went beautifully.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that came up that I wrote down for my own therapy, how fireballs, when we talk about what's not our stuff, is actually really violent language. Someone's going to get burned, which is actually activating to me. So I did talk about that with my therapist. And she said, instead of saying it's not my fireball, I can just say, that's not mine to hold. I can support others.
Speaker 1:That's empathy or compassion. And also with healthy relationships, there's reciprocity where I can ask for support holding my stuff too. But what they do with it or what I do with it or how they move through it or how I move through it, that's their decision, their choice, their work. And she said that's true with any feelings, even joy, and that there's no bad feelings. All of it is information.
Speaker 1:She said if I'm invited to help hold stuff with someone else, I can accept or say, no. Thank you. But then she said, if I am demanded to hold someone else's stuff or told to or expected to or trained to, then that's not consent. And I can't say yes or no because I don't actually have the choice. When she said train to, I felt sucker punched.
Speaker 1:My stomach was telling me what my brain didn't have permission to say. So we talked about that. Unshiny happy, blanket training, relational trauma, parentification, all the things. I can't consent to that, and I don't have to take that bait. We talked about indigenous pieces and how the season right now is the river's access to be closed because the salmon are swimming upstream to mate and have babies and return home and all the things of their life cycle, and that there's nothing about a fishhook and taking the bait that ever makes it possible to continue with the life cycle.
Speaker 1:That it's always trauma, always disrupts life, and always deprives us of the future. She said, not taking the bait and not responding to hooks is not being avoidant. It's being appropriate and healthy and having boundaries that I'm not a fish to be hooked. It reminded me of when my other therapist said it was right to run. My therapist said, attachment is never wrong.
Speaker 1:It's information, and that's all. It's never bad, even avoidant, that it can't be weaponized or villainized. That when we have anxious attachment, it means we're having to actively approach others for care. That's all. Just information.
Speaker 1:When we are feeling avoidant attachment, it means we're actively having to avoid harm. That's all. When we experience disorganized attachment, it means we're actively having to do both, approach others for care and avoid harm. That's all. And when we experience secure attachment, it just means we feel safe.
Speaker 1:We're getting care without being harmed. And she said any of us can feel any of the things any day of the week. It's not like a permanent label stuck on our foreheads that we're condemned to or sorted by, that if we have healthy relationships where we feel safe and get care and in which we're not harmed, that those relationships will be secure, That if we have to ask others for care, we'll feel anxious in those relationships because we have to approach for care. If we're being harmed, we will feel avoidant because we're getting away from being hurt. And if we have to ask for care and avoid harm, it will be disorganized.
Speaker 1:She said they're processes of how we interact with each other all the time, not nouns that are labels for a person. Attachment is never wrong. It's just information. And when we're being cared for safely and not being harmed, we will always feel secure and can ground back into that at any time. And she talked about mother earth and nature and the planet And now I go to the river to cry and walk in the grass to breathe.
Speaker 1:She told me to walk without my shoes in the grass as much as possible, to touch trees, to dig in the dirt, to garden, to smell flowers, and to touch them, to pet all of the nature that I could with my hands and my toes and my body, to sit outside in the sun when it's safe, to not be afraid of the rain, to recognize all the seasons and all the nature and what it's saying to us. She said when we touch nature, it helps our organs regulate, which helps our bodies regulate, which helps me feel regulated, which gives me a good foundation at any moment of any day, even with all the therapy I still have left to do so that I walk around with a secure attachment to myself. And this earth upon which I walk, and that I can bring that to any relationships I encounter, all the ships. Secure attachment being possible any day, any time, even for me. There was hope in that, relief in that, something that was the opposite of shame.
Speaker 1:I have the capacity to feel connected and capable when I am safe and getting care and not harmed. And I can be grounded in this as I spend time in nature with fresh air in my lungs and wind in my hair. And I thought, how could I be with this new therapist only a few weeks or months and already feel better, already feel like a light showing me the way, Already feel like I'm starting to make friends with myself, that I could be safe enough for me. You think Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this.