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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 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
Speaker 2:we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
Speaker 1:for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. What just happened at the Janina Fisher webinar for ISSTD? Oh my goodness. We are going to talk about the living legends webinar from ISSTD whose featured speaker this month was Janina Fisher.
Speaker 1:We just watched the webinar with Janina Fisher. First thing I have to say is I have been podcasting for six, almost seven years. No one has ever told me it's Janina. Not once, not once did anyone at all say that to me and it matters because it's actually very close to my mother's name. So it got my attention right away and I was like, wait, what?
Speaker 1:So I don't know if that was dissociation that I had said her name wrong this whole time, but her name is Janina Fisher and now I know. So thanks to all of you clinicians who listen to the podcast and let me say it wrong for almost a decade. Oh my goodness. Okay, so other things I wanna say before we even get into her thing is that I was actually very hesitant to even go to this webinar because I have a love hate relationship. I don't know the woman.
Speaker 1:She was very sweet. She's never come on the podcast. Her people wanted me to pay her. I can't do that, so she's never been on the podcast. And so I have a love hate relationship with her stuff, which I know is very part ish which she points out but there are a couple things I want to be really specific about for people who don't know.
Speaker 1:First, she is very structural dissociation and very IFS. She did in our webinar, which I appreciated, this is the ISSTD Living Legends webinar that we're recapping, and she did acknowledge, which I actually really appreciated, that IFS, Internal Family Systems, is designed as a therapeutic model, not a tool for trauma treatment. So I appreciate that she was explicit about that, and that made me feel a little better about listening to what she had to say. The other thing that I don't like not that I don't like, I guess that's harsh because I'm trying to blend. The other thing that makes me uncomfortable with some of her work are all the flip charts and all the pro like she's got good stuff, which is I know that sounds weird, I don't like that.
Speaker 1:The problem comes when people use that to manualize treatment instead of as tools to explain things. I'm a fan of tools when it's helpful. Her flip charts are kind of amazing. And in Seattle, I think, I met Nicole Black at the annual conference who has those DES cards that talk about depersonalization and derealization and dissociation and they're amazing the way they show and depict those kinds of experiences. That's a great tool.
Speaker 1:Like it's not that I'm anti tools. We have, I have published a workbook. Like it's a tool, I get it. But you can't manualize treatment without the relationship when we're talking about developmental trauma and childhood trauma. I have the same issue with the Bethany Brand Top DD study that's going on right now where they partner with the therapist and everybody has homework.
Speaker 1:Lots of good about it, but I have an issue with modular, manualized treatment, And that is trying to get around that by including the therapist in it, but it makes me really nervous. It makes me really nervous. So I'm just acknowledging my own discomfort going into it, right? And then the other thing to note, and she also said this explicitly, is that with internal family systems, or IFS, which was not written as DID treatment, was not written as a tool for treating trauma, they do not like the science of polyvagal, of window of tolerance, of regulation, any of those things because they see all of those as parts even in the body. So just knowing that upfront, I want to clarify those pieces.
Speaker 1:What is good about her is her level of empathy, her level of acceptance, and her responsiveness, if that's what you want. But we'll get into that. She talked about it. So those are good things and just some caveats before we get into. Oh, the other thing she said later in the session was, or in the session, in the presentation, she said she does not ask parts to come out.
Speaker 1:She asked them to join the session. So it's interesting to me because she's very structural dissociation where everybody has parts and all of us have all these parts, which means I, whoever I am, am also a part. But also at the same time throughout her presentation she also refers to the client with parts, which seems to contraindicate that, so it got a little confusing and we had some discussion going on about that. But anyway, that's her perspective. So she also, as far as people understanding her perspective up front, she's also very fluid with integration, that integration can kind of look like what you need it to look like.
Speaker 1:And she in the presentation compared it to like, you could integrate like a baseball team or like a symphony. It doesn't have to be where everyone is just one person because we're not we have parts. So that comes from IFS, which I appreciate. And then so I guess I just want to say those things up front for people who don't know Jeanine's work or Doctor. Fisher's work, what that looks like or what it's about.
