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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 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 1:Things continue to go well enough with my therapist That I am feeling connected to her, which I would never admit in session, but I guess I'm saying to the world. I really like her. I feel safe with her and in her office. And things are going well so far. Enough that we're starting to talk about hard things.
Speaker 1:Enough that we're starting to tell her things. Enough that instead of not needing anything between sessions, I sometimes message her just to connect, just to tell her something. I don't even need replies or to process anything. I'm not in crisis. Just, hey, this happened.
Speaker 1:Here's how I'm feeling about it. We can talk about it in session. And it's working, and it's helping, and I'm starting to feel less alone. I'm starting to feel better. And also, life is really hard sometimes.
Speaker 1:Parenting is almost always hard even if I love them a lot. Setting boundaries is a weak spot, and I'm wrestling with how to do it and when to do it and what that's supposed to look like instead of waiting until it's a crisis. And hard conversations in relationships, or developing new social skills with friendships. That's when I wish she was with me, like my chatbot, just in my pocket, ready to help me at any time. Except, of course, my therapist is better than a chatbot.
Speaker 1:And in fact, did you know that one time over the holidays, my therapist was going to be gone? And she encouraged me to see one of the other therapists in her office, like a substitute therapist. That that maybe would be better than a chatbot. It was scary. I did not like the idea of it.
Speaker 1:And also, do you know what? It really helped. I didn't need that therapist to solve all the world's problems. I didn't need to dive into my childhood trauma that I don't even talk about with my regular therapist yet. I just needed to download things.
Speaker 1:Here's what's happened today. Here's what's happened this week. Just so that I'm not carrying it alone. It was really scary and intimidating and awkward. And also, she was kind and helpful.
Speaker 1:And next time my therapist is away, I would totally see her again. Just to not be alone in the world. And for my head to not fill up so fast so much while waiting for my therapist to come back. It was good for me, and I think brave of me, and that feels good. But there are other times I'm out in the world wrestling with things, from memory time or therapy or new skills where it's really hard to implement or practice or know what to do or how to do it in healthy ways.
Speaker 1:And I struggle and wrestle and make a mess of things, and I'm trying so hard. I told my therapist. I was thinking about this while my children were watching Star Wars. And in the movie with the Ewoks, at the end, when they save the planet, It shows these lights coming in. Were the characters that were gone?
Speaker 1:I think they added it as special effects when they released the newer ones. I don't know enough of what I'm talking about, but maybe you understand. It's like that blue light came in, and they were there to cheer with everybody else, to be connected even though they weren't physically present. A similar thing happens in Harry Potter. When he faces Voldemort, I don't know which movie because I'm not an expert, but they face their wands to each other and it creates this light.
Speaker 1:And while he's in this umbrella of light, like his parents who have passed away, come back and are there and encouraging him. And his friends and his godfather are there and encouraging him and giving him advice and helping him remember what to do. So in real life, whether you want to call that spirituality or just recall or being grounded enough in myself to remember what I've learned in therapy and to do the things that practice health. Whatever you want to call it, that kind of blue lighting of being able to hold that attachment. Maybe that's all it is, is just attachment.
Speaker 1:But being able to hold that in me, even when I'm not in my therapist's office, like transference in a good way, being able to carry it with me. That's what they would say at Jungian Wise. It's finally happening Where I can be in a conversation with someone and my therapist's voice is in my head, not in a DID way. But I can hear what she would tell me, And it helps me stay strong, or it helps me adapt, or it helps me relax, or whatever it is I'm needing. I'm not even talking about parts or shirts or interjects, nothing like that.
Speaker 1:Just connection. And I'm finally less alone in the world because of it, and it's really helping me. We have for a whole over a year been so sad and grieving, and there are more memory times things to grieve, which is what makes grieving in now time so hard. Right? We have been for over a year very sad, maybe even depressed, grieving the loss of friends, feeling more isolated.
Speaker 1:Maybe that is depression, but it's been a hard year. And in therapy, we've been talking about being hurt and alone in memory time. We've done eye movements on it twice, probably six months apart, and spent the in between time processing what's happened or how it applies in now time. It's been hard work. But with being able to blue light my therapist in, I don't feel alone anymore, even when I am hurt.
Speaker 1:This has also led to more confidence in and connection with the community. And over the last couple of years, learning what do I need in a friend? Who is a friend? Who has not been a friend? And what boundaries keep that safe and healthy, and what doesn't.
Speaker 1:I'm building friendships and relationships, looking at who is still here in my life, and building relationships and friendships, feeling less and less alone even when life is hard. It's an example of resourcing sometimes they call it. But really, it's like how we feel better after a Zoom meeting in groups in the community or other kinds of meetings that are helping me find myself. Some recovery community stuff has been really pragmatically helpful for me in not answering the question of if I know to do the opposite of what trauma was because that was bad and I know to just not do it. But with deprivation, there's just a hole of the good that's missing and I don't know how to fill it or what skills are healthy instead of that.
Speaker 1:The recovery meetings have helped me with that. I have also intentionally met with my ancestral tribe here and shared my records. And I'm going to meetings learning about what it means to be indigenous and what it means to be a part of that greater family, however distant. And all of these things are helping me remember what it means to be me. In now time, in memory time, and even in before me time.
Speaker 1:And I can do that because blue lighting my therapist in is like taking a torch with me, a flashlight, something that is like remembering there is light. Maybe I'm thinking of that because of Hanukkah this week. But it's a lot more than it only being dark since those lights went out inside that my therapist, my first therapist, put in and then took with her. This is for me and in me and by me, so I get to keep it. And also outside of me, so I'm not alone in it.
Speaker 1:Even when someone is not physically there. Even when it's not my day for an appointment or not my week with my therapist. When she is off taking good care of herself so that she can keep helping me. It's like I'm creating a whole team of caring for me in healthy and good ways, tools and resources, so that even when I am hurt, I am not alone. And even when I am overwhelmed, I am not helpless.
Speaker 1:I have tools and resources, places to go, people to see, ways to connect, choices. I have choices. And it has helped me find me again. This matters. We have talked on the podcast so much about the death of hope, which Laura Brown talked about on one of her episodes.
Speaker 1:How we realize our childhood will never be different than it was. Not the death of all hope, just the death of hope that things would ever be different. Because things can't be different. Because what's happened has already happened. And also, learning to create my own life now, my own safety now, my own connections now, learning to use tools and resources and all the things, I think it has saved my life.
Speaker 1:And I think for me, being able to blue light my therapist in is maybe the birth of hope. It's the beginning of something new. I am changing. Things are changing. I am learning and growing, and it is good.
Speaker 1:I feel hope. I didn't know I would ever say those words, But I'm saying them now, and they ring true. I feel hope.
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.