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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 1:I am in Washington, DC at the ISSTD Regional Conference for the Northeast area. So to warn you and also the title of the conference is Subjugation, Mind Control, and attachment healing through relational connection. It has been brutal. I will walk through my understanding of what I learned. I want to be clear about a couple things.
Speaker 1:One, this was really difficult content for me because he applied this to the whole spectrum from grooming with one on one abusers to high demand religions to culty organizations. And this first session that I'm talking about in this episode was focused on the traumatizing narcissist, meaning the abuser, and how they do what they do, regardless of the context of which that happens, whether it is the one on one relationship or a cult organization or both. So it was really painful and hard to stay present, and I just wanna own that upfront. The other thing that I wanna be clear about is that he did not use any PowerPoints or any kind of slides. He was just talking from the microphone.
Speaker 1:It was very difficult for me to see, hear, and take notes, so there are some things that I missed. I obviously am not redoing his presentation. This is just a recap, but I wanna be clear that there may have been things that I missed or got wrong. In addition, it was just super hard to stay present. Okay?
Speaker 1:It was difficult stuff. So I'm just saying, as always, please care for yourself during and after listening to this episode. And if you wanna skip it, you can. But that is what this one is about. Remember also, it does not have to be binary, like you listen or you don't listen.
Speaker 1:You could listen to this one in pieces. You could listen to this one with your therapist. You could listen over time. You could listen to it later, but not today. Like, you have lots of choices of how to care for you even with the podcast, just as a reminder.
Speaker 1:Okay. Also, I took notes on paper. I thought taking notes and having colored pens and markers and things would help me stay a little more grounded rather than only typing in my computer. So that could have been a mistake. So I went with that because it felt right for me.
Speaker 1:But because of that, you will hear me turning pages, and I don't know that I will have the spoons to edit that out when it's such hard content to listen to. Does that make sense? So if you could just bear with me with that extra noise, then I will share what I have from my notes. Obviously, the podcast usually is not planned out or scripted. Every once in a while, I will share something I've written.
Speaker 1:These are just my notes today. So those are the papers you'll hear in the background. Okay. Avoidance munch. Let's jump in.
Speaker 1:So the first speaker, the one I'm gonna talk about on this episode was the full morning session. So there was a whole session and a break and a whole session. This speaker was Dan Shaw, who has been on the podcast before, so you could go back and listen to that if you wanna hear about him or his story. But the first session that he did, he structured through talking about the process of how traumatizing narcissist or the abuser or cult leader, like whatever on the continuum the person is, what they do to actually make the abuse possible, to make it happen. So it's tricksy because it's kind of characteristics of the traumatic narcissist or TN, traumatizing narcissist, and also is sort of characteristics of the process itself.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? That is the best I can explain it of trying to hear and understand correctly what he was saying. So I apologize if I get that wrong. But that's the idea of him sort of walking through his theory and the different characteristics of the process. So step one or the first one, the first characteristic is seduction.
Speaker 1:This is basically how we get sucked into being part of the group in the first place or part of that grooming relationship. Sometimes when we're children, we don't even have a choice. So it's more like the seduction of how to get us to not tell or how to get us to comply, things like that. So again, really difficult content. In the case of cult organizations, he talks about how there can be intense meditative experiences.
Speaker 1:There can be a kind of group think where you can't think for yourself or you're excluded if you don't. He talks about there being missionaries or recruiters who bring more people in, And he talked about how there can be a guru behavior and privilege that is incongruent with the values of the group. So if they're saying their values are being charitable, but then the leader, like, has lots of money and privilege, for example. There's an incongruence there. He talked about the mental gymnastics to justify what you're experiencing, cover ups of sexual abuse or financial abuse.
Speaker 1:And then a reminder that charisma or charismatic leaders are not just about personality, like someone being charming. It can also be about spiritual power or enlightenment or singular access to God. Then also the group feels that their suffering and the violations are blessing somehow or gifts somehow as opposed to recognizing the harm that they cause. So that already is sort of inducing trance and hypnotic in that way. And then X members are shunned and shamed.
