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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.
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 2:The next page. So if we put all of this together, here are two three big ways to tell the difference between what's actually happening, even underneath masking, between blue and red. One is that blue is avoidant, meaning you're avoiding conflict or you're avoiding the feelings or avoiding dealing with stuff. And red is anxious even when they're both angry. Also, another way is that blue is reserved which means like held back and quiet, and cognitive, which means thinking, or left brain, and red is reactive and emotional.
Speaker 2:Blue is focused on yourself but dismissive of others. And red is focused on others but dismissing your
Speaker 3:self. So blue would be why does this always happen to me, and red would be how could you do this
Speaker 2:to me? Yes. And then green is we are in this together. Green is being responsive, balancing thoughts and feelings, you need both of them. It doesn't matter if you've got really good clear thinking if you don't know how to also identify and express your feelings.
Speaker 2:If you're only so reactive that you're just puking your feelings out on everybody, you're not actually thinking or learning from those, what they're trying to tell you, the feelings I mean. So when you're in green, you're willing to have hard conversations because you're including both yourself and others, but also having compassion for both yourself and others.
Speaker 3:I'm curious where you would put fawning behavior on this. Mhmm. Because when I think of my own experiences of fawning, I feel like it comes from a feeling of anxiousness, which is red. But trying to think put the others first and not myself. So it almost feels like it's where those two ends loop around.
Speaker 3:It
Speaker 2:It's actually focused on others instead of focusing on yourself. So you're the one being dismissed.
Speaker 3:But I feel like it's telling yourself that I'm only thinking of other
Speaker 4:Wouldn't fawning be focusing on yourself because you've you're focusing on others, but you're only focusing on others to make sure you yourself aren't hurt because you'll get mad because the other people would be mad at you for not choosing what they wanted, so then turn yourself. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's some good Right? That's, I think, what I was trying to hit on before. I think you said it really well, Amber.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. Ultimately, yes. That's what makes fawning blue. Oh, I think fawning was blue. What makes fawning red?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's both? It's both. What makes it blue is what you just said. What makes it red is because you're denying yourself in the process. You're not actually getting what you need.
Speaker 2:Right? We talked about this with shiny happy where the story is Jesus said do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Right? Shiny happy turns that into do unto others instead of yourself, which was not a thing. Even if you're using the Christian story of Jesus, he was like the king of naps.
Speaker 2:He would always nap, go take care of people, and go nap again.
Speaker 3:And he said love thy neighbor as thyself, not
Speaker 2:necessarily. Instead of.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's almost like in the way that I might feel lonely and so I eat a cookie, which does not in any way help my feeling of loneliness. Right? So if I am feeling unsafe, so I need to make sure that I'm safe, blue end, by appeasing the tiger so it doesn't eat me except in the process of doing that, I am ignoring the things that help me, I am also continuing to make my blue end still feel unsafe through the process of trying to protect myself. Yes.
Speaker 3:It's like eating it. It's a loneliness cookie.
Speaker 2:K.
Speaker 5:So kind of focus on what Mary said before. And That, like, when someone says something when you were, like, really young that, like, made a big, like, one thing and, like, you held on to that tiny detail, I think everybody has that. Like Yeah. And it kinda, like, changes their life about, like,
Speaker 2:like And then it starts
Speaker 3:to loop in your brain.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Like, it you can't just ever let go of that. I'm kinda, like, how I just kinda focus on what I like or what I like or what I like or what I just kinda focus on what I look like and what people think of me instead of focusing on, like, your personality, instead of your looks? Like, looks shouldn't be the first thing you realize about one person. It should be their personality.
Speaker 2:I love that so much. It's also one of the reasons it's so important that we're kind to others because the looks you give and the things you say are still in them and impacting them, and you can't take those things back. The way you treat people and the things you say to people,
Speaker 1:no matter how sorry you are,
Speaker 2:you can't take them back.
