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Our guest is Joyanna Silberg, Past President of ISSTD, and expert on dissociation in children and adolescents. She shares with us about her work with children and trauma. She talks about the capacity of dissociation as a gift to yourself! She speaks to the impact of screen time on families, and she also shares about her work with trafficking victims. Trigger warning for short and simple examples of abuse and trafficking in passing (not in depth).
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 2:Joanna Silberg is the senior consultant for child and adolescent trauma at Shepherd Pratt Health System in Baltimore, Maryland, and the executive vice president of the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence. Her psychotherapy practice specializes in children and adolescents suffering from dissociative symptoms and disorders, and her forensic practice specializes in child sexual abuse. She has served as an expert witness in 27 states. She is past president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, ISSTD, and contributing editor to the society's journal, the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation. She is a recipient of the 1992 Walter Kopfler Award for her research, the 1997 Cornelia Wilbur Award for clinical excellence, and the 2011 William Friedrich Award for work on child sexual abuse.
Speaker 2:The family
Speaker 1:of of the
Speaker 2:family protecting abused children in family court. She has been a consultant for DVL EAP's custody and abuse project with Office on Violence Against Women, and her project involves an analysis of cases in which judicial decisions that imperil children are reversed by later judicial decisions. She is also consultant for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network grant through Northwestern University's Feinberg Medical Center's Child Trauma Assessment and Service Planning Center. Her new book, The Healing Developmental Trauma and Dissociation, was released by Rutledge Press on February, and she's currently working on the second edition to be released next year. Doctor Silberg is the 02/2013 recipient of Champion for Children Award from the Domestic Violence and Legal Empowerment Appeals Project and the 2013 recipient of the written media award for her book, The Child Survivor, awarded by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.
Speaker 2:Welcome, Doctor. Silberg.
Speaker 3:My name is, doctor JoAnna Silberg. I'm a clinical child psychologist, and I specialize in child sexual abuse and in the treatment of severe trauma disorders, specifically dissociation in children. And, I'm involved in some research studies looking at children that have been abused in the family court, looking at children who've been abused in multi perpetrator rings with, Internet sex trafficking. And I am, currently trying to write up some of my findings. I'm involved in some think tanks looking at sexual abuse on a six systemic level in, The United States.
Speaker 3:And I'm the executive director of a nonprofit organization called the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence. And we try to bust through media myths that interfere with the public understanding the true nature and prevalence of child sexual abuse.
Speaker 1:That is amazing. And your work is so, so important. Thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me and giving me an opportunity to talk about things that people don't like to hear a lot of times.
Speaker 1:It's a difficult topic and it's important because it takes all of us together paying attention and learning to make a change and to make things better, I think. Tell us how you got into the field. Can you go back just a little bit and tell us a little bit of your story?
Speaker 3:I've always I wanted to go into child psychology because I thought of children as sort of an underdog that people don't pay attention to. And when I got further into child psychology, I realized how right I was, that children often don't have a voice, that children aren't respected, aren't listened to, don't seem to have the basic rights that other people have. So I felt like, well, someone needs to be their champion. And then I got interested in child abuse when I started learning about dissociation as a field, and I realized that the worst abuse really happens when children are very little. But the great news is that when they're very little, their brains are still malleable.
Speaker 3:So you can actually reverse it then where it's harder to reverse the damage later. So I thought, wow. Wow. Wow. This is a great opportunity.
Speaker 3:I should work with child abuse victims when they're little so I can help prevent lifetime of illnesses and problems. So I thought, well, was a good way to use my time.
Speaker 1:So you're saying that those of us who are survivors as adults, if we have intervention sooner and prevention even, then identifying some of these issues and developmental or attachment or whatever angle you take on it, addressing the trauma sooner prevents some of the complications of things later.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Because the sooner that the child can understand that they did not deserve what happened to them, that this was not the way the world is, the sooner they can develop trust in the world. And so we wanna be able to address these things as quickly as we can, also because the brain of a child is able to make connections quicker and easier than the brains of adults. And children are still in semi protected environments where other people can help make decisions that don't put them more at risk once they've already been at risk once.
Speaker 3:So yes, we wanna try to get to these kids early so that we can really promote a future that stops a cycle of abuse from one generation to the next.
