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We visit with Jillian Hosey, a therapist in Toronto. We explore presence in therapy, ruptures and repair, and the importance of our own work in caring for our clients. This is a two-part conversation.
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. If you would like to support our efforts at sharing our story, fighting stigma about dissociative identity disorder, and educating the community and the world about trauma, please go to our website at www.systemspeak.org, and there is a button for donations where you can offer a one time donation to support the podcast or become an ongoing subscriber. We so appreciate the support, the positive feedback, and you sharing our podcast with others. We are all learning together. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Jillian Hosie is a clinical social worker and trauma therapist in a collaborative private practice in Toronto, Canada, providing trauma therapy to children, youth, and adults who are struggling with experiences of trauma, PTSD, and complex PTSD, attachment and developmental trauma, and dissociative disorders. She is an integrative EMDR therapist incorporating various treatment modalities into eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, including sensorimotor psychotherapy, havening, deep brain reorienting, polyvagal theory, and various theories of dissociation and parts work and ego state modalities. Jillian is a certified EMDR therapist and EMDRIA approved consultant and places value on the mind body connection and holistic approach to healing, tailoring therapeutic work to the client and their unique needs and experiences. In addition to her clinical work, Jillian is a facilitator with the Aggie Institute, Anna Gomez Attachment Trauma Education Institute, and faculty with the professional training program with the ISSTD, International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. She has presented on integrating the Safe and Sound protocol into EMDR therapy at the Child and Adolescent Complex Trauma Conference in 2019 and the SSP gathering with Doctor.
Speaker 2:Steven Portage in 2019. She is a founding partner of the Healing Therapy Alliance and Psychosomatic Trauma Initiative in Toronto, which are collectives of integrative psychotherapists, wellness therapists, and addiction counselors that provide a collaborative team based approach to healing and is grounded in neuroscience and trauma specific evidence informed practices. Welcome, our friend Jill.
Speaker 3:Hello. Can you hear me? I can. Can you hear me? Yay.
Speaker 3:We finally connected.
Speaker 4:I know. I wanted to check-in with you around, you know, what would be the most helpful for your for for listeners to get
Speaker 3:out of this? I really think what is most helpful for listeners to get out of this now you're interviewing me. I think that what I'm excited about to talk to you is not just sort of the work that you do, but also specifically what I love about you personally and professionally is your level of authenticity. And I think just you being on will be healing to people to who listen. And it is like sometimes the podcast is like like monkey bars.
Speaker 3:Like, people are just holding on from one hope to the next, and you are a significant piece of that process.
Speaker 4:Okay. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. I can do that. I can do that.
Speaker 4:I can just show up.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I appreciate it. It's really very kind of you. You are doing a good thing, and there's nothing that I I don't have any kind of agenda at all, and I don't think there's anything that you could misspeak or not be qualified to share. Thank you
Speaker 4:for letting me know. So I will just let things unfold, and that works for me. And I feel really honored and really privileged to be invited, so
Speaker 3:thank you. Thank you. Oh my goodness, that's so kind, because I always feel like an impostor, like all the time, trying to help. I'm like, hi, ISSTD. You said to show up, so here I am.
Speaker 3:But Yeah. Yeah. Know what. I don't know what's going on. So what I just need the only thing I need from you to get started once you're settled and ready and feel comfortable is to go ahead and introduce yourself however you want to, just enough that listeners can sort of orient to the sound of your voice.
Speaker 3:Okay. And then we'll kind of just see what happens. I really honestly, I don't know either, but it always just kinda works out to exactly how it needs to. It's kind of been a meditation in a way, I guess.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's so awesome. Okay. I'm just gonna trust the process and just go with the flow. Okay. Thank you.
Speaker 4:So my name is Jill Hosey, and I'm a social worker in private practice in Ontario, Canada, located in Toronto. I work with persons across the lifespan, I would say about as young as three, who have experienced trauma in their lifetime. I come to this work with different trainings and and modalities. And as much as I, you know, continue to train and continue to grow and learn, I see myself as an an ongoing learner and student of humanity. I also recognize the importance, and it's not just about what we do in terms of therapeutic modality or orientation, but how we show up as human beings and create a container of safety, creating a therapeutic relationship so we can explore together, so we can engage in a healing journey together, so I can walk alongside my clients in their very unique healing journeys.