Speaker 3:I guarantee there are things that all of us have done or said that are good or bad that other people remember even though we have forgotten them completely, that they will be part of other people's lives forever in the same way that those things we remember are. We just have to be very kind in how we treat people.
Speaker 2:And ourselves.
Speaker 3:And ourselves.
Speaker 4:Would fawning be the same thing as, like, not having boundaries?
Speaker 2:She said, is fawning the same as not having boundaries? Yes and no, it's a different thing than boundaries, but if you're fawning you're not having boundaries.
Speaker 3:Usually when we talk about boundaries, we're having boundaries with other people. Fawning is setting bad boundaries with yourself. Does that sound right? Like that you're not caring for yourself, you're willing to
Speaker 2:Those aren't boundaries though.
Speaker 3:That's not a boundary? Boundaries are about
Speaker 2:how you want to be treated. Ah, interesting. And boundaries are not even about the other person. Boundaries are about how you wanna be treated. This is how I wanna be treated if I'm not being treated by this in this way.
Speaker 2:I'm excusing myself. Oh, I love that. Right?
Speaker 3:So But still it sounds like fawning is when you are not able to do that with yourself. Right. I am treating myself in an unfair way.
Speaker 2:Yes. Exactly.
Speaker 4:That's what other people are
Speaker 5:happy with.
Speaker 3:Yes. Right.
Speaker 2:So if you, papa, on the back of your paper, you have some examples. Could you read some examples of red and we can talk about them?
Speaker 3:Alright. So some quotes that you might say when you're in the red zone. It doesn't matter. I don't matter. I can't.
Speaker 3:Or I do everything.
Speaker 5:I don't know.
Speaker 3:And then behaviors include fawning, keeping the peace, which is interesting as a red behavior, gossip, demanding validation, meaning you have to like me the way I am right now. It's good to be liked the way you are, but demanding validation from others. Resentful, conflict or starting conflict. What's resent? Resentful means someone did something and you're holding a grudge.
Speaker 3:Like, you're not gonna let that bad feeling go and you're gonna, like, you're okay.
Speaker 5:What I say is you wanna tell them?
Speaker 3:No. It's like, holding on to that bad not forgiving someone, not letting something go, something bad that's happened but consciously like holding on to that bad feeling rather than letting it go.
Speaker 2:Or repairing it. Like it would be bad boundaries, it would be fawning to only let it go. Yes. It's But if it's a relationship that's important to you, then repairing it is really, really important.
Speaker 3:Like, in in marriage, it's so important to do that. You guys know that mama and I have have never had a fight. That doesn't mean we've never disagreed. That doesn't mean we've never hurt each other's feelings. But when there has been a hard situation, we do the work to resolve it instead of either just saying, oh, that's fine.
Speaker 3:I didn't do anything. Either forgiving everything or holding on to the resentment. We always did the work to address whatever the actual issue is and to heal it, get back to our green zone as in a relationship. Right?
Speaker 5:It's not are you saying that, like, it's bad to hold on to that thing that somebody said.
Speaker 3:Are you thinking specifically of the time that someone said something not nice to you and now you were telling that thing to yourself?
Speaker 5:No. Like, if someone says something to you and you don't let it go, like, it's still playing in your mind, that's not bad.
Speaker 2:It's not healthy. It doesn't make you bad.
Speaker 3:I would say there are two different parts to that. One, I think it is important to get yourself to the point where you can forgive them. That forgiveness is an internal work. So as far as if somebody said something that hurts hurts your feelings and you can't get past that, part of it is about being able to forgive them for what they did because you not forgiving them is not doing anything to them or not solving the problem. It's just making you feel bad and unhealthy.
Speaker 3:But if they have not done their part, then forgiving someone does not mean mean that you need to continue to put yourself in a dangerous situation where you're gonna continue to be hurt. So there's two sides. Your responsibility is to work through to the point where you can forgive them, but then also make sure that you are safe so that you're not putting yourself in danger again. If what you're talking about is a situation where someone said something mean to you and now you were saying that mean thing to yourself as it loops around in your head again and again and again. Like all of you guys, pretty much, I've heard I remember times where someone like in elementary school said something mean to you, and I've heard you say the same thing about yourself years later.
