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This month in our NerdTown Topics Meetup, our colleague, Bill Woodburn, MEd, LPC-S, LMFT-S, shared about using stories in therapy. This episode contains a passing reference to a gun in context of a story that is told, but no violence is described or discussed or detailed. As always, care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast.
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. If you would like to support our efforts at sharing our story, finding stigma about dissociative identity disorder, and educating the community and the world about trauma and dissociation, Please go to our website at www.systemspeak.org, where there is a button for donations, and you can offer a one time donation to support the podcast or become an ongoing subscriber. You can also support us on Patreon for early access to updates and what's unfolding for us. Simply search for Emma Sunshine on Patreon. We appreciate the support, the positive feedback, and you sharing our podcast with
Speaker 2:others.
Speaker 1:This episode continues Bill's presentation from the previous episode about healing stories. This episode does contain a reference to a gun. However, this is in passing in the context of telling a story, and there is no violence described, discussed, or detailed. As always, care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Another piece on heroes. Heroes don't automatically win. And just winning doesn't make you a hero. There is kind of this cruel cultural story going around that says there are winners and that there are losers. And the heroes are the winners and the losers are just losers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see it a lot in movies. I grew up on westerns. Remember, western is all about finding out who the bad guys are and for the hero to go out into the street and end this problem in one short, sharp, violent moment in a gunfight. That's a western. You could dress it up with all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2:That's a western. Who are the bad guys? Get rid of them. And how do we know the hero's the hero? Because he wins.
Speaker 2:He wins the gunfight. Of course he does. He's the hero. So that that's kinda kinda twisted. It's like how do we know who the good guys are?
Speaker 2:Because they win the gunfight. I like to think that there's more to being a good The good guys don't always win. Yeah. You're, if you saw the very first scene of Saving Private Ryan, not the combat scenes, the very first scene, where this old man goes back to the cemetery above Omaha Beach. The cemetery I've been to is striking and affecting to be there.
Speaker 2:He's moving through these thousands of gravestones, many of whom were his buddies, and he turns to his wife and says, Am I a good man? See, because what he knows, is there are a lot of heroes who are buried under those gravestones. Because they lost their battle to survive, does not make them less of a hero. Again, I I really fight against that very cruel cultural thing that the winners are automatically heroes and the losers are not worth it. I think it's much bigger than that.
Speaker 2:I think it has to do about what you're fighting for. And so, sometimes I have trauma clients who come into my office, and they have been overwhelmed, and outgunned, and they lost the battle. Yeah, they did. That doesn't make it less of a hero. Remember, I don't judge on winners versus losers.
Speaker 2:I'm judging on heroes. And, you know, heroes don't always win the battle. That's the fact of life. Doesn't make them less of a hero. There's a particular thing I want to point out, and I I guess I'm gonna call it an attachment disorder.
Speaker 2:I call it stealing the hero. And some families do this. Where the children in the family are taught to give up their power to make a difference in order to fit somebody else's dream of what a good life is, what a safe life is, what a proper life is, whatever. You know, what would the neighbors think? And what happens when we take that in is our hero has to be hidden away.
Speaker 2:And it makes us afraid of engaging in the world. And it makes us afraid of our own hero parts who want to engage in the world. Who believe in there somewhere their actions can make a difference and all of a sudden when we hear from that hero part inside of us we go, oh crap This is unsafe. I'm afraid of that because I've been taught someone stole by a hero. I've been I I I can't do that.
Speaker 2:That's too scary. That's not because they're to be afraid of their client came she only came twice. My, my office is just down the street from the university. Come in, and bring her family. She worked for her junior year at Yale, and she was having trouble with her family.
Speaker 2:And her family comes in, her mom and dad come in, and they they sit in my office. And the conflict is starts out with mom and dad say we wanna we wanna know what your grades are. We're paying for Yale. It's very expensive. We want to know that this is working.
Speaker 2:You know, we want access to your grades. I could tell that bothered her. I thought, well, maybe, maybe not. I don't know how I feel about that. But then they went on to, you know, and we wanna select your classes.
Speaker 2:And we don't like your major. And we want you to, you know, give us a weekly schedule of when you're studying and when you're not. And we want to know who your friends are and how you're seeing and who you're dating. And oh, it just went on and on. And and and this went from a simple request to know what grades were to we would really like to run your life, please.
Speaker 2:And she kept trying to work it out. And at the end, I was, you know, I was kinda worried about her because she was starting to agree to things as, you know, I just really love going to Yale, and all my friends are there, and it's so important. And, you know, okay. I'll do this, and I'll do that, and I'll do this. Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, they leave. I'm not feeling too good about the session. I don't know something about it. I I what I really feel is that that her hero part got stolen somewhere along the session, and I was not able to support it enough. And I I was feeling bad.
Speaker 2:Well, I get a call, 23 later, and they wanna come back. I was like, okay. Good. Second chance. Maybe I can support her hero part better this time.
Speaker 2:Actually, I didn't need to. She'd found mom and dad, and she's at Yale. I've enrolled at the University of Texas. I have a part time job to cover the cost. I won't be taking your money anymore.
Speaker 2:I'm changing my major to something I really want. Woah. Now I'd love to say that I'm such a brilliant therapist that made that happen. I didn't. Okay?
Speaker 2:She found the that said I have to make a difference in the world. It was a better thing, and maybe she should have gone to Yale, but I don't know about right or wrong, but I recognize that as a heroic decision. Right or wrong, I don't know how it's gonna come out. Woah, I've got all sorts of notes here and I'm gonna blow on past them and go to the next really good stuff I've got to talk about. I wanna talk about plots.
