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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: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what
Speaker 2:we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
Speaker 1:for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. I got some emails. Not that I'm reading today because they were about recovery specifically, and it feels too personal for sharing. But I really appreciated what you shared with me and absolutely is why I keep talking about recovery too.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's one more way to find attunement and not feel alone with how hard things have been. And it has been a hard season. The year of grief finally done. And, also, I wouldn't trade for anything, everything I learned last year. But as it says in a little time for myself, which is an Al Anon book, I was exhausted.
Speaker 1:Give up on life exhausted. I don't mean that as a threat. I mean that as in what I was talking about when I talked about the whales, and I know I've talked about that in other episodes. But that feeling of being too weary to get air and too many things pushing me under, under, under, and feeling like I might not survive this, not because I'm trying to harm myself, but because I literally can't breathe, my body can't take anymore, I can't live like this, is what I learned I meant. And the difference between that and where I am now, thanks to recovery in part and also plenty of therapy, where life is hard and life is a lot And also, the only life I'm responsible for is mine.
Speaker 1:In one day at a time, which is classic Al Anon, they call it ODAT for short because Americans. I don't know if you all know that. Other places in the world bring that up to me almost every time I've traveled. Other places don't shorten things or give things nicknames or acronyms as often as we do in America. So I always think of that when I hear something like ODAT instead of one day at a time.
Speaker 1:But it said in my reading, I am obligated by compassion and common humanity to help others. This I know and is congruent with my values and also because religious trauma, which is not the same as faith, that got weaponized against me as if that were my sole purpose in life, which now I understand, even if it's in religious context, it's still part of Cartman's triangle. That drama triangle with rescuer, victim, and perpetrator. It's not healthy for me, not at the expense of myself. Even in the context of faith, I still have to be here.
Speaker 1:I still have the right to exist. I can't express or practice any version of faith, religious or not. If I'm not here, that gets further weaponized by memory time where I was trained to save the world, to save my parents, and that never should have been my job. When other people's memory time invades now time, especially in my ships where it's not my job to be their parent or their therapist or in settings where I'm not acting in those roles. It's not healthy for them or me for that expectation to be put on me where I'm responsible for other people's feelings or saving them from their memory time or the memory time being weaponized.
Speaker 1:That doesn't help any of us. None of us can do that to each other. So in ODOT, it said, I am obligated by compassion and a common humanity to help others, but this does not mean I should do for them what they ought to do for themselves. I have no right to deprive anyone else of the challenge to meet his or her own responsibility. This is true even in romantic relationships.
Speaker 1:I've had romantic relationships where the other person supported and encouraged my growth as I went through graduate school, but then expected me to stop growing and developing after. That's limiting and unfair to me. So it doesn't matter if I love them or they love me. I have to prioritize my own growth. That's part of being me, part of being congruent with my values, part of staying me, growing into me.
Speaker 1:I couldn't just stop. It was right to leave. I have been in romantic relationships where everything was okay as long as I stayed on my blanket, where I had all the freedom I wanted on the blanket, where I was supported and encouraged on the blanket. But when I stepped off, there was nothing. And I wasn't allowed back on either, which was surprising to me, I think, and also good for me.
Speaker 1:Why that was the first boundary of all boundaries, I will never know. But even that was protective because I'm not a girl who should be on a blanket. I like swimming in blankets. That's a Clarissa term, swimming, and concepts like that. Swimming in blankets, swimming in words, swimming in conversation, swimming in deliciousness, content and comfort and growth, swimming under skies and in water.
Speaker 1:Those are my values. So swimming in blankets, under blankets, but not being trapped on them. This says, although mutual dependence is one of the comforts and rewards of marriage or relationships, each partner must do his or her own job, carrying his or her own share of the burden. If the alcoholic, or we would say dysfunctional or traumatized person of the family fails in his duties, my assuming them, the other person's duties, will only weaken his or her will to accept his or her share of the responsibility. This is something we'll keep talking about, how in any of our ships, the attachment and intimacy can outpace the actual relationship development.
Speaker 1:So for example, I've been in romantic relationships where it was expected and demanded of me to act as a fully committed partner before the other person had committed to me. That's not mutuality or reciprocity. I've been in romantic relationships where phases of the relationship were skipped. And I mean, in all Al Anon words, that is my own responsibility. I cannot skip any development either.
Speaker 1:Like, for example, I should probably try getting out of the cult before I start deciding what kind of ships I want to be in. And it's unfair to me or anyone else to have the expectation of daydreams and marriage and partnership if I skipped the stages of dating or being wooed or courted, I don't know what the non culty word for courted is. It's Trixie. This is why lesbian culture has the whole U Haul thing, because so often we're good at emotional depth, but we still have to do the work of relational development, or it's not safe for any of us. We have to be careful.