Speaker 3:That is a loop where now you your own brain is being the bully. You were doing it to yourself and I don't actually know a strategy for getting past that particular kind of loop.
Speaker 2:Recognizing it and talking about it and then telling yourself other things that are true. Like, you have to you can't deny it. That goes back to what he was saying about anger. You can't just push it down or deny it or ignore it. You notice it comes up.
Speaker 2:You you can even literally say to yourself, oh, I'm noticing this thought. And then you say, and also, it's not true. And I know it's not true because this and this and this. And what I want to believe instead or what I know instead is this and this and this because and you just talk yourself through it until you build those new thoughts and then have good things looping. Not in a toxic positivity of fake affirmations kinda way, but as in telling yourself truth, not telling yourself someone else's lie.
Speaker 3:So echoing this back to make sure I understand, it sounds like if you have one of those negative statements that you've heard in the past and is now echoing around in your head, the first step towards changing that is to make it not just automatic. Make it not something that happens without your awareness of it. So when you have that thought loop through your head, you're like, wait. No. I know that thought, but it's not how I feel anymore.
Speaker 3:It's not what I think about myself. It's not how I see the world and be able to respond to it instead of just letting it run on its own. Does that sound like the first step?
Speaker 2:And responding. Intentionality replacement. Okay. Intell in intentional response will always bring you back to green, whether you're needing to respond to yourself or you're needing to respond to someone else. Shutting down and curling up and turning away is blue.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 4:Sorry. On the paper before, like, it says I mean, that's the other part. It says, keeping the piece. How is that written?
Speaker 2:Isn't that a good thing? Keeping the peace is a kind of fawning when you're sacrificing yourself to do it when it's at your expense to do it. That's different from honoring your needs and feelings and thoughts and also honoring those of others. When you honor those of others instead of yourself, then that's Greg.
Speaker 3:Would parenting your siblings be an example of keeping the peace? No? So like times where you're like, no you can't do that. Like you're trying to enforce the rules with other people. That's not what you mean by keeping the peace.
Speaker 2:That's instigating conflict. Oh, interesting. It's instigating conflict because you're not their parent and so it by default throws them into red.
Speaker 3:Fascinating. That's another one that, like, mentally you're thinking I'm doing something good, but it's really causing issues. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The same thing when you don't let someone have their feelings. It's okay for people to be distressed by feelings that are distressing. They have a right to be distressed about those things. If you shut down their distress, you're actually, like, abusing that. Like, you're Yes.
Speaker 2:Causing them relational wounds because you're not letting them feel their distress. We have to acknowledge what wounds are before we can heal them. It would be like when Mary cut her toe at the pool earlier today. If we just said, you're not bleeding, Mary. You're not bleeding, Mary.
Speaker 2:You're not bleeding, Mary. When you don't let someone have feelings that are distressing, it's the same thing. You're not tending to the wound.
Speaker 3:So is that the kind of peacekeeping that it's talking about?
Speaker 2:Sometimes. Sometimes it's bonding. Sometimes it's peacekeeping. But we also have people who are so anti conflict that they don't actually resolve or repair, which leaves them in blue, and they're not in green at all Yeah. Even though they're good at not looking red.
Speaker 4:Yes. I think that I do that a lot because I don't wanna see people get hurt, and I think I I also do that to myself a lot. Yeah. Saying, like, I'm not supposed to be feeling this or, like, saying, like, my feelings are wrong and, like, this is my fault and it should be happening. Like, I think I put a lot of stuff on me that probably aren't my fault.
Speaker 2:It's so powerful that you just said that. Let me tell all of you something that is really, really important for me for you to know. Your feelings are almost always right. It does not mean you have a right to use your feelings as weapons. It does not mean your thought conclusions are always accurate.
