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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:
Speaker 2: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 we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Okay. I needed a break and some therapy. Now doctor Tema's homecoming book part two. Chapter four is about reparenting yourself. Okay, y'all, I have barely had a taste of this from ACA, which is like Al Anon, but from the kid perspective.
Speaker 3:And so, like, how do we take care of our inner children? I am just barely getting in that because, as it turns out, you have to acknowledge your littles before you can help them. So I'm catching up, but here's what Doctor. Tema says, so maybe more of a starting place. Many of us are disconnected from ourselves because there are some things we didn't have growing up, ways in which we were not fully nourished, affirmed, prepared, or seen as children.
Speaker 3:You all the way she just broadened relational trauma while I wasn't looking, she's just like, here, let me open that up for you. It's so, so painful. Let me say that again. Ways in which we were not fully nourished, affirmed, prepared, or seen as children. To be explicit, y'all, this is what the fMRI study relational trauma is more damaging neurologically even than physical or sexual abuse, and we know those are bad.
Speaker 3:She is saying what deprivation is, aside from just not being protected or not being responded to, it is not being fully nourished, affirmed, prepared, or seen as children. And yes, she says, the reality is we cannot physically go back in time, but we can have corrective, therapeutic, and transformative experiences that allow us to heal and no longer live from the place of the wounded child. I don't like the word corrective. I know we're talking about correcting our original experiences, but corrective for me is such a religious trauma punishment word. I don't use corrective.
Speaker 3:I will use restorative or reparative. Language is really important to me in that way. Yes. These transformative experiences. So like a safe neutral example that I can share that's already public on the podcast is how that last session with my previous therapist before we had to move, that last session, the new year's session where we just painted was so restorative, such a perfect ending.
Speaker 3:And I didn't know that day I literally would never see her again, which in itself is traumatic and activating, right? And also it was so perfect. It was such the perfect, perfect session that it literally healed in me, not just having to suddenly move unexpectedly and losing her as a therapist, but it healed in me that loss during the pandemic that was so epic and took me five years to find another therapist. Therapist. That's an example of that reparative work that we can do.
Speaker 3:She says, When you look at the state of your life and the ways in which it is a response to what you never received, I want you to know that while this may be a painful reality, it is not one of finality. Although there may have been moments growing up when the presence of a more engaged parent would have made a huge difference. And even if you recognize the pain of not getting that protection or nourishment, I invite you to consider this truth. Even then, you were deserving of care and protection. You do not get a do over of those years, but some things can change now regardless of your age.
Speaker 3:Whether you are a teen, a young adult, a middle aged adult, or a senior, I encourage you to reparent yourself in some ways so some things within you can shift and you do not permanently have to act out your wound. Then she talks about the ways this can show up in a whole spectrum and kind of gives examples of the extremes of the spectrum and how it can show up anywhere in between. Right? She says, along with causing challenges in our sense of identity or self worth, neglectful parenting can also cause us to have relationship problems because no one modeled trust, open communication, or affirmation for us. You may have never seen or experienced healthy relationship reciprocity, constructive communication, or consistent care.
Speaker 3:And as a result, you may find it difficult to emotionally give or receive. You may have people tell you that you are emotionally unavailable or emotionally too much. People may call you overly dependent or closed off. Both ends of that spectrum of emotional connectivity can result from the inner child wound of never feeling safe to open up to someone. Perhaps it's not that you're unwilling to open up, but that you don't know how to open up.
Speaker 3:You may genuinely not understand what people are asking of you when they say they want more of you, or conversely, that you are too intense for them. Some of you would love to be different, but you don't know how because the way that you are now has been locked in for so many years. You may believe that being emotionally restricted or emotionally explosive is your identity instead of recognizing that your way of showing up is based in an inner child wound. She says, The pain of the inner child can keep us disconnected, shaming, and blaming ourselves. To come home is to open ourselves to the hope of repair.
Speaker 3:The reparative work does not depend on your parents' apology or transformation. It does not require them to find you and nourish you. Although that would be wonderful, you are no longer having to wait for them. You can choose you. You have the opportunity to give to yourself as an adult some of the things you did not receive as a child.
