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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 3:This episode begins a conversation we have with a friend from college who endured religious and relational trauma alongside us in the same situation as referenced in the Hallelujah and Rumi's episodes from last year. As part of that conversation, those traumas are referenced religious trauma, relational trauma, and child abuse. No details are disclosed, however. But as always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh.
Speaker 3:What do you remember about what happened with the dean or what happened with having to go to Tulsa for therapy because of DID or the professor and his wife or any of that? What do you remember about any of those pieces?
Speaker 1:I I remember that I did not like those people, that I knew they were that they were hurting you, like, that something wasn't right with how they treated you. As far as your therapist, I trusted her and felt that that was good. It seemed like that was good. But as far as, like, those other people in charge of the college, not, not so good. It was like It was like we were under the power of, like, a a bad king and queen.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I mean? Like, we're gonna be Yes. Under the rule of of these people that aren't ruling the way they should for the good of the people. Right?
Speaker 3:I think that that is part of what happens with religious trauma, even though in our context, this piece of the story happened in college. There is something about religious trauma when it is about control and about shame rather than your own agency and choosing what your faith means to you or expressing it how you want or not at all if you decide that. Like, there's something about religious trauma and that control and that shame that permeates every layer of your existence and every layer of your experience of your existence until it almost feels like you're crazy in that it makes it difficult to even know what is reality. Because reality, to stay safe, reality has to be what they say it is. That's incongruent with what you're experiencing.
Speaker 3:But then you're shamed for experiencing anything other than what they say it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, and they're asking us to validate them and to uphold them as being the ones in the right. So it's I mean, that must have been really hard for you because you're already dissociative. So it's like they're asking us to to lie and to dissociate from, from what's good, you know?
Speaker 3:Right, right, exactly. Exactly. And I think, I think that's part of what I went through during the pandemic when I was having to sort through the difference between what people were saying to me and what I was experiencing with them and not waiting for those to match. I couldn't be good enough to make those match. And I realized, oh, I have been in this situation before.
Speaker 3:And and realizing the difference between who I want to be as a person and who I feel like I am as a person, DID or not, and what they are saying. And their view of DID was all about, like, demons. Right? Like, they they called it Seth Wilson even. Ancient of the ancients to come and lay hands on me and cast out all my demons and cure me of DID.
Speaker 3:And then I was in a lot of trouble when that did not work. What in the world? It was my lack of faith, so I had to go in front of chapel to do it again. That was when I was like, okay, I'm done here.
Speaker 1:I don't understand it. I just where are these people from? How do they reconcile that they think they're Christians with with the way they behave and and what
Speaker 3:It it was really scary. It was scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That must have been really awful.
Speaker 3:What tell me what you were you were you brought up already the body memories thing, and you emailed me about this. And I was like, what? Because I have no memories of this either at all, like, at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We were driving home from, I think it was Barnes and Noble. Of course. Of course. I mean, it is so sadly ironic that we would go there and look at self help books.
Speaker 1:Like, it's so sad. But anyway, we're driving back and you were hurting. You were having some pain in your arm and we got you back to your dorm room and it was a red, like a red patch on your arm. It sort of looked like a sunburn. You asked us to feel it.
Speaker 1:It was hot to the touch. And we got an ice pack for you and just sat with you while you, like, cried on your bed, from from the pain of this. And, you know, just so we're clear, you had not been burned at Barnes and Noble. This was like me literally seeing, your past appear on you.
Speaker 3:I have no memory of this at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry. That must have been scary and weird.
Speaker 1:Oh, well, it was just sad. But in a way, it was it was good that we could do something for you, you know, instead of just being, like, totally helpless that you had abuse in your past, you know? Like, we can help you in that moment, at least. And I don't know if you remember us taking you to the hospital, for something happening, like seizures. I don't know if you want to talk about that.
Speaker 1:You don't have to.
Speaker 3:But I read this in your email, but I do not remember it. We can talk about it. Okay. I don't have seizures now that I know of, but I know about this happening with other people with DID. So I was really surprised when you wrote to me about you remembering that happening to me.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah. I mean, I didn't know it was a DID thing or what it was. You were having seizures and
Speaker 3:That it's, it's, it shows up so many different ways sometimes besides just functioning or different memories or different parts. Part of what's hard is we're talking about really difficult memory time things. And the other part that's hard is that we're talking about DID directly. And it is one thing to go about every day. This is what I'm experiencing, and this is what I'm feeling.