Speaker 1:One thing I put down in quotes that was super painful was he talked about the security of bondage as a path to invisibility. That when we have been through these experiences, we can feel safer when we are in situations where we don't have a voice or we are invisible because everything is told to us what to eat, what to drink, what to wear, what to do, what to think. And there is an illusion of security. And those of us with trauma and deprivation can mistake that for care, but that it is not the same thing as care. Because with care, we grow and develop and become more and more ourselves, and our healing looks like a progressive and increased connection with ourselves and the world around us, as opposed to decreasing connection with ourselves or the world around us.
Speaker 1:Okay. The second thing was intimidation that in the relationship with abusers, there's shameful confusion. And so when there is domestic violence or interpersonal violence, or when there is a cult organization, you almost sound incoherent when you're even trying to explain it because the relational manipulation, there's so much incongruence between what is said and what you experience. So we said coercive control is a pattern of acts of assault with humiliation and intimidation used to harm, punish, or frighten victims. And then undue influence is the legal term for it and basically is the legal term for when the abuser overrides another person's free will and judgment.
Speaker 1:He talked about how this is a gradual process, and it is a process that isolates the victim from their friends and families until they are subjugated. And that subjugation is the action of bringing someone under domination or control. Oh, so here's a painful piece. First of all, that's just hard. But he also connected that then back to infanticidal attachment, which by the time this airs, you will have heard on the podcast.
Speaker 1:So he says it happens because it exploits that attachment wound that we think and believe or understand about ourselves that we are only lovable or cared for when we are successfully submitting to the cruelty of our caregivers. And that only a lack of care that proves our lack of existence feels congruent with what we think care means. So, like, it's totally inside out and backwards. Right? So then he gave examples of, like, someone who has all their physical needs met.
Speaker 1:Maybe their family is wealthy enough or well enough off, or even, even having what they need, even if they don't necessarily have money. And maybe we're not physically or sexually abused by family members, but it was not relationally safe. That that still counts as that kind of one on one abusive relationship when it's relational trauma and deprivation. So he didn't use the words relational trauma or deprivation in that way, but that is, like, he was using different words for that when he talked about the one on one abusive relationship. That's what he was referring to.
Speaker 1:Hard things that happened and good that was missing. So then he talked about how that plays out in a system where me or I become a powerless subject with no control over not me as an object used by our abuser. Plus, there is a not me who holds shame for it. Plus, there is a not me who loves the abuser because that is how we get chosen and wanted because of that love bombing that's part of this cycle, which then he also made explicit that that is one thing that high demand religions do. They will love bomb new recruits so that they commit further and further.
Speaker 1:And that that is what happens in progressive religions, where the more you do or philosophies, where the more you do something, the more you are loved bond, but also the more that is asked of you. It it was really hard to hear all that. Anyway, plus there is also not me who hates the abuser because they're chosen for the abuser's needs, not actually meeting our own needs. Plus there's a not me who regains power by getting good at what is being asked of us to do. So not just compliance, but actually skilled at the thing, a kind of developmental fawning that can become like being good in bed sexually when we have been coerced into sexual abuse or being good at sort of this development.
Speaker 1:He called it developmental fawning, where it's not just fawning as a behavior, but literally trained in fawning, like growing up with fawning being part of our relational interactions. That this again. Has to do with disorganized attachment and the infanticidal attachment wounds being exploited. He said there's a book, and I think he said it's called terror, love, and brainwashing. He said it goes into this and talks about this a lot.
Speaker 1:I don't know the book. I have not seen the book or read the book. So I don't know what else to say about it, but I'm dropping it here in case that helps anyone. The third thing was weaponized suffering. So, like, you feel ungrateful, making you feel unfaithful, making you feel like you have done something wrong.
Speaker 1:And then he gave the one on one example of it feels like your parents are never gonna die, so it makes emancipation difficult or how difficult it can be to care give for parents when they are at a natural developmental phase in life at the end of life of needing care from adult children when you have already had to care for children while you were growing up. I mean, already had to care for your parents while you were children, while you were a child. So when we have like, he was talking about how in a healthy scheme of things, it is a natural and healthy part of life where at some point children play a role in caring for aging parents, even if some of that care is delegated or have social supports or like nursing or something. Right? But how that feels different and lands different when we have already had to do that our whole lives in cases of parentification or being emotionally responsible for our parents' well-being.
Speaker 1:So we talked about how that can be both aggressive and passive aggressive, how we have to be the regulator of our parents, and how it's ultimately a double bind because we are the cause of our parents' distress and also the solution of their suffering. Like, that is with infanticidal attachment. When we are unwanted, our parents are distressed by us. And also us agreeing that we are unwanted and not existing as children, so being children who are adults, even though we're not adults, is part like that parentification is part of that not needing any care is part of that infanticidal agreement. So even if I can't actually cease to be alive, I will cease to be a child.
Speaker 1:I won't need anything. I won't be in your presence. I will only exist outside your presence. I will exist outside your care. This was so painful and something I definitely think we can come back to and we'll be talking about more.
Speaker 1:I know we've already talked about it on the podcast a lot, but I had not labeled it in my own head as weaponized suffering. That just hurt. The fourth thing he talked about was Darvo, which is kind of like gaslighting, but he said it's something more than that. And I know we've talked about this in the podcast before, and there was a whole presentation at the annual conferences last year. So we talked about it then.
Speaker 1:But it's when the abuser denies what happens, attacks the victim, and then reverses who is the victim and offender. That's what DARVO stands for. Deny attack, reverse victim offender. So it is a deliberate strategy of repeatedly accusing the victim. It is and isn't conscious, and it is a way of offending from the victim position.
Speaker 1:It's a kind of anxious preoccupation. It steals words and needs, deprives the victim, and then again causes caretaking of the abuser. The fifth thing is predatory isolation. And here is where he gave specific examples of specific religions and high demand organizations where there are consequences if you try to leave. So you might be called an oppressive person.
Speaker 1:You might be disfellowshipped. You might be shunned. You might be excommunicated. And then he also talked about predatory isolation and the difference between healthy boundaries, that sometimes there are ways we need to minimize contact with biological families as a way of safety or having healthy boundaries when boundaries aren't respected. But this is predatory isolation is different because it's about increasing devotion to the particular group or therapist or abuser, like a not healthy therapist, or reducing exposure to healthy communities so that you are continuing to be reliant on the guru or the one on one abuser or the caregiver or whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1:The sixth thing was provoking jealousy. And he talked about how the abuser will lavishly praise someone else. So, like, a different friend or a different woman or a different sibling, so that your experience becomes more intolerable because there's no way to win. There's no way to earn approval. There's no way to ever actually arrive to safety.
Speaker 1:That leads to number seven, which is the demand for perfection and purity. We're to not feel good enough ever, where everything we do is wrong. We can't win. There are double binds. We can never stop trying harder and any pleasing is temporary.
Speaker 1:So even when we do get whatever the alleged or illusion of a reward is, it's then taken away. We don't actually get to keep it. Number eight is the delusion of omnipotence. This is when he talked about it like a dam that is leaking and the victims have to plug the holes to the dam and that this becomes contagious until it's a shared delusion where we're doing the mental gymnastics to prove the worth of the one who is delusional and not worthy of what we are doing for them. And the result of that is ongoing distress and fear that become chronic somatic complaints because only our body is allowed to tell the truth.
Speaker 1:That was hard. That was hard. He mentioned here that if you wanna know more about this, you can look up thought reform and Robert Liftham on Wiki, and that those apply to any culty organization or high demand religion. So if you wanna know more about that, you can look at that. But he said freeing oneself from a one on one abuser or a cult organization means unjoining.
Speaker 1:So, like, going back through the steps, undoing the things, and distracting yourself while your brain literally learns to think for itself. He also talked about, like, developmentally, how it happens that a traumatizing narcissist becomes a traumatizing narcissist, and it has to do with the shame and humiliation from childhood that is not tended to. And when we have that infanticidal attachment where caregivers resent that children are children and depend on them, we can be made to feel needy and greedy and selfish for having needs. And then we are humiliated by disappointment or disapproval when that is, like, earn when we have to earn our care or like but pointed out that when we have to earn care, we are literally paying for our care. It is not given to us.
Speaker 1:So then what happens is we are taught to associate dependency with shame, and it becomes this double bind where we are ashamed that we have needs, and also to ask for our needs to be met, we are then shamed for having the needs. So there's no way to win. Either way, we're going to be shamed. And so in this case, than getting help or therapy or finding your way out or with safe people, instead what happens is this kind of shame. So without therapy or healing this, the only way out of the double bind then is to become an adult who is shameless, that growing up or maturation means disaffowing the adults.
Speaker 1:So becoming the hero who becomes literally without shame, but that this has an element of not just dissociation, but insanity, making them making them appear powerful to those who are still stuck in oppressive social constructs from childhood. It is not a rational process. So that is how wounded people then get exploited by seeing a leader as a hero, even though it is not rational that they are actually a hero because they have no shame, which actually is becoming the perpetrator and being heartless and without compassion. Because we, in a healthy world or with therapy or with healing, then we know the bad things other people did to us is not our shame to carry. That is different than feeling no shame when we cause harm or other people are hurt.
Speaker 1:So, it's different between being a survivor and becoming a traumatizing narcissist. He said, it feels like cult leaders or one on one abusers that are traumatizing narcissists, that it feels like they all play by the same playbook because of that delusion of omnipotence. They are dissociatively grooming dissociated victims. And that there is shame and powerless dependence then gets exploited in a delusion of deliverance. So what that is actually goes back to a frenzy's moral defense, where the victim takes all the bad on their self so that the child can coerce be coerced into making the caregiver good.
Speaker 1:This also happens in high demand religion where the people are bad and only God is good. So when they do bad things, it is because they are bad. But when they do good things, it is because of God, which is not the same as a healthy faith system. This process is also what trauma bonds the victim to the abuser or the member to the organization. He then talked for a while about someone asked a question, and so he talked about internalized self contempt and how these parts can be especially stubborn.
Speaker 1:And it was basically a reminder that EPs or trauma holding parts or memory time folks inside as part of a system are not logical. Like, there's some trans logic there. There's some perpetrator logic there that it's not necessarily us thinking clearly in our frontal cortex. So that was a lot, and that was the first session. There was a long break for which I was grateful.
Speaker 1:And then there was a second session where Dan Shaw spoke again. I will say, admittedly, I was a bit overwhelmed, and it was much harder for me to grasp the bits of the second session. So I don't have as many notes because I was really struggling just to stay present, but I did my best. He talked about that when cult survivors exit, even again, whether that's an organization or whether that's a one on one abuser, that when they tell their stories, they can be met with skepticism and shock. But they're already carrying shame.
Speaker 1:And it's so hard to leave even after you have left, like to emotionally separate even after you have physically separated. It can also be really hard to be in those situations where you have to educate your therapist. So how it's really important for the therapist to do their learning and research and study and whatever they need to understand the situation so that they are doing the mental load rather than the client having to explain and also get help. The other thing that he talked about is therapists need to be careful about asking about underlying psychopathology that led them to be in this situation, because they're in this situation because of being groomed and violated. And so asking about what else like, led them to be involved like that or how it happened is akin to blaming a rape victim for being raped and that that is not okay.
Speaker 1:He also warned therapists that they'll be in a hurry to connect childhood trauma to cult participation, which is true because attachment wounds were exploited, but we need to go slow and first focus on healthy relationships and decreasing isolation. So not just saying, oh, the therapist is safe, but where in your community is safe and what kind of safe attachments do you need before we can address things from memory time? And how do you know it's safe? Learning how to think critically before we can even get into any of the memory time work, and that that will take time. He said another trait is only being able to obtain freedom or health by increasing commitment as opposed to, like, healthy groups where you can come and go, that you can pick and choose what you need or want or what you're learning.
Speaker 1:You can pace yourself, all of those things. They also isolate you from others instead of connecting you with others. They betray your needs instead of offering a variety of things. They can blend holistic or spirituality or different types of specific therapies, saying this is the way to enrichment and enlightenment as opposed to supporting your own process and the resources that you find that are helpful for you. And they are designed to recruit and disrupt attachment, so causing division rather than embracing diversity.
Speaker 1:Another thing he shared that was super painful was he compared prisoners of wars with members of high demand religion about how they believe that voluntary submission will make life better or easier. They honor deprivation or are more comfortable with suffering. Like, it's like tending and befriending, which is a trauma response, tending and befriending suffering. They cooperate with intense and rigid schedules, and they're told what to wear, what to eat, and what to drink. All of those are flags for culty stuff.
