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Emma shares about complex trauma, deprivation, and dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID). Educational, supportive, and inspiring, System Speak documents the best and worst of life through insights, conversations, and collaborations. An archive curated for dignity for all.
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
Speaker 3:we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
Speaker 2:for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. This episode continues the previous conversation.
Speaker 1:And I can tell that both of us well, I'm making an assumption about you in this moment, and so I wanna voice that. But I think well, I know I, and I think you are treading cautiously with our words and exactly how we wanna say things. And I think for me, I never want to invalidate anybody's trauma or say that somebody's trauma is less significant than somebody else's trauma. And I also want you and I to not get sued. Right?
Speaker 1:And lots of other considerations that are there. And so I think as we move forward with this conversation, know, I know that we're both going to do the best we can to approach this topic with as much safety, respect, and care as we're able to do in the moment.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Yeah. I think for actually getting into this topic, a great starting place would be some of LACTR's definitions. Do you want to say about that? Even in case someone is really new to the language, how would you define OEA and Ramcoa?
Speaker 2:Like, I know it used to be Ramcoa and now ISSTD refers to it as OEA and just sort of grouping all the things together. Where do you wanna start with that?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. This is great. Okay. So first of all, ISSTD, actually, as of this month, so that would be June of twenty twenty five, does not have an official definition for organized extreme abuse. And I, you know, I think that there's ways that that can be developed for the organization.
Speaker 1:I believe the board needs to get involved with that, and hopefully, they'll tap folks to help kind of come up with a definition that can be really thoughtful and to really know this work to be able to put something like that together. And definitions are incredibly challenging to put together. So let's just talk definitions or terms. So Allison Miller in 2032, healing the unimaginable this healing the unimaginable, I can talk, describes organic d I d organic DID as severe non mind control based child abuse. And then we have other terms like installed DID or forced dissociation.
Speaker 1:That's the one I wanted before. And so Valerie Sinison in Frankish Smith's 2022 book defines that those as the most severe form of DID coming from a result of ritual abuse or mind programming. And together, those are under this umbrella called, again, as installed DID. We have Joanna Silberg in her 2022 book in the OEA chapter that describes this concept as purposeful induction of dissociation. My personal favorite title for it is from Ellen Lachter, and I believe this is in her chapter in Jill Hosey and Anna Gomez's book that just came out this year in 2025.
Speaker 1:And Ellen describes this as DID systems with systematically induced and developed identities. And I like that term because it doesn't exclude how somebody might have, out of their own kind of organic survival, be also developing parts or self states that are able to help them to cope that were not systematically induced by perpetrators. And so that's the definition that I'm starting to to use. And then, you know, Ellis and Miller to kinda just talk generally about this, like, forced association installed DID. DID systems was systematically induced into developed identities terms kinda describes, you know, that, quote, altered personalities are created and and trained.
Speaker 1:And abusers will purposefully create complex dissociative disorders where additional self states can be added at a later date in in victims or survivors who've been, you know, quote, unquote, properly prepared. And that this structuring of the personality system allows these groups to continue abusing and training children without those children breaking whatever secrets they're keeping. And what Allison doesn't state in that kind of section of of the book is but I believe this is written about elsewhere. And those of us with clinical experience in this area have likely observed, I certainly know, anecdotally I have, that this can continue on into adulthood, if folks are being quote unquote accessed, and we could certainly, discuss that topic also.
Speaker 2:Warwick Middleton is doing a lot of research on that as well, I think, and Mary Anne Kate Yes. In Australia.
Speaker 1:Yes. They've got Warwick's work and and Michael Salter's work too, I think. They have a number of, like, cases that they examine that have gone through the legal system. I don't like the term judicial system because it's not necessarily finding folks justice, but, you know, that have moved through the legal system where there is, yeah, actual proof. Right?
