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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 longtime 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 we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:It was learning about the epigenetic impact of intergenerational trauma at a recent clinical training that got our attention. And our podcast interview with Veronik Mead, who's coming up later on the podcast in a few weeks, who helped us make sense of that piece of information. But looking back, Susan Peace Bennett had also talked to us about this generational trauma and generational healing on the podcast back when we shared about taking our daughter back to Africa to meet her tribe. But then when we talked about AEDP, we shared the example from the husband's history of his great great grandfather who was a goat herder in Idaho and how one night they thought they heard a thief. And so he and his son, the great grandfather, went out to stop the thief but left the house going opposite ways around the house.
Speaker 1:And that's how the son, his great grandfather, accidentally shot and killed his father, the husband's great great grandfather. And in this example, the husband shared that this sense of doing your best and trying to do the right thing and making an effort to help, still to him is experienced neurologically as failure. This theme underlies his own depression so that as he receives EMDR treatment, it isn't just for depression, but also for healing this layer that his good results in no good, or even worse, failure. It's really a fascinating process. This all began an entire coming out process for us, taking an entire year from one DID awareness day to the next.
Speaker 1:The first thing we did was write a letter on the ISSTD listserv a year ago, introducing ourselves by our legal name as the producers of System Speak podcast. Their warm welcome and positive reception gave us courage to begin connecting with other professionals more openly, which was completely new to us and something we had never done before even locally. Through these experiences and beginning to make colleagues who turned into friends, a new kind of healing began as we worked through a layer of shame about our own disorder. This led us to also making new friends, both online and in person, through the podcast and in real life and at conferences so that we met other people who were also survivors, even other therapists who were also survivors. But another significant thing that happened recently was Human Trafficking Awareness Day on 01/11/2020.
Speaker 1:We paid attention. We learned. The therapist had told us already that it still counts as trafficking if it's your own family doing it to you. It was a difficult realization and a lot to process, especially in a season of having to change therapists because the family had moved and we needed to join them emotionally and be more present at home. Triggers seemed especially raw, especially photographs, which had always been hard for us.
Speaker 1:But as the podcast grew to more than 64 countries, we recognized the platform as a way to educate and support others like us who felt so alone in all they had endured, and so we determined to try. And we started learning. Then we had Ellen Lachter on the podcast, and she said that child pornography should be renamed as production of child rape and torture materials because of the severity of the abuse involved with producing child pornography. That also got our attention. And then for DID Awareness Day twenty twenty, we consented as a system to the article about us being released on ISSTD news.
Speaker 1:That was a big deal, and it was terrifying. But it was good and right, and it was time. They let us help write it, and they let us choose the pictures. And for the first time, we released our photo. This felt empowering too as people were trying to dox us, which means that they were writing about us online and releasing our legal name and family details and address against our wishes, endangering both ourselves and revealing our contact information to previous handlers and abusers.
Speaker 1:It was really traumatic and violating, and doing this on our own terms and coming out in our own process was a way to reclaim some of our own choices and safety. But about the same time this was happening, we found out the podcast was winning an award from the ISSTD and that part of accepting the award at the conference in San Francisco, we would be having our picture taken, receiving the award. This was even more terrifying. It became a huge debate internally, and we discussed in therapy what our choices were. Not to go at all, to go but not attend the awards dinner, to attend the awards dinner but not go on stage, to go on stage but not have our picture taken, or even just to do it.
Speaker 1:And in a way, there really was a pull to just do it. We did not get to go to any of our graduations for any of our degrees. Our high school graduation was a hot mess of family drama and well meaning people trying to keep us safe but causing other problems. It was a nightmare. This would, in effect, be an opportunity to bring that full circle even though it was just an award.
Speaker 1:Plus, we've worked hard, really hard for two years. A lot has happened on the podcast, and it's a lot of work to keep going. And it was exactly what we had advocated for, the recognition and receiving of lived experience as valid contributors in all kinds of ways. And we had already made so many friends within the ISSTD so that it felt safe. There was maybe a chance we could do it, and it would at least be a safe place to try.
Speaker 1:We accepted the award and filled out the required paperwork and focused in therapy on getting our picture taken. There was no pressure except from us. The ISSTD was very respectful. We had time to figure things out, and so we did. We did it with some EMDR to focus on being safe.