Speaker 2:You know, every story's got a plot. And a guy named Dan McAdams did some terrific work in labeling, four different plots that are very, very common. And I started taking a look at them. I added some ideas. I've been I've been I've been using them for quite a while now.
Speaker 2:Let me go through them with you. The first one is called fulfillment. In fulfillment, the world was good. The world is good now, and the world will be better in the future. That's a fulfillment plot line.
Speaker 2:And the world, the world was pretty good, and it's good now. Maybe not perfect, but it's good. And it's gonna be better in the future. So the point is to get on to the future and make changes and to do well. And so, you know, when you're working with folks that have a fulfillment plot line, change is very good.
Speaker 2:Remember, we're changing toward that better future. We're heading toward that better future. Wow. Cool. Let's changes are good.
Speaker 2:Let's let's get some changes. Let's get good changes so we can head toward the good future. Setbacks, setbacks are accepted. I mean, it's like, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's it's not gonna be smooth sailing, but we are heading towards something good. There will be setbacks. It's alright. We'll just press on. And conflict is seen as productive.
Speaker 2:If you have a fulfillment plot line, was good, is good, will be better, you know, conflict is part of that making it better. Maybe you and I have different ways to do this but if I listen to you, you listen to me. You know, out of that will probably caught comes something really good for the future. It's a way of looking at things. It's like, you know, when you go to the optometrist and they put that big thing in front of it and there's like lens, lens, lens.
Speaker 2:Is this better? Is this better? Is this better? The fulfillment is a set of lenses of what to expect from the world. The motto of someone with a fulfillment plotline is push on.
Speaker 2:Let's go into the future. Let's get it done. Let's get it going. Number two in the plot line group is redemption. You know, it was really bad, but now it's good.
Speaker 2:And it will stay good if and then fill in the blank. A lot of my clients, who are working in recovery, working on their recovery come in with a redemption, a well earned redemption plot line. Man, things were bad. But, you know, they're pretty good right now. And as long as I keep doing the right stuff, it's gonna keep, it's gonna keep good.
Speaker 2:So what does that do? That means change is largely good. Client comes in, yes. This is, you know, let's change some things. That's probably gonna be good.
Speaker 2:But it also means that setbacks are are scary. You see, a setback could mean that we're heading back to that other time. We don't want setbacks because that could push us back to that awful time in the past. It's good now. I want it to stay good.
Speaker 2:I'm suspicious of setbacks. And I'm suspicious of conflicts because I just need to keep going. I don't want to go back and think about conflicts and deal with conflicts. And so if you're talking to a client that's using a redemption sort of plot line, their motto is, yes, but. Yes, but.
Speaker 2:Can you can you reassure me that this change is not gonna send me back to that awful time. Now I respect that, by the way. I'm not I'm not talking about which one of these is pathological or whatever. I respect that caution. They know what a bad time actually looks like, and they don't wanna go.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, they question me on how will this keep going forward and not send me back. Alright. Number three, a contamination plot line. The past was good, but it became bad. And it will stay bad until we can until we can eliminate the evil.
Speaker 2:However, we define evil. Contamination. It was good. Matter of fact, the past was almost ideal. It was just almost perfect.
Speaker 2:But now it's bad, and that's because some evil showed up. And the moment we can eliminate that evil, we'll go back to this good ideal. You know, my stepfather was always talking about the good old days. You know, one of these days I finally cornered him and said, okay, okay, I gotta know, you know, when were the good old days? And he, and he starts talking about, you know, the nineteen forties and And I said, okay, So the nineteen forties, the good old days.
Speaker 2:I gotta know, is it is it the global depression that you miss or being on the cutting edge of global war? I mean, which one of those are you missing? Then I realized, it wasn't either one of those he was missing being young. It's always easier when you're young. Okay.
Speaker 2:Let's get back to contamination plot line so I don't just keep distracting the stories. So with a condemnation plot line, change is considered making it worse. Remember, it's bad now. It was perfect. It's bad now.
Speaker 2:So change or improvement in this is is worthless. This is not this is not good. Don't don't tell me to make this better now. I have to get back to that perfect time. Setbacks are interesting because a setback is confirming.
Speaker 2:Well, see, I told you it's no good. I told you my marriage was no good. Of course, we argued. I told you that this family is no good. I told you that my teenager is out of control.
Speaker 2:What do you expect? That in a in a contamination plot line, a setback is just of course, this just confirms what I was already telling you. It's just all ruined. And curiously, conflicts conflicts are about looking for the bad guy. See, it was good and then somebody messed it up.
Speaker 2:And the sooner we can find that somebody and eliminate them, the quicker we can get back to that happy old time. What happens with this plot line is it it it thrives on outrage and resentment. It thrives on hatred. You see, someone stole this from me. Someone ruined this.
Speaker 2:I have to find who that person is because I really hate them. Because they messed everything up. But curiously, the outrage and resentment are also links to that ideal past. It also confirms that it was ideal once upon a time. I would not feel so outraged now if it hadn't been so perfect then.
Speaker 2:It was perfect then. How do you know? Because I'm so outraged how it is now. So there's a curious link to sitting there in your resentment of what's going on now with the idea that that confirms that the past was somehow wonderful. The motto of these folks is usually I hate and then fill in the blank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hate it. I hate this, I hate that, I hate these people, I hate those people, I hate this idea, I hate those ideas. If these people would just Last plot line is the annihilation plot line. And you know when I go through this, some people say, I don't know if I see that. Think again.