Speaker 3:And then she talks about different aspects of reparenting, like joy and structure and boundaries and accountability and emotional space and self care and safety and love, like all the things that we require as humans, even as mammals, for healing and growth. She says, you can love yourself by pursuing opportunities for healing and growth. And when it is in your power, love yourself enough to deny access to people detrimental to your development. Do not align with people, activities, or attitudes that are harmful for your well-being. How
Speaker 1:do
Speaker 3:we even know that? That brings us to chapter five, which is about emotional intelligence, which she defines as the capacity to be tuned into and to regulate your feelings and to relate to others in a way that takes into consideration their emotional experiences as well as your own. When you have disconnected from your feelings and other aspects of yourself, emotional intelligence allows you to be authentic with yourself and others so you are not always following a script that doesn't necessarily match your circumstances. It allows you to tap in, honor the truth of the moment, and let down the barriers that would otherwise make you seem emotionally unavailable or unresponsive to people. So with that, she says emotional self awareness is your ability to recognize how you feel.
Speaker 3:From when we are born, other people give us messages about how we should respond to our joy and our pain. We face countless expectations, demands, and pressures to act in a way acceptable to others, and this can require us to mute our hearts and our real feelings. Homecoming gives us permission to remove the judgment, censorship, and demands so we can actually express what we feel. Then she kind of goes into how feelings can be an opportunity for mapping. Like, she doesn't use that language, but she talks about feeling more than one thing at a time and how sometimes that can even seem contradictory and also how those different parts of us, all of those feelings need to be felt and heard and expressed and responded to.
Speaker 3:She says, instead of limiting yourself to only one acceptable emotion or claiming numbness, begin to dig beneath the surface of your response to see the root of your emotions. The truth may be that you are grieving, panicking, or even attracted to someone or something beyond your awareness. When you can acknowledge feeling intimidated, anxious, or even jealous, then you can address the real issue instead of running aggressive or ashamed. Homecoming is about digging deeper into the truth of our emotions without judgment. You feel what you feel.
Speaker 3:What you choose to do about those feelings is another story. In other words, if you're bored with your job or your relationship, acknowledge that to yourself. You feel what you feel. This self awareness is especially important if you, like me, have had moments when you know your emotional response did not match the situation. If you sob uncontrollably in response to something minimal or if a minor offense leads you to explosive anger, there is more to the story.
Speaker 3:It's a flag for memory time. We need to attend to the unhealed wound, the distorted thought, or even the core belief we hold about ourselves to get at the emotional root that has been unearthed in the moment. What is so important to understand this as part of mapping is that this is a clue that littles or memory time folks are involved, and it's not necessarily about what is happening in the present. The reason that matters is because our people we are in relationship with, whether that is friendship or work or relationships, they cannot fix that for us. That is work we have to do ourselves.
Speaker 3:And that work is emotional expression and regulation. She says emotional intelligence is not only about recognizing what you feel, but also about learning to express and regulate those feelings so that you can be at home with the emotions without drowning in them. Expressing and regulating your feelings is not about silencing and censoring them for the sake of being controlling, but about preventing those moments that most of us have experienced when we acted in a way that was harmful to ourselves and others. And then she goes into a whole section about how to do that with others, and it's simple. It's explicit.
Speaker 3:It steps things out into consider this and consider that and try this and try this. It is so pragmatic and so helpful. And then she highlights the importance of the emotional cues of others. She says, while homecoming requires self awareness, I also encourage you to consider the real value of understanding the emotional lives and experiences of others, even when they differ from your own. Assuming everyone feels what we feel is a form of disconnection, people provide social cues about their emotions, and it is important to learn to detect those cues.
Speaker 3:When we are so immersed in our own experience that we cannot imagine someone else having a different one, we are reduced to false inauthentic interactions. So this matters because when we're in relationship with someone, if we're not tending to those memory time wounds, then in now time, we are having completely different experiences. And that will be experienced as misattunement, which is more rupture and relational trauma in now time. We need to be observant of our internal experience and the emotional lives of those around us. If we are not careful, we can allow our emotions to lead to incorrect assumptions about other people's intentions and thoughts.
Speaker 3:Homecoming is about being present for ourselves and others in a way that gives space for the unfolding of their stories and experiences as well as our own. Oh my goodness. It's so good and so powerful. Okay. And then she goes from there into this beautiful chapter about community and how, especially for marginalized populations, community care is everything because it is part of the homecoming experience itself, because we are part of the collective, not just individuals.