Speaker 1:We did it by talking about safe people, taking safe pictures. We did it with exposures by rehearsing what would happen, eating the dinner at the table, listening to them say something about the podcast, going up on the stage, accepting the award, no speech required, and having our picture taken in a flash, so to speak. Easy peasy. So then we practiced with some exposure therapy, trying it out a little at a time. We made a few videos of our own children with us in them and shared one of them.
Speaker 1:We took a selfie or two and sent them to our friends, and then to the husband, and then to the Facebook page. When we found out our daughter was going to have high risk airway reconstruction surgery again and a safe friend paid a photographer to let us get family pictures taken before surgery just in case. We agreed. This gave us opportunity to meet the photographer, let different ones inside see the camera and the equipment, and allow all of us inside to experience normal picture taking in a safe setting surrounded by those we love most. And we learned a lot, a lot that we wanted to share.
Speaker 1:This information may be very triggering as we will talk about trafficking and child pornography. However, we are talking about it in terms of explaining it and giving statistics we know from our work. We will not be trauma dumping or making any specific or in-depth disclosures, but it's part of our progress having a voice and educating and advocating in good and healthy ways, even while we work on the rest in our own therapy. It's also a way, very cognitively, that we can begin to process hard things by putting them into words that feel safer in a more generic sense as we start to do more phase two work in our own therapy. It's still hard, but kind of more of an exposure therapy again, in a way of just saying it out loud in words.
Speaker 1:We learned that there are between twenty one and thirty million people enslaved in the world, more than any time in human history. Every day, modern slavery can be recognized. Children become soldiers, young women are forced into prostitution, and migrant workers exploited in the workforce. We learned that human trafficking awareness day started in 02/2007 when the US Senate designated January 11 as National Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the hopes of raising awareness to combat human trafficking. It began as a US initiative, and the United Nations has started to highlight this topic and work towards global awareness with days such as International Day for the Abolition of Savory.
Speaker 1:We are working with some of the humanitarian aid teams working on this actively around the world. The commercial sexual exploitation of children or CSEC is a commercial transaction that involves the sexual exploitation of a child, such as the prostitution of children, child pornography, and the often related sale and trafficking of children. CSEC may involve coercion and violence against children, economic exploitation, forced labor, and contemporary slavery. A declaration of the World Congress against commercial sexual exploitation of children held in Stockholm in 1996 defined CSEC as sexual abuse by the adult and renumeration in cash or kind to the child or a third person or persons. The child is treated as a sexual object and as a commercial object.
Speaker 1:CSEC includes child sex tourism and other forms of transactional sex where a child engages in sexual activities to have key needs fulfilled, such as food, shelter, or access to education. It includes forms of transactional where the sexual abuse of children is not stopped or reported by household members due to the benefits derived by the household from the perpetrator. CSCC also potentially includes arranged marriages involving children under the age of consent, where the child is not freely consented to marriage, and where the child is sexually abused. These are things we are working with internationally in our professional work with humanitarian aid teams and UNICEF and UNHCR. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states that roughly one out of every five girls and one out of every ten boys will be sexually exploited or abused before they become of age.
Speaker 1:UNICEF says that the child sexual exploitation is one of the gravest infringements of rights that a child can endure. Child pornography is prevalent on the international, national, regional, and local levels. Child pornography is a multibillion dollar enterprise that includes photographs, books, audio tapes, videos, and more. These images depict children performing sexual acts with other children, adults, and other objects. The children are subjected to exploitation, rape, pedophilia, and in extreme cases, murder.
Speaker 1:Pornography is often used as a gateway into the sex trade industry. Many pimps force children into pornography as a way of conditioning them to believe that what they are doing is acceptable. The pimps may then use pornography to blackmail the child and extort money from clients. There are times this is used in conditioning for, part of grooming for, or alongside with organized or ritual abuse perpetration. The scope and definition of child sexual abuse fact sheet on stopitnow.org states, sex abuse does include both touching and non touching behaviors.
Speaker 1:All sexual touching between an adult and a child is sexual abuse. Sexual touching between children can also be sexual abuse when there is a significant age difference, often defined as three or more years, between the children or if the children are very different developmentally or in size. Sexual abuse does not have to involve penetration, force, pain, or even touching. If an adult engages in any sexual behavior, looking, showing, or touching with a child to meet the adult's interest or sexual needs, it is sexual abuse. This includes the manufacture, distribution, and viewing of child pornography.