Speaker 2:I think we're seeing it. It. An annihilation plot line, things were bad in the past. They're even worse now, and they're gonna get worse in the future. It was bad, is bad, it's just gonna get worse.
Speaker 2:In this kind of plot line, change is ridiculous. It's it's not bad or good, but it's ridiculous. It's mocked. You You wanna change something? You've got to be kidding me.
Speaker 2:You can't change things. Bad, is bad, will be bad. What what kind of change? Matter of fact, you you are some sort of idealist. You you you are you are, thinking like a child.
Speaker 2:You you are too romantic. You are too sensitive. You are too because change is ridiculous. Setbacks are confirming. See, I knew.
Speaker 2:You knew. Matter of fact, setbacks are often proof that there is some greater conspiracy going on that is making things bad. But the curious thing about an annihilation plot line comes in conflicts. See, remember, previous plot lines had, you know, conflicts either are, you know, greeted with, like, great. This is gonna help.
Speaker 2:This could be productive, or they're not particularly productive. For annihilation plot line, conflicts are opportunities to gain power over other people. They're not opportunities for making things better. Why? Because you can't make things better.
Speaker 2:Change is ridiculous. Making things better? There's no place for a hero here. You can't make things better. If we're in conflict, you might.
Speaker 2:What I wanna do is win because winning is all there is. I win, you lose. That's that's the entire game. There isn't a larger world. There's not a larger set of values.
Speaker 2:It's win lose. And, you know, if you if you have an an annihilation plot line going, it makes perfect sense. It was bad. It's worse. It's gonna get worse.
Speaker 2:What's the only thing you can get out of it? I can win right now. I can make you feel bad. I win. In annihilation plotline, there is no greater prize.
Speaker 2:There isn't, oh, let's build a strong community. Let's land on Mars. Let's save the planet. No. On an annihilation plot line, all of that is impossible.
Speaker 2:The only thing that is possible is I might win this interaction, which means you have to lose. So now you've listened to four different plot lines. And for those of you that are professionals out there and listen to a lot of stories, take a moment to think about how listening to one of these plot lines, particularly if it's over and over during your day, affects your confidence? Perfects your performance? Your hope as a healer?
Speaker 2:I mean, not a lot of people with, an annihilation plot line come in for counseling, but sometimes they're dragged by their families. If you do that all day long, or contamination plot line, if you're with that all day long, how does that start to affect you? So, I'm gonna move on into how do we change stories, what do we do about that. But this is probably a good time for me to go over to the chat and see if there's some questions, or if you would like to add some questions to the chat. Or if you'd like to ask one, remember you can raise an electronic hand, ask a question, or if you'd rather, ask a question on chat.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Nice question. What plot lines are around you all day every day? So one of the problems is that plot lines are contagious. No?
Speaker 2:And if you grew up in a family with a particular plot line, even if you hate it, it's really hard to change the plot. And what happens, of course, is you start living out that plot in your daily life or with your next relationship or whatever. It's like, oh, why didn't things come out different? Like, well, yeah. You got that plot.
Speaker 2:Other questions? Okay. Well, let me head on into what can we do as either therapists or as clients to change our stories or the stories that we hear or help people? So let me tell you a story about change. Let me tell you a story about changing stories.
Speaker 2:Now this is a true story, and it happened in the early 2000s in a suburb in around Washington DC. And it was a wonderful summer night. And the neighbors had all gathered in one of the backyards and, you know, they were sharing some wine and some cheese and talking. It was a lovely evening. It was warm and the wine was good.
Speaker 2:And they were all standing around in a circle talking. And into the circle steps a man in a tracksuit with the hood up, and he's carrying a gun. And he says, Nobody move. Give me your money. And the party stopped right there.
Speaker 2:And everyone thought, I don't wanna die, but this is a block party. I didn't come with any money. What's gonna happen? We don't know. And in that moment as it dragged out the hostess said to the man with gun, Would you like a glass of wine?
Speaker 2:And he took a glass of wine and he sipped it and he says, This is really good wine. And, he said, Please, have, have some cheese. And he says, Some of this cheese is ripped from the shop that's just And, they all stood there. The people at the party and the guy with the gun, and they were all sipping wine and eating cheese and talking about how good the wine was and how good the cheese gun says, I think I have the wrong house. And he moves back into the darkness and heads down the alley.
Speaker 2:And everybody was finally able to take a breath. Curiously, after a few moments, the hostess heads looks down in the alley and, and finds that the man with the gun had set his wine glass on a windowsill. Not thrown it, not dropped it, not broken it. Carefully set it on the windowsill as he left. True story.
Speaker 2:You see, what happened in the middle of that, that started out as a story of a robbery and ended up as a story of community and inclusion. And something powerful happened because the story changed. I don't know what the guy with the gun was expecting. I expect he thought I'm gonna threaten people, they're gonna get scared, they're gonna give me money. Curiously, the story changed part way through.
Speaker 2:It changed because of generosity. It changed because of curiosity. It changed also because there was something inside the guy with the gun that was available to a different story. See, healing stories, healing stories, not all stories are healing, but healing stories activate our heroic selves and they set us to adventuring. By adventuring, I mean, remember adventures generate good controversy.
Speaker 2:There's not easy right wrong answers in an adventure. Might be some good uncertainty. No questions are rhetorical in an adventure. We don't just ask dumb questions, we ask important questions. And no outcomes are guaranteed in an adventure.
