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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Welcome to the System Speak podcast, a podcast about dissociative identity disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to longtime listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:It is one week after the election when I'm recording this. I spent most of last week grieving and sad. I think I was still in shock. Maybe even still some now, But it wasn't until this week with the new cabinet being named when I actually felt fear. I still felt sad, but also scared.
Speaker 1:One of my friends posted something that said, if you don't know why your gay friends are afraid, You don't have gay friends. You just know a gay person. There are terrible things in history for us to learn from no matter who you vote for or don't vote for. And the reason we put up the extra podcast after the election was because people were hurting. It's really that simple.
Speaker 1:It's not about politics. It's about humans. And people were hurting and scared. In America, we have one side that argues about who has the right to live and another side that argues about how to care for them once they are alive. But we're still talking about life.
Speaker 1:It is hard when we see all of this happening nationwide or globally to focus on our own lives, how to care for ourselves and others. And on the podcast, we have always modeled even through the pandemic. Here is what we are doing to care for us. Here is what it looks like. Not that we are getting it right and not that anyone has to agree with us.
Speaker 1:But even me trying in my own life, even when I get it wrong, means that trying is possible, which means the world is not ending, not today. And our lives are not over, not yet. Sometimes because of things like politics or memory time, It may feel like our lives are over. Sometimes they are actually threatened. That is trauma when that happens.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter where the threat is coming from. It is trauma. And that is what we do here is speak to trauma. That's why we recorded that episode. And having just been at that training the weekend before, the one about cult dynamics, what was important to us in now time and memory time was to not be silent, to not be complicit.
Speaker 1:And it is true that there are times that that puts us in danger. I consider that with every single episode regardless of politics and sometimes especially because of politics. But speaking to you, connecting to you seemed important to do right away. I knew people that were hurting because of the implications of who won, And I knew people who were hurting because of the implications of people around them hurting regardless of who anyone voted for. So I could not say nothing.
Speaker 1:That's why I said something. Anything. And for me, what came were words with my children and sharing them with you and focusing on just breathing, doing one thing at a time while the weight and the implications settled over me so that I could see clearly and move from sadness to fear back up into my frontal cortex, flighting from fear by diving into pragmatics. And that is what the last week has looked like. That's what I focused on, the pragmatics of raising teenagers into adulthood over the next four years.
Speaker 1:And the very most important first thing was passports because my name had finally settled, which meant I needed a new passport. The triplets have turned 16, which means they needed new passports. And the youngest three never got to travel with me for work out of the country because when we started doing that as they got old enough to go with me, when it was safe enough, The pandemic hit, so they never got their turn, which meant I found myself drowning in the paperwork of getting seven passports at once. I talked with Nathan about what we needed to do and what he thought and what he was feeling and the pragmatics of it all. And we want all the children to be safe no matter where they are, and they fly back and forth between us so much.
Speaker 1:What does that look like? So we decided to move forward and go ahead and pay the extra expense of getting both passports and passport cards so that each of us has all the documentation with us that they would need in case of emergency or travel should a surprise vacation arrive. I also currently have a privilege of a job with a company that covers the fee of getting licensed in other states and places. And so I used those resources to turn in paperwork to get my license as a therapist in places I hadn't done before. Having something to do pragmatically helped me respond to my fears intentionally.
Speaker 1:Not that it solves things or that it makes everything magically disappear, but it's what I can do. I know that doing all the things we can doesn't actually prevent some things or stop all the bad things from happening, but it keeps me from being complicit, which matters to my own soul. I know there are times and days where now time does not feel safe enough and that there is lots of evidence of it. But my freedom comes not with laws that can change or governments that shift or swing, but that I am me right now in this place where I stand regardless of what's happening around me. And if there was ever a time to be a system united internally together, it is now.
Speaker 1:Where at any moment, I can close my eyes and escape to any world I need to or say any prayer I want to or sing any song that comes to me. Inside myself, I am never silenced. I think I also have feelings of betrayal and anger, but I don't think I can speak to that yet right now or today. I don't know if it's because the words have not come for that yet or if it's not safe enough yet. But that is part of my song inside myself.
Speaker 1:In the same way, I can watch the leaves blowing down the street as they fall, and that part of their dance is bouncing and crashing against the concrete. The winds are changing. The leaves are falling, and we have had our first snow. The world feels cold. And, also, for the first time, I do not feel alone.
Speaker 1:I am choosing the perspective of this being an adventure. Maybe one I didn't ask for, but one in which I get to feel and say all the things I need to feel and say even if only inside because that is the healthy thing. And I have gone on walks in the winter weather to get grounded, as grounded as one can be under a cold sky, amongst trees that stretch and groan, grieving the leaves they have lost while still giving me air to breathe, enough to cry. Nathan and I had a hard conversation just as part of safety planning about how big our family is and about how limited our resources are and the implications of not having the privilege to just run away, run away from everything, to escape it all. I would love nothing more than to run away.
Speaker 1:I know how to run away. It's the staying that's hard. The un daydreaming that hurts. The undissociating that's uncomfortable. But part of acceptance for me is knowing that in this day and age, the world has come together even while falling apart.
Speaker 1:And that when I run away even to other places, the same problems are there. So I will get passports so that I am not complicit and as pragmatically prepared as I can be. And also, I know that passports are not God, that passports won't save me, not in and of themselves. Do you know what will save me? Learning to listen to others, respecting their feelings, you being kind to me, me being kind to you, and kind can still be strong.
Speaker 1:And I can see the corruptness of politics and still use my voice by voting no matter who wins because no one wins in corruption, and no one wins in trauma, and no one wins in hate. So voting matters because we have the privilege to do so. Because for me, as an AFAB person, an assigned female aberrant, I know women before me fought and gave their lives and suffered suffrage for me to have a vote, for me to have a place in the world, for me to have the freedom to move about in the world. And I don't take that for granted, not any day, even when the winds are colder than I would like. I can still choose to be me.
Speaker 1:My circumstances do not and will not define me. Who I am and what I think and how I experience the world, how I reflect that experience to others, how I express myself, how I perceive all of that, it is always mine to keep no matter how cold the winds are or how long the winter is or how dark the night becomes. I get to keep me. And, also, that's the best thing about having parts, whether you are just now discovering them or whether you've known about them long enough to make friends. There's a lot of nuance and complexity in systems.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of struggle with memory time intersecting now time, and there are moments where it almost feels crazy. But my therapist said today, Remember that your feelings are exactly right. Remember that it can be right to run. And also, on this fall day when I don't know what's coming, but the newspapers, even online newspapers, are already talking about change that's unheard of and happening so fast. That doesn't stop me from seeing yellow in the leaves or red or orange or the last bits of green in the grass or the blue and whites of the sky, the wetness of the rain, the coldness of the snow.
Speaker 1:I'm still here, and I'm still me. And maybe, like my children with autism, Maybe change is hard for me. Maybe it's also true that some changes are hard. But their changes but the changes around me don't change me. I will grow.
Speaker 1:I will learn. I will adapt. There are times to flight and times to fight and times to freeze and times to fawn. I was trained for this since I was a baby. How to stay on my blanket, how to fawn for safety, and how to feel without showing it.
Speaker 1:But the evidence of me learning all of those things and being good at all of those things is that I'm still here, which means something in me has capacity to remember that no matter what changes, I'm still me in here. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how I will feel by the time this airs or if anybody cares. But maybe today, I needed to tell me that it's going to be okay, Not because what happens around me is okay, but because I am okay. That I have learned how to show up for myself by bringing me to now time, my system to now time, to take another breath and another step and to keep going because my experience of this world is not conditional on how other people treat me.
Speaker 1:All over this world, there are terrible things happening every day. There are things very hard in my life every day, but none of those things erase me. Even someday when the podcast is gone, my voice will still carry on the wind. Not because this podcast was the best one or I always knew what to say or that I ever even knew what I was doing, But because I stay true to me, because I chose me, because I said my things, because I got my voice back. And even if that were the end of me, I would not be sorry for it.
Speaker 1:Maybe by the time this airs, life will be amazing and wonderful, and this sort of existential anxiety will have passed. But just in case life is harder, I wanna record this today. This week when I move from shock to sadness to scared and use some of those feelings of fear to find strength and to tell myself and you they can't make us disappear. There has been urgency in it. They're trying to get passport.
Speaker 1:Our town and the next town over and the city we're near suddenly closed their passport agencies for repairs. I'm sure it's coincidence. So we're going for a drive next week far enough to find an open place where we have an appointment to get our passports. Not because passports are magic or even solve anything, but because it's something I can do when there is so much I cannot do. You know what I wish we could do with passports?
Speaker 1:I wish we could gather all of us into one big safe place and avoid the hard altogether. Wait out the hard altogether. Have pajama parties and celebrations and live life together safely. I would give it to us all if we could. And also, we have done that in the community, weddings and funerals, graduations and new homes, letters of references and new jobs.
Speaker 1:We are already doing it. The news talked about a guy who went on hospice this week and posted on his social media for us to be kind and to be brave and to be decent human beings. I don't want to appropriate that, but they were words that resonated with me already and that I appreciated. And I think that's what really will save the world is how we treat each other, how we connect together, and how we care for ourselves. That's what builds safety in the world.
Speaker 1:That's what holds us together no matter what is happening to or around us. And that is what gives us fresh starts in relationships. That is why connection brings healing. And I just wanted to remind my future self and you that we are not alone. And that life has good days and hard days, and sometimes those are extreme.
Speaker 1:But now time is safe enough, Not because of what other people do to me or for me, but because of how I show up for myself. So maybe that's the question. Not just what kind of day are you having or what is happening to you or around you, But looking inward to notice what kind of world are we building and what do you need right now to care for you? What is right for you right now? Do you remember the four questions?
Speaker 1:The ones that help us understand about reenactment and memory time and now time and memory time invading now time. The number three questions, those three words, those were the ones you're waiting to give yourself. How can you give yourself those three things today, right now, in coming days and weeks and months and years. Zoom back out, not just to politics or life or changing seasons today, but just centuries and eons on this planet as people, knowing that we have survived much and still have much to experience and to give and to receive. Find the good in the world, not in a toxic positivity way, but like bookmarks, reminders.
Speaker 1:This is part of my truth. The goodness that is still in me, the colors I see in the world around me, the life and love and living we still have left, even on days it feels like everything is being taken away. We can make lace out of that, not because we wanted to, but because we can honor the truth and facts of our experience while also choosing our responses and congruence to who we already are. No one else gets to change us. No one else gets to invade us.
Speaker 1:Our healing continues regardless. I feel like I'm saying goodbye, and I don't know why. Today, when I'm recording this, I have no plans of the podcast ending anytime soon. And, also, there's something spiritual about the way the leaves are falling today, the way the wind is blowing today, the way the rain turned to snow last night. So maybe I just needed to say the thanks while I could, but I will always think of you when the wind blows, when flowers bloom, when green pokes through the snow.
Speaker 1:We will have hope again, and we are not alone. Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at at www.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.