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, 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 1:We have emails to read today. Rya shares, your book, your new book about complex trauma therapy is a truth bomb on every single page. I can't even. It is both amazingly clear and helpful and makes me want to throw up, and every page I read flashes through memories and snippets from inside conversations and moments from therapy that I didn't understand or even think I remembered. I never had an experience like this reading any clinical book or any book at all before.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I'm going to have to slow down and pace myself more and then read it again when I'm done. Seriously, though, I want you to know how much it's impacting me and how powerful a writer yous are. Oh, thank you for that encouragement, really. This is our book that just came out this year, and it is really focused a lot on some of those early social contracts.
Speaker 1:So that's definitely some hard stuff. It's also what we sort of work our way through in the retreat that we offer. So it's been a big deal this year and certainly keeps coming up in what we're working on in therapy as well. Thank you so much for the encouragement and for sharing, really. Cheryl says, I am a therapist with many years of experience in a variety of settings, but had rarely encountered DID that I knew of and had never been in a position of providing therapy or healing to someone with this brain space.
Speaker 1:Recently, a client came to me complaining of voices, and I admit to misdiagnosing them at first. But by our second session, when another person entered the room and confronted me with something I had said in the last session, I realized my error and we were off and running with DID and plurality. They realized the truth of the diagnosis, and I began a deep dive into the world of plurality. When I went through school and training in the nineties, the view of DID or MPD at the time was very different. I am so incredibly blown away by the changes that have come about in the past thirty years.
Speaker 1:The brain science, the advocacy, the online communities, the videos, and your beautifully brave, informative, engaging, sweet, and funny podcast. I have learned so much from all of you, and I believe it's making me a better therapist. But that, of course, is not for me to judge. It certainly has provided me with new tools, language, concepts, and treatment focus that I believe are so much more humane and compassionate for all of my clients, but this system in particular. I just wanted to express my gratitude and appreciation for all of you.
Speaker 1:Our brains are amazing places. Oh, thank you, Cheryl. I'm so glad you found the podcast. That's fantastic. I also love that piece that anything we do to become a better therapist also helps all of our clients even when they're not a trauma client.
Speaker 1:Lily writes, hi, Emma. I'm just listening to your podcast episode on approach. And at about three minutes thirty five seconds, you state, instead of fighting from the danger, they're fighting toward the danger. Why are you trying so hard to hold on to what is not good for you? That is what is hurting you, and you are squeezing on as hard as you can, end quote.
Speaker 1:I know you wouldn't have intended it to come across like this, but your tone was quite patronizing, and this came across as shaming. It was the right point to make, but I felt that you went about making it fairly harshly and in a shaming way. Please stop, pause, think about how you come across to others, not asking you to fawn, just being thoughtful in a mindful present way. For what it's worth, I am not someone with an anxious attachment pattern. But if you're trauma informed, it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why someone would develop that behavioral pattern.
Speaker 1:Speaking about it as though it makes no sense just reinforces the otherness of the target group you are speaking about or to. Oh my goodness. Lily, I love this email because it was so brave to send this. Thank you for calling me out. To be clear, that is how I talk to myself.
Speaker 1:So it is a problem. It is patronizing. It is shaming, and I agree with you. It's absolutely too harsh. And to be clear, that is what I was saying to myself.
Speaker 1:That is how frustrated I am with these reenactments. And I think the intensity of the tone not making excuses, explaining. I think the intensity of the tone is about my own exasperation with myself of why this is so hard, and yet you're absolutely right. It's not gonna get easier when that's how I'm talking to myself or my others. So you're a % right.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I appreciate you calling me out. I need to do better how I talk to myself. And I also know even on the podcast, there's been a pendulum swing from being too mousy to unshiny happy and unfawning and needing to balance that out. It's also a problem in deaf culture.
Speaker 1:We're super, super direct, which is ironic, really. But in deaf culture, they would absolutely say, oh my gosh. Your shirt is so ugly. You should never wear it again, and that would not be offensive in deaf culture. It's super, super blunt.
Speaker 1:So sometimes those things collide. And between Dante and deaf culture, I'm pretty rough with myself. I certainly don't wanna treat other people that way, but it absolutely happens, and I really appreciate the call out and the reminder about being sensitive. Thank you. This person writes, I have enjoyed your show for years and have learned and cried and laughed a lot from the podcast.
