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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 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:Before sharing this episode, I want to clarify something. There's a moment in this conversation where we reference gender and sexuality. It's brief and not the point of this conversation, but it is a piece included. I wanna be clear that when I talk about being okay in myself as I am, that I've worked hard for that, and that I am in no way questioning others who still struggle in those ways. I also want to be clear that as our guest today talks about gender fluid things such as there being lots of genders in lots of us and not just from self states or alters or parts.
Speaker 3:But that I already have an understanding that some could call non binary, but that what, for me, has developed philosophically, because in my development, which I will share more about in another episode, that's how I learned words for it and understanding for it. In my training with a union, We have, as part of that philosophy and that perspective, the understanding of anima and animus, the masculine and feminine in all of us. And so for me, that's already a given. And I did not go into that in this particular discussion because this discussion was not my story. But as I listened to it after we recorded and I reflected back on that, And because to be transparent, I have some anxiety after what happened with seasons last year, I just want to be clear and explicitly say that I absolutely understand respect that, and I have my own experience of that in my own way and in my own language.
Speaker 3:Also, for this podcast, we have listeners all over the world, And I want to be sure that all of us are being very sensitive to all kinds of people. And in this particular example, that includes being a safe place for the LGBTIA community. And in reference to part of what is shared in this episode, that includes respecting that a trans man is a man and that a trans woman is a woman. And that respecting others and understanding others includes far more than just using the correct pronouns. Because anyone could use even correct pronouns and not internalize what that person is expressing or presenting or sharing about who they experience themselves to be, about parts of their lives and experience that they're sharing with you.
Speaker 3:And that only comes through listening and connecting safely. So as much as I want this to be a safe place, I am aware that even my own learning, my own work through these things into these things is evolving just like any other area of my healing and yours. And so I do appreciate your listening to this conversation with patience and respect for all of us, including yourselves. Welcome to our guest, Lev. Hello.
Speaker 3:Hi. I'm so excited to see you.
Speaker 1:Me too. I'm really excited to see you. The only thing I wanted to to know is, I don't know, I just there, you know, there was some this, like, I I talk about this because goats Mhmm. Goats do this and it's natural. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:They come at each other forehead to forehead. You know? Mhmm. And it's it's the way of but I was surprised that there was any of that in the community. I was like, you know, when I was at Shepherd Pratt, I I asked several times, is there any kind of a group that we can be in once we leave here where I can continue these relationships with people who are dedicated to our healing?
Speaker 1:And the staff really discouraged it. They said, it's really a bad idea. And my therapist is not necessarily in support of the idea of us, of multiples. I mean, just for the the fact that we can not only, dysregulate and destabilize, but also because, in her experience, we can lose a sense of who who am I and who are you with one another, which made sense. And I was always of the mindset that is if we have a therapist present that that helps.
Speaker 1:And and then discovering this community. It seemed to me that what's unique here is we have some ground rules. We have some loose sense of everybody's got their own therapist. And it seems like if each of us is responsible for staying in our own lane, it can really be healing in a way that doesn't exist anywhere. I think that's
Speaker 3:what's agree. I think that's what's different, and I think that's what's unique, and I think that's what's possible. The challenge comes in when there are people who want to come only socially or to avoid their therapy.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh, oh, that makes sense.
Speaker 3:And then they increase dissociation and distract instead of practice, which is what the goal was. Yes. And actually, originally, all of the groups were actually intended to be very structured. Like Mandala Monday, we were going to actually teach art. Like we all thought like different parts of us could do different things.
Speaker 3:We all had ideas for different things, but it's not what people wanted. And so we just learned to be flexible and let go, which actually helped us with parenting, but has created a very different community than what we originally imagined.
Speaker 1:Emma, the other thing that seems so obvious to me is that if we're all fans of the pod, which we must all be, I can imagine we must all wanna be your friend and want your attention. And that seems like that would be very difficult to be you. I have no I mean, I've been in therapy so long, and I feel like I'm getting the hang of it enough that I can say this, and I feel com I feel comfortable saying it. I hope it's comfortable for you. That I said to my therapist, you know, like, every week I check-in with, like, okay.
Speaker 1:Here's how I'm doing with the system speak and getting to know Emma. And my therapist will say, just remember, you don't know all of Emma. There's a lot more to Emma than you know. Yeah. And it's really helpful because the Emma I know, you know, is growing in my knowing you.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And we don't we don't know each other in a lot of ways and and just leaving room for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that's the other strength about those of us who have been able to meet up in person or trying when we're ready. And I know you and I kept passing each other, but but those kinds of things to make it real. So it's not just a social media thing.