Speaker 1:She opened oh, sorry, I remembered it. I'm sorry. The other thing that is really significant about her work that I am uncomfortable with is that she has a perspective that you do not need to do trauma processing. You only need to work with parts. And so I don't know how that is possible.
Speaker 1:I'm not one of her clients. I don't want to speak for that and she's not here to speak for herself, but it really, really concerns me. I do think and can understand how the more we increase acceptance of ourselves as a system that some of that starts happening naturally. But I don't think it's okay to bypass it, which is how a lot of people use her stuff and use her flip chart even if that's not what she intended. So it may not even be what she proposed.
Speaker 1:I don't I feel like she's proposed this, but I could be misunderstanding, but I feel like it's used a lot that way where you can just skip trauma processing. And part of that comes from her roots in IFS because IFS does not believe in a phase based approach because you don't need to regulate anything because all of that dysregulation are parts as opposed to thinking that parts could also be dysregulated which is what I understand and experience. So I know that's a lot but a lot of people are like, oh yay Janina Fisher because she has a lot of stuff. And a lot of her stuff is really useful, which is good. But once again, it's just one person's opinion and an expert and not explicitly from a lived experience point of view.
Speaker 1:And so if we don't pay attention to what people are thinking and doing, we can take what feels good without being discerning. So I just wanted to list some cons and some caveats or pros about it at the beginning. But all of that being said, she kind of blew us away. And there was a lot of good in this presentation. And in fact, we're only going to talk about the first part because then she got more pragmatic into clinical stuff and that's just a lot for later.
Speaker 1:But just talking about the first part of her presentation that she introduced, I had to message you and like please can you come and talk with me about this because it's so much. So to get started, one of the first things that she said is that healing is not getting through therapy or through memory work. It is about feeling peace. Looking forward to that stage. That's what I thought and I was like, oh, we're not there yet.
Speaker 1:But then I thought, oh, but from her perspective it's not a stage, It's just an experience. So it kind of also challenged me to think of like, when our small moments, I have felt peace differently than I have in the past. And I definitely feel that's been a development of this year where I've had experiences of, in this moment, I feel safe. In this moment, I feel connected. In this moment, I feel peace, even if there's still everything happening around me or inside me.
Speaker 1:And the not healed, she verbalized from a perspective of not just parts, like parts as parts, but that parts are specifically, she called it alienation from self and talked about how we have parts because we have disowned not parts but our own vulnerability. I don't know if I'm ready to talk about vulnerability. Okay, so she uses no bad parts, that terminology, but that comes from IFS with Richard Schwartz. Okay, so just tracking that down. Because she talked about how we don't have, the whole point is that we don't have any bad parts because any dissociation into parts or really from a structural dissociation perspective that would be not dissociation into parts, it would be a lack of integration into one personality, right, from structural dissociation?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's so complicated when they try to explain us. So, but she was saying there's no bad parts because any dissociation is protective. So even those that we think or feel like, oh, they might be a bad part, they're actually protective and purposeful. That is the work, the acceptance, whether it's of parts or of self. And with that, she talked about how part of that development so like with structural dissociation, everybody is born with parts and through normal development, we sort of integrate those parts, which we talk about this in the workbook, but everyone sort of integrates those parts into one cohesive self, but trauma disrupts that natural integration so the parts stay.
Speaker 1:And then as we grow up with parts, those parts become more dissociated because they never got that natural integration process. And so she said, part of that is because children need a coherent mirror, meaning with a caregiver, to develop a coherent sense of self and that we don't get that in trauma. And that separation is for survival. So that is what she talked about is how alienation from self is a survival strategy. But what happens when we become adults, like adult bodies, is that often certain parts have sort of taken over, sometimes children, sometimes teens, because of either skill deficits, because of trauma, or attachment needs, or different things and reasons that some parts that maybe are not fully developed as adults, but are living adult lives, and that's part of the chaos we see externally when we're struggling because she said every part, like before therapy or rehealing, when coming we're out of that trauma from growing up, every part is desperate for connection or protection.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what to do with that. You know what I love about that? What I love about that is that it's the mirror that's broken. Because how often do we feel in therapy like, I'm so broken. I can't fix this.