Speaker 3:She says, we want to open ourselves to both community care and self care rather than choosing between them. So we cannot be healthy in community if we are not caring for ourselves. It's not the community's responsibility to solve your problems or to care for you. Right? Like in groups, we take the hard pieces and the details to therapy, but with peer support, we can practice being present with each other.
Speaker 3:And also, we are responsible for regulating ourselves, for staying out of trance, for being grounded and present if we're going to participate in groups. If we're not ready to do that, that's okay, but we need to do that somewhere else. If we want a different kind of group, that's okay, but you go find it somewhere else. This is what we're saying in the community. That being said, also self care matters.
Speaker 3:So the example we've talked about a lot is that there's no expectation that you attend every single group. We have lots of different groups and lots of different days and times and offerings so that people have a choice of what's available and so that there are different kinds of support when you need it. If there are things you don't wanna do, aren't interested in, aren't ready for, or have already, like, grown beyond, that's totally okay. She says, we want to cultivate healthy relationships and community support while also prioritizing our personal needs. I'm not going to wait for other people to give me permission to nourish myself, but I will also seek out community that is nurturing.
Speaker 3:It is a beautiful thing when you can create that community. Remember that when community, support, and even love show up, be open to receiving. When someone asks you what they can do to help, try not to be so quick to wave them away, declaring that you have it all under control. That one is really hard for me. And, also, when we're offering that to others, we need to make sure it's meaningful for them and not just how we think it's meaningful.
Speaker 3:Right? One of the examples of this that my friends and I talk about are crayons in Africa, where when we went to Africa, one of the things that happened was, like, white savior folks, really, bringing what they thought kids needed to Africa on their mission trips and things. And so we have schools there that they sit on the floor or on benches, and they have a shared chalkboard. What they need is chalk. What they need is text textbooks.
Speaker 3:What they need are small chalkboards. Right? But what people were bringing were crayons because that's what American children use in school. But they didn't have paper as much, and some of the crayons even melted because in some places it was so hot. And so they were bringing what they thought was best in their culture without thinking about what the actual needs of the people are.
Speaker 3:And so it becomes this kind of racism that is ableist or racist or whatever have not connected to the community or the people we're trying to help. And so it becomes this thing where we think we're trying really hard to offer help and are confused and baffled about why that help is not received and why it's not working. Because it's not actually meaningful or the kind of support they need. And if we're not offering what they need, then they're actually neglected by us no matter how much we're trying to offer help and support. So then paying attention how we can care for ourselves and each other and remembering that that includes our whole selves, mind, body, and spirit.
Speaker 3:She says self care is not only about how you speak about yourself or what you do for yourself, but also how you treat yourself. You may tell me that you feel great, but as a therapist, I wanna know how much did you sleep last night? What did you eat for lunch? Do you take care of your belongings? When was the last time you cleaned your house?
Speaker 3:Can you tolerate or even enjoy solitude? What has been your experience the last week with binge eating or drinking or smoking? What do your dating relationships look like? How do you feel about yourself in the presence of the person you call your best friend? What are you doing to cultivate your gifts?
Speaker 3:What are you doing to feed your mind and your spirit? You are worthy of care. You are deserving of self love. You need nourishment, not only from others, but also from yourself. You can choose to accept yourself even when there are aspects of yourself you are still working to improve.
Speaker 3:And then she applies that to physical care, emotional care, psychological care, soul care, and then also what makes that so hard. This is epic stuff, you guys. So much of it is very, very pragmatic. If you read her books or listen to her podcast, there's so much that is just very, very pragmatic, including all of her journaling and homework assignments. It's intense.
Speaker 3:All of these things are foundational and prerequisite, like need to happen before we can get to self confidence, much less self compassion. She's also really big on who you surround yourself with. She says that we cannot improve the way we talk to ourselves if we are allowing other people around us to also speak to us in ways that are not supportive. She says, When possible, spend less time with people who heighten your insecurity and more time with those who inspire, motivate, enhance, and affirm your abilities. It is hard to heal your self confidence if you continue to spend time with people who undermine and discourage you.
