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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 1:You guys are driving around with me again today because I had so many errands, and it's the only time I have to talk. It's a Friday in October. Cold enough, I slept with the windows open. Warm enough, I have pushed my sleeves up this afternoon. There's a new fire that has started by the airport right when the city had finally settled, thinking fire season was over.
Speaker 1:And I am driving towards it, not for work or to get close to the actual fire, but I'm running errands and have to go that direction. But far enough away, I am safe enough, and also it feels like I'm driving myself into the smoke. And that's kind of how therapy feels too, which is why I need to talk my way through it. I am adulting after session. Some intentional flight by being in my car, but not running away.
Speaker 1:So maybe containment too and also just adulting as part of staying present, maybe while still carrying around really big feelings. I went to the post office office first to pick up my new benefits cards. Not that my benefits have changed, but my name did. And then to the office where Jules and I are interviewing people to share space with us, which is uncomfortable and scary to me, but necessary for budgeting. And just now I've been to the bank where I got blank checks so I could void them, which is required by insurance companies, but baffled me because I've never had checks.
Speaker 1:I didn't know checks still existed. I also had to get things notarized, applications. So that I can also be licensed in Maryland and Missouri like I already am in New Jersey, in Kansas, and Oklahoma, Utah, and Idaho. It seems funny to do that work in case the counseling compact goes through where therapists can be therapists in all of the states or more easily so. But people need help now, and I can't wait any longer.
Speaker 1:That's a delay of care, and I'm not okay with it. It's also apparently a core wound of mine, and that's painful. I don't even know what to say about therapy. I'm not trying to avoid it by updating on things that no one cares about or has time for. It's just that hard to sit with.
Speaker 1:I'm hurting. I've been hurting all year, apparently all my life, and feeling the pain now leaves me quiet and bruised, sad somehow, even if also more contained than in the past. Learning to tolerate my feelings even while also feeling them and staying present with them, It's still unpleasant. I don't mean I like it. I don't mean I feel strong.
Speaker 1:I just feel sad. Like, almost all the time, an undercurrent beneath me that I didn't know was there. Like a river beneath a city that you never see. And now that's what I'm swimming in, and it hurts. After therapy, Jules asked me if I needed problem solving or presence or if she could support me by doing something or giving me space.
Speaker 1:And I said I didn't think I needed anything, not because avoiding care, but because my therapist holds presence with me, and Jules is already there. I don't need anything or help or problem solving or support in that way because what I need is to feel my feelings, and she can't rescue me from that or take those feelings away. So I don't mean overly independent. I'm not avoiding her or withdrawing. And I don't mean codependent and that she has to fix it or that I have to do it by myself.
Speaker 1:I just mean it's already here, already in me, And she's here today, and we'll go home tomorrow before breakfast because parenting. And I will have the day with the kids and try to be present with them while also feeling sad. It's also tricksy to know how to talk about what's happening in therapy partly because I'm getting a lot more blurry in therapy, and things are more fuzzy and harder to hold on to and remember, and partly because some of it's just private. The details, I mean. Or developing safety and resourcing and things that it's actually healthy not to share because it's part of what keeps me safe in public.
Speaker 1:So I'm trying to think of words and what to say and how to say it, which pieces I can share, which pieces need to be shared, and which pieces I just can't. But even besides any filtering, Literally, just trying to find words to explain what is happening inside me, what I'm experiencing. But now we're here at the next stop. You can come with me. Maybe it's the best I can do at not being alone today.
Speaker 1:You know? Hi. I'm recording. I moved and I checked online, and it said you needed my license and something.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, just with the residents, what it usually is, if your license doesn't reflect here in the lab.
Speaker 1:It does now.
Speaker 2:Oh, awesome. But I
Speaker 1:don't know if that's different than what you have.
Speaker 2:Okay. So this this is where you're currently at. So so you you didn't actually have this when you
Speaker 1:first Okay. Well, my name changed, and I moved.
Speaker 2:To find out.
Speaker 1:But I knew to find out now than to wait.
Speaker 2:Because I'm gonna go ahead and tag your license number to this. So that way, if if you
Speaker 3:wanna make changes online or, like, request
Speaker 2:an app to be valid online, that's how you'll you'll connect with our systems. It'll ask you for your driver's license number.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Need anything else? Nope. You take this or I mail?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome.
Speaker 1:Is that am I set all good? Yeah. Everything's perfect. Thank you so much. You guys, that feels good.
Speaker 1:That feels adulting. All that was was showing my new license and my electric bill to prove my residency so that I can vote. Because I had because I moved this last summer, I wanted to make sure I could still vote. But you can't just go vote. You have to register to vote.
Speaker 1:And so in my county or maybe my state, but for sure my county, county, I looked it up to make sure, and the deadline to do that, to register, is not election day. It's a couple weeks before election day. So in my case, in my county, I have to be all verified and approved and registered and all the things by the end of this month even though the election is not until next month. But it's a really important election, and I really wanna vote, and I think voting is really important. It's one of the few ways I have a voice even when I don't always win.
Speaker 1:It still matters. Right? So it's an adult way and crying because it means that much to me. It is one way I can adult and one way I can show up for myself using my voice. And I think it matters no matter how the election turns out.
Speaker 1:Because even if I don't win or who I vote for doesn't win, I'm not complicit. I may have to deal with it. I will support my friends. I will hope that whoever wins does well and makes good choices and and is kind and supports people and lets humans be humans, but I won't be complicit. It's important.
Speaker 1:It matters whether we win or not. No matter what side you're on, we've gotta use our voices. So that feels good and makes me cry. I hope you could hear that sound. That is the sound of my car fussing at me and telling me the car in front of me has stopped because it does not like how I drive.
Speaker 1:But it's a red light, and I am also stopped. So I don't know why it does that. It doesn't do it if Jules drives. So I know it's user error, but it's frustrating. The smoke is in front of me again as I head back to the interstate, and I can see airplanes flying over to drop water and helicopters from the news flying in circles around it.
Speaker 1:It's a little bit activating for me. So another example of holding space for adulting even when littles don't feel great in lots of ways. Also, can I say, it makes me glad that my therapist has had candle in her office the last few weeks, which I thought would be a little bit hard and also felt like practice? And now I'm really glad because, like, a year or two or five ago, I would not have been able to even keep driving. Maybe it's a silly thing to record in the car when I'm driving.
Speaker 1:I guess you can skip the episodes if you don't like them, but sometimes it helps me. Also, while I'm feeling sad anyway, it reminds me of when we used to have zoomies, and sometimes I would listen while I traveled. If I had to drive for work or when we were driving back and forth between Oklahoma and Idaho, which I don't do anymore mostly. Usually, it's just the kids now. But those were good days just hanging out with friends.
Speaker 1:Even if I could only listen and couldn't watch the Zoom. As we've talked about attachment things in therapy, Friendships is one of the things that comes up, of course. At the beginning of this year when I was really struggling and I had withdrawn a bit just to care for myself, to get ready for the retreat and then and then the focused repair after the retreat, one of my friends called me out for not checking in, and I tried to thank them for being a good friend. They really have been the one of the best friends I've had who stayed in my life. And their response accurately, so it's fine, was that I was not their best friend, which felt like an accurate statement because they do have a best friend that is not me, and also because I'm not a great one.
Speaker 1:It's still hard for me. And when things went sideways unexpectedly because of what now I know is this attachment stuff. But losing that friend or losing my friend before when I lost my therapist, Those kinds of situations make it hard to keep trying. So even when things were hard with Jules, it was really important for me to keep trying. She was worth it, But in the process, I've learned that I was worth it.
Speaker 1:And, also, trying so hard in person, also use me up, and, also, trying so hard in person with that and all of our hard conversations and the focus repair of the retreat left me a bit shaken for trying again with other people. I didn't wanna get it wrong, and I don't wanna hurt people. And when people who are themselves wounded also say things like the community is bad or I should not be in the community, it makes it hard for me to show up because I don't wanna hurt people. I don't mean they are making it hard for me. I mean receiving that feedback and having to consider it and figure out what is trauma and what is real, what is accurate and what is not.
Speaker 1:That's a lot to untangle. And the hard conversations with Jules and the focused repair after the retreat, all of which were good and exactly right and important, and learning to choose me and doing what needed to be done for all of those things, I don't know. I guess I lost my confidence. Like, the rug was pulled out from under me, and I fell so hard, which is my consequences and my fireball. I don't mean putting that on anyone else.
Speaker 1:But when we make mistakes, it's scary to keep trying. And when people talk about it, it's hard to feel safe to try. And all of that is part of being public because of the podcast, because of the community. It's just a piece of it, not something anyone else did wrong. But as things start to feel safer, mostly because therapy, And as I start to feel like I have my feet under me again, mostly because therapy, it starts to feel like maybe I could keep trying.
Speaker 1:Maybe we're almost safe enough to try again. And when I feel that, I send a text. Hey. Thanks for being my friend. Or I smile when I see someone on Zoom because I truly appreciate that they are there.
Speaker 1:And when someone replies and they're willing to still give me a chance or when I'm in a Zoom group and it feels good and I feel safe and welcome too, then I'm glad to be back. Not just in group or connected to my friends, but back in my own skin, back with myself, back in who I know me to be no matter what anyone else says. Speaking of judgment, fun fact, when you wanna be a therapist, you get your fingerprints taken. So that's the next stop. I'm recording.
Speaker 1:Okay. That looks great. Thanks. I'm recording. Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You can put yourself
Speaker 2:over there.
Speaker 1:You need to start. Okay. No. That is your Sorry.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're good. With your right hand. Put your fingers together.
Speaker 1:And when your hands place
Speaker 2:over here, you're good. And that's all a new process. Okay. Perfect. And your thumb, which is really flat.
Speaker 2:And wanna roll your thumb, so keep your eyes nice and relaxed. Now just roll. Perfect. And your index finger. Start flat and then roll.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Great. And so I think that hand is relaxed. Okay. And same with the other hand.
Speaker 2:So those fingers together. Okay. We're just gonna pinky one more time. What?
Speaker 1:Should we
Speaker 2:do that pinky one more time? There's a little bit of dryness. There you go. That looks good. So I'm just gonna print those off right over there, and then I'll sign them, and then you're all set.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. No problem.
Speaker 2:Okay. You are are all set.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Have a good day. Okay. I even can do steps without falling on my face or breaking anything. That's something.
Speaker 1:So here's why this matters. Not just random talking or driving into fires and back safely, although that is a % valid. It's also just going and doing really hard therapy and still being able to function in the day. That's a really big deal for me, and maybe I just needed to know it. Maybe I just needed to witness that for myself.
Speaker 1:Well, regardless, thanks for driving along. Now it's almost time for school to be out, and it's Friday night, so they're going to want playtime, food, and screen time. I have pumpkin bean soup in the crock pot, so that's ready. But this is me adulting and functioning even when I'm really, really sad, even when acceptance hurts both in now time and memory time, and even when there's parenting still to do. Maybe my therapist is right again.
Speaker 1:Maybe I've got this. And I guess I'm real enough to keep trying because I just had my fingerprints taken, and they're right here in my hand, right here on my hands. Maybe this is the beginning of me starting to take up space in my own life. Maybe that's what I've been fighting for all along. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: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.systemspeed.com. We'll see you there.