Speaker 1:I can't fix this. But that's part of why we can't fix it. It's not us that's broken, it's that mirror that got broken. That is so powerful. Like that it is not us that it's broken, it's that mirror that was broken.
Speaker 1:But because we're looking at the broken mirror, we're seeing parts. Wow. So what she did with that, when we're seeing ourselves as broken, she applied attachment styles to our internal dissociative disorders, which is very structural dissociation, so that makes sense. But she talked about, I just want to read this actually because it's so much, but when we have secure attachment internally, she says, quote, We feel warmly towards ourselves, accepting each as doing the best it can. We forgive ourselves for flaws and mistakes.
Speaker 1:I need some more earned secure attachment with myself. And then she said dismissing attachment with ourselves is quote while not hostile toward our feelings we are disconnected from them and can't acknowledge them. We are out of touch with ourselves. Gave an example of someone who, I would never do this of course because I'm fine, but she gave this example of how she had someone who anytime in therapy that feelings came up, they went straight to analyzing them and thinking about them and looking at them, but not actually experiencing them. Dismissing, like, okay, dismissing.
Speaker 1:All right, so the next one, preoccupied attachment or what some call ambivalent attachment. Quote, we are so, again, again applying it to ourselves internally, not just with others externally. I don't know why I never thought about this. Of course, that's what's happening, but that never clicked before. She says, quote, We are so blended with the intense vulnerability of young parts that we cannot be there for ourselves.
Speaker 1:We need someone else to be, end quote. And so she talked about the frontal cortex is offline at that point, which makes sense. Oh, so that gets into what she talked about later with left brain, right brain even. And then she said disorganized attachment combines those with dismissing and preoccupied, where you're either thinking or not thinking at all really. So she says, quote, we cannot accept ourselves because we are locked in an internal struggle between yearning for acceptance and self rejection.
Speaker 1:So I'm just gonna say that is what she says, the usual trauma response. So yes it's there, I feel that, I want to be accepted but also I am the one rejecting myself. So if that slide was hard enough then she goes to the next slide where I was like curled into a fetal position in my chair because she says this manifests, this self alienation manifests through self loathing, terminal ambivalence, meaning like we get ourselves stuck, we cancel the last minute, self sabotage, we can't make decisions, we won't advocate for ourselves, we won't choose a course of action. And then numb or over intellectualized, overwhelmed, acting out, including addiction and eating disorders and self destruction. Contradictory behavior, no one with DID has contradictory behavior.
Speaker 1:Regressive or aggressive behavior and not owning our behavior or having stewardship over our own behavior. Yeah, was just painful. I don't know what else to say about that. Oh my goodness. So then taking that, the prefrontal cortex online and only thinking or offline and only feeling, she took that back to science with the left brain and the right brain.
Speaker 1:And this was fascinating to me, I think because I've watched the outside kids go through this, which is always like, that is dissociated, right? Like it's one step for myself. So rather than thinking about myself, I can watch them. And she talked about how the right brain develops first, but it does not have words and yet still can understand body language, nonverbal communication, and danger. That it can intuit, like through intuition, like it knows when it's being threatened, but it can't manage if it's a small threat or a big threat, which was a good reminder to me of why, like, when we have flashbacks or intrusive memories or emotional flashbacks or big feelings, those things, like sometimes in now time, when memory time gets blurry, it can be really tricky to tell the difference if I'm in danger or not.
Speaker 1:And that's one of those things where I feel like therapists, clinicians can get frustrated with us if they don't understand all this. They can get frustrated with this. Like, why can't you hold on to that? Like, why isn't now time is safe? NTIS in and of itself doesn't work because I can't measure.
Speaker 1:There's no way to contain that to measure it. And so it talks about how our right brain responds instinctively. But then with language, our left brain starts to develop more and that's when we get verbal and we can rationalize, make plans, and organize, and learn from experience. But that this is where neuroception comes in, and so we start to overthink to minimize the danger we're actually in. What?
Speaker 1:And I think she talked later. Like, well, ultimately what this ends up looking like in a system is if you're going with structural dissociation, which she pointed out was presented by at ISSTD in 1999, which helps me understand because I read those articles that came out and the book that came out, but it felt like I was missing part of the conversation. And now I know what piece I was missing. They presented, like the paper and their theory. And so that makes sense how that happened, but I appreciated getting that other piece.
