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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over:
Speaker 2:Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to 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:While we understand the research for not giving specific trigger warnings anymore for the podcast, this particular podcast is heavy enough in content and the dynamics it explores that you need full consent to listening. While this episode is not about specific details of abuse, we do go through the timeline in recognizing some patterns of abuse and that abuse happened. And this is referenced and discussed very directly, not in-depth, but as a timeline in dynamics and in process. And it is named for what it is because that matters. So if you're not in a place to listen to it, wait and come back to this episode another time.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, you're welcome to listen to our experience of recognizing and understanding what's happened to us as a young adult. But please take care of yourself during and after listening to this podcast, And remember that you can take a break and come back to it later or change your mind at any time. Thank you for caring for you. You're back.
Speaker 3:I am back. Today, I'm just along for the ride. I'm so excited.
Speaker 1:I have a story to tell you.
Speaker 3:Please do.
Speaker 1:It's not about how I was irritated with you after our conference.
Speaker 3:That's good.
Speaker 1:Yes. No. I wasn't really irritated. It was just very vulnerable, was it?
Speaker 3:That's my understanding.
Speaker 1:You felt great about it?
Speaker 3:I would say I felt really great about it for the most part.
Speaker 1:Aren't they wonderful, those people?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. It was a lovely crowd. It was so fun to talk with them. But, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. So you know how I got doxxed?
Speaker 3:That was the rumor.
Speaker 1:That was the rumor. And it was true. I mean, that is true. I got doxxed. That's a true story.
Speaker 1:But having left my information up on their web page, guess what's happened? What? A friend from college has found me.
Speaker 3:Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a heavy thing. It is a good thing. This was Maybe the only experience I had, like, as a young adult is having a little best friend to run around with. She and her roommate and I, for whatever reason, were pretty tight. We were good friends.
Speaker 1:But all of this drama was going on in the background, and we were all very traumatized by it.
Speaker 3:Were they traumatized because things were happening to them too, or they were traumatized by the things happening to you?
Speaker 1:Well, I hope I didn't traumatize them.
Speaker 3:No. No. I mean, like, if your best friend was having these awful things happening to them, that would be traumatizing.
Speaker 1:No. They were having other awful things happen to them. It was the school
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:That was traumatizing. But what's different is they both had really good parents who said, woah. This is not healthy. We're pulling you out.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Right? I had no one.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:So there I was. But before I tell my story, I want you to tell your story. What were you doing when you were 17, 18, 19, 20?
Speaker 3:Mine is not the most interesting story. I
Speaker 1:You went to Korea. You lived in Korea for two years. That's very interesting.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.
Speaker 1:You played on the shopping network.
Speaker 3:I did play drums for hula dancers on the Korean home shopping network. But, you know, that's just an ordinary rite of passage. It's one of those things you do.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. Okay. Tell your story. I'll stay out of it. Until you're 35, that's when I enter.
Speaker 3:I graduated from high school. I went to my first semester of college. I, oh, I wrote a a women's quartet that has gone on to be published and still makes us money every year.
Speaker 1:It's all over YouTube. Yeah. High school choirs use it for competitions.
Speaker 3:Yep, it's true. I went on a church mission to South Korea and was there for a couple years. And then I came back and went to college. So
Speaker 1:Hey. When you graduated high school, were your parents excited about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Must be nice.
Speaker 3:They weren't trying to kick me out of the house if that's what you're implying.
Speaker 1:Ugh. Okay. So here's the problem with therapy.
Speaker 3:Okay. It's just one.
Speaker 1:So many things that are a problem with therapy. It makes you remember things. I do not mean it puts bad memories in your head or false memories in your head. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about it makes you put pieces together that you don't want to put together and have spent a lot of energy just putting far, far away out of your head.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's the function of dissociation. Right? It's to protect you from those things.
Speaker 1:Hush child.
Speaker 3:I'm I'm just saying what I've heard.
Speaker 1:So here's part of the problem that I don't know how other people do it. Let me tell you. I don't know how other people do therapy. Maybe stuff just randomly comes up for them. Maybe they just go in.
Speaker 1:They know what they're gonna talk about and they do it. That never happens to me. I always think this is what's gonna happen in therapy, and then it never happens in therapy. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:The other thing is I feel like there's a general pattern, not a specific or an intentional pattern, but a general pattern of working your way backwards. Now that's not gonna be true for everybody. But I think it happens for us because in some ways, not every way, but in some ways, more recent trauma is easier to deal with than the early, early stuff.
Speaker 3:That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:Right? And so it's not that we have a plan to work our way backwards along the timeline. I don't mean that. But it's almost like building muscles. And so the more recent stuff like, we, you and I Mhmm.
Speaker 1:We, meaning you and I, just wanna be clear about this, both have some medical trauma from our daughter. Yes. This is not her fault.
Speaker 3:Nope.
