Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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, 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 we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Are you ready? Are
Speaker 2:you ready for it?
Speaker 1:I feel like there's become a small problem in recent weeks of Taylor Swift invading the podcast.
Speaker 2:A little bit. But to be fair, she's invaded our lives all over the world. All over the world.
Speaker 1:It is a little crazy here. Okay. That's what we're talking about today. We have our nerd shirts on. We also admittedly have our cynical shirts on.
Speaker 2:Are they the same?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's an excellent question.
Speaker 2:I don't
Speaker 1:know. Because we don't want to answer that. Let's discuss why. Dissociation phobia. Right?
Speaker 1:Okay. So today we listened to an ISSTD webinar. It was about NDR. Do you know what it was called and who the lady was?
Speaker 2:Her name is Kathleen Martin, and it is called what you may not have learned in EMDR therapy basic training, colon, treating nonrealization, nonpersonification, and nonpresentification.
Speaker 1:Okay. So two things before we discuss this. Two things I wanna say. One, she very appropriately opened with the reminder that EMDR is a therapy model. It is EMDR therapy.
Speaker 1:It is not just eye movements. Which she also said that Francine Shapiro officially changed the name in 2014 to EMDR therapy. I didn't know that before. Oh, right. So EMDR is not even actually the name.
Speaker 1:Like, you literally have to say EMDR therapy. I remember when I took EMDR basic training with Michael Coy and Jill Hosey, whom I love both of them, shout out to my friends. They really emphasize that, that it's not just the eye movements. I think people who do EMDR therapy, meaning clinicians, I think they know that there's all these different phases. But I think when we talk about EMDR therapy, that we forget that and we just think eye movements.
Speaker 1:There's actually a whole lot of stuff that even can take years before you ever actually do eye movements. Yeah. It doesn't always take years, but it can, and we'll talk about why. The other thing that we have to say upfront before we talk about any of this is that she was very clearly in favor of structural dissociation. So her entire model of everything she said today was based on that.
Speaker 1:So we kind of had a mixed response to the webinar because there were some actual really good gems. In fact, I even posted something to the community that I'll read in a minute. So I mean it. Like, there were really some very good things that we want to include, but there were also some things we had real problems with. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we will spill the tea. Any clinicians who wanna listen to this webinar, I think because it was an EMDR, like, Andrea webinar, you have to watch it live to get the credits, but I think it will be on the CFast library if anyone is wanting to watch it. Okay. So I guess the next thing that I have to confess is that this webinar started in eastern time. So it was, like, 7AM our time, and I was still getting kids to school.
Speaker 1:So I was watching but kept getting interrupted. And so what do you even wanna share about the beginning? Because I could not focus.
Speaker 2:You had on too many shirts.
Speaker 1:Too many shirts. It was like, put on a shirt. Take off a shirt. Put on a shirt. Take off a shirt.
Speaker 1:It was not not that kind of taken off shirts. Yeah.
Speaker 2:What I wanted what I wrote down was she was talking about, one of the things she thinks basic training suffers with or, like, is is a weakness of it is one, there's so much time spent on phase four, which is the reprocessing, the eye shoop de doops, because that's so different than any other therapy. And so they focus on that a lot, but then also they rush to get to that in the training. So they kind of, like, glass over phase one and two and three so that the training focuses on phase four. And so then everyone that practices only with the basic training rush over one, two, and three to get to the good stuff of four.
Speaker 1:So they're passively unintentionally training people to skip a lot of the early work that should come before we ever do eye movements. This is actually really important. So for people who are not clinicians or clinicians who don't know about EMDR therapy, there's actually, is it eight? Eight phases. Eight phases of EMDR therapy, and eye movements, the shoop de doops, as we call them, do not even happen until phase four.
Speaker 1:So there's actually one, two, three things that really take a long time to do well before it's even safe to do eye movements. So one of the issues is that treating dissociative people, people with dissociation, using eye movements can be really tricksy. But part of what mitigates that is doing phases one, two, and three really well. Yeah. And so there are some people who get super overwhelmed by it because that's happening too soon or because people are not, knowing how to adapt it with dissociation, which Michael Coy talks about a lot.
Speaker 1:So I would definitely recommend his presentations for that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:She also talked about when she does basic trainings for people, she requires that they take another twelve hour training on dissociation and complex trauma. Well done. Yeah. For her folks.