Speaker 1:Because now I understand where the whole conversation happened and how that came to be a thing, structural dissociation. Anyway, so adding that, what happens is we end up with ANPs, apparently normal personalities, which she calls the part that keeps on keeping on. None of us have those parts either. And EPs or some people, or it stands for emotional parts, some people call them trauma holders, that kind of thing. But she talks about how EPs have implicit memory, meaning the experience, the hypervigilance, the scanning for danger, but it's not explicit because the right brain, that part of the brain does not have words.
Speaker 1:But the left brain, or what becomes ANPs, focuses on what needs to happen next. Right? So ultimately she didn't say this, but when I put the left brain, right brain together with ANPs and EPs, what ends up happening that she did talk about, that ANPs basically are anticipating the danger that might happen. So we're thinking through every step, we're going through like every angle of even like small decisions, right? Because we don't want anyone to get hurt, we don't want us to get hurt, like what are we going to do?
Speaker 1:What if this happens or if this happens or they do this or they, like all the angles because we anticipate, we're making ourselves safe, protect, like I never thought about an A and P as a protector. I can't even say how fast I'm thinking. I never thought about ANP as a protector. We are protecting ourselves by anticipating danger that has not happened yet. And then EPs are feeling the danger that has already happened but feeling it right now because they don't have time and they don't have measurement, which I appreciated someone telling me a decade into this.
Speaker 1:And so like this goes back to why CBT and DBT can be very good tools specifically to practice certain skills when your frontal cortex is online. But why EPs feel like they fail therapy when they're only expected to do CBT or DBT because you don't have access to that part of your brain. Neurologically cannot do it. It has to be experienced. So this is what I mean, that's what therapy is about, right?
Speaker 1:I mean, theoretically, when it's good therapy. So when we come to therapy, like when we're just starting or when we're realizing we need therapy, we're in this space of the A and P feeling like they're functioning fine. So like why do we need therapy? Why do we need to connect with these other parts? Why am I lying that life is hard or that I don't have a grip on things because clearly I'm functioning very well?
Speaker 1:Because dah, dah, dah, dah, here's my list of evidence that my world is fine. And so that like the impostor syndrome, like all those kinds of things happen with that ANP because they only have the frontal cortex and the thinking. But the ENT, despite functioning externally, there's the chaos inside. And the danger is still happening, it feels like, and is being experienced. So ANPs have to learn that or not just learn but like literally experience but they can experience because they're thinking which is only learning.
Speaker 1:So you have to go via learning which is why any of us who first get diagnosed were like, let me read all the books. Let me learn all the things because that's a way to get it in, a way to experience in a way that we can tolerate. But with EPs or those trauma holders, they are only going to heal through experiencing healing all, which is why we can't think our way out of it by ourselves. Well, I don't like this at all. So what does that look like?
Speaker 1:Like ANPs have to learn how to experience and EPs have to learn how to think. That's bizarre. So when we talk about integration, it's not at all about making anybody go away. It's literally about bringing both parts together. And she talked about that in the brain as the corpus callosum.
Speaker 1:And she talked about how that doesn't even develop until after age 12, and development that's that between the brains, right? And that is delayed in development even more by trauma. So, like, no wonder it's hard. Like, we literally don't have the parts of the brain, not just parts of us, but parts of the brain to do that work of bringing both together. The other piece that I actually loved about what she did was her slide about the F words.
Speaker 1:Now I know they're not all F words but it's really fun to say F word. So we're talking about those trauma responses of flight. It messed me up because she has them out of order because we always flight first. So I have to flip them, but it's backwards on the sheet. Flight, fight, freeze, and then she also talked about submit and attach.
Speaker 1:So what I liked about what she did was she explained not just like what each of those are as a trauma response, but what the underlying need is and what their actual goal is, like what they're trying to do, which again helps normalize that instead of just like, why why do I keep doing this? Right? So she said flight is a way of distancing. It helps us by either distancing us from parts inside or from pain outside or from big feelings. It's about what they want to do is to control the distance, whether that's between parts or between people or between thoughts and feelings or memories or from an abuser or whatever it is that's hurting.