Speaker 1:I don't mean that. I just mean what we went through trying to keep her alive was extremely traumatic, and we both still have PTSD from that. Yes. When those pictures or videos pop up, like we are in full panic attack.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Having to excuse ourselves from the children to like, go calm down. Right? Like, no one, you've had a medical trauma child, like, it's one of those things just know you don't understand unless you've been through it. Right? So working through that, I can talk to you about that.
Speaker 1:That was awful, but I still have these sensations. We're both in therapy. Wonderful that parenting traumatizes you. It's fantastic. No.
Speaker 1:So right. So there's this, going back in time a little bit. I can go a little bit further back in time even to my parents dying because that's also when I got you. So it also it almost balances things out a little bit. So also, you were a witness to that.
Speaker 1:So somehow, I know that we can't have a witness to all of our trauma. I know that. And I know that part of our trauma often, especially in childhood, is that the people around us either don't recognize it or don't acknowledge it or don't stop it. All these layers of complicit
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That becomes part of the problem. So when there are times that someone witnesses your trauma, it's kind of powerful because it helps contain it somehow because you're not carrying it all by yourself. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Even though I know it's not always possible, I get that. I am not seeking this out intentionally.
Speaker 3:Plus you've you've always talked about how subjective your recollections are and how you're not sure what is a fact memory or just what you were understanding, like how you put the pieces together at the time. And so hearing something from an outside perspective can help give you perspective. Right?
Speaker 1:Exactly. Exactly. Oh my goodness. This is why I love you. So you can stay.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I will keep you. Sorry, ladies. I'm just kidding. Okay. So, oh, my brain is just blown.
Speaker 1:Like, ugh. Okay. So I have that experience with you because you met my mother.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Which we were actually just talking about before what happened today happened. Mhmm. So for listeners, it's actually your third podcast in a row. Oh. I know.
Speaker 1:Right? They're gonna be spoiled, and then I'm gonna be back crying and whining and, oh, therapy. Oh, therapy. And they'd be like, please bring the husband back.
Speaker 3:I feel like I should have a punch card. If I get five times, then I get a free sandwich. Like a loyalty card. Like, here I am again on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh, well, we're gonna have to get creative to get you back on two more times. You can't pat my arm. That's the kind of stuff I have to edit out.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Are you, though?
Speaker 3:I was working on healthy consensual nonsexual touch.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. Okay. So, anyway, the going back on the timeline, the other experience I have of this is with the English teacher who was also on the podcast. Right? So she witnessed that whole transition from high school to college to that therapist that moved us in getting sued and losing her license and all of that story.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:She's the one who said, you cannot even talk to your previous therapist anymore. You can't. You have to stop.
Speaker 3:The English teacher said that.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Let me just breathe for a minute. Okay. So those are big moments. Right?
Speaker 1:Like, breakthrough life changing, you get pieces moments.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. So today or sometime in the middle of conference, why can I never just, like, have a normal experience like normal people where you just wake up and do the thing that you think you're doing that day?
Speaker 3:Hint. It's spelled d I d. Schmack.
Speaker 1:Because this was not my fault. This was not my fault or because of DID. Well, technically, was. But so because of the podcast, which is about DID, so you win again. Ugh.
Speaker 3:I'm not trying to win anything.
Speaker 1:You want punch cards. Punch. Punch. I'm gonna punch you. I'm not really.
Speaker 1:Nobody worry. There are no safety concerns. Okay. So in the middle of the conference or something, okay, I get a message. Where do I get a message?
Speaker 1:I get a message on the Emma Sunshine Facebook messenger thing. And it actually took me a long time to figure out where this message was because I could see the alert, but I couldn't find it. And it's because it was for that account, which I used to have for the podcast because I tried to have a Facebook page for the podcast, but it didn't work because all it did was make all the people who know me find that page and then yell at me and say mean things about mental health. So I do not have that Facebook page. I am not I mean, it's there, but I'm never on it.
Speaker 1:I don't check it. I don't message there unless I get those alerts and happen to pay attention. But this was from someone who was not my friend. So not only was it on the wrong account because I don't actually check that. So please, please don't try to frame me.
Speaker 1:Like, I'm not there. I'm I'm not there. Right. But it was also in, like, message requests or something. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So it took me ages to figure out where this was coming from. Anyway, this was from this girl from college. She lived on my floor or the floor below me or something in the dorms. So we were in the same dorm. That's how we became friends.
Speaker 1:We became friends because she knew sign language, and she was in sign language class.
Speaker 3:Cool.
Speaker 1:Okay. So this is how we became friends. And her roommate was also really sweet and very nice. So the three of us became very close friends. We did not see other people.
Speaker 1:Like, we were not the cool girls. So we didn't run around doing the cool things. We just hung out at the dorm all the time. We were not dating boys. We were not like, we were very probably a little developmentally delayed.
Speaker 1:Let's just say it out loud. Okay? So, anyway, they were close to me when we got diagnosed with DID the first time.