Speaker 2:We go on the adventure because we're heroes and we go on adventures. We don't go for some guaranteed outcome. You you know, a a young friend of mine, I was over visiting her parents, and, she came up to me and he said, Bill, I I know you really like history. Did anything interesting happen during the French Revolution? And I said, well, actually a bunch.
Speaker 2:It was a it was a wild time. It got pretty violent, and they were competing power structures, and it changed the face of Europe. And I asked to see her textbook. She took me to the kitchen table. I looked at the textbook, and I was wrong.
Speaker 2:I gotta admit, I was wrong. Nothing interesting happened in the French Revolution. According to textbook, a bunch of people got together and they discussed, economic problems, and then there was a shortage of bread, and then everybody got mad at the king, and then Napoleon showed up. French Revolution right there. Why is that so ludicrous?
Speaker 2:Because they cut out the adventure part. They went to the guaranteed outcome. All the questions were rhetorical in the textbook. So let's start with an example story that a client actually brought in. I cleaned it up a little bit, but the client brought it in.
Speaker 2:It's a simple story because I don't wanna go through a long story. So we can mess with this story and see what we could do with it to help it be more of an adventure and more of a and and can help that client connect to their more heroic self. So here's the story. Three lines. I probably lost my job today.
Speaker 2:I got really angry and I yelled at my boss. I probably lost my job today. I got really angry and I yelled at my boss. Okay. So listen to that story for a minute.
Speaker 2:Is needing to be told today that is coming out like that. It's a story of what? Story of fear, uncertainty for the future? A story of guilt? A story of justification?
Speaker 2:A what story am I listening to? What is trying to be told here? I have to keep an open mind. I don't we don't know yet. But just start with, I wonder what I want not what is the story about, what does it mean.
Speaker 2:That's for Siegfried and Carl Jung. For me, it's just what story is trying to come out of this person and be in my office today. And who is this person in the story? Or if you're the client, who am I in the story that I'm telling? Am I the hero?
Speaker 2:Am I the victim? Am I the monster? Who am I? Is there an initiation somewhere in this story? In in other words, is there a point at which we go into the deep dark forest and come out changed?
Speaker 2:Is there a piece of that into the story? Might be. There often is. Are there allies in this story? Are there people well, if a client is telling you about it, one of the problems is sometimes clients come in with very confused stories and I'm not sure how to be an ally in that story.
Speaker 2:Okay. But we can discuss it. And what kind of triumph is the hero in that story headed toward or triumph for? Well, I probably lost my job today. I got angry at my boss, and I yelled at my boss.
Speaker 2:Now, if you notice something interesting here, this story is the first thing I would do to help a client with this story is I'd I'd go ahead and realize that this story was told out of order. See, all stories have a beginning and a middle and an end. You have to find the beginning. You have to use So, I probably lost my job today. That sounds more like an ending than a beginning.
Speaker 2:I yelled at my boss. No. That sounds more like a middle than a bit. It sounds like the story goes, I got angry today and I yelled at my boss and I probably lost my job. Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let's see what we could do with that. Well, we could put an order. That that helps. I could try to convert this into a history story, which I think would be a mistake, by staying saying, what happened that got you angry?
Speaker 2:See, in story world, I'm not that worried about what happened that got them angry. They got angry. That's the beginning of the story. Now there may be and I'm suspecting there is more of a beginning to that story. And one possibility is I could see if I could get the client to tell what was going on for them.
Speaker 2:Notice autobiographical. For them, their experience before they experienced anger. Oh, that's kind of a different way. I didn't say why were you angry or what made you angry. That moves back into history.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let me see. Like, it was 02:00. Maybe I was hungry. You know, I didn't have a really good but, no.
Speaker 2:This isn't helping. Not what I'm trying to go for. I'm trying remember, I'm trying to move this into autobiographical. What was your experience? And can we even move it to the mythical here somewhere?
Speaker 2:That would be nice. So I'm much more interested in the point of view and the experience of the person who got angry. For the therapists out there, let me give you, a way of moving through a story and helping it become healing. Step one. You wanna find what I call a gateway image.
Speaker 2:In other words, we need to find a powerful image in this story. Not a fact. An image in this story that propels us through the story that is valid all the way through. See, that's why why I that's why I can't start with what makes you angry. That's may or may not be, a gateway image.
Speaker 2:I don't know. So let me get your help here as though you were this client. One of the things I might do is I might say, okay. Well, I hear angry is a big part of this. Give me other words for angry.
Speaker 2:Can someone type a few in the chat? What's what are some other words for angry? You could say, I got enraged. I was disappointed. Boss.
Speaker 2:I mean, someone give me a few. There we go. Frustrated. Yeah. I'm overwhelmed.
Speaker 2:Helpless. I rate. Yeah. Notice how I got angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, helpless, irate, ignored, unjustified, scared. Oh, already the story is changing and we're coming up with a gateway image.
Speaker 2:Some way to get into this story. Disrespected. Resentful. Absolutely. So I would offer the client, what changes in the story?
Speaker 2:And I'm just gonna kinda randomly pick what something you y'all put up here. And say, what happens in the story if we tell it like this? I felt neglected this morning, so I yelled at my boss, and I probably lost my job. Now I'm not preplanning like there is some perfect word here that is going to make my client see the light and, you know, make me a perfect therapist. Yes.