Speaker 1:And then I guess the other aspect that I wanted to address while we're here is kind of talking about these terms is, you know, these kinda Manchurian candidate programs that Colin Ross speaks about where, basically, you know, states are created deliberately. A new identity is implanted. Amnesia barriers are created, and then those parts of folks are used in simulated or actual operations. And this presentation, at least in my clinical experience so far, I see two. There's maybe a third case that I have cases right now where, you know, clients are disclosing that they've been abused by certain government agencies or kinda sectors of the government or government related groups.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of information about, you know, projects like MK Ultra and Bluebird and and other projects, Stargate, that are you know, have declassified information in them. And those cases are almost like I think when we're talking about organized extreme abuse, I think of it as an island off of the island of DID because, like, working with DID or OSDD or you know? Yeah. So working with complex dissociation, I'll just leave it at that, is sort of like its own clinical island. And then off of that is, like, a smaller island that is the OEA or Ramcoa stuff.
Speaker 1:And then still a part of that, but, like, its other tiny, tiny little island are folks who, you know, are disclosing that they've experienced government abuse. And the cases that I've worked with where folks are are saying that that's in their history, They have a pretty intensive texture to them, and the complexity is high.
Speaker 2:I think if clinicians who are new to this think about how working with someone with DID is like having a lot of people in the room. And so you're working with the set of caregivers or whoever that sort of had that social contract or whatever conditioning came from the trauma and deprivation that that one body experienced and working with all the folks in the room who were growing up in that environment. And so kind of like the one contract, but all the different formations that it shows up in someone with DID. When we get into that smaller island of ritual abuse, it's almost like not only is there a lot of people in the room, but they all have different contracts.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that that fits.
Speaker 2:To be so gentle because when we are working with someone with DID, there's this sort of unified as a system, even though there's all the complications and nuances and complexities of that. I don't mean everybody agrees, but people, folks somehow inside kind of know what the contract was growing up. And so how to approach care or avoid harm and the different folks inside are sort of helping with that. But when we're talking about Ramcoa folks, it's like all the different ones had different contracts and they are working to not even get to that original contract. Like it just gets more complicated.
Speaker 2:It's not just lots of folks in the room. It's lots of contracts in the room too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then the thing I'd add oh gosh. There's so much to add. One of the things that's coming up that I kind of wanted to add is, that the the different states or self states, ways of being, sometimes are purely the function. And that can be quite challenging to work with and really does, I think, require getting the other parts involved.
Speaker 1:That is, I think, one of the things when I say the texture of the work is different. That means a lot of things. But that's one of the aspects, I think, where the texture is different, and we start getting into then the difference between self states and fragments or, you know, other things other things like that. It's like a a further breaking down of the identity of the person to not having if you can hear my pug coughing in the background, I'm so sorry about that. He's old.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, it's like this this further breaking down of the person to not where the state doesn't necessarily even have an know that they can have an interest, know that they can be a they. It's almost like like if you have a tape player and if you're pushing play or stop or rewind. And so working with that and working to develop that to develop some sort of a sense of, gosh, agency is, like, way far down the line, but just a sense of, like, being able to go outside and feel the sun. You know? It's a it can be a really, really long and complex road.
Speaker 1:And one of the other things that I've noticed is just the sheer quantity of, you know, different self states and all of the interactions between them, the different layers and levels. It just yeah. It's if I'm even having a hard time kind of in this moment verbalizing the nature of the complexity, I can't imagine what it must be like for the person who's experiencing that.
Speaker 2:It is so complex. And I love the way you describe it as function and with the tape player, that's so powerful, like trying to, explain to folks who are new to this, if we have just, again, not just as in minimizing, but if we have OSDD or DID folks where the different self states maybe represent different periods of time or different memories or different aspects of, roles or jobs that they had. This is like with Ramcoa or OEA, this is like such a specific job that it really may not be attached to anything else. So not listening to the tape or worried about the content of the tape, just knowing it's my job to push play, or it's my job to push rewind and doing the job. And so part of, we can talk about conditioning and programming in a minute, part of what gets intense about that is that without any other context, those sort of functions get set off and set off each other, whether it's about safety or not.