Speaker 3:How did you first learn about trauma and dissociation? That's always the first question. Just how did you get to this place on your journey? I was I was actually quite and I was quite late in my own journey in terms of discovering, you know, what do
Speaker 4:I wanna do? And so I had done a bit of traveling and had decided at some point in time that I wanted to become a police officer. And so I went back to school and I went into a into a program, and I'll never forget the day I was sitting there and I was in, I believe, traffic, you know, legislation around traffic and ticketing.
Speaker 3:And I'll never forget sitting there and thinking in my head, I really don't wanna give people speeding tickets. I would rather rather sit down with them and become curious around what happened that they were speeding today. I wonder what's going on for them. And it was that moment that I realized that I was in the wrong place for my own growth. And in that moment, I realized I, quote, unquote, wanted to be a helper.
Speaker 3:And that for me has actually evolved because I've also come to realize the concept of helping and what that means for me, what that means for others, but that my journey needed to take a I needed to take
Speaker 4:a different direction. And so I had completed that program. And then I started to wonder, okay, where do I go next? And I went back to school into a psychology program, felt it wasn't a fit. Found myself in a sociology program, felt that wasn't a fit either.
Speaker 4:And a professor had become curious around social work, and it was a fit. And so I went into a bachelor's of social work in a critical social work program and went on to do my master's degree in that same program. And when I entered the program, I went into this program thinking I am gonna help. I'm gonna make a difference. And that was my guiding force until I was sitting in a class one day, and the professor said something that made me pause and made me start to think, what does that mean and who is that about?
Speaker 4:Who is my helping about? Is it about me and wanting to help because that's gonna make me feel better, and what's that about? Or is this because I wanna meet people where they're at in their own journey? And so I that was the pivot for me in terms of recognizing, okay. A, I have a lot of my own work that I need to do.
Speaker 4:I have a lot of my own exploration that needs to occur as I'm on my own journey of figuring out who I wanna be in the world and as well as realizing that I also don't get to decide what, quote, unquote, help looks like. And for me, that started an ongoing lifelong journey of trying to unlearn what I know and trying to figure out how to show up in a way where I develop comfort and certainty in all that I don't know and all that is uncertain. And that is something I've carried along with me in my journey of trying to show up in a way that works for others and is not about me. I think it's one of
Speaker 3:the first things that drew me to you actually is I mean, I know we're in the middle of pandemic, we live in different places. I don't mean, like, we don't hang out all the time. But I'd love to. I I right. I got to know you actually first through the podcast is where I, quote, met you just online a little bit because you were an early supporter of the podcast, which meant so much to me because as we started coming out about the podcast, that was such a terrifying experience.
Speaker 3:And so you were one of the first safe people. And I don't know if you even know this. You were one of the first safe people that just reassured me that us just being here in this space was even okay. And then as we started participating more in ISSTD, we got to know your work and your thoughts a little bit more and interacted just a little bit that way. And then taking, we were in the EMDR class.
Speaker 3:And so getting to know you, one of the things that I so appreciate about who you are is exactly what you just shared, is that presence that you offer of holding space even across the Internet through the pandemic. And it is such a safe experience, there are so many of us who have never even had that. And and it's significant enough that I felt it, even in this context where, I mean, you're not my therapist, we don't get to live in the same place, there's the pandemic, work with the ISSTD often is just like even emails or meetings, It's not even like hang out and chat time. And so it's just it's it's something that is so meaningful and so significant that I appreciate how you have been able to just hold presence and sort of somehow open up that space to let me hold presence too. For example, just using as an example.