Speaker 3:So
Speaker 1:we talked with them about DID and talk like, processed with them, if I could use that word, as we were learning about DID. But they were also with me in that school, which the more I learn about it and the more I realized about it and the more therapy I have, the more I'm like, that was really a lot of religious trauma.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When the English teacher was on the podcast, she called it a cult.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:That was a very strong word. So I don't know. I I I don't know. It's so fuzzy in my head, and it's so hard to pull those pieces out. But I could not believe that she had found me and she had found the podcast.
Speaker 1:So she listened to the podcast and was like, let me tell you. I remember all of these things. She was like, I remember John Mark. This is what we used to do at John Mark. I remember when you tutored me, and that was Chris, who's now Doctor.
Speaker 1:E. And this was, I did this with this one, and I did this with this one, and you worked at Subway. And I was like, what? Like, she remembers all of these pieces from that time that she was a witness to, which is wonderful, except that she was also traumatized, and it was awful. And I'm really sorry that she was
Speaker 3:in traumatized by you.
Speaker 1:No. But I think it was made worse because she was in proximity to me. And so they were really rough with her because of me.
Speaker 3:Oh, so the school sort of acted out against her because she was one of your friends?
Speaker 1:Well, she, like, helped try to report what was happening with the professor's wife.
Speaker 3:But,
Speaker 1:basically, how they responded to her was that nothing is happening except that she was a bad influence on me and so should stay away from me. Like, that she was bad and not safe for me.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And so what I remember about that is that the therapist, which I think we referenced this a little bit on the English teacher episode, but, like, I'm trying to get pieces back in my head and put the pieces together. The therapist that moved us in. Okay. So let me back up. It's so confusing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. It's in the book. This is part like, more pieces to what happened in
Speaker 3:the book. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. So it's so hard to do a timeline because you're holding so many different pieces and there's gaps and you're trying to fill in pieces. But when you try to fill in pieces, then, like, you can't stay present with it. And so it's so hard to put pieces together in order.
Speaker 3:Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. But just the Reader's Digest, not feelings right now because you're not my therapist, but just trying to get that timeline down.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 1:So my mother got that boyfriend and the suicide attempts, and I was going to be raped and killed if I stayed at home. I had to run away from home. Like, I was not safe.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:I had nowhere to go. A family from the church was going to foster me. But they said I was old enough that if I could have a job and stay in school, I could be emancipated. I got a nanny job where I could live and have room and board in exchange for being a nanny to these three rowdy, awful boys that prepared me for my own rowdy, awful boys. Okay.
Speaker 1:So I lived there my senior year of high school. See, I can do this. I can do this. I lived there my senior year of high school. But because I was at that church school, because I had been sent there, which is a whole different story and lots of trauma there, but that is where I met the English teacher.
Speaker 1:Well, she had been a teacher in junior high, but she was best friends with the lady I was living with. So that was our second encounter together. Okay. Okay? So then I lived with her, babysat those or nannied, whatever, those boys the rest of that school year and through the summer.
Speaker 1:And then in the fall, I wanted to go to a different school. I had several scholarships, but you can't like, scholarships aren't enough even if you have a full ride. Like, you have to have clothes. You have to have tennis shoes. You have to have shampoo.
Speaker 1:You have to have blankets. Like, going to college is actually really, really hard when you have nothing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I really didn't have a lot of choices, and I'm trying hard to have compassion for myself with this. Because so much of me thinks if I would have just taken one of those scholarships and left on my own, I wouldn't have gone through any of this. But I don't think I actually had a choice because I couldn't provide for myself. And I was surrounded by all these adults saying this because everyone from that church school or the church that sponsored it, they all went to this little tiny Christian school for college. Okay?
Speaker 1:So when this lady that I was nannying for took me to that school, She told the dean of women this is the story in the
Speaker 3:book. Yes.
Speaker 1:In the enrollment line in front of everybody that I had been molested and that she knew this because I was having nightmares. This dean of woman said that if I wanted to stay in school, I had to be in counseling. And she was the counselor, except she was not licensed.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:This is in the book, this story. So she gets me in counseling, teaches me how to do journaling, has me journaling for her and turning in my papers to her, And I'm doing all of this. And then whatever happened in psychology class that I don't remember but is also referenced in the book, I don't really have all those pieces because it's really hard for me to talk about him and his wife. Yeah. And so it gets very fuzzy very fast.
Speaker 1:But for whatever reason, he diagnosed us with DID and said we need to go to the specialist in Tulsa.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:And that's the therapist that ultimately well, no. Let me back up. Sent me to the therapist in Tulsa, but I was completely on my own. I had no transportation, and so his wife would drive me. So that's how I started going to therapy with the specialist in DID in Tulsa who then said that the professor's wife was molesting my littles on those trips.
Speaker 1:And that the school was a cult. She said that, but it's a little Christian school.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:But she said we were not safe there and that it was not safe. Like a Christian sect cult is what I mean. It's a big scary word, but that's what the English teacher said on the podcast. Right. And this is what that therapist said.
Speaker 1:So I'm just it's hard for me to breathe.
Speaker 3:You're doing great.
Speaker 1:I'm just trying to talk here really fast because I wanna put the pieces in order.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. So she said that the school was dangerous, So she cut off contact from the school, took us home to her house, and moved us in and wouldn't tell our family where we were and wouldn't tell the school where we were. Okay? Other things happened. She ended up our basically, our family found us through a chance encounter that's a whole different story.
Speaker 1:And so she sent us to a monastery in Arkansas. So we were at the monastery in Arkansas. And then knowing that we had been locked up at the therapist's house, like, wouldn't let us leave, we had been locked up at the monastery. So when she came to pick us up to take us back to her house, we knew we were gonna be locked up again. So, basically, we ran away, but we had nowhere to go.
Speaker 1:Right. So we went back to the college. Okay? And then they would not let us have any contact with our friends from before the two girls
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Because they said, well, okay, the two girls were trying to get us connected to our therapist because they knew we needed help, and they were trying to help me. None of this should have been, like, on any of us.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:Like, where were the grown ups in all of this?
Speaker 3:Right? They were the ones causing the problems.
Speaker 1:Right. But because they tried to contact that therapist, they said that those they told those girls they cannot contact with us us anymore, and we were all locked in our dorm rooms.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:And there's a whole much more to that. Like, very handmaid's tale. Like, I just that's what I told her on the when I talked to her. I was like, oh my goodness. So, very, very just, Ultimately, the professor and his wife adopted me as an adult.
Speaker 3:This is the psychology professor Yes. And the wife who is molesting your littles?
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. I can't even think about it. I don't know. This is what the therapist said.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:I it is very hard for me to remember any about that, and I don't want to, like, falsely accuse anyone. But I think it's part of why I'm very protective of that part of my system.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 1:The Oh my goodness. Okay. So in the end, to get away from them, I had to leave the school. Now this is a very tragic part of my history because in my nerd world part of my history, because I was doing a double major, five year study. It was my senior year, two weeks before graduation.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 1:And they asked me to bring in this stack of documentation about all of these things because my case, meaning my treatment case, that I could not discuss it directly because I was more intelligent than them. This is what they told me. And so this is not me saying that. This is what they told me. And so I had to spend the last week of my senior year scrambling to get all this documentation they wanted, and I did.
Speaker 1:I got the entire stack, everything that they wanted. And then, basically, that's I mean, things are still not quite in order. But, basically, that's when they gave that whole stack of documentation to my parents, all my journaling from therapy to my parents, all my essays that I had written, which were very emotional, some of them are in the book, to my parents. And my parents, had not had contact with for six years. My father, had not seen since fifth grade.
Speaker 1:And they gave all this stuff to them. So I basically ran away from there, got another nannying job, nannying for this girl with autism and which also prepared me for my children with autism. So it's not all bad. Like, I'm trying to recognize the good. Right?
Speaker 1:Trying to put pieces together of how did I become capable of what I'm doing. It makes sense. But, anyway, this family already knew that the school was creepy. Those are my words, not their words. I'm not trying to cause problems.
Speaker 1:They they had already heard stories about the school. They already knew there were problems. I don't know what they knew. I just knew they already knew it was a problem. And so they hired a nun, which I know sounds ridiculous, but this nun was an attorney and used that nun to adopt me so that my name could be changed and legally no connection connection to the professor and his wife.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:Right? So then
Speaker 3:So were they do you feel like they were really altruistic in doing that, that they were really trying to protect you?
Speaker 1:At the time, yes. But they did not believe in DID, and we were not functioning well at the time. We were a mess. And so we could take care of the daughter okay, But we were a mess and want and they were Catholics. So if they were and this is not about Catholicism at all.
Speaker 1:I'm just talking about patterns of our experience. They were Catholic. And because of the monastery, that was a trigger. And because of the other therapists, then if they we needed help, they were like, no. If you have a Catholic therapist, you need to go back to her.
Speaker 1:So, like, we got sent back to that therapist and then basically just had to run away. So for a long time, our name was their name even though we had no contact with them. But we were still worried about, like, what if something legal happened and we were attached to them in some way? And so that's why much later, when we found our mother, we asked her to adopt us to get our name changed back to a regular name, which is why we were actually, by the end of our story, not in the book, I mean, in our life, in my life, adopted by my biological mother.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:How bizarre is that? This is what I was going through while you were on your mission.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That makes my head and my heart hurt.
Speaker 1:It's bizarre. And so, anyway, she was like, I know you had to change your name several times because of safety. There were other issues involved too. We had to testify in something. Anyway, there were other issues too, but our name got changed.
