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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 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 we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I want to start by naming out loud this space between what happened and when I'm speaking now because it's not okay. There has been a delay. And, also, it took me a minute to find my words. My body was sick over the holidays, and then we had the flooding and the doxing and all the grieving, and that turned into pneumonia. And layered on top of that, the overwhelm of watching violence unfold while trying to stay upright and present in parenting.
Speaker 1:These are reasons, not excuses. Sometimes words come quickly, usually when I'm feeling safest. All of this felt like danger, and then it's much harder for me to find my words. So it took a while, and I'm sorry. But today, words came, and I can breathe well enough to share them.
Speaker 1:It was during the pandemic, under the same administration, that George Floyd was murdered in the same city. That city remembers. Trauma rarely comes as a single moment. It builds and layers and presses into what is already there. And George Floyd wasn't the first one either.
Speaker 1:And there are so many brown and black skinned bodies and people and names that are not being remembered or spoken the way Renee Good and Alex Pretti have got our attention. And, also, it should have our attention. For many people, these deaths sparked an immediate physical response, shock, anger, fear, a tightening in our chest, a sense that the ground is shifting. For black, brown, indigenous, immigrant, and mixed heritage communities, this did not feel new. It echoes something we already know, something the body has already learned generations ago, long before this week's headlines.
Speaker 1:From a trauma perspective, that difference matters. Trauma lives in how danger is registered and whether it can be held with support or whether it is in deprivation being carried alone. When harm is carried out by systems that claim authority, protection, or legitimacy, the injury cuts deeper. Assumptions about safety and fairness are disrupted. The nervous system learns that danger can come from places meant to protect.
Speaker 1:This is betrayal trauma. It unfolds relationally even when it happens at the level of policy or enforcement. What we are witnessing and what I am speaking to isn't just political. It's relational. The same dynamics appear in abusive relationships too where power is uneven, movement is controlled, people are surveillanced without consent, threats are framed as protection, narratives are shaped to minimize or justify harm.
Speaker 1:Documents and video footage are stolen and then weaponized. In the case of these deaths, the scale is larger, but the nervous system recognizes the pattern. This is where the work of our friend and colleague, Laura Brown, feels especially relevant. She writes about power based trauma and the way harm is shaped by who gets to define reality and whose suffering is acknowledged. When violence comes from those authorized to use force, fear and grief are joined by something else.
Speaker 1:This is a tearing in our moral fabric and feels like the world no longer makes sense in the same way. That is why these events feel heavier than ordinary grief, complicated grief even. This is also where the language of moral injury becomes useful. Moral injury names what happens when people are forced to live inside actions that violate deeply held values, especially when those actions are carried out by institutions that later deny responsibility. This kind of injury lives in meaning, conscience, and trust.
Speaker 1:Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay described moral injury through the experiences of veterans whose ethical frameworks were broken under command structures that refused accountability. What we are seeing now carries that same texture played out across civilian life. People are asking how could this happen. The world is watching it happen. All of us wondering who allowed it and what it means to belong to a society where lethal force without cause is explained away.
Speaker 1:Moral injury often brings rage, despair, disillusionment, withdrawal, and, yes, even exhaustion. These responses point to something intact rather than something being broken. They tell us that values are still alive even while being violated. For many of us, that puts us in a functional freeze kind of experience where we feel like we could collapse from all of the trauma we are witnessing and experiencing, where both sides of politics say, that's not what I voted for. And while we're all witnessing this and experiencing this, we're also trying to hold our jobs, trying to help others, trying to parent, hungry for normal days in normal lives, and feeling guilty about it.
Speaker 1:And I was shocked to hear the false information being delivered calmly simply as if it were true. And also not shocked because it's happened to me personally, because I heard that this was happening on the news and grieving because of how it adds to the dividedness of our humanity and our country. My body reacted before my thoughts did. I felt nauseated, not only because the information was wrong, but because I knew people were receiving it as reality. People trying to make sense of the world with distorted maps, all of us suffering, all of us being played.
Speaker 1:What followed then was sadness, not even contempt, just sadness. Sadness for how these narratives deepen our separation from one another. Sadness for how much harder it becomes to grieve together or to protect each other when shared reality fractures. This too is a kind of harm, narrative violence that divides us slowly, persistently, and deeply. Alongside all of this, there's that other piece that needs to be said.