Speaker 1:Some of my favorite episodes are the conversations that include Nathan. I love hearing Nathan more often on the podcast. The conversations between the two of you are great. Please consider including Nathan in future podcasts. Oh, Nathan is on the podcast anytime he wants to be.
Speaker 1:That's totally cool. Last time he was on, we had the conversation about codependence, and I found this book literally with the same title as the podcast that I didn't even know existed. It's called codependent no more. Melody Beatty Beatty, Beatty maybe, is the author. I've never heard of this book before.
Speaker 1:I don't know how. Apparently, it's an old book, not a new book, but I don't know how I made it this long in therapy without finding this book, but we will come back full circle to be talking about that some more for sure. It's painful. Anne shares, hi, Emma. Yesterday, I listened to episode four thirteen, heroes.
Speaker 1:What you said in this episode was huge for me, and I would love to share it with some DID friends and my therapist. Unfortunately, I can't find it anymore on Apple Podcasts or the System Speak website. Is there any reason it was taken down, or am I just unable to find it? I've had a break from listening and coming back yesterday. It filled my heart.
Speaker 1:You have, through the podcast, traveled with me through so much. You have given so much of yourself. My heart is filled with gratitude that you are here in the world with me. And I am so glad that that has been helpful and that it helps you feel less alone when things are really hard. I know that's really important to us and something that matters.
Speaker 1:I am so sorry about the missing episodes. That is because we have been relooking at what is up and how to track it so that we can feel safer about it. The spreadsheet is working. At the time of this recording, We have the first five years of episodes back up, and we are working through 2020 right now getting those up. However, because you've requested this, I will go back and listen and see if we can get it back up for you, and I will email you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that request, really. And I'm sorry for the struggle of not being able to find it when you wanted to reference it again. Susan shares, I have a suggestion for a t shirt. Trust the system. I'm frequently telling clients and their spouses to trust the system.
Speaker 1:I love this so much. I love it so much. Susan, we are on this, and I will email you an update. Terry writes, the swamp episode. Twenty twenty four has been the awakening for me and my partner.
Speaker 1:The mapping episodes from November 2023 are so very helpful and timely for me right now in March 2024. No matter how challenging it was to share with us going through mapping back in November, it is what I need. I studied all the episodes that were still up throughout 2023, and I'm grateful they are being categorized on the spreadsheet and brought back. Now I'm waiting for my books to arrive. I'm one more person who is immeasurably helped by everything shared on system speak.
Speaker 1:Thank you. They also said, we are proud to know you are there at the conference in Texas. I wish I could be there for the plenary. That's such a big thing. I belong to professional societies and given presentations.
Speaker 1:Very few people deliver the actual plenary in any of those meetings, and usually there is one plenary. Whatever is the case with your conference, the plenary you will address in that big ballroom honors your contributions to what is practiced and valued by ISSTD. Oh, Terry, thank you so much. We've been so glad to have you in the community. I also just wanna take a minute to give a shout out to Ohio.
Speaker 1:I don't know what's happening in Ohio, but y'all have brought more books than anyone else, And we keep shipping books to Ohio. So I just wanna give a heartfelt and serious thank you to Ohio. I don't know what's going down there, but you all are doing some serious healing work. So thank you, Ohio. Charlotte shares, packing is mapping.
Speaker 1:There's so much in this episode and so with use in energy, a lighter funny story. We are making lunch, listening, walking around the kitchen. When we heard packing is mapping, we literally did a full stop and burst out laughing. This is so true, and we can see how this applies to us. Rock on.
Speaker 1:Oh, thanks, Charlotte. That is funny. Mars writes about episode seven, the OG episode seven. This is our new favorite episode. Some of you heard me about this in Tuesday morning group already.
Speaker 1:This is a bit more detail. Ten years ago, Emma, it's a hard thing to be a stranger to yourself. To understand what's wrong is to remember what I can't understand. Now time, Emma. This is uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:How do you guys even listen to this stuff? I could quote and reply to every five sentences, give or take a few, through this whole episode. I will spare you witnessing all of that at the moment. Mars, we should totally recap the recap of the recap. Just so densely helpful for me right now, especially while I am knee deep in therapy four days a week, Mondays with Larry and Tuesdays with Linda.