Speaker 1:And this is why, like, now even when people docs us and see our legal name, I'm like, it means nothing. Except I was delighted to finally marry you so that my name could mean something. So I appreciate you in that very bizarrely patriarchal way giving me a name that actually set me free.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I appreciate that. But when people are like, oh, what name do you go by? I'm like, you don't even know my name much less any DID names unless you really, really know me because of all these layers. Right?
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 1:But, anyway, she contacts me, this girl who was my friend at the time of all this going on. And she is like, I remember this happening. I remember them talking about us. She said she remembers she remembers being concerned about me on those road trips because I came back, like, disturbed and not just because of therapy. She's like, we knew something was wrong, but we didn't know what was wrong.
Speaker 1:And then she said there were other times that we got called to go to their house, the professor and his wife, and that they would wait in the car for hours outside while we were inside. And that the professor and his wife didn't invite them in, didn't tell them what they were doing. We weren't able to communicate. There weren't cell phones even back then. Right?
Speaker 1:And so, like, they're like, we never knew what happened to you. We were just out waiting in the car in the driveway for hours, lots of times.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:And she remembers, like, the list of our all of our alters and names and ages being passed around to all the faculty.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:She remembers when they tried to do an exorcism to get all my altars out of me, to cast all my demons out
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:Which is I don't have. She remembers them saying that to stay in school, I would have to go before the whole chapel, like, entire school and confess my sins that opened me up to being possessed so that I needed an exorcism as part of my repentance. She remembers I don't know. We talked for a long time. We talked for a long time.
Speaker 1:But then she also she's like, I wanna be on the podcast. Not like in a not in a you know, like, have been creeps who are just like, hey. Let me be on the podcast. Sure. But this was an authentic, like, I want to witness with you and for you our experience.
Speaker 1:And it was hard for both of us. It was very intense because the content is difficult and because we were both struggling. Like, we both have our own therapists. We both have some dissociation. We both are very traumatized by everything that happened there.
Speaker 1:So we really had to pace things, and there were a lot of things that we were able to talk about on our phone call that we could not talk about when we recorded the podcast. But still, even then, the things she was able to say and the things that she was able to witness and help contain and just not even confirm, but just say, I was there. I saw this. Like, there's something so powerful, and we so rarely get it. And this is the second time I've gotten it.
Speaker 1:Well, third time counting you. And so it was very powerful for me. It's very emotional for me. I don't even know why I'm telling you or recording it. I other than I'm afraid that if I don't, I won't be able to take it to therapy.
Speaker 1:It will slip away before I get there. I won't see her until Wednesday.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And all this time, all these years, like, twenty years, we're old now,
Speaker 3:by the way. Yep.
Speaker 1:Twenty years, she in her life, her roommate in her life, and me in my life have carried the shame of we are so bad, even God didn't want us.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:We are so bad, we couldn't even go to college. We're such a failure that even though we did okay academically, we're not acceptable enough for college. We are so socially messed up that not only do our peers not care about us or want to spend time with us or want us to do things with them, Even the teachers are going to harm us, and the administration wants us to go away. This was my developmental experience of young adulthood, was shame and abuse and trauma that echoed what I had been through going up. And so at first, I'm like, why does this always happen to me?
Speaker 1:And at first, I had these big feelings of once again, there I am vulnerable and people are hurting me. I've gotta be the common denominator of this keeps happening to me and keeps happening to me. But then I remember what I've learned about reenactments. And I'm like, of course, this was going on. It's the same church I grew up in.
Speaker 3:Like,
Speaker 1:the same little sect, tiny, rural country, This is the church school where my physics teacher had that game he made up to molest the girls in the class and have the boys help. This is the same school where church school where the youth minister was abusing the girls in youth group. This is the same town where the youth pastor got arrested for embezzling in Texas. Like, this is this is why I was saying about that Tammy Faye movie that you watch
Speaker 3:with your
Speaker 1:parents of, like, you don't understand how that culture shaped my world.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:Even if you have to admit Tammy Faye had some tenacity. Like, it's bizarre. Right?
Speaker 3:I I feel so heartbroken just hearing it. Like, it's shocking.
Speaker 1:I feel crazy telling it, like, crazy, crazy, like, intentionally using the word crazy. Like, I want to be sick. And that's not even the bad stuff. That's just like, this was the structure of
Speaker 3:It's the timeline.
Speaker 1:Authority. This is the timeline, yes, of how it all interplayed and how like, where were we supposed to get help? We literally were talking to admin. We were talking to professors. We were talking to our families.
Speaker 1:We were talking to even me talking to my family once it all they got sucked into it. We were talking to therapists. Like, who was it that was supposed to help us? How were we supposed to help ourselves?
Speaker 3:And you were isolated there?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I remember, well, we talked before. There was a time that my grandparents, my paternal grandparents drove up to try to pick me up from that school. And I was locked in my room, and they wouldn't let me come out. So my grandparents had to drive back in the night because I wasn't there.