Speaker 1:So he said, ultimately, when you're going to define a cult, it means a charismatic leader, and charismatic can mean powerful, not just personality, that indoctrinates members with the goal to eliminate some kind of impurity through rituals and ceremony and dress. He also reminded people, again, that that can be a one on one abuser situation or a social media personality. It doesn't have to just be an organization. He also reminded people that it used to look like for a season, it was kind of a fad that it looked like wearing special robes and shaving your head or things like that. But in modern times, it looks like successful and educated people because they are specifically targeted, because they are raised to be leaders and so exploited to be effective recruiters.
Speaker 1:And that culty groups require obedience. So they also, this is part of how they cause division. They can't support people on other teams. So like, you have to choose organizations or they'll be divisive online and social media instead of trying to bridge the gap or bring things together. Also, that their promises are not actually related to what they're doing.
Speaker 1:So maybe they're saying they're trying to help, but actually what they're trying to do is make money or sustain leaders' delusions. They convince followers that they need something and then sell it to them. Their leader is the only one authorized to assess progress or grant benefits instead of you being able to see your own progress and the evidence of it and determine for yourself what feels better or not. And then he also talked more about submission and punishment, but I got a little blurry there. It was really hard.
Speaker 1:And then he talked about relational dictators in politics and social media, where members are deployed to defend leaders and their positions or statements and how that becomes contagious and viral and is one of those ways where they create division is they just get people worked up and angry and really aggressive about things as opposed to actually responding or tending to things. He also reminded us that yes, shame can show up as like heat in the face or neck or being disappointed in ourself or self disparagement, but also even in feeling unsettled or confused, but also it can show up in, abusers, like telling you that you don't have a right to heal or to feel better. And so then that becomes their bait, again, that they're promising enlightenment or enrichment in some way, but they're actually doing that mirror thing. Like, we talk about the mirror thing with attachment, how it's not us that's broken, it was the mirror that's broken. They are trying to get themselves to be reflected as good by us thinking they are good.
Speaker 1:And so then we think we can be like them and that that will be reflected back to us as well, but it doesn't end up being reciprocal. So we think we can be cleansed or healed or good, but we're actually just out running or trying to cover our own shame. And that again is then what makes us shameless, where we have no shame, except that's actually dangerous and cruel. So, it's a false promise. We don't have other people's shame is what is healthy.
Speaker 1:What other people do to hurt us is not our shame. We have to carry their shame. But if I do something to hurt someone, then I do feel ashamed of that, and I'm sorry that I hurt them, and it helps me not hurt them again. That's a healthy kind of shame. So he said also post culty experience, we may fear we are shameful in all the ways they told us.
Speaker 1:We may have panic attacks because our fear is so big. We may have thoughts of harm or fight self punishment because of infanticidal attachment that's been exploited. We may also have panic attacks from anger starting to surface. And it's really important to recognize how vulnerable we are for a really long time after leaving these kinds of groups or situations and to be aware that we may have introjects or internalized self shaming voices, and that it's important as part of our healing that we take responsible for our own hurtful behavior, including reenactments with loved ones that when we hurt them the way we were hurt, which usually like with reenactment, remember it's not intentional or conscious, but as we become aware of those things and heal, wanting to change the ways and improve the way that we relate to others and care for others so that we are not unintentionally causing harm in ways that we aren't aware. So ultimately, he said that the antidote for these kinds of culty experiences is time with people who know how to treat us safely and in healthy ways.
Speaker 1:And that was really the beautiful closing of more examples of things we're already doing well in system speak and also things I'm learning in therapy and also in things I'm learning in relationships. And it was such a relief to see there is health growing, even if I still have progress to make. And even if we're all still growing individually and together, like there was so much hard content and it was a relief to feel some things as right or good or on a healthy track. So I hope that makes sense. I know it's so much jam packed into these few minutes, but I wanted to make sure that I could share what I could and then also contain that to the episode so I can take these notes back to my own therapy and spend lots of time processing all that sort of came through for me and came up in me as I listened to this.
Speaker 1:It was really intense, But I hope that that information is helpful for someone. There was so much about the normalizing of boundary violations, objectification and dehumanization that I never even realized was happening, whether again, that one on one abuser or an organizations and the the continuum of those experiences happening and also learning to trust myself intuitively that when something feels not good, it's okay to pause and ask why. And also when something feels right in my body to pause and look at that too, of like, okay, okay, this feels different. Why does it feel different? What makes it different?
Speaker 1:How can I have more of this good that is different? And so even though it was super hard to listen to, there was also hope, which I definitely appreciated.
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.