Speaker 1:So like, that's amazing. Well done. I think we forget partly because we're in the middle of it and partly because we're like, oh, I wanna help with DID or, oh, I want help with my DID or, you know, theoretically, if someone should have it. But we forget to slow down and understand the greater context, like neurologically what's happening, how trauma works in the brain and the body, and all these foundational things that are really important. So for example, you and I are going to be starting in a month.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. In a month in January, we will start doing our class for ISSTD. But the entire first course is just about complex trauma. Yeah. Like we don't even get into heavy dissociation, much less DID until the second course.
Speaker 1:The whole first course is about just the context because it matters that much. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's so complex. There's so many pieces to it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's why we call it complex. Yep. That's great. Okay. Anything else about that part up until we get to I
Speaker 2:AIP? That was the most relevant parts that I took notes about. Okay.
Speaker 1:So in this particular training, she actually focused a lot. Did you get anything from phase one that was, like, extra super important? No. Okay. So I feel like in this one in particular, she focused a lot on phase two or maybe just what I took from it that was really important is that part of why phase two is so important is because it creates the necessary environment to be able to do eye movements, which still is not until phase four.
Speaker 1:Right. So if you don't do phase two well, not just skipping over one, two, and three, but phase two specifically, if you don't do it well, the person is not actually even ready to do eye movements. Right.
Speaker 2:She kept talking about phase two, focusing on unjamming the AIP, which is the adaptive information processing in our brain. So the thing that lets us process information so it doesn't get stuck. And when there's trauma, it gets jammed. And the whole point of phase two is to help get it unjammed so that it can then when you go to process, it goes it processes correctly.
Speaker 1:Right. So if you don't do phase two well, then what happens when you start doing eye movements later in phase four, this is when people get flooded or this is when it doesn't work at all. Like, I don't feel anything happening or too much is happening. They fall asleep. They fall asleep.
Speaker 1:Dissociation does that, like all the things because they literally do not have access to a properly functioning part of their brain that does the processing, which is what the eye movements are for is the reprocessing. Right. Which means either they're not processing at all or they are reliving instead of processing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Every time she would talk about jamming, I got the picture in my head of, you know, the Jim Carrey, how the Grinch Told Christmas movie, and there's, like, the package sorter that she falls into. I kept thinking of that like all those patterns.
Speaker 1:Yes exactly exactly. So when she's talking about that part of our brain the package sorter the processing. Mhmm. She said the reason we need that part of the brain online and working instead of all jammed off is to create the environment to do the reprocessing. But she says the environment that create like, the environment, meaning the relationship between you and the therapist, and then also your own relationship with yourself, with memory time, with now time.
Speaker 1:Like it's really a lot of work before you ever even get to eye movement. And some of the things that really are a part of phase two, which means you have to learn and be able to do on your own and together before you ever even get to eye movements, are tolerating negative affect, meaning being able to tolerate that there are hard things to tackle and hard things to talk about. Or that there
Speaker 2:are even EPs around, like tolerate the real the oh, what am I trying to say? Tolerate the fact that there are EPs. Right. Right.
Speaker 1:So we're gonna come back to that piece because we're just going to let that slip away for a hot minute. We have to be able to tolerate positive affect. So good feelings, good interactions, being tended to, being cared for. That's intense before we ever even do eye movements and then a capacity to stay present even in memory time. What?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, they focus on that, like dual attention. So for processing, when you go to that phase, you have to be able to be in them now time and memory time at the same time, like a foot in both.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. That's what Michael Coy said too, a foot in both. It's really tricky. Like, the closest I can get to this or explain an example of this without, like, triggering people would be how when we wrote the memoir and did that editing work.
Speaker 1:Right? All that that is an example of difficult content. I'm just gonna package that up in a intellectual cognitive framework. Right? I can I can't tell you what is in what chapters?
Speaker 1:You probably could say what is in what chapters, but I can think to myself when I get triggered and something comes up, I can think, oh, that's a chapter in the memoir. And that becomes like a container, right? I have awareness that this is a thing I'm going to eventually need to take to therapy. That's different than in the beginning of therapy. Like it almost becomes advanced topics, right?
Speaker 1:Because at the beginning of therapy, I don't know who I am. I don't know where I am. I don't know when I am, and I don't know why I am. Like what is even there that's causing a problem? This is later when you can, like, tolerate, there's this thing that is distressing me, but you know what the thing is.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And you can tolerate knowing about the thing and experiencing the thing while staying present in now time. Do you know what that means? What?