Speaker 1:I'm pro flight. Okay. So that's one of our favorites. These might all be our favorites. We'll see.
Speaker 1:So then she talked about fight, which she says protects us with hypervigilance, mistrust, resistance, and self harm and suicidality. I never considered those as part of fight. But she talked about how it is fight whether we're fighting someone externally or we're fighting ourselves or whether we're fighting our own body. Oh, snap. That's all I have to say about that.
Speaker 1:Freeze. Freeze might be our favorite. I don't know. DID, freeze, like, we're definitely a fan of freeze. Obviously, it's a default.
Speaker 1:But one thing I wanna say in the workbook group on the community, we are recently talking about from the workbook chapter four about understanding dissociation. We were talking about the difference between freeze and collapse. So freeze, the way we explain it with the outside kids is that freeze is like a pause button. Collapse is like someone hit the stop button. Like when we get to collapse, that is a medical issue.
Speaker 1:Like your body is shutting down, your organs are shut, like you are preparing to die. Freeze is more like I am frozen, cannot respond, or like a part paused in time or in memory or in sensation, those kinds of things fall with freeze. And then, and freeze, she said, is about fear. Differentiating that just from hypervigilance where you're waiting for something in case it might be. This is no, really, I am afraid right now of everything.
Speaker 1:Right? It's a lot. So then she talked about submit, which I thought was interesting because we also had just talked about this in workbook group. And so submit submit is like waiting for it to be over. So there's this picture I posted in the workbook group where for flight, there's like a lion chasing a little kitty.
Speaker 1:And then for fight, the kitty turns around with claws out to face the lion. And then for freeze, the kitty is like just lays down and is like just there. Right? Like, there he can't get away. It's the whole playing dead thing when the tiger is in the room.
Speaker 1:But with submit, it's almost like if you're using that picture I told them, like just trying to keep things safer and more neutral, it's like the lion is chewing on the kitty's leg and the kitty is just going to wait for that to be over. And so their question was about what is the difference between fawning and submitting, because they both appease responses, both giving the abuser what they want, not because you are intentionally choosing that or wanting that, but I think part of the difference is submitting is letting the abuser do what they do because it's the only way to survive. And fawning is caring for the abuser and making the abuser feel safe and calm so that you can be safe and calm. So it's very similar but it is a little bit different. And the reason I bring that up is because what Janina said was that fawning is actually a hybrid of submit and attach cry.
Speaker 1:That's it. That's it. I'm going to make you feel okay about chewing on my leg. Right. So that is awful.
Speaker 1:She also points out that the underlying issue with submit is shame. That that's where the shame comes in. The self loathing, feeling helpless, feeling hopeless, that was helpful because I would not have put those together on my own. It makes sense, but I think as a person who is dissociating, dissociated, Those are different parts in my head. The part who has to let them do what they're going to do to survive and the part who has feelings about what they did to me.
Speaker 1:This is so hard to sit with. It is so hard to sit with, and it's so hard to hold. And I think for me personally, because there's already a book and people know that in my story podcast, right? For me, part of this shows up in that there was one very oriented towards doing what the mother needed and very oriented towards letting the father do what the father did. Both of them having opposite feelings about the other parent.
Speaker 1:And sometimes I struggle, even without getting into details, sometimes I struggle not just with those conflicts or those parallels, maybe both of that. I struggle with the parallel and I struggle with the conflict not between them, but in perception. Like, don't talk to each other. They're not it's not like I hear a lot of arguing about it. Like, they are both literally waiting for the other parent to rescue them.
Speaker 1:And that's not gonna happen at all. I mean, first of all, both parents are dead, so there's that. But, like, right? So I clearly have a lot of therapy to do there on that. But also, one feels shame with one parent and waiting for that, oh, that's attached cry, oh snap, that feels, I'm gonna throw up.
Speaker 1:Waiting for that other parent to actually come help them and make it stop. And then the other one the same, feeling shame with that parent and waiting for the other one to come help and make it stop. And so that's like just with two, just two parts or alters, whatever word you want. That's like six different layers of the same incident and so to try to see it on paper is very overwhelming. But also I appreciate a good diagram.