Speaker 3:And that's so meaningful in a way that I don't know that survivors often get that experience or are even aware of that experience, much less having it outside of therapy. And so I appreciate that about you. How did you get from sort of coming through that journey and getting into ISSTD or working with survivors? How did that piece of things, like it seems so naturally through the work that you've
Speaker 4:done, you've done so much work, but how did that unfold for you to connect from that piece to survivors? I I wanna say first, thank you for sharing that with me. I had no idea, and I feel extremely honored I've been able to do that. So thank you for sharing that with me. It's well, my journey has been all about learning about myself and formal learning in a learning context, in classes, in clinical trainings, at school as I continue to grow and learn in more formal ways.
Speaker 4:I have been given an incredible opportunity in my practicum at the end of my bachelor's degree to work with a local victim services agency. Was crisis work where I got to work with survivors in the moment of experience. It was an incredible opportunity for me and I learned so much. It supported me to keep moving forward in my journey. So I continued trucking along and and not really knowing where I was going or where I was gonna end up and what kind of work I wanted to do.
Speaker 4:And I landed working, it took some navigating and and figuring out where I wanted to be. And I started working in an agency that provided services for persons who had experienced domestic violence. Was the start of really starting to work with survivors. I had been given the phenomenal opportunity again to work with such incredible clinicians and mentors to continue learning. I had begun working with adults, I'll never forget there was this moment of realization where I thought, I'm missing something.
Speaker 4:I'm missing something in my work. I'm I'm working with adults and and I so value and appreciate this work. And I realize for whatever reason in that moment, adults were once children who may have had these incredibly adverse experiences, whether they're experiences traumatic experiences of commission, where things have happened to them or traumatic experiences around omission, things that needed to happen but didn't get to happen. I began a journey to starting to learn to work with kids and youth. I was afforded wonderful opportunities to work with different mentors and different teachers.
Speaker 4:It wasn't until my EMDR training that things shifted for me. I walked into my EMDR training and there's very much a practical component that's a part of it. You come into the training and you're asked to bring your own material. In my training, I was asked to bring material that was, let's say for example, a four out of 10 distressing and something that occurred prior to the age of 10. I froze.
Speaker 4:I froze and I realized I don't have many memories from prior to the age of 10. It took some navigating and maneuvering to get through that training, which was very, very difficult, but that started me on my own personal journey and becoming curious around why don't I remember? I started working with an EMDR therapist who understood different ways of using EMDR therapy and adapting the protocol to work where there may not be access to memories. Before we even go near memories, what needs to happen to build safety and security within the room to even approach those things that I may not have access to. The things that as I move forward in my journey, I realized they lived in my body as much as my mind didn't know, my body did.
Speaker 4:And that started my healing journey. And as well as what I so in my own training, what I oftentimes do is I will train in a modality and before I integrate it into my practice, I will actually work with a therapist with my own stuff to understand what it feels like and what it means. It's unique to my own experience, and it can't be translated to anyone else because each human being's experience the ways our mind and body protects us is different for everyone. But I have found that in doing my own work with whatever modality I'm learning, it supports me in being able to show up for my clients. And that I mean, my learning journey is ongoing, and I feel like I'm going to be forever a student.
Speaker 4:I am a student with my clients where that my clients help me to understand their experience. I can come into the room with certain modalities and and, you know, ideas around change and shift. But again, that's what I think. And and and I don't know that that matters as much as being able to come into a room and understand, I mean, a virtual meeting space now, of course, what's going on for my client? What fits?
Speaker 4:What's their language? And I ground it back in what was my language, and what did I need to be honored so that I was able to do my own work? I found that my own work continues to humble me in my clinical work.
Speaker 3:This feels so sacred, the space in that, because the work that you've done on yourself, in yourself, with yourself is so evident just from this far away perspective. And you can feel the safety of that and how it opens up. And I think that I am I'm feeling several different things. I think that you're saying something that is so significant for therapists and for survivors who are looking for therapists. There is something about being able to just share a space that is so healing besides anything that needs quote fixing.
Speaker 3:Right? So like, I think of course, of course there are things I need to work on in therapy and of course there are things that I need to do and that we need to do together.
Speaker 1:There
Speaker 3:There's so much doing and fixing and healing. And like, that's why I'm going to therapy because I'm a person who wants to get better, who wants to be well, who wants to be fully present with all of myself. Like, whatever that means to me, that's why I'm there, right? That's why I'm showing up in therapy. That's why I'm doing the work just to get myself to therapy.