Speaker 2:As Emma says, it opens up another story possibility. See, I don't want a closed story. I want an open story. And for an open story, I need some options here. And changing some strategic words with the client's consent makes a difference.
Speaker 2:Matter of fact, I have a whiteboard board in my office, and a lot of times I get them to write down a few, and then we just pick some. How about this story? How about that story? You know, there's another cool one. I probably lost my job.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That one that one's an interesting one because, you know, my bet is, that they didn't lose their job. I don't think they, like, misplaced it. You know? I'm I'm gonna put it down when I came home, and, you know, I got ready to go to work, and I looked around, and I couldn't find my job, and I'd probably fall behind the couch.
Speaker 2:Wait a minute. I think lost the job kinda presupposes some stuff, and maybe we need to shake that loose. I learned that many, many years ago, when I was with a buddy and I and I said I've lost my job. And and, it was before I was a therapist, and it was just one of those sort of young man temporary jobs. I was like, man, I lost my job today.
Speaker 2:My buddy, who was black and had different stories in his head, said, oh, man. They took your job away? Oh, wait a minute. I didn't lose my job. I didn't misplace it.
Speaker 2:I wasn't I wasn't lazy. I wasn't sloppy. I didn't, you know, I didn't I didn't fumble it and drop my job on the floor and it broke. They took it. Now that's a different story.
Speaker 2:And if I said they took my job away today, there's a whole different response to that. And then I then does that make it right or wrong? I don't know, but it it sure opens up that story. So finding a gateway image, which could be in the anger, I also might say, come up with some words, some other words for yelled at your boss. What else were you doing when you were yelling?
Speaker 2:Well, I was trying to express myself. Or I was standing up. Or I was looking at my boss. Or I was pleading. Or I was crying out.
Speaker 2:Or Yeah. Okay. Again, we're opening up those critical words to see if we can open up this story, give more options. We use these sort of customary words, like lost the job, that trap us. And I'm just trying to pull that apart.
Speaker 2:Another thing you can do to really help the client tell you the story better, is you can go to the next step, which is coming up with a setting for the story. I got angry. I yelled at my boss. I probably lost my job. That's kind of free floating.
Speaker 2:There's no real tangible setting for this right now. I I I'm having trouble grasping it. The client's having trouble grasping it. The the story seems to be just floating amorphous in the air. That's not the way this works.
Speaker 2:Could we tell it with the richness of being embodied and in a place on Earth? So the client who told this finally told me, I was driving here today and thinking about seeing you. I was in my car, and the traffic was heavy. And I kept having to slow down, and I kept thinking I probably lost my job. And then I came into the waiting room, and I didn't wanna tell you because the waiting room seemed nice, and I just wanted to stay there.
Speaker 2:Oh. All of a sudden, this story is starting to have roots. It has a place. It happened to an actual person in an actual place. I had a client come and tell me a story that was so embodied and so part of place.
Speaker 2:And I'll try to tell it to you again. It was a while ago, and I've lost a couple of the, great details, and so I may add in some just to make it work. She was an older lady, and she was telling me the, the last time she'd seen her father, before he went off, to the army in North Africa during World War II and died and never came back. She was little, and she told the story with such a place and time that it became a much powerful story. It was not just my dad died in World War two.
Speaker 2:She said, it was really cold and the weather was overcast, And that was really good because we knew the German bombers wouldn't come over tonight. And I went to the train station, and it was warm by the train. And I could smell the cold smoke. And I held my mom's hand and my dad's hand as we walked down the platform, and they were all these soldiers. And I hugged my father, and I could feel the scratch of his damp wool coat and the bumps of his cartridge boxes and military equipment.
Speaker 2:And then he stood up, and he got on the train. And after a moment, he opened the window, and he waved to me and looked at me. And I turned to tell my mother that I could see him waving. And when I turned back, he was gone. The power the power in that story isn't the fact that she lost her father in the war.
Speaker 2:The memory, the power in that story was that it was a real experience that she felt in her body, that she saw directly, that she experienced. And without a setting, without going through those things that sometimes in a therapy room seem so small and why are we wasting time on this? You know, for her to remember the smell of his damp wool coat, the scratch of it on her face, that makes the story far more real, far more autobiographical than just, you know, I lost my father in World War two. Hi, Ingrid. I see a hand up.
Speaker 2:Do you want to, either speak to us or you can type in the chat either one?
Speaker 3:I just wanted to speak to that example you've just gave because, it reminded me of when I was, in creative writing classes and I was studying with fiction writers as my mentors, and they would always teach you that if you want to make your reader cry, like like the story that you just gave, you don't say, oh, my dad died in the war. It was really, really sad. That's not the reader is not gonna have any emotional connection to that. And to make a reader cry, you give all of those embodied details to the environment, and it can be just like the minutiae. But for some reason, that produces a more emotional response than, like, oh my gosh, it was so sad.
Speaker 2:Yes. But part of the reason is that we live our lives in bodies. And we live our lives in a physical world. And so that's the way we that's the way the stories get told to us and get experienced. And to sort of surgically get rid of that and only abstract it up into just an intellectual experience, yeah, we leave the emotions behind because it's our body that had the emotions in the first place.