Speaker 1:Or also, the other thing it it can feel like sometimes to me is a long distance. It can have a vibe of kind of a long distance. I don't mean that in a negative way. I just mean, you know, new relationship energy, it can stay in a level of which it's like, oh, this friendship is so easy. Well, no.
Speaker 1:It's just one distance. You know what I mean? We only get to see each other in the good parts
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:In some ways. So, anyway, great. And I'm not coming person, which I'm very disappointed about. I can't go either. Oh, I I I came to it because of Florida.
Speaker 1:I'm not ready to go to Florida yet and not the whole, like, COVID thing. I haven't had COVID. I really am I have the privilege to avoid people, and I'm gonna just keep avoiding people that are unmasked.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I can't go for that and for finances. For for
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 3:For primarily finances, also Okay. Similar to what you were asking about earlier about people's perceptions, and it was just really unsafe for me last year. There was a lot of people saying that they knew me that didn't actually know me, a lot of people that were gossiping, not even bad gossip, just saying things that were not actually real. And so there were just it was so dramatic for me, even though I wasn't involved in any of that, that it just it did not feel safe. So this year, I mean, I I absolutely support the goodness of it, but this year we did not sponsor.
Speaker 3:We're not going. I don't know if we'll watch virtually or not. I have a couple of friends who are presenting, so we might watch virtually. But again, just to be careful with so many different people and their systems and their parts of that, like, it's just so exponential that it gets tricksy really Oh, yes.
Speaker 1:I mean, even that sort of thing can happen is in therapeutic communities anyway, and I've had a lot of experience with the different things and just so many dual roles situations. So let me just say that. I can I can empathize?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Alright. And it's hard because that was that was a really safe place for me, I thought, and a place where I had felt very safe before. And so it was really sad that that got tainted for me a little bit.
Speaker 3:And I think I had a similar experience with some of the drama that happened in the community over the last year. The people that I left that the people that left because of seasons were people that I looked up to and I thought would be the most helpful in my own coming out journey. And so to be wounded by them and not be a fresh trauma was it felt like what happened with my previous therapist, like a betrayal kind of trauma, even though cognitively, I absolutely understand they were trying to keep themselves safe. And I totally support that. At the same time, caring for their hearts and knowing that they're doing their best and trying to find ways to give that freedom.
Speaker 3:And then things like the Littles group, for example, like the same thing, I think that it's so well intentioned. But I think for me, what I was seeing was it crossed the line, like what your therapist was talking about, where people were so identifying with that, that it was not safe or healthy. And so I cut it off.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad. I I didn't wanna I didn't wanna become a facilitator. You know, I didn't wanna cross into, like, having my, you know, work part come out to to to or if you're not doing using as my hands to say, like, to put structure around that space because it's it was I mean, it's not job. But I when I went, at one point, I found I had fallen asleep, and I misunderstood. I thought that I was feeling safe.
Speaker 1:And then I realized, oh, I was actually making myself leave because I wasn't safe, and it wasn't wise. Mhmm. I didn't even bother telling you because I just felt like, you know what? Some of this is trial and error and look at us look at us trying things and discovering as we go.
Speaker 3:Well, and that was my initial concern why I didn't do it from the beginning. And everyone not everyone, but you know what I mean. They're like, oh, no. No. No.
Speaker 3:We really wanna try. I'm like, well, if you feel like that would be a safe way for you to express yourself and that would then make this other group safer, we can try that. But it wasn't. Right. It
Speaker 1:was No.
Speaker 3:It just made people more comfortable. So I cut that off.
Speaker 1:I just concur. I just never told you that, yeah, that happened.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's a hard thing. And I think but I think that's one of the things we've learned in the community is how to speak our truth to each other. Yes. Because initially when things would go wrong, people would not tell me.
Speaker 3:And so if I didn't see it, I literally didn't know. But I don't wanna be complicit to that. But I also if everyone wants a group on this day or a group on like, I cannot be at all the groups all the time. And so if I don't know that there's something that we need to work out as a community, not even like someone's in trouble, just as a group that we need to work through, I I can't help if I don't know about it. And so people learning to speak up has made it safer.
Speaker 3:Me learning to ask more directly has helped make it safer. So I think we're all learning together. And then at least for us, we're seeing the evidence of that in real life, as they say, in my other relationships, being able to confront things more directly.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:I didn't know we were gonna start with all this.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you for just clearing that. For me, it just clears some air.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Is there anything else you have questions about or wanted to comment on?
Speaker 1:No. No. That's no. It's great to see you.