Speaker 2:That takes more learning and more experience that you're doing that work. That your feelings are almost always right
Speaker 1:because your feelings are giving yourself information.
Speaker 2:You don't ever have to turn off your feelings. And in fact, if you do, the longer you do, the longer it takes you to learn how to learn from them. You're not bad for having feelings. You have feelings because you're a mammal and mammals have a nervous system and are built for connection. What matters, what makes the the difference between red and blue feelings and green feelings is that with green feelings, you don't have to be alone in them.
Speaker 2:Papa and I can help with your feelings. Papa and I can tend and respond to your feelings. In fact, the more that you talk to us about this is what I'm thinking or this is what I'm feeling, the more that we can help you so that you can navigate the very exact same circumstances in green without having to go to blue or to red. Because green means you're connected and not alone in it.
Speaker 3:Just to maybe clarify one thing that you just said that your feelings are almost always right, but your thought conclusions are not necessarily right. So we talked about if you have feel angry, usually it means there's something that feels unfair, something feels wrong. So that's usually absolutely right. Your thought conclusion or how you put that into words in your head or in your mouth. If your conclusion is everyone hates me, that's probably not a correct conclusion.
Speaker 3:It's that's a generalization for one thing. Not everybody knows you. But so part of part of regulating your feelings is not bearing your feelings or hiding from your feelings. It's learning, like mama just said, of understanding what it is that's actually causing it so that you can or what is bringing up that feeling so that you can address the actual problem.
Speaker 2:So for example, with what you just shared, you, my my friend, cannot even stay in the room when there's conflict in a movie because you get so uncomfortable with conflict that you cannot tolerate even imaginary conflict. But that is not that conflict is bad. It is that that's how blue you feel. You re you need a lot of blue to feel safe. But the more you are connected and learn that conflict is not always dangerous, then the less distressing the conflict is.
Speaker 2:With what you went through as a baby, it makes perfect sense that your brain has associated conflict and danger. Yeah. Papa and I have had a
Speaker 1:year of very hard conversations,
Speaker 2:but I have never been unsafe with papa. Papa has not been sit unsafe with me, even when we had big feelings about things, even when we had thoughts about things, even at core value stuff like shiny happy and navigating all of that. Big time conversations. But we were safe with each other, and
Speaker 1:we repair
Speaker 2:with each other. And we're sitting here in this day with all of our conversations that we've had
Speaker 4:beautifully
Speaker 2:because we can be green even when the circumstances are hard. So I'm not saying, oh, force yourself to watch all the movies and sit through the conflict. I don't mean that. I mean, you don't have to be in it alone. When we are very blue or very red, we feel very alone.
Speaker 2:When we think there's been an injustice and we feel angry, whether we take that blue or we take it red, that injustice, the actual conclusion that is a fact is that I, as a mammal, am in danger if I'm not part of the herd. That's why it goes to those extremes. That's what the accurate thing is. And also, you are part of the herd. This is our herd.
Speaker 2:This is our family. You're not alone. We do care. We are here. Right?
Speaker 2:So you have to remember to give yourself all of the evidence and all of the thoughts. It is not an accurate conclusion that everybody hates you, nobody loves you, and you should go eat worms.
Speaker 4:When you're angry, does that mean something is wrong or you feel something is wrong?
Speaker 2:It means you, at a neurological level, have sensed an injustice or that something is wrong. It's not always happening in the moment, but it will feel like it. That's called an emotional flashback. So when you think everybody hates me and no one is helping me and I'm alone, overall, it's not actually true. Papa and I are here for you.
Speaker 2:We've got your back. And, also, maybe I'm at work or you don't have a phone or papa's sleeping or that it's been a hard day or someone was rude to you. But neurologically, your brain goes I'm a mammal and to be disconnected is literally a threat to my life. And so I feel disconnected and so I feel like my life is being threatened. That's what's wrong.