Speaker 2:It's just, this is what activates me to do this, like stimulus and response. So there's not always a lot of filtering or context to why something is happening. Sometimes there's very specific, like context or reasons, but sometimes it's literally just this, set this off and it's like dominoes. So I think that's why clinicians get overwhelmed because they feel the intensity of that. But I think we can read that as countertransference also where we get that feeling of the overwhelm from the intensity and all the domino effect of everything, and just recognize it for what it is.
Speaker 2:And that is what their experience is, which is getting communicated to us And doing what we would always do for countertransference of taking care of ourselves and making sure we're tending to our own self so that we can be there for them. And then that helps us stay sort of out of the loop of those stimulus and response stuff so that we can see clearly and help them see clearly. How do you want to talk about conditioning or programming?
Speaker 1:So actually, it's really, sorry. That's my, like, I'm so excited to talk about this laugh that you got there.
Speaker 2:Can I interrupt for just a moment? Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm having feelings because we were laughing. I wanna just make it explicit for any folks listening that we're laughing because it's such a big thing and it's such a hard thing to talk about programming and what people have been through is so horrific that it's ironic we're excited to talk about it, not because it's funny or to mock in any way, but because it's such a big deal and we're tackling such a hard thing.
Speaker 1:Yes. I would echo that. And I think to be a clinician doing this work that you've you've gotta be energized by complex problems. And for me, part of why I laugh with that is because I love finding the loopholes to help somebody get around their programming. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes. It's like it's like such a triumph to be able to help somebody to do that. And it's at least for me, I can't speak for you, Emma, when I laugh about, like, like that. It's because I feel like my client and I are outsmarting the folks who thought that they won.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I just wanted to make that explicit. It's the freedom from the double binds and all the setups and traps and everything that it's like, there is a way out. There is hope, and that is what delights us. And I just wanted to make that explicit.
Speaker 2:Explicit. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm really glad that you pointed that out, especially for folks that might not know us personally, yeah, and how we might mean something. Okay. So conditioning. Daniel Chuck and Connors in their 2022 book, treating complex trauma and dissociation, define conditioning as a kind of learned behavior that teaches the person to automatically respond and react in ways deemed acceptable to the people raising the child or to other people in the position of power over the child. So in that same book, Daniel Chuck and Connors, they go on to define extreme forms of conditioning or severe conditioning as an attempt to lock the person into behaviors that are detrimental to health insanity.
Speaker 1:Severe conditioning is often found in situations of organized abuse such as, like, sex trafficking, pornography rings, criminal gangs, and organizations is their definition. Some folks I heard I've heard the term conditioned compliance thrown around in the field. I am not sure where that term has come from or who coined it, but that is something that I found to be helpful in terms of my EHR electronic health record documentation in the event that, you know, my records get subpoenaed and I have to go to court. Because if I write the word programming, you know, a court might, one, not understand what that is to think that I'm you know, I don't know what I'm talking about or that I'm making things up. And so I do use that term in my doc in my documentation as sort of like a catch all phrase.
Speaker 1:And then we have mind control or programming. And Noblet and Noblet in their third edition 2024 book, Cult and Ritual Abuse Narratives Evidence and Healing Approaches, which is an absolute masterpiece for anybody who's not read that book. Define mind control and programming as programmed responses are generally and commonly used in a variety of cults. It's possible for an individual who understands the concepts underlying programming to identify cues that would affect the programmed person simply by talking to that individual and by observing his or her eyelid and other responses to to triggers. And as and this is, like, the the main definition as the manipulation or traumatization of alter personalities, fragments, or other dissociated mental states or entities for the purpose of mind control.
Speaker 1:You know? So that's that's a definition you could think about. My favorite one, again, comes from Ellen Lachter who, like I said earlier, is just pays so much attention to being specific in her languaging. And so she defines mind control and programming as one, conditioning, operant, classical, and fear conditioning. Two.
Speaker 1:Deception. Three. Hypnosis. Four. Coerced perpetration.