Speaker 1:I know I referenced it, but we need to talk about it explicitly. The widespread grief and attention given to Renee Good and Alex Pretti exists alongside a long history of BIPOC people lost in detention, separated from families without public mourning or recognition, and killed by authorities. Their deaths did not pause the nation. Their names did not circulate the same way. Their families grieved without witnesses.
Speaker 1:That is deprivation. It is an absence that leaves its own wound. When loss goes unnamed, trauma deepens. When pain is unseen, it becomes harder to metabolize. This is one way systems communicate whose lives are considered expendable.
Speaker 1:Trauma happens not only through violence but also through erasure. This is where the work of Jennifer Gomez helps us find words. Institutional betrayal describes the harm that occurs when systems that people rely on for safety or care cause injury or respond in ways that deepen it. What matters is not just the original harm, but the narrative that is rewritten after it, the silences that fall. Who is believed?
Speaker 1:Who is remembered? Whose suffering is framed as tragic, and whose is treated as inevitable? For communities targeted by immigration enforcement and surveillance over generations, this pattern becomes chronic. The nervous system learns to expect harm and to expect grief will not be publicly held. Vigilance, shutdown, despair, and anger emerge in response.
Speaker 1:This is why uneven mourning matters. It mirrors a familiar dynamic from abusive relationships where one person's pain is centered and another's is dismissed. And this isn't just impacting us adults. It's impacting our kids too. I want to share something in full, actually, from my kid's school because it shows what trauma responsive care can look like when institutions choose clarity.
Speaker 1:This email was sent to all of the people in our school district, and it was sent out in five languages: English, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, and in video and sign language. It says, dear families, in our school district, we strive to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for each and every student in our community. We acknowledge that physical and emotional safety and wellness are critical to the learning process. Recent events in have been widely shared online, including graphic footage of people being shot and killed. Many of our students may have seen these videos or clips, whether intentionally or accidentally.
Speaker 1:Many of us are directly impacted by the violence and presence of ICE in our community. In the past, witnessing something this violent would have been a major upsetting experience for a young person. Today, because violent images are so common online, it can seem normal, but it is not normal. Seeing someone killed is a serious and traumatic event, and it is natural for all of us, not just our students, to feel scared, confused, or overwhelmed by it. Repeatedly watching violent content can affect the brain, raise stress hormones like cortisol, and negatively interfere with sleep and overall emotional health.
Speaker 1:Please check-in on what your child is seeing online. Many young people encounter violent content without adult guidance or processing. They may watch clips, scroll through feeds, or hear about events from friends, often with no one talking with them about what it really means or how to handle it. This can leave them feeling irritable, anxious, confused, sad, fearful, or numb. All of these reactions are normal.
Speaker 1:You can support your child by asking them directly what they have seen online, taking time to talk with your child about what they are seeing, what they think about it, and how it makes them feel, Talking about how what they saw is not normal or okay, and that it is okay to feel upset or scared. Encouraging breaks from social media or muting accounts that show graphic content, offering ways to process feelings through conversation, journaling, art, or speaking with a counselor. Please pay attention to your child's reactions. Some children may appear withdrawn, irritable, or unusually anxious after seeing violent content. Others may act as if nothing happened.
Speaker 1:Both reactions are normal, though persistent distress is a sign to seek support. You don't have to navigate this alone. Our administrators, counselors, social workers, and staff are available to support students and families. Sincerely, the district leadership team. This letter names violence as traumatic.
Speaker 1:It normalizes a wide range of responses. It invites connection. And also, just today, my kids' schools began running ice raid drills. My children described them as like school shooter drills except white kids in front. New recess rules followed.
Speaker 1:Only one third of the children outside can be brown skinned heritage, which is what the kids called them. That's a quote. Or immigrants at a time. So schedules rotate to reduce risk, and the other kids circle around them on the outside. The schools have also added military fences with gates that have alarms.
Speaker 1:We live near the schools and so have watched the gates and fences going up. And all of this is landing hard, not because schools are trying to keep kids safe, but because what it means when children have to organize their play and their bodies around anticipated state violence. I've already shared in a previous episode that parents are stepping in and stepping up too. We have formed parenting patrols. We've completed background checks, including mine.
Speaker 1:Like all of the states I'm licensed in, I have background checks with fingerprints. We walk the kids to school, drive the kids to school, watch the routes home. We are coordinating care so that brown skin and immigrant children can get to and from school safely because otherwise, they're too scared to even leave their homes. This is community care under pressure. This is adaption in real time.
Speaker 1:This is what humans do when systems fall short. Using my recovery language, there's so much I can't do anything about, but I can share presence with another mom. I can walk students home or drive students home. I can make sure kids aren't alone at the bus stop on the corner. There's so much I can't change, but I can do the things I can.
Speaker 1:Living alongside this kind of harm requires something more gentle and more flexible than constant vigilance or perfect clarity. Trauma does not resolve through endurance. It moves through access, rhythm, and choice. One place is to begin allowing internal responses. You do not need a single emotional stance.
Speaker 1:It's okay to move between grief and shutdown, productivity and distraction, reflection and creation. That movement is regulation and keeps us from getting stuck. In advanced topics groups, we have seen conversation and sharing get so heavy, and then all the silly goofy come back, and then back to heavy again, and then silly goofy, and back to heavy again. Healing lives in this flow, flowing like the rivers, not staying open all the time. We don't have to drown in it.
Speaker 1:It also helps us to orient to what is present and the resourcing we have. When our nervous systems are activated by violence, anchoring in what is concretely here and happening right now can steady the body. Our feet on the floor, our breath moving in and out, a familiar task, a trusted voice, these moments teach our nervous system that awareness does not require collapse. Processing does not have to be articulate or polished. I didn't wait until all of the perfect words came.
Speaker 1:I just waited until I could breathe enough to speak. It may mean talking with someone who shares your values. It may mean listening rather than speaking. It may look like community, art, movement, collective silence. Presence does real work even without words.
Speaker 1:I said as much when I first wanted to say something but did not have words yet. That's what I said. I posted, I really wanna respond, and I really wanna say something, but I don't have words. And now that the words are here, I'm trying to say them. Honoring our limits without shame matters too.
Speaker 1:You're allowed to turn off the news. You're allowed to disengage for hours or days. Caring does not require constant exposure. That's compliance, not relationship. Remember?
Speaker 1:Taking in only what we can hold a little bit at a time is a core healing principle. Recovery says it one day at a time or little by little, gently. Overexposure can harden, numb, or further fragment us. It's okay to titrate things. It's okay to go slowly and gently.
Speaker 1:There's also the question of resistance. Resistance does not have to be big. Sometimes it's donating or writing, organizing, voting, checking on your neighbors, supporting impacted communities. Sometimes it's tending to our children, our clients, our own bodies, our own rest. Survival lived with integrity in our own care, congruent with our own values.
Speaker 1:That's not passive. That is active. That is resistance. Across all of this, we can use the work of Laura Brown and Jennifer Gomez to remind us that healing in the presence of power based and institutional harm requires community validation. Being believed matters.
Speaker 1:Being named matters. Being remembered matters. These are regulatory experiences. They help restore coherence when systems fracture it. There is something older and sturdier than any border or enforcement agency.
Speaker 1:Human beings have always regulated through relationship with the earth. Long before documents and surveillance, people oriented to seasons and soil, water and wind, trees and sky. Indigenous wisdom has always held this truth. The earth is not owned. It is related to.
Speaker 1:Violent systems compress time into urgency. Indigenous ways of knowing hold deep time, time that stretches beyond administrations and policies, time that remembers continuity. The ground beneath your feet is still there. Your breath is still happening. Your nervous system can attune to soil and rain, sun and wind.
Speaker 1:We grieve the many BIPOC lives taken or harmed without public witness. We grieve children practicing drills for violence they never should have to anticipate. We grieve this fracture of our shared reality, this trauma and deprivation of our own humanity. None of us was meant to carry all of this alone. Connection brings healing, Healing brings witness, and witness brings justice.
Speaker 1:We keep going by staying with each other, by telling the truth in human feelings, by remembering the earth beneath us, the earth that holds all of us. This is how we remain human. This is how we stay connected, and this is how we survive together. Connection brings healing, and healing brings hope.
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.