Speaker 2:When we have trauma and deprivation on top of that, where you really did experience danger and you really were of good nurture, then your brain goes, that's the evidence. I know this happened before, it's gonna happen now, so it's happening now. And your left brain can think about all of that. And your left brain can tell time, and when you're in the green zone, you can think Oh, I know that's actually from my childhood. It's not happening right now.
Speaker 2:But your right brain cannot tell time. And your right brain does not know it's not happening now. Your right brain thinks it's still happening. Can I give you a safe example of that that's not too intrusive? If you don't like it, I can take it out.
Speaker 2:We've had these discussions about the dance moms and how it's so funny because you hate conflict, but you're watching this show full of drama and how it has come out sideways. So we're like, it's making you nasty. Don't watch it. Don't watch it. Like, why are you watching this?
Speaker 2:But you're so drawn to it, and you're so drawn to it, and you're so drawn to it. So I'm like, what is this? Like, it has to be meeting a need or you wouldn't keep doing it. Right? If it wasn't meeting any need, you wouldn't stay interested in it, but you're, like, obsessed with the show.
Speaker 2:And it's so funny because you're not an obsessed with TV kind of person, but you are obsessed with this show. So you know what I did? What? I actually asked your mother. I don't wanna say her name because we're recording, but I asked your biological mother.
Speaker 2:Do you know what she told me? That when you were a baby and she was using drugs, that's what she would put on TV to hold you, to keep her still so that she wouldn't hurt you while she was using drugs.
Speaker 5:That was so sweet to do. Woah. I feel like that's why you're missing.
Speaker 2:Like it. So you're not obsessed with the show, you're remembering a moment of being loved even though you were in danger. So when you had other feelings of being in danger, you turned to the show. It makes perfect sense, Amber. So what's also is interesting that not all emotional flashbacks are bad.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we can remember good things,
Speaker 4:and that can I again, I don't mean
Speaker 2:in a toxic positivity way of only tell yourself good things and don't think about the hard things? But sometimes, when the hard things feel really hard, you can tell yourself the good things to help you hold on to the and also because that's a beautiful memory. And now it makes sense. Sense. Does it make sense?
Speaker 2:Isn't that wild?
Speaker 3:Alright. Some quotes you might say when in the blue zone. You never let me win. I give up. She always lies.
Speaker 3:I hate her. And some actions might be withdrawing, flight, or running away, complaining, not having words to express yourself and your feelings, not repairing ruptures in relationships, not getting along with others, not playing with others, not giving others space. And all of us do things in all of these zones. Right? We're not saying, oh, you're a blue kid or you're a red kid.
Speaker 3:Right? We recognize these pieces in all of us.
Speaker 2:All of us have blue, red, and green experiences.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Can blue also be like you think, like, you think you've done something bad, but you actually haven't done something bad?
Speaker 3:For real.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's another kind of looping. Telling yourself you're so bad or that people don't love you when it's not true. Not because you're trying. No one wakes up and says, oh, I think I'll lie to myself today, any more than someone wakes up and is like, oh, I think I'll go lie to someone else today.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 5:Who would fuck?
Speaker 2:That little fuck gets looped. You have big feelings. They get connected. It starts looping, and then we have that rabbit hole where it's like, no. That's that's not even a thing.
Speaker 2:That's happened when it's like, you're yelling. You're yelling. You're literally not yelling. Literally not. But it feels like it because the conflict is big, but you're actually safe.
Speaker 2:And in the past, when there was conflict and yelling, you were not safe. So it feels like a math equation. Oh, there's conflict, and I don't feel safe, so there must be yelling. Like, your brain fills it in for you like a missing pixel.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I can think of several instances recently where I was asking you to do something or asking you to fix something, hadn't even raised my voice, and you thought I had yelled at you because you felt bad and so you filled in all the other pieces to make that make sense.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's not even about trauma and deprivation, sometimes it's super pragmatic. Like every single one of you and me and papa have at different times that, oh, why do I have to do the dishes again? Why did why is it my turn to do laundry? You know why? Because nobody likes to do laundry or dishes.
Speaker 2:And also anything. If you wanna have clean dishes and have clean clothes, we just have to. It's just pragmatic. The same thing can happen in that neutral way too. Okay.
Speaker 2:Green examples, papa?
Speaker 3:In someone who's in the green zone listens, they take turns. Sounds a lot like that emotional maturity checklist we read through. Oh, cool. They are kind to others. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:They balance thinking with compassion. They balance compassion with boundaries. They balance feelings with context. They agree about concerns. They're open to input.
Speaker 3:They receive feedback. They prioritize relationships. One thing that immediately jumps out is a lot of the conflict that I see among the kids happens when one person is saying stop doing this and then the other person gets mad as opposed to just receiving that as information that the other person is trying to let you know they don't like something or that they want something different, and all you have to do is, like, adjust or accommodate in some way, then it solved a problem for both of you. Right? It doesn't have to leap into red for conflict or blue into shutting down and pouting.
Speaker 2:Can I add an and also to that? Yes, please. Almost like a counter except both are true. Mhmm. If we were not parenting each other, we would not have sunburns there.
Speaker 3:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2:So you are all sensitive to feedback because everyone has been trying to parent each other. And, also, that's part of trauma and deprivation. You didn't have parents before us, and then you have us for parents. And also papa has depression and I have to work, so then you parent each other. It's like, no.
Speaker 2:No. No. Really? Let us tend to you even if we are also human because we are not perfect either. But it's really important you get the care that you need and that you say so when you don't.
Speaker 5:And so sometimes when, like, people are, like, parenting other people and, like, giving feedback sometimes. Like, the person who's not really like, the person who thinks that the person who's trying to give them feedback, they think they're just parenting them, and so like I said earlier, like, they're just embarrassed, and they feel like they don't want the other person to be around. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what I hear in that is shame Yes. Where instead of what you're doing is not okay, it's that you are not okay. That's shame. We feel guilt when we do something wrong so that we can learn not to do it again. We feel shame when we think we are wrong.
Speaker 2:You're not wrong. You're good. You're exactly right. You're beautiful. You are loved.
Speaker 2:Even if also, we're helping you learn to become healthy, happy happy adults as best we can.
Speaker 4:I have a question. So in the green is being kind to somebody. But for an example, if somebody, like, wants to, like, pick a movie and they they ask you, like, what movie you would like, and they ask if they you wanna watch this specific movie, and you say share even though you don't actually want to. Then you're lying. Would that be sawning or being kind?
Speaker 5:Like, where do you draw the line?
Speaker 2:It's a good example. It's not kind because it's lying, and it's denying yourself. What is actually more important is what actually applies here is a concept called accommodating. There are times where it may not be your favorite movie, but you just wanna relax so you don't care that that's the movie they picked even though it's not your favorite. That's fine.
Speaker 2:That's accommodating. If you hate that movie and can't stand that movie and really don't even wanna sit down right now and you say yes, I will watch that movie with you, then you're denying your needs and it's not okay. Does that make sense? The green says it doesn't say be kind to others. It says be kind.
Speaker 2:That means being kind to yourself and to others.
Speaker 3:I feel like I saw I saw Kurt give a good example of green kindness last night. I was telling mama about this. That Barrett, for whatever everybody yesterday was doing different activities, lots of things going on, and Barrett had gone around to ask all of the kids if they wanted to come do some sort of specific activity with him and everybody was already doing something. A while later, I found Kirk, playing ping pong with him or the basketball game or something. And were you miserable doing that?
Speaker 3:No. No. It was fun. Right? So it wasn't that you were hurting yourself to serve someone else.
Speaker 3:It was just you had made the choice to change the activity you were doing to take care of someone else. And he wasn't doing it to get out of trouble. He didn't come tell me that's what he was doing so that he could feel all shiny and happy. Right? He just do did it because he recognized the need and had a good solution that would have him be happy as well as the other person be happy.
Speaker 3:And I was very proud of you for that.
Speaker 2:If we make ourselves happy instead of other people, that's not healthy or kind. If we make others happy instead of making ourselves happy, that's not healthy or kind to ourselves. But when we are kind to others and ourselves, when we include others and ourselves, then that is very, very green. And there are ways to do it. Part of why like, your big questions about how do you even do that, part of why it's hard for you to know isn't because you're wrong.
Speaker 2:It's because papa and I did not know. And when you have two people together who don't know how to do that, it's called codependency. And it's not actually healthy at all. And papa and I spent the last couple of years really digging into that and learning how to do things differently so that papa's needs can be met, so that my needs can be met, and, also, we still care about each other. Also, we still care about you.
Speaker 3:Alright. Look at how old we are, and we're still trying to learn those things. Right. So when we get on you guys about improving your behavior or remembering what's going on in your brain, it's not because we expect you to do it perfectly. It's because we are trying to give you a head start on the things that have taken us decades to learn so that you can go go even farther in your own progression.
Speaker 2:And also in a compassionate way, not shiny happy.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. No. No.
Speaker 2:We've come so far from shiny happy so far. And, also, we want everyone to feel tended too. Yeah. While we are talking about emotional flashbacks, can I say something about you? Something I notice that has to do with red and blue and green.
Speaker 2:It's not a mean thing. Kiriye has a pattern of feeling rejected if she has not paid attention to or in the center of things or getting her needs met this very second. That is not about Q. A. Is bad, Q.
Speaker 2:A. Is not bad So one thing that just happened that I did to Kirier was she was feeling a little blue, so I invited her to my lap and we got to snuggle, which helped her feel very green. But then because my knee is hurting so bad, I had to ask her to get down. And that sent her back to blue because of the emotional flashback for Kyrie is that she was born and put on a helicopter. And when you're most vulnerable as a mammal and supposed to be most connected to a mother, she was left alone in that hospital for thirty thirty eight days before DHS got that paperwork even though we already knew she was ours.
Speaker 2:Thirty eight days for an infant not being picked up, not being held. I am not saying Kyrie can behave how Kyrie wants. Kyrie is learning just like the rest of us, but have some compassion in those moments of what her emotional flashback is. I don't mean she gets away with everything. I don't mean those things.
Speaker 2:I mean, you all have your own origin stories. You talk about superheroes. Right? You all have your own backstories and origin stories. That is literally hers to be cast aside and not picked up.
Speaker 2:So when that happens even on a small scale, she feels that in a really big way. So when we just see, oh, we're all here together, why are you upset on the floor by yourself? It's actually in context to her experience. It's in proportion to her experience. Think about that with you talked about going to red so fast, so is it okay for you to hurt people or to hurt property?
Speaker 2:No. No. It's not. And also, when we're just looking at that, does it look like, parent, this a small thing happened. Why are you so red so fast?
Speaker 2:That doesn't make any sense. Look at the emotional flashback part of things. It does make sense when you were left alone and only hurt by the people that were supposed to be loving you. Not because they're bad, I don't mean that disrespectfully, I mean because of trauma and deprivation and the way they were dealing with stuff, right? And so you were in danger, so you think if there's any disconnect I'm in danger and so I have to be violent before someone is violent to me.
Speaker 2:In context of your origin stories, things make sense. It doesn't make you bad. And also, you write your own stories moving forward. And we wanna help you so that you have more choices, more access to more parts of yourself, and knowing what you're actually thinking, what you're actually feeling, and where all of that is coming from, and what to do about it matters.
Speaker 3:I feel like kind of what we talked about before with looping thoughts, that the way you're able to change those is by recognizing them so they're not just automatic. So if you're in a moment where you're frustrated and that bubbles up real fast. Right? So learning to recognize that is, oh, this is one of my big origin story feelings. Right?
Speaker 3:This is a feeling that I've had since I was a baby because I wasn't safe. In this situation now, how am I doing? Am I safe right now? I'm feeling frustrated. This isn't working.
Speaker 3:Am I in danger? No. I'm not in danger. Is someone trying to hurt me? No.
Speaker 3:Someone's not trying to hurt you. So maybe that sort of awareness of those things when they come up is that part of how on an individual I mean, a therapist can help you more specifically than that, but as individuals just sort of becoming more aware of it is, I think, part of that healing process.
Speaker 2:Jules and I have had this she was gonna be here for this conversation to share this, and to talk in her own way. And I don't wanna tell too much of Jules' story because she's not here. But since she had her cousin had COVID, she's not with us today to protect Kiriye, which is so kind. But we have had a hard last year in part because she is good at caring for other people, as you know. I am good at caring for other people in some ways.
Speaker 2:Neither of us know how to receive care. So Jules calls it care busters, you know, because we got all those care bears. Do you remember when she found them? So she found all these care bears at a garage sale or marketplace or something one time, now they're at the office. So she calls them care busters where we keep doing things to stop the other
Speaker 4:person from caring. Mhmm. When literally that's
Speaker 2:what builds builds a relationship and friendships and and families and each other. Right? So we want we're trying to care for the other one and the other one keeps trying to stop it. And it has caused a really hard year, not because she's bad, not because I'm bad, but because of that sunburn factor where it's hard to know how to be tended to. But do you know what happens when we're not tended to and don't let people tend to us?
Speaker 2:It comes out sideways. It means I was too shiny happy. It means I didn't have the reserves to slow down or to be softer or to be less shiny happy because I was trying and trying and trying. Sometimes that makes me really feel angry in a healthy green way, not a red way, that things from shiny happy impacted our family so much or impacted my parenting so much or that I was so hard on you guys because I thought I was supposed to, that the evidence would be if we did all the things, it would be okay. Or the promises were, if we did all the things, it would be okay.
Speaker 2:And all I did, the harder I tried to do that, was make things less and less okay. And that took me a long time to heal, but things are so much better now. Not perfect, not finished, but so much better.
Speaker 4:So, we didn't pop up when actually talking about this, I think.
Speaker 3:About
Speaker 4:attachment? Yeah. What do you call it?
Speaker 3:Anxious attachment and avoidant attachment.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And I took a test a couple weeks, though, I think. I think
Speaker 3:what was that? It said you had secure attachment. I said sometimes you show signs of anxious attachment with some people and avoidant attachment with other people. And there's another term for that where it's like a mishmash of things.
Speaker 2:When you have both avoidant attachment and anxious attachment, it's called disorganized attachment. Here's what's funny about that. When you say disorganized, it thinks like, oh, it's a mess. You don't know what to do. You're not doing any of it right.
Speaker 2:When you have disorganized attachment, you're actually doing all the things. You're trying all of the strategies to make it work. So it has to do with childhood, you having lots of different people or left in the car or things like that. It comes from that. But when you get to secure attachment because you do your own inner work whether that's in therapy or through books or on your own or with your parents, when you learn to have healthy relationships, it's called earned secure attachment.
Speaker 2:Now, Jules and I think you shouldn't have to earn attachment. That's rude. Children should not have to earn attachments. It should be part of the care that's offered. So Jules and I say learned.
Speaker 3:I wish to speak in the same word. Yeah.
Speaker 2:What do you think of that? Any closing thoughts? Yeah. Bet the world is one amazingly confusing place. It's complicated.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 3:We're trying to give you guys tools to understand it better.
Speaker 5:That's all we got. That's why I have
Speaker 4:a little wooden toolbox in the garage, right, for all the tools you'll give me. What? Exactly.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for participating for real. Thank you for learning with me and letting me practice with you so I can teach my peoples about it. You're welcome. And it's been super fun having everybody here together even if a short time. I know school's about to start.
Speaker 2:I'm so sorry, but we've had a grand grand day together. So we have finished this. If you want to go get swimsuits on, you can. I will order your banana splits. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Thanks, mom.
Speaker 1: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.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.