Speaker 1:Five. Manipulation of identification with the aggressor. Six. Manipulation of attachment needs. Seven, deprivation of basic needs.
Speaker 1:Eight, direct terrorization. Nine, agendas. 10, spiritual techniques. 11 oh, sorry. I want I need to go back.
Speaker 1:Nine, indoctrination slash enculturation into the abuser's beliefs and agendas. Apologies for that. 10, spiritual techniques. 11, skills training. And 12, formal programming.
Speaker 1:That is the use of numerous mind control strategies to construct inner landscapes that intentionally sequester victims' dissociated self states and control the relationships between them to set victims up against themselves.
Speaker 2:I'm really uncomfortable with a lot of things you just said.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I can see why it's really uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:I feel like you just unpacked the bite model. I know we're talking about other things, but I just feel like, oh, there's that. Maybe I need to look at this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then I've got one more definition of mind control from Allison Miller in her 2024 book as abuse of children and adults by an organized group that deliberately creates, indoctrinates, and trains internal parts or alter personalities. Beliefs are implanted and parts trained through deprivation, torture, electroshock, drugs, and stage magic to do, quote, jobs for the perpetrator group. This is much more than organized sexual abuse. Ellen Lachter also has a great definition for torture based mind control, and I'm happy to let folks know about that.
Speaker 1:But my sense maybe is that Ellen's previous definition that you mentioned made you feel uncomfortable might be sufficient for now, but you can let me know.
Speaker 2:It's okay. I'm okay. It just goes on the list of things to take to therapy, and then we move on.
Speaker 1:Okay. So Ellen in the 2011 book, Ritual Abuse and Mind Control, Manipulation of Attachment Needs. In her chapter, she defines torture based mind control as, one, acute torture, including pain, terror, drugs, electroshock, sensory deprivation, oxygen deprivation, cold, heat, spinning, brain stimulation, and near death and two. Conditioning directives, illusions, stage tricks, film stories, spiritual threats, manipulation of attachment needs, and classical operant and fear conditioning to coerce victims to form altered mental states, including a, Hyperattentive mental states that arise spontaneously in response to perceived threat to physical survival and are completely attuned to external stimuli ready to do whatever is needed to survive. And B.
Speaker 1:Self states spontaneously form in response to threat to psychic survival. So that is levels of mental anguish that exceed the tolerance of all previously existing ego states and that are mentally registered apart or dissociated from previously existing ego states. See, ego states that develop more gradually through conditioning, all three of which are subjected to programmer strategies to define, control, and, quote, install within them perceptions, beliefs, fear, pain, directives, information, triggers, and behaviors to force victims to do, feel, think, and perceive things for the purpose of the programmer, including execution of acts that violate the victim's volition, principles, and instinct for self preservation and to cause ego states that usually have executive control of mental functions. So the whole the host front apparently normal personality if we're looking at structural dissociation theory to have no conscious memory for the torture conditioning programming controlled ego states or executed programmed behaviors. So TBMC or torture based mind control then is often, like, synonymous with or means the same thing as or is used, you know, in the same way that torture based, trauma based followed by mind control programming or programming.
Speaker 1:So programming is basically another word for torture based mind control. How are we doing?
Speaker 2:I no. I'm good. Thank you for asking. I appreciate the consent. Before going into it more explicitly.
Speaker 2:I just am thinking the heaviness of how horrific it all is, is part of why even clinicians sort of dissociate from, Oh yeah, forgot that was a thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So how does that show up in the office? Like how do clinicians see that? How do survivors recognize it themselves so they know to seek out help?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I, you know, that's a really hard question, Emma.
Speaker 2:You're welcome.
Speaker 1:Mean, I think that if somebody is engaging in behaviors that or acts or noticing thoughts or urges that seem in direct conflict to the values that they hold I'll give an example. One of my current clients who is just, oh my gosh, brilliant. I'm so privileged to to work with well, everybody I work with, but I'm really privileged to work with her. She sometimes experiences violent thoughts about harming her beloved pet who she absolutely adores and would never ever ever want to harm. And the images and urges that she notices come up for her about harming this pet are really specific and detailed and they scare her.