Speaker 1:That's so powerful. And I don't know if people even heard how many powerful things you just said. That was like a whole list. That was amazing because there's so many significant pieces. I want to break it down just a little bit.
Speaker 1:How do you explain dissociation to parents or caseworkers or foster parents or whoever you're working with?
Speaker 3:Well, dissociation is a capacity that the brain has to disconnect, and this disconnection allows a child to protect themselves from awareness. So let's say you have a daddy who comes home at night drunk and beats you, but during the day, he will, make you really good things to eat and bring you cookies. Well, you don't wanna remember what happens at night because you wanna be able to survive and you know what, side your bread is buttered on. You basically try to let your mind just remember what's good during the good times and what's bad during the bad times. And that if practiced over and over again with motivation as you see a young child would have, can easily result in the child actually having amnesia for some of the events of abuse disconnection in the brain.
Speaker 3:Some children may show dissociation by trying to go away in their minds by living in a fantasy world or pretending that they're other people or pretending that other people in their brain take over their lives, like cartoon characters or other kinds of people, that are fantasy creations that allow them to escape, and that's another way dissociation can manifest. But all of these are disconnections from reality which allow a child to survive. But the trouble is if you're in a good environment where love is abundant and where you're learning things that help you, You don't wanna have dissociation. You don't wanna forget. You wanna be able to make connections.
Speaker 3:You want your brain to work correctly. So sometimes when children have been rescued from an environment of dissociation that that promotes dissociation, it's very hard for them to learn these skills that they can actually let themselves connect and remember and be part of the world. And that's what I do.
Speaker 1:That's so empowering because you just gave a framework to dissociation as a capacity, not something that they're doing wrong or that's a naughty behavior or something they should be ashamed of. You just said capacity.
Speaker 3:Correct. Capacity. This is the brain's gift to yourself. This is your body's gift to itself. This is our brain's enduring, survival methodology for when you're stuck in environments which cause trauma.
Speaker 3:Even post traumatic stress disorder is a capacity, believe it or not. Because when you when your body let's say you've been to Vietnam or some other of the recent war, more recent wars that we've had, and you hear the backfire of a car and you jump. Well, sure, that wasn't really a bomb or a gun going off, but your mind is saying, you better watch out. There are guns and there are bombs, and that could have been one. So you better watch the heck what you're doing.
Speaker 3:So it's your brain giving you a warning system, and that is the way our brains evolved so that we would remember trauma so that we could avoid it. But we need help when the trauma is no longer there so that every single thing is not becoming another, trigger or a cue to becoming scared or upset.
Speaker 1:This is fantastic because it's so empowering. I feel like you just completely swiped out the shame of the diagnosis itself or of the whole struggle.
Speaker 3:Yes, I do have a very empowering framework when I talk to kids. I say, why do you think I'm an expert on this? And they say, oh, because you're very smart. I say, no. Not at all.
Speaker 3:Because I listen to kids like you, and you teach me everything I know. So I just need you to teach me some more stuff because that's gonna help me help you better and help other kids. I tell the kids they're the real experts. I'm just learning from them.
Speaker 1:What do other clinicians need to know about working with trauma and dissociation in children or adolescents? And for that matter, is there a difference between children and adolescents when you're working with dissociation?
Speaker 3:Well, is because, teenagers, as you might imagine, become much more secretive and also they much more want to, hold on to their dissociation because they're developing an identity and they want to really protect themselves better from attaching to someone who they don't necessarily know if they can trust. But what I wanna tell clinicians is do not be afraid of treating children and adolescents. Do not shy away. It is so rewarding. And unlike adults, children and adolescents change more readily.
Speaker 3:I really do like children and adolescents way better than adults, and I would like to encourage clinicians to try their hand at it because they will see that the work is very rewarding. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's a piece of cake, but I am saying that the reward you get from watching that little light reignite in the eyes of a child, finding that spark again after they've been hurt is just so rewarding that I think clinicians should be embracing work with children and adolescents more.
Speaker 1:Well, now we just feel so confident in everything because you're empowering all of us.