Speaker 1:Part of dating before you ever get to partnership is building a history together, taking the time to learn yourselves and each other. I don't think I ever knew that until this last year, which makes sense if we think ships can replace our parents or our therapists or if we think we're born to be the savior of the world, and we're supposed to be everyone's parent or therapist, we can't be. That's a boundary. So sometimes it's right to run when our ships are not safe. And sometimes it's right to just say no even if we stay.
Speaker 1:No. In this ship, I am not your parent. No. In this ship, I am not your therapist. No.
Speaker 1:In this setting, I cannot rescue you. The only people I'm responsible for in that way are sessions if I'm working, obviously. But even then, it's not about rescue. My outside kids, maybe in some ways, but they're growing up, and what that means changes developmentally. So there are things I help my youngest with that my oldest doesn't actually need for me.
Speaker 1:And even with my youngest, there are things they needed from me a year ago that they don't need from me anymore. In fact, that's how it works developmentally, even with dependence, healthy dependence, and then healthy independence. So while all ships require the participation and reciprocity of expression and responsiveness, the process and function actually becomes less and less the more intimate we become. I mean emotional intimacy. I don't mean anything about sex.
Speaker 1:This says, how can I best help someone else? By not interfering when they get into difficulties. I must detach myself from her shortcomings, neither making up for them nor criticizing them. Let me learn to play my own role and leave theirs to them. If they fail in it, the failure is not mine, no matter what others may think or say about it.
Speaker 1:There's that detachment pamphlet again. It's a big thing in Al Anon and a huge piece of what I've learned over the last year, not detached from people in cold ways. Nor is it cruel, really. Just healthy. I'm not detaching from people or being more avoidant of people.
Speaker 1:That's not what it is. It's more like detaching from me being responsible for other adults. And any of my healthy ships, we're adults, even if we also have littles. My relationship is an adult relationship. Even if I also care about littles, my own or someone else's, That's different than caring for them.
Speaker 1:The only babies I have to rescue, the only babies I'm responsible for are my own inside and out. The detachment pamphlet, which I know I've talked about before, but here we are again, says, detachment is neither kind nor unkind. It does not imply judgment or condemnation of the person or situation from which we are detaching. Separating ourselves from the adverse effects of another person's alcoholism can be a means of detaching. Detachment can help us look at our situations realistically and objectively.
Speaker 1:And I love that then in the middle of this, it reminds us again that living with someone else's trauma in a reenacting kind of way, where their memory time is invading now time, is too devastating for most people to bear without help. This is really important because if we have good therapy and enough support, then reenactments don't happen. So I can live with a person who has trauma, but I cannot live with someone else's trauma. Does that make sense? It's a subtle distinction.
Speaker 1:The same way with me, I can take my trauma to therapy. I can do my recovery work. I can even talk to, as they say, fellow travelers, other people in the community, other people. We can share with each other reciprocally, supportively in ways that are healthy because we are doing our own individual work. So it's like parallel play for adults, which is very different than trauma bonding.
Speaker 1:I cannot be responsible for anyone else's trauma. I am responsible for my own. So can I love all of my ships and peoples and friends and partners who have trauma? Absolutely, I can. Can I live with a partner or people or people in my life who have trauma?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I can. Can I live with someone else's trauma? No. I cannot. That is life threatening.
Speaker 1:It was already life threatening for them, and this makes it life threatening for me. And that is not okay. That is not healthy for me, and it does not help them. That's the distinction. In Al Anon, we learn nothing we say or do can cause or stop someone else's drinking.
Speaker 1:And remember, we can substitute trauma for drinking. Nothing I can do can rescue someone else's baby. Nothing I can say cause or cures someone else's trauma. That is their memory time. It has already happened.
Speaker 1:Even if it surfaces in now time, that's when it goes to their therapist. It cannot come to me. There's nothing I can do to solve someone else's trauma. I am responsible for my own. It says we are not responsible for another person's disease, meaning the family impact of drinking, of substances, of trauma, of deprivation, any of those things.
Speaker 1:We are not responsible for another person's trauma or their recovery from it. I cannot make someone go to therapy. I cannot make someone go to recovery. I cannot do anything about that for someone else. That is their work to do.
Speaker 1:We talk about this in the community as even check-in groups are about what is happening for me, what I am experiencing, and how I am responding to it. It is presence with each other. It is not problem solving. There is not crosstalk. I cannot offer you suggestions of what will help you because I am not you.
Speaker 1:That is your work to do. I can only share my own experiences and focus on my own self parallel to you sharing your experiences and focusing on yourself. We talk about it in the symposium. Things will surface. We are practicing exposure to care and exposure to undissociating parallel to each other, but you are responsible for what surfaces for you.
Speaker 1:And what surfaces for you goes to your therapy at your therapy time. This says, detachment allows us to let go of our obsession with another person's behavior. This is what that obsession, that's kind of old language, the way they're using it here. I think we think about obsession differently. But what they're describing is that red flag of when memory time has invaded now time.