Speaker 3:And it's another thing to call it what it is and to talk about it directly of, oh, this is a thing. And even all this time later, like, I feel like I've made so much progress and that I've learned so much and I've come so far and still there are days of like, wait, are we sure about DID? Like, can that really be a thing?
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm sure it's it's so intense to work through and to to face. I mean I don't know. I can't imagine. But if you, if you want to know, like, it's okay. You don't have to be so as covert with me unless that's just what you're comfortable with because I don't want you to, you know, do anything you're not comfortable with.
Speaker 3:What I'm gonna go back to the podcast because that feels safer. What was that like to be catching up on our story or hearing us after all this time? What felt the same? What felt different? Or what did that make you remember?
Speaker 3:You're smiling now. What is that? Can you see me? I can see you.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's just so good to like, it feels like you're back in my life. You know what I mean? Not that you left, just I don't know. It's just so good to hear from you, and you have so much wisdom, that I can glean from. But what stayed the same is just that you're authentic.
Speaker 1:You're very real. You're very compassionate. And you have that heart for justice that you've always had. And it's just, it's, it's good to see, that you're doing well, but it's okay when you aren't doing well too. You know?
Speaker 1:I don't want you to feel like you have to be doing well, but it's just it's just been great.
Speaker 3:It's funny to me because your roommate, I had not talked to since then until she found the podcast, but you somehow were still there and followed me around the world and all the places I lived or this place. Somehow, I don't even understand how that happened, but somehow in these different significant pieces of my life, most of which were disasters, you just kind of poked up and, hey, I'm still here. Everything's okay. And so really you and who we call the English teacher on the podcast are the only ones I've known that whole time that have consistently stayed in my life, and that just makes you so extra important. So no no pressure there, but it's a lot and you've seen me through things and when I got really, really, I had that scare with my heart and I got really, really sick and you even came to visit me I remember thinking this is wild that someone would come to visit me, that someone would notice or care.
Speaker 3:I don't know other than God, how we stayed so together enough that in that level of chaos that everything that was happening, everything I've been through, even in my adult life, that we were able to stay connected. But I just want to say again how much that means to me. I'm so grateful because that sort of constancy and that sort of consistency is not something that I got anywhere else besides the English teacher.
Speaker 1:Well, you've been there for me too. And that I mean, it's been, like, twenty years of life. So you've been there for me through a lot. And even if we're not always communicating directly, I think we found a way to keep each other in the loop about our lives through blogs and stuff. We're like, do you remember the old, the old fashioned group emails?
Speaker 1:Those sorts of things. So, yeah, it's been pretty amazing. I don't have a good friend that has stayed with me for twenty years. I do have friends, like, I have a good friend from, from junior high, but we don't share about, like, how we're really doing. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:It's a little more surface y. So, it really does mean a lot to me too.
Speaker 3:And you married a therapist.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I did. In my defense, he wasn't a therapist when I married him.
Speaker 3:I just think it's funny.
Speaker 1:It is. It is.
Speaker 3:It's okay. It's hard. I think that for me it is about having you to witness what we went through because even besides that trauma or even besides DID or getting sent to Tulsa to that therapist, it also impacted even my family. Like there's a lot of things that I know are my problem or my fault or I'm unwell or crazy or you can say whatever, but there's a lot of things that were really happened because of the school and the trauma that happened there that they don't understand and that I don't know that I could ever explain to them. And even if they did understand, I know that doesn't fix everything, but it was, it so impacted every area, like completely derailed adulthood, is the opposite of sort of launching your adulthood.
Speaker 3:It is, it is the opposite. It was hard and What would you say? Is there anything else that you would add or share about religious trauma even generally? Because now that I've talked to you I know that's where we are going in therapy. I already knew it was coming.
Speaker 3:I've saved your emails. I need to go through the emails. I need to read them. I will probably read parts of them on the podcast because I need to process that and give that a context and validate it somehow that brings justice to it in a way to say things out loud. But it is so hard.
Speaker 3:How did you navigate that part of your life at all? Or how would you even explain, like, to your husband or or to a friend? Like, here's religious trauma. That's what that is. How do you even have a conversation like that?
Speaker 1:I I don't even know. I am still working on where my place is and my faith. I'm still working on church, like attending church. Choosing a church is really, really hard. I mostly I mostly go to church for other people.
Speaker 1:I, I gotta be honest. Like, for my husband, for my kids, you know, I want them to have that experience. I think it's just a matter of finding a place that's safe and that feels safe and like home. And I haven't found that yet. As far as explaining what it is like, it's like it's like God it feels like God leaves you.