Speaker 1:And that is one of the things that she noticed like, oh, I think this is programming because it's not in the nature of my soul that little now we're I'm kind of moving in a different direction now, but I'll say this. I don't know a lot about souls. I'm not I'm not a a spiritual expert or an afterlife expert or anything like that. I'm I'm just a cultural Jew, actually. So, you know, I'm not even personally a very, you know, religious person.
Speaker 1:But I think about the soul is like the little light that everybody has within them. And a number of my clients look at the soul as a little light that all of their parts have, and it might be the only thing that their parts have in common other than the fact that, you know, they inhabit the the one body that they have. Although many folks who experience this have parts that don't believe that they inhabit the body. But oftentimes, there is that light that they all can sense. And for this client, at least that's true.
Speaker 1:That may not be true across the board for everybody and that's okay. But for this client, that light is all the value, the values that this person has. And she knows that harming her pet, doesn't match with that light. And that's one of the ways that she is starting to learn to name her programming and to do the opposite of her programming. And that is one of the ways that programming can begin to be untangled.
Speaker 1:And I just wanted to kinda loop back to our terms of conditioning versus extreme forms of conditioning and severe conditioning versus programming and mind control and sort of let everybody know that terminology is really tricky. And so I would just play it safe with whatever your client prefers. One of my clients who I I just adore everybody I work with, so I'm just gonna lead lead with that assumption, though I might still feel like I have to say it. One of my clients who I adore doesn't like any of those terms. And I said, well, what do you think would work better for you for us to kinda call this out?
Speaker 1:You know? And they said, how about mode? And so we refer to their programming as modes. And whenever one comes up in session, I might say, I wonder if that might be a mode. What do you think?
Speaker 1:So yeah. You know, I I think identifying that thing that is not an inherent desire for the soul to do might be a program. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:It does make sense. And I like your intervention of being able to call it out directly and not afraid of that, of like, I wonder if that might be a mode and being curious about that in the same way that we're curious about conditioning or parts or patterns that we're noticing that may be developmental, whether states or parts or whatever of recognizing, oh, here's something to be curious about. Let's just notice what we're noticing and how even that in itself sometimes helps stop the dominoes. Like even if, even if we think about it in the framework of mitigating harm, if we are able to pull out a domino somewhere along the line, there's still, like, it still stops sooner than going all the way. Right?
Speaker 2:Yep. And so getting better and better at noticing it sooner so that we can just tend to where the wound is. And that framework of just being curious and finding language to call it something in a meaningful way where we can agree what we're talking about. I just I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. I gotta talk Domino's because they keep coming up. So I have a really fun intervention that I'd like to share if that's okay.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We like fun.
Speaker 1:Yay. Okay. So I was walking around a craft store kind of like I see all my clients virtually with a rare occasion of of going in office if we need to. And this is something that I did end up going in office for, but I think it could be worked out if the client can go and obtain, you know, something like what I'm going to tell you about, and that could be worked through virtually. So I'm walking through the craft store, and I see a bag of these domino shaped blocks that are all different colors.
Speaker 1:And this is when I'm you know, I was trying to kinda help a client see that they might have a Ramcoa OEA history. Their denial programming was really, really active, and, you know, I was trying to find some ways to get underneath it. And so first, I, you know, said, okay. We've got black as an option, but the Sharpie is black. So just for logistical purposes, we can't use black.
Speaker 1:And because a lot of systems have kind of like a white and black split or dark at night or, you know, other types of themes associated with black and white. I said, let's just, you know, take out the white ones too. So it's really just the the colors, and the client agreed with that. And I said, so how about we'll each take a term? And I took the term programming.
Speaker 1:They didn't like that term. It makes them feel like a computer, and that's a common criticism of the term, and I can get that. People aren't computers. And they took the term mind control, which parts of them had already endorsed experiencing, aspects of mind control, like training, which maybe we'll end up talking about later, and other things so that a lot of the indicators were already there that I felt very confident in doing this intervention with them. And so I wrote on each different block of the colors that, you know, I picked.
Speaker 1:I wrote programming. So each block got its own letter to spell out the word programming. And my client did the same thing, and they said, I'm not using any of the ones. And I said, oh, well, that's fine. You don't have to use any ones.
Speaker 1:But can I ask why you don't wanna use any ones? And they said, oh, I'm terrified of the color. This came up later. It was really important down the road. And I said, well, that's fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You don't have to take no big deal. And they wrote mind control on their blocks with with each letter getting its own block. And then we set the blocks up kind of like you would dominoes that if you notch the first one down, that they would all fall. And just that kind of sound and that end clank made them jump.
Speaker 1:And we immediately did some grounding, you know, kind of talk through about, you know, how this environment was not fake or fabricated, things needed to be worked through with them. And they agreed that they felt that they could set them all up again. And so they did. And we both did together as a collaborative team. That's a really important part of the work, I think, is collaborating with the person that we're working with, being with them in whatever the activity or intervention is that we're doing.
Speaker 1:I hope I think that that helps kinda foster a sense of trust and relatability and kind of this feeling of I'm with you, and I am. And, anyway, we all set the blocks up again. I said, okay. Now let's pick a block. It can be anyone.
Speaker 1:There's no right or wrong answer. And I'd like you to just shift any of the blocks to either side. And so we both did that. And we did the same thing again where we knocked down the first block. And, you know, the like you said, not all the blocks fell.
Speaker 1:It stops at the point where that one block is moved to the side. And they were so surprised. And I looked at them and I said, look, it's following the rules. All the words are all the letters are still in the right order that they need to be in. We just made this one tiny shift that didn't break any rules, and it stopped the end result of what was the, like, intent of, in my mind, I'm thinking of the programming.
Speaker 1:I think I might have said that to them. It stopped that program from running all the way. And they were so blown away that this could be an option for them. And it reframed the way that I think a lot of their parts were looking at the programming that they have. And later, I've gotta just sort of button up thing.
Speaker 1:A number of sessions later, I'm meeting with this person, and they showed me a piece of artwork that they had made, and it had a ton of in it. And I said, you know, wow. You know, this is, you know, beautiful, and it was. They're an incredible artist. And I said, you know, I noticed there's so much.
Speaker 1:And they said, oh, yeah. I love I said, oh, well, the day that we met, whoever I met with that day was terrified. I wonder if, you know, you two could talk. Right? And so that led to another way of kind of working to develop the internal communication and finding out different aspects of different parts.
Speaker 1:And that that domino intervention could be further titrated. I kind of made made a call that I thought my client could tolerate it all at once. But conceivably, you could, you know, label one domino at a time, like, once every session to really titrate calling out those terms. And, you know, we did that intervention a number a couple of years ago, and sometimes my client will check to make sure that they still have their dominoes. I and they'll say, do you still got your dominoes?
Speaker 1:And so it's turned into transitional object for therapeutic work. We have a couple things that are, like, our connection or things that symbolize our relationship, but that's one of the things. And when they start to when their denial programming starts to kick off, sometimes their parts will say, go look at your dominoes. And that really helps them.
Speaker 2:That's an amazing story.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you liked it. It this person is amazing. And it was it's a really useful tool, you know, to kinda demonstrate how programming can work. Now where this might fall flat is I some clients have shared that abusers use dominoes during the process of their programming, and so it could cause an adverse reaction if that was in the person's history. Luckily for me with this particular client, that was not the case.
Speaker 2:I think that's an example though, of how we can adapt metaphors or create different metaphors still tend to it. And that's such good modeling of, that's okay. We're not locked in. That's the whole point.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This conversation will be continued in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in community together.
Speaker 2:The link for the community is in the show notes. We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also care for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community. I'm not there for dating and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually.
Speaker 2:I'm there to heal too. That's what peer support is all about. Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.