Speaker 3:Right? So even that's for me, like, part of the last year or five or ten when my therapist is saying, yeah, this is another time we're starting over again. Why do you have people in your life that are causing you to have to start over or to clean up things instead of people who are building you up and supporting your work? It's a good question. It's a good question.
Speaker 3:It's also in a very pragmatic way why things like, why I don't think we need to be in these, like, social media wars with each other as a community, an extended community, even online. There could be other podcasts. There's gonna be other communities. Everybody's doing their thing. Find where it's safe and fits you, and that is good enough.
Speaker 3:That is okay. That is zero offense to me because if we are forcing ourselves to share space in ways that don't feel safe to us, that's not gonna be safe. That's why I'm like, this is what I'm offering here. If you wanna be here, be here. Come participate.
Speaker 3:We're happy to have you. We're happy to enjoy our time together. Some of it will be hard. Some of it will be learning. Some of it will be fun.
Speaker 3:Some of it will be silly. But if it's not you, you know, make your way till you find your place that is you. Because if it's not you, we won't be meeting your needs. And if it's not you, we can't conform to what you need because it's not us. Right?
Speaker 3:Like, this is already who I am. This is already what I'm offering. This is who we've been. So we're gonna grow like this. That is me.
Speaker 3:And that's true for anything, whether it is friendships, relationships, community ships. Right? She says, you may need to take inventory of those around you to consider how you feel while you are in their presence and when you leave their presence. Okay, y'all, this is huge. I was going through a situation where I was, like, trying really hard, but then anytime there was separation, then there was just this devastation that I felt.
Speaker 3:And I thought, okay, so that means next time I'm with them, I need to try harder, I need to do more. And I went through this cycle for ages until a therapist, both of them said to me, Hey, hold up. If you're not feeling good and your body feels familiar but it's protectors, and then you feel devastated after, it is more like you are numbing out to what is familiar trauma and not safe to feel it until later. And seeing that clearly and having that explained to me, helped me understand and get out of that cycle of this is not actually good for me, but the dynamic is not good for me. I can't participate in my own reenactment.
Speaker 3:Right? It's my reenactment to heal and to repair rather than to repeat. She says, you do not have to live your life shading your shine by playing it safe and underutilizing your gifts no matter how many years you have been living beneath your potential. Homecoming gives you permission to embrace the confidence to step into the radiance of truth beyond self doubt. As you come home to yourself, you will recognize more clearly and quickly which connections support the development of your confidence and which undermine it.
Speaker 3:And I think that's something I've really struggled with in my different reenactments of getting myself into situations that either hold me back or actually cause destruction to what I'm trying to do. And getting sucked into that. And part of that is the coercive control that's so familiar to me because of religious trauma. And unfortunately, that becomes part of my reenactment of just succumbing to that. And that's something we'll talk about later on the podcast because I cannot even today.
Speaker 3:Then she goes into a whole chapter about spiritual practices. And to be clear, we're not talking about shiny happy. She is a Christian minister and there is that context, but she's talking about empowerment, social justice, all the different things that are counting as spiritual practice. I have had some of my most sacred spiritual, sacred spiritual, like I can't, I could repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. Some of my most sacred spiritual moments in Zoom groups with y'all.
Speaker 3:I have had sacred spiritual moments with The Wolf's Book or Price for Admission or This Homecoming Book. I've had spiritual experiences by the river and on my elliptical with really delicious food. There are all kinds of ways that spiritual experiences can show up. Being vulnerable enough to open ourselves to the possibility even of what spirituality could look like for us, even outside the context of religion or shiny happy or anything like that, that in itself, that willingness, that openness, that vulnerability, that is a spiritual experience.
Speaker 1:I saw in my mind fairy lights lights through the mist. I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift, pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away. My spine split from carrying us up the hill, wet through my clothes where her bones caught the chill. Gone. It would never say I abandoned the ship, but it was going down with it.
Speaker 1:The wide knuckles of dying grip holding tight to you quite resentment. My friends say it isn't right to be scared. Every day you'll love a fear. Every breath feels like the rarest air. You're not sure even wants to be there.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in Community Together. The link for the community is in the show notes.
Speaker 3:We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also care for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too. That's what peer support is all about, being human together.
Speaker 3:So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.