Speaker 3:But at the same time, and regardless of techniques or specialties or certifications or not, I think that more than anything, I need that space or with my own clients want to offer that space. And when I don't I don't think I don't know. I know those other things are important, I don't see at least for me, especially because I've had some therapy drama over the last year, I I don't think that I can get to that place of being able to do that work without having that space. Does that make sense? Like that space is such a prerequisite.
Speaker 3:And I think that's the problem that happens with the techniques and certifications and things. They are wonderful tools that do so much good, but we have to have that space first.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah. Oh, I so agree. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this idea of fixing and change and what does that mean. I remember my own experiences showing up in EMDR therapy, for example. Okay, so I'm going to reprocess those memories, but I'm reprocessing these memories in a space with another human being.
Speaker 4:My experiences, my adverse experiences, my own traumatic experiences have occurred with other human beings. And so there is something happening in the room. I can't go near that content because the very idea of being in a room with another human being is triggering. Yes. So how do we then create a container?
Speaker 4:I think of Doctor. Steven Porges in this safe container whereby we can focus on their therapeutic work. Is it fixing? I don't know. I think that all the ways in which our mind and body has stepped in to protect us are gifts of survival.
Speaker 4:Do they need to be fixed or can we learn how to use them in a way that works in the present? Use them when they're needed and draw on other things when they're not. And I continue to be challenged by this idea of strategy, modality, technique. Can we even use a strategy or a modality or a technique if the very idea of being in a space in relationship to other has been the source of trauma? Then I sit and I think, as therapists, the times where I've thought, this isn't working or I'm not doing something right.
Speaker 4:Is it that it's not working or is it that the space, this container isn't safe enough yet that I am a trigger. Not because I'm intentionally doing something wrong, not because there's anything wrong with my client, because my client has been hurt and harmed in relationship. So this complexity around there is hurt and harm and trauma within relationship, but then it's relationship that heals. So how do we work in that in between space to create safety? I think that's everything.
Speaker 4:I think it's everything. In fact, you you've
Speaker 3:been so vulnerable. I can I can share this? I talked about it a little bit already, and I know you know because you were there. But I tried to do the ISSTD EMDR class, And everyone was so respectful of me trying to do it. And I worked so hard to be prepared.
Speaker 3:And I thought, okay, I can do this because of these reasons. I think that I'm ready to do this. I need it because it will be helpful to these particular people, and I really wanna help them in this particular way. And so I tried so hard to do this, and I read everything and the same thing in a different way, but you know you need to come with this experience. So think ahead of time within this context what you could use safely, but then also saying oh yes, by the way, I have DID and I'm a survivor in case you didn't know.
Speaker 3:And so having to work out all those things and I thought I had really safe threads that in that very careful context would be okay. And I was so prepared in those ways and I feel like I did a good job of that part. I'm really proud of myself. That was what they worked for me. Then as soon as I was in that space with another person and they were learning like other students, right?
Speaker 3:They were learning why I was learning. We were all being vulnerable together. No one did anything wrong, and we were all being safe for each other. And I was trying to follow the protocols or whatever and doing all these things. But just to be that close in a space with another person, it was too much.
Speaker 3:I couldn't do
Speaker 4:it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I had to step back and then give myself permission to say, okay, so now what I've done is confirm the whole relational trauma theory and just offering myself the grace in this space to say that I can't. And clearly, not only do I have my own trauma from growing up or whatever, but I specifically have this therapy trauma and this being in a space with another. And that's what helped me realize, like, I have gotten through the last year of quarantine and the pandemic in 2020 and all of that with all my therapy drama of having to leave my therapist, and and now my therapist I got after that has died of COVID. And so, like Oh my goodness. All of this therapy drama, I have contained it in the quarantine experience.