Speaker 3:Well, you said so I'm working right now. I'm taking a little break, actually, from working on the second edition of my book, The Child Survivor, which should be coming out in 2021. I hope to give it to my publisher in another week or two. And my whole focus in my book is to really help clinicians see that this is work that can be done. They don't have to be afraid to do it.
Speaker 3:It can be methodically outlined how to approach these things even if they seem weird or strange or hard. There's a sense. There's always a sense to what the child is doing. And if you get the logic behind it, you will be able to follow through. And so I encourage people, if they're interested, they can pick up the Child Survivor first edition, or if they're willing to wait, get the second edition, which is coming hopefully within the next six months, I hope.
Speaker 1:Can you give an example, I mean appropriately, obviously, but some sort of example of what you just said about following the logic of the child to understand what's going on with the dissociation?
Speaker 3:Sure. I let's say, I have a little boy, and let's say he's eight years old. Let's say he's very ashamed because he's a new foster child, and his his foster mother has found that he's been stealing money from her pocketbook. And he comes in with his head down, and he knows he's been caught, and he thinks I'm gonna yell at him like all the other adults in his environment. And that's not what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna say, oh, wow. You're you were you were able to steal money from your foster mother. I kinda know why you did that. I kinda can get why you might do that. And he's like, sure.
Speaker 3:Why? You know, as if I could really know. And I said, well, so much has never been handed to you. So much you deserved when you were little and you went from home to home. Some places you didn't even get enough to eat.
Speaker 3:You learned that, basically, unless you take matters into your own hands, you might not actually be able to survive. So that little feeling you get when you successfully get that money out of your out of your foster mom's pocketbook, that feels really good. That feels like a charge. That feels like an electric charge going through your body saying, wow. I just did that.
Speaker 3:I just took care of me. I just took care of myself. And, of course, that's gonna be hard to not do. Why wouldn't that be hard to not do? What you've learned your whole life is that without your own self helping yourself survive, no one else is gonna be there.
Speaker 3:So I get it. I totally get it. So that's the difference between shaming a child into, trying to do more appropriate behavior and understanding that there's a reason behind the child's behavior that can be understood, then I can address it. Once I acknowledge with the child why he does it and why it might feel good, we can address whether he wants to change it first, why it might be desirable to change it, and then how to change it. But we can't do it through morality or ethics or lecturing.
Speaker 3:We can only do it through knowing where the child is coming from. Does does that make sense?
Speaker 1:I have six children adopted from foster care, and the stealing is absolutely a real scenario of them just trying to empower themselves and I feel like we try we're obviously not perfect and we're so very human but we try really really hard not to shame but also just privately as the parent sometimes it's just baffling of you have enough food we have all of this here and trying to
Speaker 3:Because you've done everything you know
Speaker 1:Yeah the hard part for me now that they have they've lived with us for two years in foster care and then they've been adopted for five so now it's been seven years and still every single day is all about attachment I'm still here, I'm not going anywhere. Still going to get food. You still have the power to make your own choices.
Speaker 3:Every interaction is a test. Every interaction is a test. You know? I had a a a mom and a and a little girl that I was working with that was adopted when she was six, and, it seemed like they constantly were fighting, and it always came down to, well, now you definitely are gonna abandon me. So I had them each write on card what they most want the other person to know.
Speaker 3:So, they both really wrote the same thing, shockingly. They both wrote on a little card, I want you to always know you are God's gift to me. And I told them to keep that little card, like, on their person, in their pocket, in their pocketbook somewhere so that when they are in the middle of an argument, they can just pull it out and read it, and they can know that there's some way to bust through that automatic going to the lowest level of abandonment fears and fighting with each other. And you know what? They didn't really need to pull it out.
Speaker 3:They just doing that exercise was enough to keep that in their mind. So that is exactly right. Your your kids are testing you every day because they're not yet sure if abandonment is going with this attachment or whether attachment attachment is forever. They don't know. I'm sure you're doing your best to teach them that it is forever.
Speaker 3:I trust that you really are doing that.