Speaker 1:She talks about how it's that part, it's the submit part of a system that gets irritated by positivity. I was surprised she said that specifically. She's like, with a submit part, you cannot be warm and caring. That's actually dangerous to a submit part. They will brace against it.
Speaker 1:This is where they will reject it. And this is the story she told about strings attached. Oh, man. It makes my head hurt. Like, now I'm thinking, oh, this felt good and this felt good and this felt good, but I was worried about that and I was worried about that and I was worried about that.
Speaker 1:And I thought at the time that me, this part of me, whoever I am, I shall never reveal myself. No, just kidding. This part of me was learning to feel kindness but also trying to be healthy and independent and now I'm like, that's like two parts of like this part felt kindness and another part was warning me of it And now I'm like snorkels. Like how do we ever sort all this out? I know I've talked before about how therapy sometimes feels worse before it feels better, but I never thought about being explicit about that piece, maybe because I didn't recognize it yet, I hadn't experienced it yet, and that specifically good therapy can feel dangerous.
Speaker 1:And I think that got worse for me when I lost my previous therapist, or maybe even played a role in that in ways I didn't understand. My previous therapist, part of what was good was she was very good at being warm. So talked about, or Janina talked about that attach or attach cry and how that part is needy. It uses vulnerability desperation to elicit protection. So that goes back to AttachCry, which I think is why what happened with my previous therapist hurt so much, was because I felt like she had made AttachCry be acceptable, but then left us in it rather than tending to it or teaching us to tend to ourselves.
Speaker 1:I don't think intentionally she's a terrible person and did that on purpose, but because of the timing of everything and the pandemic and the conflict of interest and everything happening at once, that's what unfolded. And that was hell. That was awful, which is what led to collapse and literally being like medical intervention because AttachCry even didn't work. So, Janina talked about how with AttachCry, those parts need warmth but don't need respect and don't want respect. Who wanted respect?
Speaker 1:Oh, fight. Protectors want respect, not empathy. I don't even know what to do with that. It was a lot. It was so much.
Speaker 1:That's a really big flip chart. Oh, the other thing is that she talked about how some parts are not experienced as people but as feelings, but they're still parts. What? What? What?
Speaker 1:So examples of this she gave were overwhelming emotions, shame, hopelessness, helplessness, chronic expectation of danger. And one thing I loved about this one was not just hypervigilance, not just terror, not just mistrust, but she also talked about what I have never heard. She said post traumatic paranoia that can look like psychosis or look like delusions even, but are actually memories that they are watching for happening in the present. And that that can count as a part even if it's not a part like a person or with a name. And then she also called out body sensations specifically as hearts.
Speaker 1:Can't oh my is this like IFS? Is that where that comes from or this is just Janina or Siegel? I don't so for example okay. And then also impulses, like motor restlessness, posture, impulses to get out, violence turned against the body, like self harm, and then beliefs like I hate myself, no one cares, I'm not safe here, that those kinds of experiences, everything from emotional to physical, they are experienced as a state, which is what makes it different than feelings. That's why they're parts.
Speaker 1:So not just I feel helpless, but I am helpless in this state. This is where my OSDD and DID friends who are like, I have parts, but I don't have amnesia. This is where the amnesia is. Snap. Because it's not just it's not just implicit.
Speaker 1:It's also the amnesia between parts. The part being, I cannot remember that I also have parts who hold hope. Oh my goodness. I'm just gonna leave that there. She also said parts can be experienced as less of ability to communicate, voices, constriction, regressive behavior, increasing preoccupation with helpers where the only safe or place becomes the office or the hospital or the house or group.
Speaker 1:Alternating dependence and counter dependence unchecked self harm. Oh, she was brutal. I don't even know what to do with her. So alienation of self is like a rupture in any other relationship. So Janina was saying that we need to repair that relationship to self just like we would repair any other relationship.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the huge part of this was because of that disowning of self or alienation from self, which is where we get parts that are vulnerable or ashamed or angry or depressed, we have thoughts like, I don't know myself, but I do know I don't like myself. But she said that in order to feel safe in relationship to others, we need internal compassion for ourselves. And she gave the example of people who say, I hate my part, I don't want to know my part. And she's like, but you know that's not actually true because you're not a person who hates. You're not a hater.
Speaker 1:And so she gave examples of how part of learning to accept ourselves really comes down to acknowledging that we are also people. And that's hard with trauma. She didn't say this, but putting those pieces together, that's hard with trauma was because we were not treated like people. We were treated like objects. Finishing off this last part that was really just like before the break of her presentation, right?
Speaker 1:Like we can't even I don't even know what to do about the second half and her model specific. But the last thing that she really closed with was this concept of self and how being curious and being compassionate and courageous or calm or connected, all of these C words stimulate our prefrontal cortex, which decreases amygdala activity, which is how we start to feel safer with ourselves. And then she had this quote from IFS that said, There is always a higher self untouched by trauma and capable of becoming a witness and self healer. Which is interesting. That for me felt like a contrast to the emerging self concept.
Speaker 1:Who is that? Mosquera? I think it's Dolores Mosquera who talks about the emerging self. And in that concept, the emerging self is not yet and is in process. So maybe they're saying the same thing, but it seemed like Janina's quote was about how that self is already there and already has capacity.
Speaker 1:Whereas with mascaras, it's more of an unfolding that is in process and being developed. That's what I feel like is a really big important part of lived experience in that otherwise, the parts that are touched by trauma remain disenfranchised. And that happens in a model where you don't have to process trauma, which I think comes back to sort of the weak point of this model. And later in the second half when she talked about her model, even when she got to integration and whatever that looks like for a specific person, like she was good in being flexible about her model of integration, but she quoted Siegel and talked about how integration requires differentiation and linkage, that we can't integrate what we can't see. And I feel like that's what she's saying there though with that other quote.
Speaker 1:Like your higher self that's not touched by trauma is the part of you that's good or attainable or more valuable or powerful or present or something. And that does not feel good or consistent by lived experience anyway. And so she talks about why it's so important to teach parts language so that you can acknowledge all parts, which is why there's some dissonance there or incongruence or something. But then she read this question from Hofstadter that said, The question trauma survivors don't know to ask is Which one of the many people of who I am, the many inner voices inside me, will dominate today? Who or how will I be?
Speaker 1:Which part of me will decide? This made me really uncomfortable. It felt exclusive. It felt oppressive. I feel like we are in a place of where for our system, for my system, I feel like we're kind of even just pausing the word integration and focusing on inclusion.
Speaker 1:And I know that doesn't fit exactly, but I've got all these kids with IEPs, right, and accommodations and all that. So that's like, I can work with that at least. It's a model, a framework, a something, a concept I can work with. And so it's more about if I can hold space to acknowledge that there are these parts of me and that I can't really change that and I can't change the past, how can I accommodate all of these parts of me so that my whole being as one emerging self is like capital S self is included in my life in good and healthy ways? So I would change this question to be more something like that, instead of which one of these is going to dominate to me.
Speaker 1:Like, that feels really male. It feels really patriarchal somehow. I don't know. It just feels icky. Like, who gets to be the better one?
Speaker 1:That's when you get those power struggles. And so asking that question, it all seems like a really bad idea to me. I would change that question to be something like, how can I include all parts who want to contribute today to this? And that contribution I mean, I can still I can still utilize all of her good stuff from parts work that she was talking about, very ego state kind of way, and think about some parts might contribute by not participating or by warning me against participating or by I need to be creative and how to let them participate. Like it can look like a lot of different things but that contribution is valid and how to incorporate and include like I want That being said, the good thing she has in her model is this intentionally dissociating so that you can learn how to intentionally associate and compared that to healthy dependence leading to healthy independence.
Speaker 1:I think that was perfect. And then she closed with how that moves us from alienation to attachment. So really, she never said that, but what it felt to me was just those restorative experiences, how that can happen through therapy or visualization, calm places, experiencing it, but it's always responsive, which she did not say explicitly, but I think is what heals. I mean, it has to have entombment. Has to be an other.
Speaker 1:Was so much. It was so much. That was intense. 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 1:Connection brings healing.