Speaker 3:So since we're talking about the community anyway, when we started the community, when I track how people signed up, whether it was because of the podcast or someone referred them or something like that, we got almost a third of the listeners signing up for the community. That was very exciting except that only like 1% of those people ever actually joined groups. And so in some ways, it's been tricky because if they signed up for the community but didn't enter groups, then after so many months, I have to remove them just for the safety of the groups. And so it's kind of sad because I know there's some people that have gotten lost in the shuffle that maybe were just moving slowly or wanted to check things out or have the courage, but just for safety, if they're not participating or not in the groups, then I have to pull them out. And so it's been interesting to watch that, that those who have been in groups may recognize your voice or know you a little bit from the community or from emails, but how do you want to introduce yourselves today?
Speaker 1:My name is Lev, and I use theythem pronouns. This is my nonbinary Hebrew name. I love it so much.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry. That's not a normal response, but it makes me so happy.
Speaker 1:You know, I I'll I'll just mention. I grew up with the Hebrew name Miriam, which is a very common Hebrew name to get as a kid, especially if your everyday name starts with an m. And when I started to come out as nonbinary, which happened because the transgender community has developed in into one that recognizes there's more than two genders, I started to realize that Miriam is about as femme as it gets and, like, no shade. Like, I would have been probably Moshe if I had been a boy, and that's about as mask as it gets. And so I actually talked to a bunch of people, including rabbis, about what would it be like to get a Hebrew name that sounded like it could be more than one gender.
Speaker 1:And, actually, it was a really neat process. So I haven't removed Miriam from my name. I've just added Lev. And in fact, on my podcast, there is a conversation with a rabbi who helped me to learn that at any point in your life, you can add a Hebrew name when you've gone through a transition. It's actually traditional.
Speaker 1:For example, if you've gone through a health crisis, to add a Hebrew name that says, I lived.
Speaker 3:That's amazing. I I was not born Jewish, but I have a heart for Israel. I have lived there so much, and I've started I started a master of Jewish studies. When my parents died, both times, I went to Galilee to throw stones in the lake and which can be a Jewish thing, but I have lived there. I have friends there.
Speaker 3:If I could support my family there, that's where I would be. I love I am a Galilee girl. I I just there's so much about the culture and the ancientness, and the story of your name is one of my favorites. And it's really been powerful to me, especially as we've reclaimed those parts of us over the last year. And I know that's what we're gonna focus on today, but while we're talking about it, it's a big deal to me.
Speaker 3:I'm trying not to cry right now. Just talking with the husband and then therapy about sexuality. I I have not ever struggled with my gender in that way, and I don't mean to confine confine myself to something in that way, but I like my parts. I like my lady bits. I like all of everything, and I like other lady bits.
Speaker 3:Like that like that has just been who I am, but I am not like a girly girl. I don't speak girl. Like the thing when girls say one thing, but they're really meaning something else or, like, all that subtle like, I can't do that. Deaf culture is very, very blunt. And so with the husband, and until the last year when we've looked at things differently and opened that up, I almost never wear makeup.
Speaker 3:I try to brush my hair every day. Like, just depending on that whole spectrum of how fem are you not. And in fact, one of my core gay traumas is, or queer. I'm working really hard to reclaim queer. When I was in the community as a college student, I actually came out to my family.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I've ever said this on the podcast. I actually came out to my family when I was 19, and it was in the middle of all that college drama, which did not help. My family was not happy about it. It did not go well. It was really traumatic.
Speaker 3:I lost my housing. I can't even get into that. It was very difficult. And ultimately, my partner died by suicide, which is in the memoir book. And so there was a lot of trauma there.
Speaker 3:But on this whole thing about exploring gender, like, I've looked at it and I've thought about it, but I think I'm pretty just okay with where I am, which feels good because I think it's the only place where I just like, I'm good right now.
Speaker 1:I think I'm okay
Speaker 3:with it. So that's super fun. But it's one of my core like queer traumas because my first date I ever went on in college with a girl, she pulled me aside in the bathroom where I'm like, oh, what's about to happen? I don't know what's about to happen. Right?
Speaker 3:But she got really close to me and I thought, oh my goodness. In my head, this is funny. This is way too much information. In my head, I thought if she's gonna kiss me, that's gonna be really exciting, but we're in the bathroom and it's not cool like on TV. Like, I'm really grossed out right now.
Speaker 3:I kinda went out of the bathroom. But she got really close to me and she was like, how does she say it? I tried to share it before and I can't get the line right, But I've never forgotten it, but I don't wanna mess it up. She said, you are too fem to be butch, but you're too ugly to be fem. So what are you?
Speaker 3:And I have never forgotten that. And so through a series of difficult, difficult, like, queer traumas, I was just like, I can't do it. I don't I don't fit in that community even though I feel that and it took me like, took I spent five years, I think, not dating anyone and then found the husband who is very safe. And so we just did our thing, and he's been very kind and safe. You know that.
Speaker 3:Like, I have no bad feelings for him. We're still very close. But, like, it is taken all the way until that conversations with seasons for us to even, like, find words for what what is it we've done, and is it okay or is not? He's fine with it. I was really struggling with it, and we had a lot to work through, and my life has completely changed in the year since.
Speaker 3:But all of that to say, that is what I was wrestling with while you were working on your name. And your name and the story of you finding your name brought me so much courage and healing and a framework to be able to bring healing in my own life in the present, not just for past things. Because your story about adding a name, when you shared that, like, summer sometime time. Right? It's so blurry.
Speaker 3:When you shared that, I thought that's what I needed. The husband is not harming me. I don't wanna abandon the children. I'm not running away in a dissociation way, but my life is missing something that needs to be added. How can I add that in a safe way that is what I need and beautiful and good and tender but doesn't harm anyone and isn't running away and isn't abandoning myself or the husband or the child like, what can I do?
Speaker 3:And so we call it adding. And we've worked very hard in our family of, like, what does that mean? What are the boundaries? What is the communication? And very, very transparent in that way and learning a lot about ethical nonmonogamy, like, take me from that.
Speaker 3:And you're the one who said to me a year ago, aren't you poly? I heard you were poly. I thought you said you were poly. And I was like, no. I can't do that.
Speaker 3:I can't do that. Still don't
Speaker 1:think I
Speaker 3:can do that. I still don't think I can do that. I still don't think I have capacity to do that. But you know what I could do was adding and finding what is it that is missing.
Speaker 1:That's
Speaker 3:amazing. How can I add that and bring my life that peace and that heart? Right?
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:And your name did that for me, and so I just wanna thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. For anybody who doesn't know, Lev means heart in Hebrew. And two things. My partner was my best friend. We met thirty six years ago.
Speaker 1:We had relationship as best friends where in my language, we're both the boys in our partnerships. And even though each queer relationship does not have to have one boy and one girl, and gender is more complex than that, Many of us, especially in adolescence, play the role of a boy or a girl. So my partner and I were were boys. And it is my opinion that one of the reasons we didn't get together sooner romantically is that we were so busy being the boys. With these other girls, we didn't note each notice each other.
Speaker 1:We didn't consider each other as romantic partner options. So years later, we added this is how I'm connecting with this adding. We added a romantic relationship, and my partner is fem identified and looks more visually like a boy. So everywhere we go, people people ask, what are her pronouns? Because they think she's the trans identified person.
Speaker 1:And in fact, I am the trans identified person because you cannot tell necessarily what people's gender identity is. And I think there's a lot of complexity about there's well, I welcome the the complexity that the queer community is also opening to and helping the world open to. And I just wanna say, I know quite a few people who call what you're describing about your gender, they call soft butch. I don't I don't know if you've heard that, but, Rachel Maddow would be an example. Just FYI.
Speaker 3:Oh, she's hot.
Speaker 1:And right. I was just we don't know each other that well, but I was just about to say, we don't call that hot, Emma. You're you were just on the cutting edge of attractiveness. That is the
Speaker 3:story of my laugh. Almost there. So close.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You're you're just I don't know. I think, you know, you're you're ahead of the times is what I would say. And and and truthfully, my partner's father is the one who is more, heart centered in a way that is often associated with a mother. And I have come to see that my own father, my birth father, is in many ways the more naturally attuned with me.
Speaker 1:He he seems to get me on a on a heart level that is more more like what I was looking for in a mother. And I just wanna say, I think there's complexity in how we experience nurturing where we can get mothering from men. So I think there's there's a lot of there's a lot more to this topic than meets the eye. And I do wanna say, I think my father has DID. And I think one of the reasons that I experience him as having more than one gender and accessing a certain kind of femininity even though he's a big burly guy might be gender complexity that comes with DID.
Speaker 3:There is that whole conversation I for did read
Speaker 1:what you wrote or that you shared recently about gender and transgender. And I want to say that in my case, I met a bunch of people who were talking about being nonbinary who were also multiple. And I discovered because I went to one particular presentation where there was a panel of people talking about what it's like to be multiple and nonbinary. I heard from each and every person how distinct it is. We all come to it differently.