Speaker 1:We are trying. And what you said was fascinating, putting words to that process of seeing the logic behind what they're doing, because often anytime that there is some kind of something whether it they've gotten in trouble for something except it's not really trouble they just think they're going to be in trouble like they've done something and all we want to do is just explore it and be curious about it and how can we help and what were you needing and are there other ways you could have met that need or you know all that kind of processing they're still at the point of trying to suck us into the dynamics where they came from And so anytime there's conflict or drama, it's like a window into what they endured before they came to us, even though they were so little then, because they try to pull out these pieces of us and we're like, that is not me and that is not my response and I'm not gonna go there with you. I'm just gonna sit down on the floor and I'm going to listen and I'm going to wait and I'm gonna regulate while you see that, you know, I'm trying to be present with them, but you see and you feel, you feel.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it happens with my patients too. You can feel what it was they went through, through the transference that they're puking out onto you.
Speaker 3:Exactly right. And what is important that you always have to remember is that when you're a child, just being a child is a trigger. Because when you're a child, you're fundamentally powerless because adults are in charge of you. So it really doesn't take very much of an interaction of any kind to be a trigger for a child of that feeling of powerlessness. And once they get into that feeling of powerlessness, well, then it's almost like you their past is like a hall of mirrors.
Speaker 3:It's like one feeling of power in the powerlessness that reverberates and echoes like an echo chamber all the way back to the first time they felt it years and years and years ago. And every one of the experiences of powerlessness echoes, activates, and increases the volume of that feeling. And you think all you did was say, no. Well, you know, have chocolate after you eat your dinner, which is what every parent is probably gonna say. And yet even a mild comment like that, given a certain state in a child, could be enough for that powerlessness to get kicked in and for it to become a full blown trauma reaction.
Speaker 3:Hopefully by now, that doesn't happen in every interaction with them, but that is what newly, newly new foster parents, new adoptive parents often experience.
Speaker 1:What do new foster adoptive parents or parents who are themselves survivors need to know about parenting children with trauma?
Speaker 3:Well, it is extraordinarily complex. They're heroes for trying. They're heroes for sticking with it. No day is a perfect day. And what I like to help my clients and children do is to microanalyze interactions that look like they were so simple, but when you microanalyze them, they weren't so simple at all.
Speaker 3:Let let let me give you an example. Mom says, would you mind unloading the dishwasher? You know, when you get home from school and the kid comes home and they look at the dishwasher and they didn't get a chance to unload it then, and the mother is looking at the kid and sees that the kid didn't do it yet. And then suddenly, the kid just starts throwing the dishes out of the dishwasher. Nothing happened.
Speaker 3:What was that? Nothing happened. It was just a series of exchanged looks. But a lot did happen that you can microanalyze in that interaction. The child could have seen the disapproval on the face of the parent.
Speaker 3:The child could have known, well, I was gonna get to it. Doesn't my mother realize I just had to get my backpack put away first or I had to do x y and z first or I had to call my friend about something first that I was gonna do it, and now she thinks I'm not gonna do it. And now she's looking at me like I'm so terrible, so I might as well be so terrible. Or else they're hearing in their mind the sound of a parent from another house that they lived in screaming at them. You idiot.
Speaker 3:You stupid person. And maybe they wanna just get that sound out of their head. And maybe they can't even tell the difference between the parent that's talking to them right then rather calmly and the parent in their mind that's screaming at them. So what I like to do is to let each person just microanalyze their reaction. What did the face mean?
Speaker 3:How did you react to the face? How can we slow it down? How can we slow it down with communication, empowering each person to communicate during that whole interaction? What did I feel? What did you feel?
Speaker 3:And then redo it in a new way. Like, mom, I was gonna get to the dishes. Lay off. I just had to go do x, y, and z. And mom's saying, yeah.
Speaker 3:I know. I shouldn't have made that face. I'm just had a hard day, and I was just thinking about how hard it's gonna be to get through dinner tonight. But, yeah, of course. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3:Let each of them communicate what's really on their mind instead of being triggered by the faces and the implications and the reactions that they each have to each other.