Speaker 2:That you might be ready for stage four. No.
Speaker 1:No. I didn't say I wanted to do that. I'm giving an example.
Speaker 2:I didn't say you needed to. And also, maybe you have the capacity, at least the capacity to stay present in memory time.
Speaker 1:As long as it's very, very cognitive and contained in a book on someone else's shelf in another room. Okay. Here we go.
Speaker 2:Maybe another building.
Speaker 1:That was actually an example of the next thing. The fourth thing you have to be able to do is have a capacity to regulate back out of the trauma. When you get overwhelmed, are you able to reorient yourself to time and place using grounding skills, time orientation, humor, coping Containment. Containment. However you do it, like, is your thing.
Speaker 1:You do you, boo. But whatever is your thing to back out of memory time safely and be able to be okay in now time. Not undistressed. It is distressing stuff that happened. You don't have to pretend that it doesn't bother you.
Speaker 1:Just different than not being aware that it bothers you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. See, I felt that was hard to hear because I'm super good at reorienting, but also because I dissociate it. And that apparently is not the same thing. Right? You can't just forget it or lock it away and not count.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I also think we have different capacity for this at different points in our therapy. In the beginning, it's much harder to do that Later we get better at it, but doesn't mean we always can. Later we get pretty good at it. Also, that's different for different shirts or parts. Right?
Speaker 1:Some have had more practice at that than others, and that's always gonna change over the course of therapy. So there may be some times or some parts who are ready to do some eye movements on really specific things, but others cannot participate in that. Other times later down the road, those parts may be more ready if it's helpful.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And again, I'm not saying everyone needs to do EMDR therapy. We're just talking about
Speaker 2:it in
Speaker 1:this context. Yeah. So to even be able to be ready for eye movements, You have to be able to tolerate a negative affect, tolerate a positive affect, have capacity to stay present even in memory time, have capacity to regulate back out
Speaker 2:of trauma. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:You know what? This actually oh.
Speaker 2:Oh, no. I'm sorry. There were some more pieces to that.
Speaker 1:Oh, so Those requirements. Okay. So before you share that Yeah. One thing that this did for me, though, is help me understand, like, the very beginning of the podcast, when we first started learning even about, like, plurality and online community, one thing that happened for us a lot is really, this is not my experience. I can't identify as this because it is not my experience.
Speaker 1:I think part of what has happened is that I just wasn't there yet. Like they really just were more evolved. It's also a different experience, but they had skills I didn't have, and I could not relate to it. So I just wanna say that explicitly because it's one more reason that as a community, whether we're in different groups or whatever, like as a community, an online or in person or a healing together, whatever, it's really important that we are safe with each other. And it's really important that we don't get sucked into like activated drama, fight responses, kinds of things where we are judging each other or saying someone else is wrong and our way is right because it's just different.
Speaker 1:We're in different places. We have different parts in different places. We have different therapists helping us in different ways. And our experience is valid. Like, everyone's experience is valid.
Speaker 1:And I think that's really important. And this emphasized that to me. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1:That was my avoidance for whatever you're gonna say next.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you just didn't write them down because maybe you had to run out for one of the children or something.
Speaker 1:It snowed today, so there was all kinds of drama getting kids out the door. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So she also talked about being able to have leadership in adaptive self regulation, which I think is another way of saying these other things like capacity to go into distress and come out of distress. So you're just have the ability to have your own leadership. Like, I think she meant, like, autonomously. You don't have to have your therapist help you regulate. You can regulate on your own.
Speaker 1:You know what that makes me feel like? You know how we're like, I hate Frasier's table because this whole thing of, oh, here's the boardroom, and we're all gonna go sit around the table. How, like, white man Mhmm. That feels. Right?
Speaker 1:So there's been lots of adapting. I think the clinical community generally has done a really good job of what does your gathering place look like? What do you need to feel safe and comfortable in that kind of internal place? And that's great. Not that I have done that yet, but the vision of what it could be feels much better in that context as a gathering place rather than, like a boardroom.
Speaker 1:But in this specific context, it makes me I have the image maybe because we're gonna go see songbirds and snakes later.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. But
Speaker 1:I have the image of like a movie theater. I consent to when I walk in to watch it on the screen. I know it's not happening right now. I also can leave at any time. I can pause it at any time, but not just to like, oh, you're having a flashback, hit the pause button and everything will be fine.
Speaker 1:But more of that cooperative experience, collective shared experience of like in the theater, in the rows together. I can see that this is what we're talking about. We can navigate it. I know it's not happening now. I can also even tolerate feeling things, you know, later, and we'll talk about this, but they talked she talked about AMPs and EPs and how EPs are feeling all the things and APs or ANPs are like, I literally can't feel all the things, which we talked about napping.
Speaker 1:Yep. We did. Called it. Yeah. But, like, I cannot tolerate that because I can't function if I do.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. But when you go watch a movie, you experience emotion. Like there's music and there's things that happen and you like the whole gamut, right? Mhmm. You experience emotion and also, you know, it's not entirely yours and yet your experience is valid.
Speaker 1:And then it's a response to what you're seeing. So it gives me in that very moment of just you reading, I got that whole vision of having a framework of being able to structure tolerating that in a cognitive way that is also experiential. Mhmm. Does that make sense? It made a
Speaker 2:lot of sense. I I liked it. And when you were talking about the movie and the emotions piece, it reminded me of an article that's, like, written by one of the founders of the theory I was trained in called crying at the happy ending, where it's like the idea that when we watch a movie and things are like stressful or we don't, it's a cliffhanger, the climax is happening. The emotion gets held in until there's the release and it's like safety at the end. There's been the resolution.
Speaker 2:Everything's okay. Then we can cry because we can't cry when it's not safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Unless the movie is French. French movies have terrible endings. They just stop.
Speaker 2:It's over.
Speaker 1:It's
Speaker 2:done. No resolution. No happy ending.
Speaker 1:Sorry, French. That's fine. You watch a French movie, and you're like, what just happened? No. What happened?
Speaker 1:They just stopped. Just stopped. There's no resolution. They just stopped. We could get into the history of that in World War two, but we don't have time for that right now.
Speaker 2:That's another podcast. No one wants to listen to that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. That makes sense. So holding in. Oh, that's the moment why we have flashbacks. Right?
Speaker 1:Like, it's not until, oh, we're safe now. And then our brain is like, oh, let's go clean house. Here's a thing to work on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, and also why a lot of times clients will say like, everything in my life is fine. Like, I don't understand why I'm having such a hard time now because like I have a great partner and my family's good or I love my job. You know, all these things are good, and then they fall apart. And, well, because you're finally safe, so now you can feel it.
Speaker 1:Oh. Welcome. Crying for the happy ending. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. I'm actually excited. I don't necessarily have a desire to participate in therapy, actually, but I am excited about this theater concept, which is so funny because I don't even go to lots of movies. Right? Although we are today.
Speaker 1:It's true. But I have struggled for decades. Liter that's how old I am. Literally three decades to find a way to engage. Like, to it's it's so hard.
Speaker 1:Like and we'll talk about this because she really gets into it. But as an A and P, in my context, in my system, I have to work. If I don't work, we're going to be homeless. Mhmm. If I don't work, we're going to be hungry.
Speaker 1:And now because of other shirts, parts, things, peoples, other people are also going to be homeless and hungry, which I don't appreciate, by the way. Okay? I'm just being honest and transparent. So I have and, like, I'm exhausted. I work too many hours.
Speaker 1:I work too hard. There's too much happening, but I'm trying to survive literally daily. Yeah. Trying to survive. I have not known enough for ten years, and it's exhausting.
Speaker 1:I don't mean that as a complaint. I mean, that as trying to be transparent and vulnerable. I'm exhausted. It is exhausting to try to keep up. And it's not like they are overly spoiled or we mismanage funds.
Speaker 1:Right. It just Mhmm. It's that much. Just the need is that great. Right?
Speaker 1:Trying to keep up. Six kids is a lot. Medical bills are a lot. All the things. And then the layers of it's just expensive to be poor.
Speaker 1:Right? Yeah. So difficult situations get complicated. That's my reality, which also is a whole other podcast that nobody wants to listen to. But because that's my reality, I do not it's not that I don't want to go to therapy.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't wanna go to therapy, but nobody wants to go to therapy. Right? It's not that I don't believe in my therapist. It's not that I don't wanna go to therapy. It's that I cannot lose my capacity to function or we are in crisis.