Speaker 3:And so as we start to leave quarantine and we're getting vaccinated and things start to open up in small, small, tiny ways, and I don't know what that will look like in the future or by the time this airs, but my anxiety is I'm okay where I am. I don't know how to go back to people. I've worked really hard learning how to zoom and connect fast this way or to talk with this way. But now that I'm aware of relational trauma and the depths of it, it just stirs up so much and it's so difficult. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, I sit and I listen and I reflect and I
Speaker 4:think what a learning in that moment. So it's and I'm trying to find the right words for this, and I don't know that I can't because it's your experience and not mine. But this idea where that's the that's information in the next layer of healing, that moment of realization that, okay. This is not the right time or the right fit. What does that mean?
Speaker 4:I've just learned something new about all of me, and that's the next layer. And I don't know if that's coming across in the way that I intended to, but that it's all important information. It's all part of the journey. It's all part of healing.
Speaker 3:I think that it was huge information. I think you're absolutely right because what happened was I have spent years, years and years, decades, decades afraid of the content of my past. And this has happened and realizing that even though the content is difficult and the content is hard, like not to minimize that at all or dismiss or associate from the severity of that. I get that that's a problem and that needs to be addressed in therapy. Absolutely.
Speaker 3:But the thing that's actually in my way of getting that work done or getting that help done is not the content. It's the relationship and that relational trauma piece. Hearing, like, Simone last year present about relational trauma and how that's worse neurobiologically and neurologically on the brain even than untanked kinds of abuse. Right? It freed so much.
Speaker 3:And I was what I did do while I was searching for therapists was go back through all my therapy notebooks and all my journaling and all of that and wrote the book. Like, that's how our book came out because Oh, wow. Okay. So here's the content. If we're no longer afraid of the content, like it's difficult.
Speaker 3:I'm not minimizing at all that it's difficult content, but it's not the piece I'm afraid of. And that empowered me to be able to look at it. So now I have this outline of, okay, so we don't put the worst things in the book and we still have these boundaries for the book, but I can say things in my own words because I am not afraid of the content anymore in the same way. And so here's a list of triggers that we can actually resolve because we're not afraid of content. And I can say the content is hard or the traumas are difficult, but what is the place where the wounds are is in relationship.
Speaker 3:And so here's an outline. Here's a container. So then my story went to the container of the book. Right? And but it's something I can hold.
Speaker 3:It's outside myself. And so sharing that or choosing where it goes or to what degree we share that or not or all the pieces that are not in it, of course, but that that's going to be with a person, that it's the process of connection and the being with and someone being with us, I think, is everything. The presence, not the content. Absolutely. And I I feel like it's so
Speaker 4:important that within therapeutic space that we make as therapists this space for everything to be seen, known, heard, felt within the context of the relationship, and not just about the content, how terrifying it is, and that as therapists, I feel that I have a responsibility to have open ears, an open presence, that all of me has to reflect back in my words, my actions, my my body language, my facial expressions, which I get wrong and mess up on, but that it conveys that no matter what shows up, even if it's about me and me not getting it and me not showing up in the way that's needed, that there is space for that. That with all of the things that needed to happen within the context of forming secure attachment, that there's a rebuilding or re scaffolding, and the client is the expert in their own experience. How we do and don't show up as therapists is so important. It doesn't matter how many trainings we go to, how many certifications we have, how many modalities. I talk about trying to look at myself from the inside out when I'm in the room.
Speaker 4:What's my face showing right now? What's my body showing? Does it match? I don't know how this is being internalized. Can I make space for that to come into the room, to be seen and known and heard without any judgment, without any criticism, acknowledging the ways in which transference encountered transference shows up in the room to honor it?
Speaker 4:I really you know, as I sit here and I talk about this, I'm thinking about my own mentoring with Ana Gomez and how much she's taught me about this and how it's helped me in my own journey of discovering me. Because if if I can understand that, then maybe I can offer some of me and offer repair, corrective experiences, relearning, and also make space for my clients to say, no, I don't want that right now, and for that to be okay too.
Speaker 2:You can hear this conversation continue in the next episode. Thank you. Thank you for joining us for System Speak, a podcast about dissociative identity disorder. This podcast is available on any podcast player and on systemspeak.org. If you would like to know more of our story, our memoir, If Tears Were Prayers, is now available at systemspeakbooks.com.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening.