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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 a podcast about dissociative identity disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning Remember, Chuck Bin and Casa said we are only confused when something comes between us and our values. Healthy relationships bring clarity. Abusive ones bring confusion. This is the difference between love and control.
Speaker 1:Love says, I see you. Control says, I will decide for you. I will decide who you are. I will decide when you're good enough. I will decide when you are worthy of my time and attention.
Speaker 1:We need to, as part of boundary development, stop using our empathy as an excuse for their behavior. It turns out I'm not actually the Dalai Lama. Right? Understanding why someone harms me does not make the harm okay. Empathy without boundaries becomes self destruction.
Speaker 1:That brings us back to consent. Because when other people have emergencies, when we are thriving, when we are made to feel guilty for having friends or participating in community, when arguments fly over texts and emails, when we stop going out to connect with others or explore the world around us, we think those are things that are our choices because we are trying so hard, but it's actually conditioning. It's a kind of covert manipulation where it's not loud. They may not be beating you. They may not be screaming at you, but they are silencing you, and they are making you smaller.
Speaker 1:Now not I'm not saying everyone does that to us on purpose or even is aware of it. It may be how they were treated when they were little, but empathy without boundaries becomes self destruction. I am a human and deserve to be treated like one. I am in process and deserve to be respected as someone developing my humanity. And if we want to care well for others, we have to be present in ourselves to do so, which includes learning how to set boundaries so that we are not in crisis because we never told them we couldn't.
Speaker 1:Laura Brown talked about in one of those chapters about how whoever is dating us does not want to be the abuser, and they don't want to date an abuser. So we cannot interact with them on the social contract of our parents, and we cannot have expectations of ourselves that our parents had on us, or we are not adults in now time. When I moved here a year ago, I thought I was gonna drown Being even further away from some of my children, the things happening with politics in our country, the issues of religious trauma, grieving the separation of my marriage and the ending of that experience, even if that was healthy and right and good and maintaining friendship with him and co parenting and all the things in lots of ways, It was still the loss of a daydream. I was grieving the loss of so many daydreams while also being really hard on myself that I had failed everyone I knew, that I had done everything I wanted to offer had been spoiled, that everything I had worked so hard had been taken from me. And I thought I was going to drown.
Speaker 1:I know that's metaphorical. I wasn't actually drowning. Right? And I didn't even want to hurt myself. I just was beyond overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:It felt like there was no air. And, also, I told the story of the drowning whale only a few weeks before I moved here. And where I live now, there actually are whales. My family goes out to see them. It was an amazing experience.
Speaker 1:I think I shared some about that and also what felt so sacred and so personal to be with my whole family together again and to be experiencing this just as part of life and culture. And it really is a culture, not just that we live near Wales, but that people around us where we live, part of the culture is being able to identify them, being able to connect with them, tracking them, being delighted when they surface, knowing who is where and how they're playing and how they're doing and all of the things that becomes community with us and the whales. And also, not long after I moved here, we lost a whale. If I could not for the life of me, I could not find the article about it, but I feel like it was a jaypod whale. I'm sorry if I get any facts wrong.
Speaker 1:It is not intentional. I feel like it was a jaypod whale, and I feel like it was a young male. And he must have been sick or something because he was not older like his mother was still alive. So, somehow, the mother whale heard like however they communicate, right? Like, I'm not a whale.
Speaker 1:I don't know how the telegraph got to her. Somehow it was communicated to her that he was not okay. And they literally saw her racing across the waters to get to where he was. Y'all, the whales surrounded him. And they stayed with him and they stayed near him.
Speaker 1:And I am not a whale, so I don't know what happened or what that was like or to speak to that. But then he really did let go. He could not get to the surface anymore. He was sick enough. He could not come up for air, and he did sink and drown.
Speaker 1:And I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried because I had so identified with this experience. And, also, part of why I cried is because I realized he did not die alone. He was surrounded by the other whales who loved him. His family came. They honored him.
Speaker 1:They clearly had their own grief process even afterward. We witnessed this as a community, and it was so powerful because death happens. Oh, grief is hard. And, also, it was a year of grief for me, and I know the grief group in the community has been intense. And all of these feelings have surfaced where there is so much of my trauma centered around grief, and I need to feel the fangs.
Speaker 1:And when grief happens with someone young, like this adolescent or young adult male whale, has injustice even when it is natural. And there is rage that surfaces against the injustice, especially with such innocence. And I felt this, and I grieved this, and I worked through this in therapy with so many layers of grief and pain and struggle and how much harder trauma makes life, deprivation makes life even when no one's trying to do anything wrong, even when no one wants to hurt anyone or themselves, and also it is so hard to get air. And my first months here were spent grieving this whale that I never even met myself because by the time me and my family got out on the water, all of us together again. That whale was already gone and a memory, an honored memory.
Speaker 1:I even saw a picture of him on the boat. And then as newcomers to our culture, as reentry with our tribe, as canoe journey, which you've got to hear about last fall, we began to learn the whales, to identify their markings, to track their sightings, to delight in the community of the whales and ourselves. And then there was another loss at the end of the summer. And I'm sorry that I am such a newcomer. I don't know the details exactly or which one, but another whale that was a mother whale lost her baby.
Speaker 1:And this had happened before, I think, with the same mother. And she carried it and carried it and carried it and swam with it on her head, on her nose, lifting it up, holding it as long as she can hold it. Grieving not just the loss of her, but all the moments of having her, this mother and baby. And it was this profound experience after all of my other losses, after learning about my littles inside, about learning about rescuing my own babies. What have I just been carrying around without even knowing it?
Speaker 1:And what is it time to let go of? To honor but release. Not moving on without it, but moving on because of it. And now even wicked has come out and that song about being changed for good. I am permanently changed because of my experiences these last few years, and I am full of love and hope and life even while also grieving and learning to let go.
Speaker 1:But if I come full circle back to what I told myself in 2022 on those original episodes I was working on this weekend, that I am the ship, that I am on my own ship, that my body has me inside it, that my body talks to me, that my body is part of me, that I am in my own body, in my own life, that that is my ship, then it also means I am not the whale. And if I am not the whale and I have my own ship, it means I am not drowning. I may have a ways to go on the journey, but I am not drowning. And there are days even in the Pacific Northwest where the clouds break and the sun peeks through. And because I appreciate it so differently now, I literally run outside to feel the sun fall on my skin and take my shoes off to feel my feet on the earth and stretch my arms out to feel the wind in my fingers.
Speaker 1:And the rain still comes and does not melt me, and I do not drown. I am me, and I'm still here. And I have made it through again. Hard things, beautiful things, good things, learning things. And because I am encircled about with this gray cloud of witnesses, I am not alone.
Speaker 1:Others have mourned with me, have grieved with me, have witnessed with me, and I am not alone. And even when I have no choice but to let go of what I was carrying around on my back, I'm still changed for good, and I am recentered on myself and in myself in healthy and beautiful ways that bring me back to my own healing, which is a continuation of where I left off, integrating all the things I've learned in the meantime, honoring all of the good of all of the experiences in the meantime so that, yes, I am me, and, also, I am more me than I was before. That is healing. It is already happening. Do I have feelings of, like, wanting to run into memory time with all of the, this is what I learned now, and this is what I've gotten out of it, and this is where I'm at, and what I can now do that I could never do before.
Speaker 1:Yes. Because I still have that little daydreamer. And euphoric recall is always a thing. And, also, I am in my own skin again, and I understand the boundaries, and I understand where I'm at now in now time, adulting myself for myself, even those little ones who don't have to live inside a tornado anymore. I can bring them home to me.
Speaker 1:I can be home for them. 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.