Speaker 1:So literally not just for the good of my outside family, but also for the good of the system, I cannot fall apart. It is not an option. And so I cannot like, I understand clinically, but just personally, I cannot be exposed. I cannot be traumatized. Like, it's literally not a choice.
Speaker 1:And yet also, obviously, I am traumatized, but I cannot be. Or I will not be. Like, again, existential crisis, which we'll talk about again later. Yeah. But it's that same process, right?
Speaker 1:And so, but cognitively, and especially as I've grown professionally and been through these classes and trainings and have learned so much, I understand that the only real thing that can help me actually be not traumatized or heal from trauma is to do therapy. Right? Yeah. So it feels like then a double bind.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Which then also activates trauma. Yeah. Because of childhood stuff. So I can't even consider the option because the moment I do, I put myself in a like, the idea of I need therapy is in itself a reenactment by default. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Therapy is not a reenactment, not really, but that process. Right? And so how can I hold both of my left brain knowing therapy literally is the door out? I've got to go in that door to get out of this room. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Right? And also be able to stay enough in this room that we literally don't die
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Or aren't homeless or don't let the children starve. Right. I could not find that door. When you said that and I got that image of a theater was the first time I felt like that's a door I
Speaker 2:can walk through. Like maybe you can do some therapy through that lens?
Speaker 1:Right. Like the key there is tolerating. I don't have to be what they are. I don't have to absorb who they are. Right.
Speaker 1:I don't have to absorb what they have been through.
Speaker 2:And you also don't have to have that movie running all the time in your head, like, while you're working, while you're
Speaker 1:Right. I can leave the theater. Yeah. I don't know what just happened in my brain, but it feels really big. Oh, I'm glad.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense at all? Mhmm. It is literally the first time in my life I felt like there is a way that is possible for me to participate in therapy. You need a movie theater inside.
Speaker 2:What? It's like nice, thick, red velvet curtains that you can open to go in, but then close when you're done.
Speaker 1:It's cold. Do you remember that? Are you too younger than me that you don't? You're just barely younger than me. Did you ever see them?
Speaker 1:Maybe.
Speaker 2:I don't remember. I remember. I don't know.
Speaker 1:We didn't When the curtains used to still open. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. On the screen. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That's how old we are. We just barely remember that and just barely remember when they used to pump your
Speaker 2:Oh, I lived in Oregon during my grad school, and they pumped your gas there.
Speaker 1:So I really remember. Not anymore. They told us when we were driving to Seattle. We don't do that anymore. Like, I was like, I was not
Speaker 2:expecting It was so weird when I moved there. Like, you have to stay in your car. You get in trouble if you get out and try to pump your gas. At least then, not anymore. It was weird because, you know, I don't like being taken care of.
Speaker 1:Yes. That's also another episode that everybody wants to listen to.
Speaker 2:Oh, no. No. No.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. I didn't mean to get us off track, but that was really powerful. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm glad it happened. I don't feel like I did anything amazing.
Speaker 1:You shared space with me. I love you.
Speaker 2:I love you.
Speaker 1:There are two more. I know. Right? It's like, oh, wrap. It's a wrap.
Speaker 2:No. They're they're quick. Communication, compassion, and cooperation among parts of self. You have to have that in phase two.
Speaker 1:I could not have even gone there until the theater ideas. So I'm glad the theater came first. But that works. Right? As long as there's a seat on either side of me they keep
Speaker 2:their popcorn over there. You can be in the back row. Just throw popcorn up at you.
Speaker 1:Okay. Maybe I will be in the back
Speaker 2:row. There you go.
Speaker 1:Maybe I could be in the box where the projector Yes.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:Wait. Why does that put me in control of things? That also
Speaker 2:Because you're the host. That's important. Oh, what is that? I'm sorry. I mean, never mind.
Speaker 2:Okay. What Moving on. The last one is necessary adaptive information, including current time orientation, has to be present. Oh, okay. One last piece on this that I wrote down that I thought was interesting because she was talking about you have to be able to link in adaptive information in order to start unjamming the processing, the AIP, right, the package sorter, meaning like time orientation that it's now or that you're safe enough, like parents are dead or, you know, that information when it gets linked in, there is some natural reprocessing happening.
Speaker 2:And that made me think of times when I've worked with clients and just giving them some information about like, this is what trauma looks like, and this is how it shows up. And they're like, oh my gosh, that's what I'm doing. That makes sense. That's there's like this relief that comes with that education. And it feels like it's that it's that adaptive information is getting in.