Speaker 2:It was the place that gave us, the emotions in the first place. Like watching a sunset. I mean, I could tell you, oh, it was a pretty sunset. But I can't I can't quite give you that physical experience without you having been there watching the sunset. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it just makes it much more powerful. So one of the things that I encourage clients to do is spend a little time on what the physical experience was. Not the physical experience of necessarily yelling at the boss, or necessarily bad physical experience, but just the grounding physical experience. Like the client who says, you know, I was thinking about it in the waiting room, and the waiting room seemed so nice, and I didn't wanna come into your office.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's more real than just, oh, I have the story to tell you. Or when I yelled at my boss, I felt like my head was gonna explode. Or I stood up. Or I yelled at my voice, but then when I well, I yelled at my boss, but when I heard my voice, it didn't actually sound very loud.
Speaker 2:Those are important pieces. So thank you, Ingrid.
Speaker 3:I have just a follow-up question on that. Drop it. I mean, obviously, it depends on the story and how what emotions are around that story or what history is around that story. And when you get into, like, the autobiographical Mhmm. What happens when you're working with a more dissociative client where those details can become triggers?
Speaker 2:Sure. Okay. There are two pieces there that I wanna sometimes sometimes I answer the question that I that I wanna answer. So number one is sometimes when I work with a heavily dissociated client, they they they no longer have that physical data. I mean, I'm trying for a setting, but they don't really have a setting for me.
Speaker 2:So I got a couple of choices. One is we can sit there quietly, and I can be patient to see if they can find some of the settings. And it's not always a physical experience. Again, I'm a little cautious, like you said, around the view. But it can be, you know, what did you see when you were driving?
Speaker 2:How was the traffic when you were driving? You know? Now I have to be real careful. I don't wanna get too far back into history. But I they they saw some things.
Speaker 2:They heard some things. And I can do that rather than going into a necessary body sensation. The other though is, you know, sometimes it's time for them to go a little at least a little bit into a body sensation. Maybe maybe maybe this story can handle that. Or maybe not at first, but but eventually, it can handle that.
Speaker 2:Maybe this is a client who can start you can start to explore what did your body feel like when you yelled at your boss? Oh, that's scary. I get it. You know, it's scary. Let's just take a little piece.
Speaker 2:What was your breathing like when you yelled at your boss? Oh, I wasn't breathing, really. I just was yelling. Okay. That's fine.
Speaker 2:And it might be weird. Okay. We're done. You know? Or if that's working pretty well, be standing up, sitting down.
Speaker 2:I'm standing up. What's the difference between yelling at your boss standing up or you just telling me the story sitting down across from me? How does your body feel differently about that? So I it it may be time to start gently moving into some of those pieces. I what I don't wanna do is get scared of what the client's scared of.
Speaker 2:I want to be respectful of and acknowledge what the client's scared of, but I don't wanna be scared of what they're scared of. Because sometimes I have to remember, I'm I'm looking for the heroic part that's ready to go into the deep dark forest, and sometimes we do go into the deep dark forest. And sometimes it's a round setting. Another way to help the client with a story is also, to go into character. Remember, good good stories have characters.
Speaker 2:Right? So I'm interested in, well, you know, I wonder what your job says about what just happened today. You know, and they look at me blankly, like, what do you mean my job? Oh, what what is your job telling you about what happened today? And they might get a little smile like, and I'm like, no.
Speaker 2:No. Come on. Come on. Come on. You know, if if if Bambi can talk, if if Disney can have talking dancing teapots and singing whatevers, Jobs can talk.
Speaker 2:So what is the job telling about the day? Well, the job's worried because, you know, I might have to leave it behind. Oh, okay. Now, I'm not expecting some big therapeutic insight because I don't I don't work on big therapeutic insights. But what I'm interested in is what does this story look like, and can I open it up to some change and some nuance by shifting the point of views?
Speaker 2:What does what does the story have to tell you? What does the, sorry, the job have to tell you about this? Or what does your anger or your disappointment tell about this? And eventually, maybe what does the boss say? But I don't wanna fall into that trap of, oh, you have to think about what the boss felt.
Speaker 2:No. I'm I'm not going there. I'm really talking about point of view. You know? And so instead of your boss, I might say, so have you ever been a boss?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. I had to supervise somebody. Well, what's a boss's take on this? What if if another boss heard this, what would they say? Okay.
Speaker 2:So, again, checking characters. And I again, I typically do it by seeing if we can shift point of view and get more information from point of view. The next one is generally called enactment or telling the story. I like to I spend time help clients experiment with taking with telling the story differently. Well, we talked about changes in words, so what if we go ahead and tell the story like that?
Speaker 2:You know? I felt disrespected by my boss, so I yelled at him. Oh, no. We changed that. I felt disrespected by my boss, so I powerfully let him know I wouldn't stand for that.
Speaker 2:And I think I might lose my job, but maybe it was worth it. Okay. What I love to do with clients is say imagine, and let's just tell a different story. You don't have to accept it, but you can't know until you tell it. So let's just tell it.
Speaker 2:And they'll tell four or five different stories using different words, maybe some different points of view. And what we're looking for is what story do you want to be the story about this? Remember that we took it, we put it beginnings, middles, and ends, so it's going to be talking about flows. And then we, you know, checked some words, and we got some gateway images so we could get in a little deeper. And then we're gonna check characters.
Speaker 2:And now it's like, yeah, let's play with this. Let's imagine. You know, if we don't the boss is not here. No one you know is here. It's just you and me.
Speaker 2:We can tell this story any way you want. Now there are two important pieces here. Number one is there may be a story that's more truthful than that quick, I yelled at my boss, I probably lost my job. There may be a deeper story that's way more truthful, and I would love to get to that story. Because that's liable to be much more healing.
Speaker 2:It was healing for me when my buddy said they took your job away. Oh, it didn't make me feel as much like a lazy victim. I was like, oh, no. They made a decision, didn't they? It's also important in the act of getting clients to tell diff store different stories or the same story in different ways, to help people realize that we have the power to tell our own story.
Speaker 2:See, the person that comes in and says, I yelled at my boss. I lost my job. That's that's the cultural story. I mean, all those phrases are things that just everybody says about it. But what if they get to say their words about it?
Speaker 2:And how powerful is it, even if it doesn't save their job or change anything, for them to walk out of my office and say, I'm choosing how to tell the story about that. It's my experience. I get to tell my story about it. I get to choose. I have power here.
Speaker 2:That's big. That's that's really big. So the last step in this is what I call the integration phase. And I don't mean, parts integration. I mean integrating the story together.
Speaker 2:You see, if someone has if we played with the images and found ways to get deeper into the story, and then they told it with some of the setting and the physical experiences and the embodied experiences. And then we've explored the characters and they've had a say, and then we've enacted it so they get to tell it in different ways and and choose and have some power. We wanna be able to wrap that up into a story that they can carry with them forward. And one of the biggest ones that I love to do is I'll be telling the story and I'll say, okay, so if this was a movie, what would the title be? If this has changed to, I I'm continually disrespected by my boss, and I let him know about it powerfully, and they may decide I shouldn't work there anymore.
Speaker 2:What is the title of that? Not the I lost my job today title that they walked in with. It's the title that it's like, I stood up for myself. I've made important decisions today. They can't treat me like that.
Speaker 2:I'm open for whatever title. But it's interesting. Titles are important. What? How are we gonna save this?
Speaker 2:The other thing I suggest people do is use what I call the brain camera. Let's take a picture of what happened today and give it a title, and then you can go back to, yeah, that's me on my boss. Oh, but the title is me standing up for myself. This is a picture of me standing up for myself. That's particularly important in people that come from families where they got erased, and their experiences got erased.
Speaker 2:We're rebuilding an experience. Oh, so when I forcefully remind people not to disrespect me and set a boundary, that has the title of standing up for myself. And if I see something like that again, I can I can compare it to that picture in my brain? And, oh, no. That's oh, they tell me I'm being a bitch.
Speaker 2:But really, that goes under the title of standing up for myself. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it.
Speaker 2:So it's really important to have titles, pictures, have a way of storing that in the brain. Emily, you got your hand up. What's up?
Speaker 4:We have a question in the chat. They said, how do you work with alters or others with conflicting stories and being able to help everyone who's listening to heal the experience?
Speaker 2:Great question. Thank you for asking. Here's what I do. And again, I am not, the world class expert here. It's just I'm a guy who likes to do this.
Speaker 2:Number one, alters get to tell their stories. I'm not gonna interfere with that. They're valued in my office. Matter of fact, the more stories we've got, the more open the story is, and it's important to keep it open. See, the problem with DID isn't that there are altars that have stories.
Speaker 2:It's that all of those stories have been crammed into this sanitized version that the host is gonna come tell me. Because so much of DID getting along in the world is is taking all those stories and cramming them into a a, you know, a fully homogenized, pasteurized, safe version. Which isn't very therapeutic. So, no, I wanna hear the others. And you know what?
Speaker 2:Remember, I'm not doing this from a historical mindset or historical story space. So they can have conflicting facts. That's okay. Okay. I'm looking for a central truce in the story that maybe different alters can all recognize.
Speaker 2:Using our, our, story that we've been using about yelling at the boss, I could hear, oh, we should oh, oh, oh my god. We pissed we pissed off the boss. Or the boss is gonna hurt us. Or I've been I've I've I hate that boss. I've always hated that boss.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You gotta hear all sorts of stories. But what remember, I started as a family therapist. So what if we work with those stories, writing them down so different people can read, so we can get around some of the amnesia barriers, or telling them, which can also help, because sometimes telling it out loud can move around an amnesic barrier. And helping come up with maybe the central truth, which might be that the authors begin to say, no one gets to mess with us.
Speaker 2:Okay. That might be a central truth of the story. All the other pieces don't have to all fit. I mean, I'm not trying to glue the base back together. Like, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This will fit fit. It has to fit right here. No. No.
Speaker 2:No. I'm just looking for a central truth that that transcends the splits. We have changed and people don't get to treat us better. Great. We get some agreement on that story, I will absolutely we can gloss over whether it happened at 09:00 in the morning or at lunch.
Speaker 2:I don't care. There's a central truth here. If we can get there, that's healing. Now, can't always get there. You know, that's that's why that's why we all go to therapy so long.
Speaker 2:It's it's hard to get there. There's another fallback position. Let's say I can't get a particularly central truth. Sort of I mean, I'm getting some story thread here. For the system to see this as an adventure, that they went on together, that where there was a heroic aspect.
Speaker 2:See, yeah. I mean, this is the Rings trilogy. I mean, we're all heroes, and we're all going on the adventure together. And we all have different skills, and we all have different weaknesses. And that's okay.
Speaker 2:We're all on the adventure together. And we we all, at one time or another, act as heroes. Meaning, not that we're all never scared, never perfect, that we all but what if, you know, I we all at some point believed that our actions were would make a difference here and that the world was worth making a difference in. In. Even a child alter said, I will be quiet now, instead of crying, so that someone else can be strong with the boss.
Speaker 2:I was a hero too. Okay. Yeah. You were. For real.