Speaker 1:I feel like sometimes for myself as a parent, sometimes the more aware I become of how important it is to be so entirely present and attuned with my children, the less that I am. I don't mean I'm regressing. I mean the more I think that I am, more I see where I'm not and how much I'm really provoking them in ways I never intended to. I'm not being malicious or abusive or dangerous, but I'm making their lives so much harder than it has to be in ways I didn't see and it really has become its own kind of meditation of trying to be present and not distracted not doing something else entirely present eye contact attuned with them, mirroring them all of that all the time and it's exhausting! It's like I don't have the muscles for it even after these years my muscles are still getting stronger
Speaker 3:You know, we aren't present the way we used to be. I was talking to one of my children about the beach vacations that we used to have years ago when they were little, and my daughter said something so interesting. She said, Why, when I think about it, is it so much fun? And then she said, I wanna tell you one reason why it was so much fun. She said, we were all so present.
Speaker 3:I said, well, what do you mean? She said, well, none of us had cell phones, none of us had computers, none of us had anything distracting. We had to make our fun from our interaction with each other. And in order to do that, we had to really be present with each other. She said, and we laughed so much because of that.
Speaker 3:We laughed so much because we were deeply sharing at every moment. And I thought, you know, we are missing something With all the electronic devices that we have, we may not always be as present as we once used to be or as families might have used to be before all of these different ways of communicating with the outside world interfered with our communication with each other.
Speaker 1:I think that's so true. We, in our house, don't even have a TV or any screen time other than movie night together as a family. And we just cannot have that at all and also parent well we cannot work and parent at the same time my husband and I have to take turns because work and any sort of screen are the two biggest disruptions to our interactions and we just can't we cannot other people may do fine I'm not judging people where they're at in their family but our family my husband and I we cannot parent well and have screens in the house. That's not even about the children being on them too much. We ourselves cannot do it.
Speaker 3:Well, good for you for taking such a stand. One thing that I've noticed with traumatized children is that the immediate gratification from playing, like, a video game or playing something that gives them a really charge back is much more addictive to them than it might even though it is addictive to many children, it's very, very addictive to traumatized children. And when you take it away or when even if they've been on it for two hours and it's time for the screen time to be over, the deprivation that they feel is so huge that it becomes all of these things become great battles. I don't know if that's one of the reasons you noticed you needed to be away from screens, but, it is it does become a battle in many households. So good for you that you found a way to rid yourselves of these things.
Speaker 1:How did you start learning about screen time and then even into trafficking online? Where did you become educated about that and start advocating for change there?
Speaker 3:Well, those are two different questions. I guess the screen time I learned over time from watching a lot of little seven and eight year old boys having rage attacks that went on for two hours, always precipitated by the same thing. You took my DS away. You took this away. You know?
Speaker 3:And I thought, like, what is going on? Why is there this level of trauma from this? So I did notice that. In terms of my, work with online predators, there are multiple things that got me into it. One was working with a certain attorney's firm where he was getting a lot of the cases of children who were just starting to be identified whose pictures were taken and put online in the early nineties.
Speaker 3:Those women reaching maturity now, some of those pictures have been found, and some and those victims, according to a law that has been upheld by the Supreme Court, get restitution from anyone who has looked at the picture. So in a very important Supreme Court case decision, the Supreme Court determined that anyone looking at a picture of abuse of a child is virtually in that room abusing that child and owes that victim restitution, which is very powerful. So I would got involved with cases like that, and then I was, doing some international supervision where I was teaching a course about trauma online. And I was, supervising some therapists that were seeing some of the same really horrific trauma symptoms. And when we compared notes, we saw there were so many similarities, and we were able to track it down to an online ring that many of the kids were involved in.
Speaker 3:So it was kind of a fortuitous by by having multiple therapists in the same supervision group seeing some of the same kinds of behaviors that we put stuff together. And then as I learned more about it, I began to see that it was really much more common than people think. The surveys have been done about it now. There's a a big survey that was done in Canada. And they found that when they just looked at the kids online whose pictures were taken, huge numbers of them had been abused even as young as four or younger and had been abused by multiple people and had been, part of these sex trafficking rings.
Speaker 3:So, it was eye opening to me. Eyes that I didn't wanna open and see, but once I did, I realized this was another area that's not understood and that really needs to be better understood in order for people to help these kids.