Speaker 1:The US Department of Justice defines child pornography depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor persons less than 18 years old. Images of child pornography are also referred to as child sexual abuse images. Notably, the legal definition of sexually explicit conduct does not require that an image depict a child engaging in sexual activity. A picture of a naked child may constitute illegal child pornography if it is sufficiently sexually suggestive. Additionally, the age of consent for sexual activity in a given state is irrelevant.
Speaker 1:Any depiction of a minor less than 18 years of age engaging in sexually explicit conduct is illegal. Federal law prohibits the production, distribution, importation, reception, or possession of any image of child pornography. A violation of federal child pornography laws is a serious crime, and convicted offenders face fines and severe statutory penalties. The stopitnow.org also gives the following statistics. One in ten children will experience contact sexual abuse in The US before age 18.
Speaker 1:More than fifty percent of sex abuse survivors were sexually abused before the age of 12. One in 20 five children, ages 10 to 17 will receive an online sexual solicitation. Of substantiated reports of child maltreatment in The US, Nine Percent were unique survivors of sexual abuse. The average age for a minor to enter the sex trade is age 12. Globally, prevalence rates show that thirty six percent of women and twenty nine percent of men experienced sexual abuse in childhood.
Speaker 1:More than one third, thirty five percent, of the women who reported a completed rape before the age of 18 also experienced a completed rape as an adult. Thus, the percentage of women who were raped as children or adolescents and also raped as adults was more than two times higher than the percentage among women without an early rape history. Forty two percent of girls experiencing their first completed rape did so before the age of 18. Over one quarter of male victims of completed rape experienced their first rape at or before the age of 10. Children with disabilities are three times more likely than children without disabilities to be sexually abused.
Speaker 1:Children with intellectual and mental health disabilities appear to be at most risk with four point six times the risk of sexual abuse as their peers without disabilities. Thirty one percent of girls and seven percent of boys involved in the juvenile system have sexually abused. Ninety three percent of child sexual cases, the child knows the person who committed the abuse. Males made up eighty eight percent of perpetrators. Sixty percent of children who are sexually abused do not disclose it.
Speaker 1:Fifty percent of child sexual abuse cases are perpetrated by someone younger than 18 years old. Twenty four percent of sex offenders are known re offenders. Most are acquaintances, but as many as forty seven percent are family or extended family. Those of us in America who are identified victims of child pornography are notified by the FBI via the Child Pornography Victim Assistance Program, CPVA. If you actively need help now, several related resources are available in The United States.
Speaker 1:The Office for Victims of Crime, OVC, is a federal office that provides funding to support victim assistance and compensation programs. OVC's website provides victims with information, resources, and a directory of crime victim services. You can call them at 50420 or visit www.ovc.gov. The Child Help USA hotline is a twenty four hour hotline dedicated to the prevention of child abuse. It offers crisis intervention, information, literature, and referrals to local emergency social service and support resources.
Speaker 1:You can call or 422-4453 or visit childhelp.org/hotline. The National Center for Victims of Crime, NCVC, works with local, state, and federal partners to provide support to crime victims and also advocates for laws and public policies to secure rights, resources, and protections. The National Crime Victim Bar Association, a program of NCVC, also provides information on civil lawsuits against perpetrator or other responsible parties, as well as referrals for attorneys specializing in victim related litigation. You can call +1 803942255 or visit victimsofcrime.org. These are hard things to live through and hard things to remember and hard things to work through.
Speaker 1:There's no easy way around it, and the layers of it are brutal. The years feel like one rabbit hole after another, with pieces overlapping, but each experience distinct, and the nights so very long. None of this is easy to talk about, or to acknowledge, or to share. It's not comfortable to deal with in therapy, and it's exhausting to avoid in everyday life. But doing the hard work is the only way to get our power back, and remembering that it's not my secret helps us to tell about it.
Speaker 1:And the telling matters because none of us are alone and all of us are worth the healing. And healing means connecting with those who have been so alone with so much hurt for such a very long time, whether inside or others with stories like ours. So we did work hard, and we did get ready, even though there is a lot more work to do.
Speaker 2: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. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemsbeat.com. We'll see you there.