Speaker 2:You were a hero too. Sometimes heroes are loud. Sometimes heroes are quiet. We're all heroes together on an adventure. We all do different stuff.
Speaker 2:So hopefully that answers I I don't always answer questions, but I I I talk a lot, which, you know, maybe works. Let me do some concluding ideas, and then I will open up for more questions. What I'm hoping that you're seeing out of all this is that we all have heroes inside of us. That being a hero isn't a singular thing. It's it's something we can all do.
Speaker 2:Each one of us is a person, each part of a system. That being a hero is a mindset, and it's capability. It requires an initiation. You have to go through some tough stuff. You have to go through some scary stuff sometimes.
Speaker 2:And heroes come out the other end, and they don't always decisively win, but they always uphold their values. They always uphold their values. And our story that we were using, yeah, maybe, maybe that person is gonna lose their job. But there's a difference in I lost my job. Oops.
Speaker 2:I'm good. Versus I stood up for myself. I expressed true and important values, and I had to sacrifice my job to do it. Okay. Heroic.
Speaker 2:And adventurous. We you go on adventure, you don't know how it's gonna end. But you know that you're gonna stand up for yourself. You know you're gonna express your values. And that that's gonna be the constant, not the outcome.
Speaker 2:And, let me suggest for the therapists out there, that one of the kind of stories you can learn to tell your clients, and they're very brief, is what's called a blessing. I don't know this from being religious. Can be, but it doesn't have to be. A blessing goes like this. I wish for you and then fill in the blank.
Speaker 2:I wish for you that you will hold on to this experience as a hero holds on to their adventure. Or me, today. I wish that you will hold on to this workshop as something that aids you, and that emboldens you, and that intrigues you, that is my wish for you. See, those are blessings. And learning to give a blessing that makes sense, that fits, that helps.
Speaker 2:Important therapeutic skill. Okay. Now I'm gonna back up a little bit, drink some iced tea, and get questions from you all.
Speaker 4:That was so good. Thank you so much for coming back again.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I appreciate it. And thank you so much, Emma, for remembering me and remembering to bring me back. That that's that touches me. I I appreciate that.
Speaker 4:I'm I am so grateful as, obviously, I have the podcast and have the book. And as part of sharing my story, there's so many opportunities for my hero self defaulter and seeing clearly why that is and what is happening helps me intervene in my own behalf, I think, and reclaim that aspect of what I do want and what I do choose to believe about myself and about the world and all of us in it, and it's such a good reminder of that. And finding our own power in our stories and why they are there rather than only being afraid to look at them or to hear them or to sit with them is such a beautiful way of giving ourselves power back. And I appreciate that about your workshops, and I I I know I'm a fan already of union style and and stories and the wolf's book and all of that, but but to have you come in and share that piece with us and teach us a little bit, I know that it's something that we will keep talking about on the podcast and something that we'll talk about in groups privately as well.
Speaker 4:But, I wanted to thank you. Okay. Questions if you have some. Together has a question. Go ahead.
Speaker 5:I'm not sure if this is just a quite is a question or more of a statement, but I just wanna say that everything that you talked about about the different kinds of stories, closed and open stories, you know, finding the hero, the plots of stories. Huge. Absolutely huge to be able to sit back and evaluate
Speaker 4:each
Speaker 5:of if you will, evaluate what kind of story is being told and why. And why is it coming out this way, and what is involved in it? And to be able where barriers are down or where there's journaling done, to be able to understand each of the others and their perspective rather than it being a battle within, but instead for it to be able to be an understanding within. And that is just has been just huge as I'm as I'm listening to this and took it, pages and pages of notes, because the value of this is just so significant. So I just wanna thank you for that.
Speaker 5:I think I need to read over all of this a a few times to be able to really, if I was able to do that beforehand and then ask questions, it would be much easier. But this is tremendous, the amount of information you've provided and your heart that you've put into it. So thank you so very much.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I really appreciate that. And, you know, I I I so like hearing you say that this this will help you be stronger together. Mhmm. One of the things that I touched on a little bit, but I wanna emphasize is I I don't want to say that a system all has to have the same story in order to be healed or good or functional or whatever word we want to insert.
Speaker 2:A group of people, inside people, outside people, they always all have different stories. That's just that's that's just being people. Yes. So making room for different stories, but also helping as many stories as possible being healing stories. That's that's what makes it powerful.
Speaker 2:But again, that's an an internal community, external community, communities with healing stories that are very accessible to the members of the community. Just powerful communities.
Speaker 5:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 4:Any other questions or comments before we let you go and let Bill go? Okay. Bill, thank you so much. Someone says, this has been an incredible thank you, Bill. There's so much here to think about and process.
Speaker 4:I appreciate you sharing all this. Please also says thank you. Thank you so much. I we also appreciate you coming, and, also, I appreciate all of you for letting us host a guest. I know that takes a lot of courage to trust us, to trust them, and, you were brave to come and listen and learn with us and to think about our stories, which I guess is going to be the focus of the weekend a little bit.
Speaker 4:Someone says, I'm grateful for the ideas of healing stories and of being heroes who have been and will be adventuring together. I can already tell this is going to be a big change for us. Thank you. Someone else said, it is a lot to process, but, yes, your wisdom is greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. Your support really helps us feel less alone while we sort through all of this and learn together. Maybe it will help you in some ways too. You can connect with us on Patreon by going to our website at www.systemspeak.org. If there's anything we've learned, it's that connection brings healing.
Speaker 1:We look forward to connecting with you.