Speaker 1:How do you explain trafficking to people when you're speaking somewhere or teaching someone? I mean, I'm asking because I saw this week there was a picture, an article about there was an article about how child trafficking isn't always a child tied up kidnapped and tied up in a random basement that so often people who know them are involved and they're being passed publicly and things like that and it was sort of confronting the stereotypes of trafficking so that people can become more aware and pay better attention or different attention. How do you explain trafficking, and what is your understanding of the online that you've been focusing on?
Speaker 3:It's become so increasingly easy to make films or to do live streaming or to do live streaming on demand. If anybody wants to make a little bit of extra money and has no moral compunction about utilizing children in their house, they can make huge amounts of money by selling pictures or acts that they videotape of, children. And, yes, you're right. It's usually in the home or it's an uncle or it's a grandparent or it's a a close family friend or it's a Boy Scout leader or it's somebody that the child has contact with who, exploits them in that way. If they're being exploited anyway, just sexually abused in the ways that did not involve the Internet, chances are the Internet is gonna be added as another component because it's a way to share your pleasure.
Speaker 3:It's a way to remember your, abusive events and keep it as, a trophy, And it's also a way to make money by selling images to others. So, usually, if you have in this day and age, if you have the first level, you usually will get to the Internet level as well. But it is likely not a stranger. It is likely somebody in the direct household or in the periphery of the household with whom there is a lot of trust, which is why the child isn't out loud access to that place multiple times. Now there's also online predators that just target victims online.
Speaker 3:What they often do is they'll pretend to be the same age because children are always meeting people online. They'll pretend to be the same age. They'll pretend to be, you know, a love interest of that child of the same age, asking the child then to start taking pictures of themselves, sending pictures. And then it turns out as the demands get increasingly sadistic that it is not a same age person. That's just how they dupe them or groom them, but it is actually an adult who's then using those materials for other purposes.
Speaker 3:And that is a scam that kids fall for very easily because the perpetrators just need to say things like, oh, you know, you're just my type. You're so beautiful. I never saw anybody as beautiful as you. And just say what the kid needs to hear. Your parents probably don't understand you, so you better keep this secret.
Speaker 3:All those things that work for the teenage mind to keep secrecy and privacy, these abusers can use them, and that's how these kids are victimized.
Speaker 1:Is there anything that parents need to watch out for or know or be aware of in trying to keep their children safe online?
Speaker 3:They should, keep their child's passwords. I'm not gonna say till what age, but longer than you might think with the idea that in this day and age, it's important that parents have a way to know what exactly their children are being involved in. If they see the child with the door closed in the room for hours on end online, that that's just a warning sign. I mean, maybe they're just talking to their friends on Facebook, but that's a warning sign. If if it's so much fun, they can be in the middle of the living room talking to their friends on Facebook.
Speaker 3:They don't have to be in the room with the door shut. But I think, also, if you see in your child any kind of sudden change in behavior from happy go lucky to sullen or angry or, vindictive or crying, if you see any change that's a sudden change in the way your child used to be, suspect something's wrong. And now that people are pretty much homebound during this pandemic, what could be wrong is likely something happening online if you know where your child is most times.
Speaker 1:So, again, paying attention and being attuned with your child.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah. I like the fact that when you do your screen time, you make it as a movie night so you can share. Know, that's one of the best ways to do, values education with kids is to look at a show together or a family show together and then talk afterwards. Why did that character do that?
Speaker 3:What would you do if you were in that situation? How would you get out of it? Who would you go to if you felt that way? Make watching, shows together an educational opportunity to share your values with your child.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. My husband is a writer. He writes musicals, so he doesn't even wait until the movie is over everything all along it's paused let's talk about this character development why do they not match the background because they don't belong here
Speaker 3:Wait, and he's saying he stops it to say all that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they talk about
Speaker 3:it all the Where does before he
Speaker 1:waits No, he does not wait. He stops it as we go. Everything. This plot device here, listen to why they're doing the music like That's
Speaker 3:so great. What kind of musicals does he write?