Speaker 1:When there are big feelings and we're ruminating about something, it means it is a relational flashback. If we're having big feelings about someone else and we're ruminating about someone else, it's not actually about that person. It is about what happened in memory time, and that is what is surfacing. It's it's the part of the iceberg that's under the water, the part we can't see. Remember, if we have flashbacks that are visual, we can see it.
Speaker 1:We get some context. So, like, if the example is a car accident, we might see the car coming at us or whatever the visual flashback is. If it's an auditory flashback, we might hear the tires screeching, and we have the context of what it is we're remembering. But emotional and relational flashbacks do not give us context clues. And so we may think it's about now time, but, really, it is memory time.
Speaker 1:And so that obsessing so much about someone else or how bad they are or whatever big feelings are surfacing with that kind of rumination, when we become obsessed about someone else, whether that is in a parasocial way, whether that is in a ship, whether that is in a resentment or revenge kind of way, whatever acting out is happening, it is acting out something of your own stuff. It is not about the other person. That's the obsession it's talking about. Detachment allows us to let go of our obsession with another's behavior and begin to lead happier and more manageable lives. So in the examples I already used, if I have a romantic relationship with someone and I finish graduate school, then the next step for me in my life I already started before I even met that person is getting my license, starting my practice, is doing those things.
Speaker 1:If my person that I'm with, I can love them all they want. Oh, that hurt. Okay. I'm gonna leave that in because I just think I said something significant. I'm gonna love them all they want.
Speaker 1:Y'all that's compliance. That's not love. I will take that to therapy, and we will circle back to it. I can love them all I want, but it doesn't mean that they want the same things I want. And if they don't, I can't manage them or obsess about it enough to make it work.
Speaker 1:So it doesn't mean I stop loving them, but the next thing in my life after graduate school are the natural things of getting license and starting my practice and working. Right? And so if we cannot be life partners in function and process, I could still love them all I want, but I still am responsible to continue living my own life. That is detachment. I could love someone with my whole heart, and they want to stay in a cult, and I need to leave a cult, then I'm still responsible to leave the cult.
Speaker 1:I can't force them to understand or wait for them to understand. That is detachment. I can love someone with my whole heart and not be able to convince them that I am safe or good or kind if all they are experiencing is how badly they have been treated and so thinking I will treat them the same. The same for me. If I am so scared to participate in relationship that someone else cannot prove themselves to be safe enough for me, then I'm not ready for that relationship.
Speaker 1:I need to go back, slow down, and work on safety, and then see what I'm ready for or what I enjoy or what I prefer. That is detachment. We live our lives with dignity and rights, lives guided by a power greater than ourselves. You know what? I heard the best story last night about someone who was talking about how their higher power was a cat.
Speaker 1:This cat that was always there, this cat that was always watching over them, this cat that was always waiting for them, this cat that, like, slept close to them while this cat that literally kept watch over them while they were sleeping and how that was their higher power. Like, we're we're not even having to some people even say HP instead of higher power because that can be so sensitive about god things, especially if you've had some religious trauma. But I loved this example where the world is a shit show right now. What is happening in our country, what is looming over us, how hard relationships are with other people who have trauma because all of us have so much stuff circling in the air all the time, it can be exhausting. And how do we find a higher power big enough to help us with all of those things?
Speaker 1:But just this reminder that when we're talking about a power greater than ourselves, it doesn't have to be someone else's definition of God. That's not what we're talking about. That is still what we need to detach from. We're talking about what does it mean. And so, like, for my friend, higher power was something small and soft and safe.
Speaker 1:It was just a kitten. Doesn't mean she was worshiping the cat. It doesn't mean the cat was her god. That's not what we mean. In the big red book in chapter five, it says, many of us with strong religious beliefs had been unable to live by such convictions before finding ACA.
Speaker 1:We found religions that allowed us to reenact the shame despair of our childhood. You all, when I read that sentence, I literally went and vomited. Religion can reenact the trauma of our childhood. It says there are many fine religions, but we took what religion had to offer and converted it into a familiar method of self abuse and self condemnation. This sentence is a powerful example of detachment.
Speaker 1:Are there things like cults? Yes. Are there things that are shiny happy? Yes. And also, even then, I do not blame I'm not saying that those things aren't wrong.
Speaker 1:But in this sentence, it's not about blaming this church did it wrong or that church did it wrong or this version of God. That is the obsession. Whether that's it's not about whether that's true or not. It is about that is the obsession, and that is the crazy making. My responsibility is to focus on myself.