Speaker 2:It's not no longer is the narrative that I'm bad. It's, oh, I was traumatized and that's why this is happening to me. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yes. You went somewhere.
Speaker 2:I don't know what happened. That's okay.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. I'm was excellent, and we'll leave it in the episode. I'll hear it never. You'll hear it then. I love you.
Speaker 1:I love you too.
Speaker 2:I think there was a piece that we didn't talk about that was really, like, maybe gut punchy truth about attachment breaches. Oh,
Speaker 1:okay. Before we talk about that Uh-huh. I wanna say what you were just sharing is why we need ANPs and EPs to be able to work together. Yeah. That.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. A lot of things are happening in my head because of the theater. It's okay. A lot of things. Exactly.
Speaker 1:When we explain what's happening in the brain, it opens up space for compassion for people. So I always tell them, like, I tell almost all of my very early on, actually, so that we have some shared language. I tell almost all of my people the story of how the brain works very simply. Do you wanna hear it?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay. I say, if we're in the wilderness, just for pretend.
Speaker 2:I made it through the wilderness. I'm sorry. Let me take that out.
Speaker 1:Gonna leave it. I love how we're editing this while we're talking. If we were in the wilderness just for pretend and there's a tiger Mhmm. There's no time for us to be like, there's a tiger. It looks like this kind of tiger.
Speaker 1:It looks hungry, so we need to tell our legs to run and tell our heart to beat and our lungs to breathe because we have already been eaten. Yeah. There's no time. So our brains have what is called neuroception, which helps our bodies respond to danger faster than we can think about it. This is why jump scares in a movie work because our body responds faster than we can think.
Speaker 1:This is just a movie, even when we already know it's a movie. And they're like, oh yeah, Right? Because the there are they already start processing. Mhmm. And then I say, the way this works is in the very middle of our brain is the amygdala, which is like the size of a thumbnail.
Speaker 1:Right? So then they're already dual awareness because I'm talking and I'm moving. Mhmm. And the amygdala is like the smoke detector for danger. And I literally point up because a dual awareness is already happening.
Speaker 1:Like, we're practicing it together. The amygdala is like the smoke detector for danger. So it goes off danger, danger, danger, danger, which I sign. So they're hearing and seeing. Right?
Speaker 1:And when that happens, the brain sends a message to the vagus nerve, which branches off to all the major organs and tells that nerve to lay down on the organ, which activates. And here's what I say, because it tickles me. What activates what everyone on TikTok knows is called the flight or fight or- Fight. Fight or flight. But then I say, in English, we speak alphabetically.
Speaker 1:And so then they're dual awareness again, they're thinking about that while we're trying to talk about something else. We say fight or flight because we speak alphabetically, but flight always happens first. We only fight when we can't get away from danger. And when we can't win the fight, then we freeze. And I show them how flight is at the top of the head and fight is at the back of the head and freezes at the back of the brain at the bottom by the brain stem.
Speaker 1:And when we freeze, it's like the tiger just walks by. If if I don't move, the tiger will just walk by. Mhmm. Right? So then I have that framework later when we get to fawning to come back to the tiger story and say, fawning is like, if I feed the tiger, it won't eat me, which I actually got from you.
Speaker 1:But I tell that story, and then we can go back to what does flight look like? What does fight look like? What does freeze look like? What's happening in the body? And we talk about all these things as they come up.
Speaker 1:But that very general part in the beginning, because from then on, we have, like, a shared language. When they're like, oh, I'm feeling this in my body, and this is, like, we can figure out what it is. And it's like following their own breadcrumbs. Yeah. When these people who at the beginning of their very first session are like, oh, I don't, I can't feel my body at all, or I'm completely disconnected.
Speaker 1:And by the end of the first session, they're like, oh, I'm in flight on these days at this time. I'm in right? It happens so quickly, that natural processing, which is why EMDR therapy, when done well, becomes exponential. Yeah. Because you can continue doing it even outside of session, even away from eye movements.
Speaker 1:Your brain learns how to heal itself because all of your organs, all of your body knows how to heal itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's supposed to be able to. It's just jammed up. Right. Like that packaging disorder.
Speaker 1:Right. Which is also why I think the part of flight, which none of us have any anxiety or flight response, of over productivity is part of the process. That is what does the jamming.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:It flight always happens first. The first thing we do is jam that processor, make it stop. I'm gonna fill it up with all the things to make it stop. I myself am not guilty of that,
Speaker 2:of course. Not like getting up at 7AM for an EMDR train training and then webinar or podcasting about it. Right. No. We never do that while also getting children out the door.