Speaker 1:And so they canceled their hotel or whatever. And they hit a deer on the way back, and it totaled their car. It could have killed them. I mean, that's not really the fault of the school or me or whatever, but that's how out of control it is. And one of the things I said to her, and you can listen to it later for the recording, but one of the things I said to her is we were being treated like children, not just abused, but, like, abused as children.
Speaker 1:We were adults.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, young adults, we were children in some ways. But seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, and 21, like, being locked in your room literally.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Truly abusive. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about my family member who now has the book and is upset that I'm talking about any of it, like, they're mad at the therapist because they think everything is that therapist's fault. They're mad at the English teacher because they think that she was in cahoots with the therapist, not understanding that she's the one who tried to turn the therapist in. They think the school is good because it's Christian, but they're the ones who sent me to the therapist. Like, they don't understand at all what I was going through on my end, and no wonder it seemed crazy to them.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They had no part in any of those events that you just described. So for them, what's triggering for them is that, the feeling of shaking their the foundation of their sense of self, of who they think they are, and who their history what their history is. Right?
Speaker 1:It's like it's like that analogy. I mean, I know it was a joke earlier, but it's like that analogy about the handmaid's tale about, like, we got sent to a different master and they fought over us. That's what it feels like.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or a different whatever they're called. I don't know. It's too scary to watch.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry that all happened to you.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. I don't have a normal history timeline to tell you. Like, that's just messed up.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't have any particular kind of timeline I need. But here's here's one thing that is reinforced for me again is that the people who really know you, who really know you, like, and understand you, love you. The people who rail against you are the ones who have picked out one piece or who have projected their own ideas onto you. Those are the ones who are being such monsters. But the people who really see your heart and know all the parts of you, really, they are the ones who love you.
Speaker 1:When I think of those years and everything since, I just feel shame. Like, I can't tell you how much shame I feel because not only was I abused and had DID, but they were telling everybody about it and then, like, using my DID system against me. That's part of why it's so hard for me to talk about it or so hard for me to be out and proud about it or so hard of me to disclose who is doing what or talk about my inside stuff at all because they literally used that against me and made it all public. So everybody knew all of that going on, which gives the same dynamic as childhood, right, where everybody knows that this is going on, but we're complicit in making it happen or letting it keep happening.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:My aunt says that she tried to adopt us, but that she couldn't get my mom to sign the papers.
Speaker 3:This is your maternal aunt? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I don't need to go on that, and I certainly don't need to dig up more. Like, it's bedtime, and all this is in my head. Which is why I needed to talk about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But what is that? Like, religious trauma is a thing. Yeah?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:But does it count if it's a college instead of a church?
Speaker 3:Yes. It was a college, but they were positioning themselves as the mouthpiece of God.
Speaker 1:It almost destroyed her. Like, when I think about it, I feel all the shame. But when I see her, I'm like, I can so clearly see the impact on her on her. And I'm so grateful that she's had family and good support, but she felt so fragile to me. And I was like, oh, I told her.
Speaker 1:I said, this is not your fault. What happened was not your fault.
Speaker 3:My goodness.
Speaker 1:It's hard to offer that same thing to myself. To myself, I just feel like, well, if I would have prayed enough or if I could have gotten enough self control or been disciplined enough or like, why wasn't I just normal enough to just go how hard is it to go to college to just attend your classes, mind your own business, marry a man like you're supposed to? Like, I didn't wanna marry a man. It was hard to focus in classes, and I didn't have any friends at all except for these two girls. And we were not normal.
Speaker 1:Like, looking back, I can see how delayed we were, which is probably why we were so ostracized by everybody else.
Speaker 3:You were never given the chance to have a, quote, unquote, normal young adulthood. That was not your fault. You didn't have any support system that was actually supporting you. The only support systems you had were entirely self serving and destructive in the way that they were interacting with you.
Speaker 1:The impact, like, goes on in weird ways. So I think we've talked about this before. Like, for example, I will never get to be a professor even though I love teaching and have done so much, like substitute teaching for professors or they've had me come in and guest lecture or things like that. I I will never get to because When I lost those five years the last week before graduation, I had to transfer to another school that would accept some of those credits because I lost that, which means it was another kind of the same kind of school. So not accredited the same way or whatever, which meant to get into grad school, I had to go to a similar kind of
Speaker 3:school goodness.
Speaker 1:That was accredited the same way. I couldn't go to a state school, and which means to get my doctorate, I had to go to a similar so even though I could study and learn and make up my own education, which is why, like, I did really hard things in supervision, like go find that psychoanalyst and the Jungian guy and did all these things to make up the difference because I knew my education was lacking, but I couldn't transfer it. And all of that goes back to because I was a foster kid or because I was
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Emancipated or oh, what do they call it? Award of the court. That's what I was. That's what it says on my financial aid paperwork.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:And so all because of that, like, it holds me back. I mean, my life is fine. I don't mean any complaints.
Speaker 3:But,
Speaker 1:I mean, that's just an example.
Speaker 3:It certainly shaped the path your life has taken.
Speaker 1:She was a year behind me, and so she didn't even get to finish school. And she told me that she finally finished college. Like, she was so traumatized by that, that she finally finished college in the 2019 and got her first teaching position for the second semester of twenty twenty, and the pandemic happened.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:And so she's spent her first two years of teaching during the pandemic, and then it's been awful. And she's like, I can't keep going. I have to do something else.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness. That's so sad.
Speaker 1:So even for her in a different way, even though there's, like, still not someone in front of our face pointing their fingers at us, telling us how evil we are, like, it's impacted her literally all at these twenty years. And I don't have family support like she has, but I have you, and she does not have you. And I could just see the difference. I thought, oh, this is the difference between having community or not, having a support person or not because she's not in a good state. I could just see it and I could feel it.
Speaker 1:And I was like, oh, sweetie. I don't mean that as condescending at all. I mean, like, empathetically, I feel you. I've been there. I see in your face what I have felt.
Speaker 1:This is not on you. This is not you. Like, please stay alive. Don't let them win this one. Everybody else has these college stories.
Speaker 1:Like, I went off to college and I dated all these people and I had all these drinking parties or I did all this or all my friends or my sorority or what I'm like, college was hell. I was imprisoned in college. That's what it was like for me. I don't wanna talk about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's I think I think my friend Dee, that's all I'm gonna say for her name, Dee, from the community, asked me once on the podcast, like, wrote in a letter asking about anger. And I was like, I don't know because we're just not there yet unless, you know, the kids have been really a lot and doing something dangerous or something, you know, and then I have to decide how I'm gonna express that. But this is one of those times where I feel like I I really maybe could get in touch with some anger. I think I did with the therapist letters. Like, I tore her letters up.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I burned her stuff. I think I needed to get that out. And I think here is part
Speaker 3:of
Speaker 1:the problem. I think that's ultimately what it came down to in ways I didn't understand because she's part of that whole circle.
Speaker 3:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 1:But I think that's part of why it was so hard for me to get away even from my therapist now. I mean, not my now now therapist. Right. But that therapist. Like, she's not from there.
Speaker 1:She's not in the circle the same way. Like, she used the I think that's why we ended up back with her because she was the bridge between the therapist where who helped her start being a therapist And this evangelical circle that is so tragically sad for because I know I'm not trying to trash talk. Like, I love me some Jesus.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But the but between what happened to me when I was little in church settings or with my parents, I think that's why I was getting so triggered and going in circles for so long because it took me, like, literally until this conversation for me to go, oh, bleepity bleep.
Speaker 3:It's
Speaker 1:the same stuff. Like, I told you that my parents took those classes to learn how to spank their children, how to beat their children, just spoil the rod and spare the child or spare the
Speaker 3:Other way around.
Speaker 1:Spare the rod.
Speaker 3:To spare the rod is to spoil the child. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Those classes that they took that even my mom talked about, that's from the same not for she didn't go to that college, but those classes that my parents took were from that same the same people that govern all of those churches in that college. And it's that governing agency that the English teacher said on the podcast was a cult.
Speaker 3:Oh, interesting. Okay. Wow.
Speaker 1:And so here I am, like, two years later talking to my friend from college going, oh my goodness. When she said cult, like, I think, like, she meant cult.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And when people say religious trauma, they don't just mean being abused by a priest.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:Like, there's so much, especially now that I know about relational trauma too.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:There's so much that was going on relationally. That was not okay.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Oh, I wanna throw a rock through our glass windows.
Speaker 3:Oh, please don't. But I'm glad that you can see that what was happening was not okay, and that it was not you that was not okay. It was things happening to you that were not okay. You were doing the absolute best you could under the circumstances.
Speaker 1:But this is why to this day, I'm like, oh, but it's my fault. Or, oh, I wasn't trying hard enough. Or, oh, I'm not good enough. Or, oh, I've gotta be more truthful and more penitent and more repentant. It's because of this stuff.
Speaker 1:That's the stuff they told me. Yeah. And thinking just, again, trying to be in hindsight, trying to stay in now time, looking back at that context. Like, if I think of our oldest daughter, who I don't think the podcast people even know. I I was talking I we're doing a podcast with my friend, and I was like, actually, I don't think the listeners even know we have an older daughter because we've never talked about it.
Speaker 1:But thinking about her at her age and the hot mess she is when she's trying so hard, I can't imagine this being her environment while she's going through those developmental stages.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because, really, it's a situation in which you do not have free choice. Right? They were they were severely limiting your ability to make your own choices.
Speaker 1:That's what they told my friend. I said, I didn't have a choice. I couldn't consent to any of this. Yeah. Whether to go to therapy or not, whether to stay in school or not, because it meant being homeless.
Speaker 3:It was a series of ultimatums.
Speaker 1:It's all ultimatums.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's a total power a power trip. Right? You will do my will or else you will suffer the worst consequences. You will be cast out.
Speaker 1:And then you're cast out anyway? One the guy the guy who did the keynote for healing together, he did the keynote, and he also spoke later in a session. And his other session was all about this. It was called the f word, but he meant family.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And he talked about how his whole talk was about what it means to be the one to be the one in the family who steps away, who speaks out, and how you're ostracized because of it. And then you realize you had already been ostracized all along anyway. And I was just weeping. Like, I tried hard to be good. I tried hard to be silent.
Speaker 1:I tried hard to say, okay, all of this was my fault. I tried hard to say, okay, it was me who failed the family. I was not strong enough as a second grader to hold my family together. I was not strong enough to say no to people who were hurting me. I was not strong enough to be good enough.
Speaker 1:I was not good enough for my parents or my college or my family. I am not enough. I get it. I will accept that. And I lived with that for twenty years.
Speaker 1:And I'm just done.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Good.
Speaker 1:I'm just done. I I'm putting that down. I'm just I can't carry that around anymore. I can't.
Speaker 3:Good.
Speaker 1:So at risk of whatever those consequences come, I'm doing my best. I'm just tired. I think that's why I've been so weary because this has been culminating with all the safety issues we've had since they got the podcast and the books and just I'm not trying to cause harm. I'm not trying to come after them or bother them in any way. I just wanna live my life with my family.
Speaker 1:I think of that blessing you gave me
Speaker 3:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:And about how heavenly father said that I could have what I want and how I joked about. I mean, that's out of context, but you know what I mean?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I joked about it was like the genie thing. Right? Like, you have to be careful what you want. And if if God is wanting saying you can have what you want, then I need to make sure I'm aligned so that wish can be granted. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Even though God is not about granting wishes. I know that. But I was using the metaphor and thinking about, okay. So what is it that I want? What is my heart truly desire?
Speaker 1:And I think it's just peace. Amen. Even mean, like, world peace, like, in a miss congeniality. I mean, like, I just wanna live with my family in peace. I wanna be able to provide for us enough that we're not hungry and trying to keep the heat on.
Speaker 1:I want my friends that I love in the community or in groups. I want them to be safe and well and feel loved and seen and heard. I want us to have a circle of safety where we can have our voices, where we're not silenced, where we can say what we need to say and feel what we need to feel and know what we know and still be safe. That's all.
Speaker 3:That's good.
Speaker 1:I want to somehow help. Make a difference. Offer something. Use this hell that I have grown up in for good.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because that's the only way it doesn't have power over me anymore is if I myself, with a real god, not the god that someone said they represented.
Speaker 3:The god in their own image.
Speaker 1:Oh, snap. Use this to transform the world back into how it should be, how it was meant to be, where people were designed for people because we're brothers and sisters, because we're the same, because we're humans, because we need each other, because love. Like, how hard is that? It's hard. Turns
Speaker 3:out. It makes me think of a a CS Lewis thing so you can cut this out in your podcast because I know that's not what everybody needs to hear, but, in his book the great divorce, he talks about the idea that, in my own way of saying it, that heaven and hell are retroactive, that ultimately to arrive in heaven is to look back on your life and see that all of the horrible things that happened have led you to that point and how glory works backwards to make even those things holy, and how people who have chosen hell will look back on the indulgences and the the things that they have done in their life, and those things will lose their sweetness to the point that they will feel like they were they were in hell the whole time. It's hard to imagine such awful things as you have endured as ever having the capacity to become like pieces of light of things that helped you to become the amazing person you are. But you are an amazing person. And when I look back on your story, I don't feel any condemnation towards you for any of those things.
Speaker 3:Like, what I am is incredibly impressed that you kept moving forward and you kept trying and you kept finding ways to survive and you kept finding ways to be yourself in all of those awful, awful circumstances. That's amazing. So while you may not be able to look back with appreciation on those things. I see them as being part of what has made you into the person I love and the person who's blessing the world with your talents.
Speaker 1:Running my mouth.
Speaker 3:That too.
Speaker 1:That's my talent because I will not be silent.
Speaker 3:Amen, sister.
Speaker 1:Ugh. Religious trauma is messed up.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It is messed up. Like, it's the greatest perversion. Right?
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Like, no matter what your faith tradition is, whatever is the definition of good and holy and sacred to you, that thing being perverted to be used as a weapon Yeah. Is, like, one of the deepest, most awful violations.
Speaker 3:It's like a spiritual rape.
Speaker 1:Yes. Oh, that hit me so deeply. I can't even
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It hurts me. It hurts me so much.
Speaker 2: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. The link for the community is in the show notes.
Speaker 2: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 for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too, being human together. So, yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.