Speaker 1:And I was involved in that because I was able to convert it into a familiar method of self abuse and self condemnation. I could use those things, shiny, happy, culty experiences, to reenact my own trauma and deprivation. I am not saying that I was responsible for what other people did that was abusive or harmful or depriving of care. I am saying that with detachment, I let go of the obsession of focusing on what everybody else is doing wrong, and I focus on myself and how I am using those things to maintain the social contract from childhood that I should be abused. So detachment is letting go of that and making changes because that's not true.
Speaker 1:I should not be abused. No one should be abused. I should not be deprived of care. So why am I acting it out against myself even more than being complicit in my own abuse by maintaining those relationships, whether that is any kind of ship or an organization? Why am I acting that out against myself?
Speaker 1:It says, many of us have tried to live religious lives, but we were quick to point out our religious feelings and to condemn ourselves for falling short. So whether it's a healthy faith tradition or not, that's irrelevant. Without recovery and without therapy, it is reenactment for me. And I take that, whatever is being offered, and use it to harm myself, which may or may not be what the actual faith tradition wants or intended or proposed, but that's how I'm using it. That's the obsession.
Speaker 1:That is what I detach from, whether that is an organization, a religion, or a ship, because that hurts me. That is not okay. It says, if we weren't condemning ourselves, we were unsure of what we believed. Nonetheless, we acted like true believers, hoping we could have the faith and peace that others appeared to have. So then we have set ourselves up with the obsession of false expectations of parasocial relationships in everyday life, whether that is idealizing a teacher, idealizing a pastor, idealizing a minister, idealizing the next door neighbor, idealizing a parasocial relationship like me on the podcast or a movie star or a musician, any of that.
Speaker 1:Anytime we idealize someone, the only way to reencounter humanity is to tear them down from that pedestal, and that is cruel, and that is acting out abuse, and that is not about the person. That is about how we were treated when we were little. By the way, that really hard page from the big red book that I just read, if you turn the page so for me, in my copy, it's page 78. If you turn the page onto 78, it clarifies that lots of people in recovery use the word God, g o d, and change that to good orderly direction to help us see the difference between safety and stability and the chaos and deprivation and trauma of reenactment and emotional flashbacks and relational flashbacks. So then going back to detachment, it says, we learn not to suffer because of the actions or reactions of other people.
Speaker 1:That does that's not a toxic positivity thing. It doesn't mean I can't hurt when people are mean to me. Of course, it hurts when people are mean to me. Of course, I feel betrayed when people who I thought were safe and good are cruel. Of course, that stings.
Speaker 1:Of course, it hurts. I'm a human. I have feelings, and I have a right to my feelings. And also, I don't have to obsess about the harm that they are causing me because that tells me what is happening for them. It does not speak truth about myself.
Speaker 1:So I don't have to suffer by obsessing about what is wrong in the world, what is wrong with them, what is wrong about what they're saying, what is wrong about what they're doing. I refocus on myself, come up out of my limbic system back into my frontal cortex. And instead of reacting to that or focusing on that, I focus on myself. I act instead of reacting. And I do not allow myself to be used or abused by others, even out of compassion or interest in hoping that will help them heal.
Speaker 1:There's no amount of sacrificing myself that will actually help someone else heal. And I cannot rescue them from that because that is their therapy work. I am not their parent, and I am not their therapist. I cannot do for others what they can do for themselves. I do not have to carry abuse in my body instead of giving it back to them and letting them carry their own stuff and let them work that out in therapy.
Speaker 1:I don't have to create a crisis, but I also don't have to prevent it. If the crisis is happening, I have a right to care for myself through that and weather that storm. It says by learning to focus on ourselves, our attitudes, and our well-being improve. We allow others in our lives to experience the consequences of their own actions. So here's the kicker.
Speaker 1:At the very beginning of chapter six in the Big Red Book, it says that the central problem we have as survivors is a mistaken belief formed in childhood, which affects every part of our lives and all of our ships. And here's what's wild. In this, which was published ages ago. Right? So it's not a clinical book, but it's trying to explain some common experiences, and it describes PTSD or, like, post traumatic stress as, quote, the tension of unresolved grief following the loss of fundamental security.
Speaker 1:This is why reenactments are so big and so messy and why trauma drama can spread through so much and almost impact so many people because it is preverbal harm that we are grieving, that we so desperately wanna put on anyone to make it tangible enough that we as adults can see it and witness it. Because if I feel it in my body and you feel it in your body, then it makes it true. And also with therapy and recovery, I know it's already true, and I don't have to puke it on somebody else to make it real. It's already real. It can stay in memory time, and I can now as an adult tend to those stories in myself and those parts of myself with the witness of my therapist, with the witness of my recovery group, with the witness of others who are doing that same work for themselves.
Speaker 1:That is containment. That is pacing. That is titrating. That is being responsible for myself and my own safety, even while dealing with so much that is so heavy and so hard and, yeah, very, very real. But I can do that and still be breathing.
Speaker 1:I can do that without drowning. 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.