Speaker 1:Like, you weren't accepted by him. Like, he's not with you anymore. I just remember that really clearly, just feeling like, where are you, God? Why why is this happening? You know?
Speaker 1:And I know that he didn't leave me. I know it in as far as, like, you know, intellectually, but I still don't have that. Even looking back, I don't have When I'm thinking about my memories, I don't necessarily feel like he was there. So, yeah, it's a lot to,
Speaker 3:I, I don't know if people who are not necessarily religious or have a faith tradition understand how much a view of God impacts everything and all of who you are in some ways, and so how completely devastating it is for that to be taken away. And to awaken out of that, no matter how you navigate that in the future or reclaim it or not even, I have a good friend who had plenty of trauma and faith tradition growing up and is like, no, that's just not, it's not. And that's okay. But it's so life changing and it alters our, alters, there's the word, it alters our whole experience of how we see things like that. And talking about finding a safe place for church, It's so hard.
Speaker 3:My therapist has talked with me about, like, my work and the work that I do. Why is war zone my baseline? And that keeps coming up over and over again of why why is war zone my baseline of, oh, I can do this job because I can handle it. Why? Why is that what I can handle?
Speaker 3:Why is that where I'm okay? Like, I don't wanna go out to lunch with a group of girls, but I can go to a war zone and strap on some armor and be like, let's do this. Like, why is that okay? You know, and talking about trauma and impact, and when you talk about looking for a safe place for church, I feel the same thing there. Like when I go to church or take the outside kids to church, I get them in the building.
Speaker 3:I feel like I'm in the war zone. I get through, like, whatever meetings I need to do, and then I wait in the van. Just now, while you were talking, I thought that same thing that, oh, church is a war zone for me. And why am I pushing myself through that when my body feels so unsafe that I've spent more than half the time in the van every single week. And how many years have I been sitting in the van?
Speaker 3:I don't even know how to answer that question. How many years have I been sitting in the van instead of inside the church building itself? And what is that about? Like, that's a whole different piece of therapy. Right?
Speaker 3:So I'm really excited about that. But but those are those are real questions when you have been through trauma of this kind even though our context was college and we say our context was college but everything in the college was about religion. Our classes were religious classes. We had to pray before class. We had to go to chapel during the week.
Speaker 3:We had like assignments, church assignments on the weekends. Like, it was our whole life. It was not just like we went off to college and we learned how to do math. We had to go to a different school to do math. We had to go across town to the other college for our math classes, literally.
Speaker 3:Like the whole the whole thing was study. And and it's I have such a I have such mixed feelings about it because there are research skills and writing skills that I have because some of those classes pushed us so hard academically, and I am grateful for that. There are studies that I know how to do in-depth study of scriptures or of ancient writings or in other languages that I have because of those classes. And I am grateful for that. And I have you and your roommate who have somehow stayed with me and I am so grateful because our college experience was not like a sorority experience and we were not the cool girls doing the whatever cool girls are supposed to do.
Speaker 3:And so I missed out on all of that. So to have come out on the other side with you and some skills that I can say, okay. These pieces are good pieces, and I'm grateful and wanna keep those. I I'm glad. Like, thank you.
Speaker 3:Also, how how many years have I been sitting in the van because I can't be in a chapel? And that's not even a question that I've ever said out loud until just now. I I I can I can have my faith and I can explore that my way, and maybe that's why we bounced all the way to where we landed now simply because they hated this church, and so I got as far away from it as I could? I mean, are pieces I love about this church, the whole feminine divine and and different aspects that were important to me and it supported my sobriety and all these things, like all the things. But at the same time, I'm still in a van every Sunday.
Speaker 3:And what is that about? Like, that's not why we're in church. Not what you go to church for. How to bring healing to that is a whole, that's a whole different podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. I can imagine. I mean, we had to hear a sermon every day at that school and go to church on Sunday.
Speaker 3:And Wednesday.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. We had to volunteer. I don't know if they make you volunteer, but still volunteer. But, yeah, it I I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I'm always trailing off and just, like, at a total loss for words.
Speaker 3:That's the association, though. Right? Like, that's the whole point. This was trauma, and it is hard to talk about. It is hard to finish our sentences because we're not just reflecting on something that we read in the newspaper, although we did read about it in the newspaper.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It's hard.
Speaker 3:This conversation will be continued in the next episode. Thank you.
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.
Speaker 3:Connection brings healing.