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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Welcome to the System Speak podcast, a podcast about dissociative identity disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to longtime listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening
Speaker 2:to the podcast. Thank you. My life is not perfect, and I'm often a mess. That's part of learning to decondition, deprogram myself from shiny happy. Just accepting the imperfections of myself and my life.
Speaker 2:So right now, the only time I can record a podcast is in my car while I have words parked waiting for someone else. But it means cars are moving around me, and so there's noise. And in my car, the sunshade at the top is open. These last days of summer, it's supposed to finally start cooling off this week. But for now, it's still hot.
Speaker 2:Too hot for the sunshade on the roof to be open. And, also, it broke when the kids were helping to load my car when I first left Oklahoma, whenever that was, two years ago, three years ago. So now it's jammed and torn and falling off, which isn't perfect at all, especially for a new car. And, also, zero priority in my life or my finances, like, not even on the list. I know there's lots of people who can understand that.
Speaker 2:And so it just hangs there, reminding me of imperfection, of living life, and the messes that life can cause, and also that it's okay. Even though it's hot on a day like today, I would rather it be stuck open than jammed closed. I will, because of my own experiences, always prefer the lights to be on. Maybe need the lights to be on, to let the light through. Jules and I were talking this morning before work about how it's so good to be together and close and when we can see each other and have conversations.
Speaker 2:Everything is easy. Everything is right in the world. We can feel and experience attachment, and all is well. And, also, because of what my therapist calls attachment wounds. When we're apart, it's harder.
Speaker 2:Maybe the biggest hard since I moved here. Because attachment. Not because I'm doing something wrong or Jules is doing something wrong, but because attachment is hard. We have had for two months wildfires in the mountains. It's been really activating for me, triggering for me, and trying to deal with it has impacted everything.
Speaker 2:The children could not swim at the end of the summer, even when the family was all here together. There have been days where I couldn't see the cars in front of me almost driving to work. Days where the sun was bright red through the smoke. Weeks and weeks, months, two months where we didn't see the sky at all almost. The mountains that surround our city were not even visible because the smoke was so thick and got so bad.
Speaker 2:The first month, it was the wildfire smoke from California blown here and then trapped in the valley in an inversion because of the mountains. And then after summer storms with lightning, we had our own smoke that also got trapped here. And it's been an uncomfortable and scary couple of months, so much that we had to wear masks when we were outside, like the children waiting for their school buses, where we couldn't go on walks. And so I had to find ways to stretch my body or use my elliptical indoors and maybe by default, let my ankle finally finish healing a year later. But Oklahoma does not really have wildfires as often.
Speaker 2:We have tornadoes, but not wildfires. So I'm new to wildfires, and the wildfires here were especially bad this year. And one of the people that I used to work with on disaster response told me it was because of beetles that had eaten the trees the years before so that there were extra trees that were dead and dry with the extra hot temperatures and then the lightning storms and the wildfires spread like wildfire. But something I never knew before was that when a wildfire is particularly bad, it actually can create its own weather with stormy clouds and its own lightning. From afar, it looks like a dark mushroom cloud, like from a nuclear bomb, Except this is from the wildfires, and it's dark and nasty.
Speaker 2:Those clouds don't create rain because there's no moisture in it, but they do create lightning, which then makes the fires worse. And that's part of what has happened here the last two months. And Jules said, that's what it's like when we're apart, when we get in our own heads or our attachment wounds hurt us. Not because we're trying or acting out or doing anything wrong, just because ultimately inside, we are scared and alone. We've done therapy all year long on being hurt and alone, and it's been hard.
Speaker 2:And that metaphor that Jules thought up, the visual of that really helped me grasp onto the picture of what's happening so that I can tend to the storm and recognize what's experiencing internally without being afraid of Jules or her absence or her life that she had before I ever came into the picture Or that she's grown in her own development since because she's a real person outside my head. Someone I can hold and touch and love in all the safe ways, but who is real and cares and alive and has feelings and thoughts and shares them and also shows up for me and lets me feel and think and say the things even when they're hard. I think everyone who lives here is excited and relieved because the rains have finally come at the end of summer, and it's already starting to snow in the mountains even though it's the August. There is relief because rain and snow put out the fires. Like me curled up with jewels and crying because connection does bring healing.
Speaker 2:I got reminded of this in the community in a post I'll share later on an emails episode. But they were referencing the codependency checklist episode, and they called me out for saying it would have been codependent to have Nathan or Jules do my homework with me because they said doing it alone is what's codependent, not asking for help, thinking I have to be independent, which for me is both a trauma response and a religious trauma response. So I've got a double whammy of that one. And the reminder that maybe connection does mean healing. Maybe tears really do put the fires out, which takes me back to my poem from the memoir about if tears were prayers and ashes still made soap.
Speaker 2:Then fires would make me clean and whole again, not just destroyed, which is really hard to hold on to and to grasp and to understand. And, also, they say that because of the wildfires, the forest will be really healthy next year, that erosion will be less, that growth will be good, that even though the fires are scary, and, of course, we don't want people or property or animals hurt, that it's cleansing, maybe like therapy or crying, and that the new growth will be incredible and impact the environment and the mountains for years to come. I hope that's true. I need a metaphor like that when therapy is getting really, really hard and really, really deep and really, really real. And, also, the more I show up for myself that way, the healthier my interactions are and the more I learn to show up in my relationships, even friendships, the more vulnerable I can be because the safer I already am, because connection brings healing.
Speaker 2:Even when sometimes part of the process is a storm of lightning, fires that feel like it ruined everything and destroyed everything, sometimes just clears out what didn't need to be there. And the tears put out the fires, and new growth comes. And that, I think, is worth it. 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.
Speaker 2:Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.