Speaker 1:All kinds of things. He writes for New York, works as a composer but because we're both writers we can talk about those kinds of things and he points those things out even when we visited different churches for them to sort of have some exposure to other faiths and backgrounds and traditions We talked about not just this means this to them and why they're doing this but also art came from this piece because of this and this music is here for this purpose and traditionally it was like this and when they do it like this that's actually a trance and it's emotional manipulation which is not the same as worship Worship means this like talking about all these things because they can be so easily dissociated and so easily sort of trapped into not realizing what's happening around them that we have to teach them how to be conscious and aware so that they are actively participating whether that's in a movie that they choose or worship that they choose or any kind of things in school when we read things together for their school all of that so that's a big thing. I didn't mean to get off on that tangent though sorry.
Speaker 3:Well you fascinated me I want to interview you about all those musicals and I want to know what his favorite musical that he didn't write.
Speaker 1:It's pretty fun. It's pretty fun. And what about for survivors? What would you tell or what would you offer to survivors who have been through this in the past in some form? I know for myself I was in therapy for a long time and in four years with one therapist before the therapist said to me it's still trafficking even if it's your parents who are selling you I didn't know that counted cognitively I did not understand that that was the same thing because I had such an imaging that trafficking meant being taken off the street because you went to the car and looked for the puppy, you know, and and then something terrible happening after that.
Speaker 1:I didn't have a cognitive understanding of You
Speaker 3:might have had the cognitive understanding, but it is really almost impossible to get the emotional understanding that the person who you've had this attachment to could be doing something so malevolent, so lacking in love, so lacking in what a parent is supposed to be, the opposite of parenting. It's very hard to make that connection emotionally even if you didn't know it was trafficking. You can't believe that about your own parent very easily. It's something that you have to kind of come to. I've watched children come to it, and it's, it's a process.
Speaker 3:I know one of my favorite little girls that I work with from the point of discovering that she'd been a victim of incest to, her growing up was her movement from talking about her father to calling him her ex sperm donor, that became the name, when she truly made a disconnection from him and really felt that she no longer had to get anything that was meaningful emotionally from her memory of the bond with him. That was the point at which everything emotionally meaningful came from other places. And that that is a necessary step, at least for some survivors, to get to that point where they don't require that emotional sustenance from the person that hurt them. Because otherwise, they get into this terrible cycle, which I I call this, the cycle of attachment. And it's the cycle of trauma attachment because as soon as you feel you're disconnected from the person, you feel unloved, and then you're forced to see yourself as an object deserving of abuse just in order to keep that relationship and in order to break free of that cognitive hold on you that makes you see yourself as a victim, you have to really disconnect from needing that emotional sustenance from the abuser.
Speaker 3:A very, very, very hard thing to do.
Speaker 1:Just last week, one of our children, I'm not gonna say which one obviously, but one of the children said, who's lived with us for years already. And they said to us last week, I know that this particular biological parent, I know that they made bad choices because you shouldn't touch bodies for children. That's how they phrased it. But I don't understand why they were a bad guy because I remember them giving me ice cream. Just now getting developmentally to the place to be able to start processing that and having to hold both at the same time and sort through it and have conversations about grooming and different things like that that are such difficult conversations.
Speaker 3:Well, that gives us the question of what love is. And I try to tell kids that if you have a pot of soup that is so delicious, it's got everything good in it, it's got chicken and vegetables and rice and it's delicious, and you put one drop of poison in it, the whole soup is bad. You can't say it's a good soup even though it has all that good stuff in it. And I say the same thing about a parent who might have given you ice cream, but that one thing was like poison that messed up the whole soup.
Speaker 1:That's so powerful. Such a visual. That's absolutely something we could talk about in our family. I feel like I was going to interview you about some things and instead you just popped up on my screen and changed my life. Woah.
Speaker 1:That is powerful.
Speaker 3:Well, where'd you find me? You doubled me up and then I changed your life, okay.
Speaker 1:Because I feel like this is one of the moments that really changes everything. Understanding of some of the very things I'm trying to process right now you've really put into words in a way that I've never seen presented before or been able to receive before. Maybe I had to be like a little child to receive them because these these examples are are just empowering.
Speaker 3:I'm good at thinking of, I don't know, analogies, But I also I do a lot of court testimony, and what I discovered is that the more analogies you give a judge, the better off you are because they hold on to those analogies. You find them in their decisions. So I try to think of those to keep things, you know, really solidified in the brain of of a judge when I'm testifying, which I testify about child abuse, and I want them to understand the implications for the children. And and often I find that I my language becomes I don't know. It's it's not really I try not to use technical jargon when I speak.