Speaker 1:I have such rich resonance with the topics covered here. And, also, listening as a podcaster who is relistening and reediting episodes I recorded four years ago, this one is arriving right on time. Hearing the content plus context, both are supportive for me. This is an example. Interaction between ten years ago, Emma, reflecting on marriage to the husband, facing feels about being alone while listening to now, Emma, with Jules, and during a season of completing a legal divorce process.
Speaker 1:Hearing now time, Emma, recognize not being afraid of being alone now. That's complex. The way this sounds within the whole episode with the kindness between Emma's and Jules, this is what healing sounds like to me, to us. I can make an art piece about this like a sandwich to be continued. What I appreciate most is the sound of open heartedness.
Speaker 1:To me, there is a heart centeredness demonstrated here as an example to me of the healing I want for myself and others that I am not finding accessible anywhere else. This is encouraging me to continue taking emotional risk in therapy and my personal life, such as with my spiritual development and with my fiance. It's open hearts in stereo sound. Both of them, as therapists who are systems and both caring about each other's healing as well as the listeners, are interacting with past version of Emma in addition to past version of Jules because Jules was a fan of the podcast prior to their meeting. That's a whole lot of complex past and present reflecting.
Speaker 1:In my system, there are layers and layers and layers. It's sort of the conversation I yearned to witness before I knew I was a system. I'm in awe. I just want to say to my whole system, we can do this. You've got this, Mars.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. They also wrote in about Rainbow Guild. The conversation about the Rainbow Guild on the episode where you talk about that is standing out among the rest of the episodes for me as a fan because I have been waiting for possible info about naming systems, The process of naming and the naming too. Super speechless about what it was like to hear the idea and words on the episode about that topic. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:Yes. We never planned on that. It just sort of unfolded on its own, and we've just sort of let it hang there, noticing, not necessarily responding or changing anything. Just noticing it's a thing. It happened.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Mars, for writing. This person writes about the Rich Hofeller interview. My mind is blown. I'm listening for the second time and trying to stay present. I needed to post to see how others are absorbing this.
Speaker 1:I feel too stupid to post to nerd town, but feeling like I don't know where to post in order to pick this apart. Oh my goodness. You're not at all too stupid for nerd town. Nerd town is just where we learn, and that in itself is nerd town. It has nothing to do with intelligence or any other measurement of interaction.
Speaker 1:You're welcome to post in nerd town, please. And, of course, once you guys direct me, I will not likely have time or capacity to respond for a week or so. But some of the things that feel big but slippery. Number one, protectors hold the most shame, and rage is even more slippery. Number two, welcoming protectors into therapy is actually necessary.
Speaker 1:This makes me want to vomit. Oh, same. I am grateful that you have written this down because it's so true. And number three, it's normal for protectors to present every time we are making progress. This is big and so true.
Speaker 1:There's more, but I just can't. I love listening to Rich Hofeller, but he and Shevitz, but I struggle to digest the goodness. Right? I agree with this. Charlotte added, I love this episode so much.
Speaker 1:Lots of reasons, but there was a line that I don't wanna forget. Something about healing shame needs to be a part of every therapy session. Hannah added, I'm only halfway through the episode, and I just have to say, wow. That man is amazing. The conversation between him and Emma is a gift.
Speaker 1:The combined wisdom between the two of you is blowing my mind. Melissa added the question about he said in the interview that protectors chronologically age with the body. That's not true for us, and I know it's not true for some other systems. What's it like for everyone here? Someone shared in response, we do have a major protector who's done a lot of therapy, and they seem to fluctuate in age.
Speaker 1:So still not sure what's going on there or what that means in relation to your question, but wanted to share. I did understand that the whole episode, he was generalizing in examples because of the broad overview of the topic. We said in reply, I heard that also but understood it to mean many of them are aware of a lifetime even if they do not age. There are older protectors too, not only children. And, also, so many of them are children.
Speaker 1:When I do interviews with these people, I let them speak for themselves and then just take what applies to me and let go of the rest. Sometimes I learn more later. Sometimes I never agree with them. Use what is helpful and don't worry about what's not. In the context of your question specifically, I have known about younger protectors, but learning how I protect myself in ways I wasn't understanding and how that relates to keeping the body alive, that brought in my understanding of protectors at my adult age in a new way.