Speaker 1:Making breakfast. Uh-huh. Those are really good eggs.
Speaker 2:Yeah? Thank you. You're welcome. I folded them in. How
Speaker 1:do you fold them? You fold them in, David. Just fold them in. Oh my goodness. Okay.
Speaker 1:We're so far off. You had an attachment piece that we skipped because
Speaker 2:attachment. Oh. She talked about all these ways that we expose clients to trauma, like asking questions of like, what are you feeling? What's happening in your body? All of those list of questions.
Speaker 2:When we do that, when we ask some of those questions too early, when they're not able to tolerate it, like they haven't yet become had the capacity to tolerate it, that causes an attachment breach in the therapeutic relationship, like a rupture, because we are asking them to be overwhelmed and they can't, but they want to please us.
Speaker 1:Which is another jam. Yeah. Which is why when something goes wrong in therapy, it's hard to restart therapy with someone else because there's a jam there.
Speaker 2:Right. There's like a jam in front of a jam in front of a jam. You have like, you have like 12 jams to get through. No. It's like you have this river full of beaver dams.
Speaker 2:Right? And it's just been yeah.
Speaker 1:Except that we were talking last night about therapy. And seriously, that was the best therapy session of my whole life. Yeah. She's gonna know if she listens to this.
Speaker 2:You said you weren't gonna ever tell her that. Oh. Oopsies.
Speaker 1:It was hell. It was awful. Yeah. But it was so good for me. We were talking about basically that I'm afraid to reengage in therapy because of what happened last time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it was actually super simple, super contained, and she does this pivoting magic where she's like the whole nutcracker suite up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know how like, she, like my therapist is, a weaver of, like, trans logic threads at the same time. Yeah. And then it's like, and here's the portrait, the big reveal, and bam. Wait. What just happened?
Speaker 1:I don't know how she does it.
Speaker 2:You said last night that she pivots faster than you can dissociate. So it's like she she keeps you from even dissociating. It's
Speaker 1:wild.
Speaker 2:Right? Bob and move or bob and weave. Bob and weave. Bob and weave. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes. Right? Mhmm. She does. And so what happens is it contains me enough that instead of the window of tolerance, which we'll talk about again in a minute, she says EPs are on the edge or outside the window of tolerance.
Speaker 1:She opens the window of tolerance so that they're within those lines. Mhmm. But then she's, like, bouncing back and forth in this rhythm. I don't even know how to describe it with, like first of all, she's funny, so it catches me off guard. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So I will be sitting there sobbing, and then she will make me laugh hysterically so that, really, it bounces me from hypo to hyper or from negative affect to positive. Like, in this it's like trans induction, except it's containment.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's like she's playing that game of pong. Do you remember the old Yes. And right before you get too far into dissociate, like hypo arousal, she'll, like, come in with something funny and send you back to the other edge so that within right before you get to, like, manic, she pooms you back over. Yes.
Speaker 2:She keeps you inside that window really well.
Speaker 1:Well, but here's what's crazy. You're talking about that river with all the dams in it. This is what happens. It's like she's keeping me from docking at the side so that I won't get in the river. The window of tolerance is the window.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. But I'm inside the tolerance. The tolerance is the river, and that is how we move through.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Have you seen the panda video about the river, the of tolerance?
Speaker 1:No. But I will, and we can put a link in the show notes.
Speaker 2:It's really cool. I I give it to adult clients who have children they wanna talk about trauma with, but then they love it themselves. It's really cute.
Speaker 1:Okay. You can show me, and I'll I'll put it in the link in the show notes. But, yes, it was powerful. I only recorded a very short episode using the excuse, which was also valid that the kids were coming home from school. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But it's the one with the Cher song. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:What did we end up calling it? Therapy after love.
Speaker 1:Therapy after Oh my goodness. So, yeah, like, it's literally making therapy possible again. Like, I'm so grateful to her, not in a fawning way, and I love her so much, not in an inappropriate way. But I feel so safe in that whole office. And I don't know how to express in words what a gift that is for a human soul.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's more than just applying the right techniques, right, or giving treatment. Like, it's literally healing people's souls.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah. Yes. 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.
Speaker 1:Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.