Speaker 3:I try to just use examples that will make sense to people. Otherwise, they just tune you out. So it's it's taken me a few years to realize how to convey messages in a way that can really speak to people easily. But, yes, I do try to use analogies. Well, I am I really admire you and what you're doing to bring information to the public and also with you and your husband.
Speaker 3:He deprives himself of screens while he's busy writing musicals. Wow. That's pretty impressive. And, I'm amazed with your children that you have, brought there and doing your best to show them what love really means and what attachment really is and what not being abandoned means. And I I really applaud everything that you're doing.
Speaker 1:Is there anything else that you wanted to share today that we didn't get to?
Speaker 3:I guess if I have to come up with an ending concept, it is that kids are amazing. And I I just wrote okay. Here, I'll give you this. This is a section I just wrote in my book, and this is what I'll give you to end. So it comes from a quote from Albert Einstein.
Speaker 3:And Albert Einstein says, You cannot solve a problem from the level of consciousness that created the problem. That could apply to many, many, many things, but I wanna right now just apply it to working with an abused and traumatized child. So the kind of consciousness that leads to a child feeling that they're an object, that their purpose is just to serve someone else's needs, is a level of consciousness which makes that child see themselves as dispensable, as useless, as as somebody else's property. But just now imagine the level of consciousness that is in your household, where each child has a special unique spark, where each child has individuality and and God given specialness and uniqueness, where each child is allowed to flourish and be themselves, can you imagine that that could be the level of consciousness that could make the problems that caused it almost inevitably reversed?
Speaker 1:I can. That gives such hope.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because it's a whole another way to see people. And that's why we have to empower ourselves to realize the power we have to do that.
Speaker 1:Thank you for bringing this sacred moment to our interview. Well, it's been
Speaker 3:my pleasure. I ever had such a receptive interviewer before. So I'm really glad to have offered you something that could be helpful to your audience as well as helpful to you and your family.
Speaker 1:Where can people get your book?
Speaker 3:So just go onto Amazon or, look under the publisher, Rutledge, r o u t l e d g e is the publisher, and it's called The Child Survivor, and the new it's called The Healing Developmental Trauma and Dissociation. And the new book is gonna have the same name, it's just gonna be called the second edition, and it has two more chapters. It has a chapter about the pandemic, and it has a chapter about sex trafficking in the new newer book. But and then the other chapters are just updated somewhat. So I wish your audience health, safety, happiness, and lots of love to their children tonight.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Are you connected to ISSTD?
Speaker 3:Oh, yes. I was once I was a former president. I was a president of ISSTD.
Speaker 1:I thought you just might wanna
Speaker 3:mention I am connected. Yes. I've gotten some awards from them and I have enjoyed my association with a group of people who are brilliant and compassionate at the same time.
Speaker 1:I love them so much. Are you on the team with Fran Waters? Are any of them working on the new guidelines for the children?
Speaker 3:Yes. Yeah, I'm on the task force and I'm directly involved in doing that. Absolutely. We're working on that right now. We're in the process.
Speaker 3:Yes, indeed.
Speaker 1:That is fantastic. Thank you so much. You are one of my favorite people on the planet Thank you.
Speaker 3:Oh my god. That's really quite quite a statement, but thank you for that.
Speaker 1:I I don't say that lightly.
Speaker 3:Glad we ran across each other and Fran and I worked very closely together. And yes, we'll be working on those guidelines together.
Speaker 1:I am so glad. We interviewed her for the podcast as well. And I am grateful because when I think of what survivors go through and how long treatment takes and how long it takes to find a good therapist and what life is like during that time, the idea that all of that could be circumvented, just it makes me weep. Like, that's so powerful what you all are doing, and no one will ever know no one will ever know or understand the extent of the power and grace and goodness you have given to the world because when it's prevented it doesn't happen and it's not seen and so I want you to know that I see it even if no one else will ever understand what a big deal it is that you all are doing. And I am so, so grateful.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Emma. Good luck to you and to your family, and thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Alrighty.
Speaker 2: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 www.systemsspeak.com. We'll see you there.