Speaker 1:I also appreciate your sharing of this isn't me as a great example of adultish protecting even if through masking or communicating. Well done sharing. I really love this topic, and I really want to talk more about this on the podcast. And, also, it's still that hard. It's really difficult.
Speaker 1:Mars shared about the OG recap episode 63 part three. Such amazing and profound kindness. The interactions between you two, Jules and Emma's, when I talk about what the podcast means to me, I have hesitated to say that the System Speak podcast has cohost now because I know it's up to y'all to describe the podcast that way if you ever decide to describe it that way. So I just wanna say it's my newest favorite thing about the podcast being able to hear these recaps. Big, big wows.
Speaker 1:This week, I went back and relistened to some of the episodes from last year that bring up a lot of sadness for me. Window waving, aloneness. Ouchie. Ouchie. So ouchie.
Speaker 1:But Jules said, I don't mind a little tornado if it brings me you. Jules, that is one of my favorite lines ever in the whole of podcast. I guess I mean it's meta. As a listener, fan, community member, friend who stays, I also feel that. Sometimes one or the other of you puts into words what it's like to live through the loneliness that was my life prior to meeting this podcast and the community, prior to meeting this moment, making room for one more care inside for healing.
Speaker 1:It's transformative. Emma said, I don't know whether to cry or to throw up. I think that should be a new bumper sticker. Sometimes I don't know I have room for more opening until I hear a new episode or again an episode or here with a new recap an episode again again. This is what heals us.
Speaker 1:Omar's specific examples really help and are so tender, which makes it real in a relational way as opposed to just one more thing we're learning in a left brain way. It helps me hold space to keep my right brain online while I feel the things, not just reading the things or learning the things. It helps with experiencing the things. So thank you for sharing, Mars. Kate wrote in about Gabriela's emails.
Speaker 1:They said, so nice to hear all the lovely emails that listeners sent in in response to Dante. Hearing my own email is always a nice surprise. I found the podcast in the spring or summer of twenty twenty, so nearly four years ago. Oh, thank you, Kate. I'm so glad you did, and I'm so glad you joined the community so early.
Speaker 1:We have appreciated you being there from the beginning of the community. This email says, could you please explain from the recap episodes what happened with the closet? What is wrong with your closet? Why don't you wanna open it? We already thought you came out of the closet.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. Okay. So here's what happened. There was a lot going on with the family and a lot of moving around at the same time as the retreat was happening. So after the retreat, the things that we had used at the retreat, basically, the kids just threw in the closet.
Speaker 1:So the closet upstairs in an office was just sort of a hot mess of retreat things, which we had not unpacked to put away because of that painful ending even as we continue to heal relationships and connect with people and move forward and find ways to do that as a group and individually. And so it was just painful to open the closet. And, also, we have an avoidance of the memoir book for lots of reasons as well. And so that was stacked inside the closet, but we couldn't get to it without going through the other things. So it was literally just like a pile of things in a tangible way of stuff we needed to keep working on in therapy, and it was too much to just even open the door.
Speaker 1:And so we have since cleaned out the closet and put things away and brought the supplies even to the new office and the stack of books as well. And so that has been taken care of since. But sometimes it just sort of takes that sitting with not just this is hard, but how avoiding the hard thing is making our life harder. So it's another example of meta. Right?
Speaker 1:Because we're doing a recap of an episode from ten years ago about how avoidance made our life more complicated because of a now time experience that had just made our life more complicated in which we needed the support of resources that were in a closet we were avoiding and not being able to get to it made our life more complicated. Do you see how it just mirrors? So this is what the Chrises talk about in their groups when they say as inside, so outside, or as outside, so inside, or something like that. Like, it just reflects what is going on. And so when we're not feeling safe externally, we have more walls internally.
Speaker 1:When things aren't feeling safe internally, we're a little shaky on the external. Right? Things are it it's really just difficult to stay. I mean, that that's dissociation. If I don't see what's in the closet, I don't have to deal with what's in the closet, and that is exactly where we are in therapy right now.
Speaker 1:It's actually really, really hard to be talking about difficult things in the past when our now time life is not feeling settled or regulated. And the courage and tenacity to start over or to just keep going or what that looks like, and by start over, we still have our therapist we've had for a year now. And, also, it feels like starting over because we have talked about all these what did they say in English? Putting out fires of all these things that have happened over the last year, we've done that work with her, but that's not the fire we need to be talking about. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:So, like, to really face things from the past, to really do eye movements on things that matter. It's scary. We started doing eye movements trying to just sort of ease into things with our broken foot, which led to being hurt and alone, which led to all kinds of tangents and deep hard things, and it was too much too fast. And so how do we slow our roll? Jules has been teaching the kids that phrase.
Speaker 1:So how do we slow our role in therapy and also keep going? Because it's like you know how we've spent all this time with less binary thinking and trying to find the nuance, trying to hold both, all of that? This is, like, less binary process of we're going to drown in therapy or we're going to avoid therapy. That's still binary even if it's in process rather than in thinking. And so how to gently ease into things and also keep going, but not drowning in the process, that's what we'll be talking about in coming weeks and months, years maybe.
Speaker 1:So there's that. But, yes, the closet has been cleaned out, and everything has been put away, and that's much better now. So maybe that's reflecting our progress in therapy that we're even doing eye movements. Right? So there's meta again because it reflects what's happening on the inside and the outside.
Speaker 1:We did open it. We are looking through things. We are putting things away, and the same thing is happening with therapy. So that's kinda cool. This email says, what happened to the songs at the end of the episodes?
Speaker 1:We really loved them. Oh, well, I'm glad that was fun. That was a bit of a season. We have taken all the music out for a couple of reasons. One, again, the level of emotional vulnerability that requires, When that got shaken a bit, it did not feel safe enough for that level of sharing.
Speaker 1:And that's just really complicated, but we will talk about it. The other issue is that we had a license to use and perform individually, and that is why we were able to add the music to the podcast because we could use that license. And if we performed it for ourselves, like, doing a cover, then under that license, it was appropriate use for a podcast. But now we have a nonprofit. So even though the podcast hasn't changed since the nonprofit has been approved, It changes the kind of license you need to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:So what I do have now is we can do instrumental, but it's gonna be a while before I can pay for a larger license for being able to do words as well. So that changes things. But, also, I didn't mean to distract from the podcast. It was just really part of ourselves we were learning and expressing and trying to reclaim, but that got a little retraumatized in some ways. And so we did, just pause that, which I think is respectful and pacing rather than avoidance as well as pragmatic because we have to have the appropriate licensing to be able to do music on the podcast.
Speaker 1:So we will keep working on that, but we can add some piano music and can add some, instrumental music. We have appropriate licensing for that. So that is helpful and really is a bit of a marker. I don't know what you would call it. Like like a monument except emotionally, not physical.
Speaker 1:I don't remember the word. We're, like like, a bookend, except we're not done. I've, like, this season that has been really hard, we were learning a specific thing. We are we have been drowning in that and then conquering that and wrestling that and really ready now to just shake it off and get back to ourselves and our own focus. So what does that look like shaking off some of those hard things and refocusing on our therapy and our healing and just sort of letting go of the rest of the things that we can't do anything about or trying to be what other people needed or wanted and closing out unfawning, not that we're done, that's an ongoing process, but really coming back to therapy and working on hard things and really kind of getting back to memory time a bit in therapy, which has been maybe five years.
Speaker 1:So in some ways, it feels like a new era, like starting over the brave spaces of and creating brave spaces within myself to stay focused on myself, my own healing without the distraction and pulls, and I wanna say traps even, of other people's stuff. It's one of the benefits of learning about not my fireballs is that I just focus on my own stuff. So we have lots to share about that and lots to share about what has been happening in therapy. That's what's coming up on the podcast next, really. It's just a refocus, almost a restart, like, back at the beginning.
Speaker 1:I figure out who I am, who's here, why they are here, what they need. I feel like I have spent ten years facing my fears and recognizing relational trauma in active ways with people around me in the present and getting myself in a safe enough situation and environment and resources with enough support and resources to actually try to do what we started ten years ago. So I'm not starting from scratch because I know what DID is. I know some of who's in here, and I have an outline of what has happened or what we have been through. And, also, I haven't got to talk about it, like, at all, And it's really time to do that.
Speaker 1:But to do that, I have to shake off the distractions of everything else and just get back to work in therapy and do it for myself. 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.