Speaker 1:And in my case, I am cultivating an adult, identity that can take, oh my gosh. My most recent word is constituency that I am that I am elesting a kind of representative for my internal perspectives where where I, as a nonbinary presenting adult, can represent all the genders within me. Because I have a very distinct four year old boy part that I've always known since I was four, and I I never lost touch with that part. And I I know that part feels male, and what you see doesn't look male. I mean, I I don't look male, and I'm trying to be a nonbinary representative of my full spectrum of genders.
Speaker 1:And I'm not speaking for anyone but myself when I say that. You know? Other people's experience of gender and transgender is not doesn't have to be identical. But in my case, I've been coming to representing myself publicly in a way that reflects what's happening internally in a way where I'm counting myself in the transgender community in ways that I wouldn't have been able to do sooner without all of the work I've been doing around OSDD.
Speaker 3:It's so much, and there are so many layers. And there are certainly
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 3:Certainly those aspects of things. And and, like, Joe Mark's been on the podcast, usually has a hat on, pulls the hair back, but I also like, the part of me that is gonna type up research pulls the hair back too because it needs to be out of the way. Right? I have some shirts that are more fem. I'm not very good at dressing up, and I don't have like a cute body that needs cute clothes.
Speaker 3:I'm just comfortable with myself. I've worked really hard to be healthy. I am I am a big girl, but I am alive. Like, I fought cancer, and I fought, like, trauma stuff and pain. I walk every day.
Speaker 3:I eat mostly healthy. I I'm okay with that. Like, I'm just I'm okay with that. Well, I have heard that it is very common, if not true for all of us, that
Speaker 1:we have more than one gender within. And I'm just saying that there I think that there partly, we haven't studied this. We haven't studied this. We don't have enough information about what's true for all of us who are multiple in our gendered identities. So I just wanted to say that.
Speaker 1:But how I ended up with Lev as a center point for my emerging lending perhaps, co consciousness actually works better for me at the moment is I was talking to a rabbi on Zoom like this, and I kept going like this with my hands where I'm pointing to my heart with each hand back and forth and back and forth. And I was saying, my therapy is all about bringing into my heart all of who I am so that every facet of me turns toward me for the care, which is connection and protection that I didn't always get as a child. My caregivers weren't necessarily aware or able to help me with what I was experiencing. And so I I have the ability now to be this loving parent for my inner world. And in the adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families program, there's an emphasis right now on a love developing, cultivating a loving parent who is responsive to the inner world, and that's that's the language I use.
Speaker 1:So it's like each of me, it's turning to my heart to say, this is who I am. And so when I have a relationship like this with you where I feel safe and I can relax my guard and I discover myself, I then become accessible to the inner me who who more and more is saying, you're kinda cool to me, which sounds like more and more voices internally talking to me and wanting me to pay attention to them, which is very distracting from getting bills paid or doing any of that adulting stuff that I thought I'd get better at over time. Thanks to therapy. I seem to be getting more and more chaotic. But, anyway, the the experience with finding my heart from within and seeking my own heart has made me this very heart centered person, which is is how Lev became the name.
Speaker 1:But because the rabbi I was talking to said to me, why not Lev? You're pointing at your heart over and over and over again. I think your heart. And and something you said earlier I wanna share with you that I connect with is I think the easiest thing for me to find throughout my whole system is what other people call God. I come in and out of calling this God.
Speaker 1:It's a power greater than myself. It's something that connects to the eternal. It's something that's beyond fathoming. It's this this sense of an essential goodness that's in everything. My adoptive maternal grandmother said to me when I was very small, she said, a warmth in your heart is God, and this will always be with you.
Speaker 1:And this is this is where you'll find it. And I have never lost that. And I just wanna say just because you shared with me what's easy. You know? This is the easy with me is this is how I find my way through all of the despair is this that that she helped me find.
Speaker 3:That's so amazing. I love that you have reclaimed that. It can be so epic to untangle that from what people have done or that from what people have said or from that who poorly represent it. I think I got an email in the last round of emails. I haven't read it yet, don't think, but it was it said something about why are why are we still talking about religious trauma?
Speaker 3:Like, can skip them respectfully, but why are we still talking about it? And I'm like, well, first of all, because I have DID, it takes me a really long time to process stuff. And I have pointed out that it took me a year to process seasons, which is an improvement upon three years to process what happened with my therapist. Like I'm making progress, but also because for me, it's everything. It's everything.
Speaker 3:I my some of my childhood trauma was in the context of church. Some of my adolescent trauma was in the context of church. My college trauma was at an evangelical college and then wrestling with current stuff now and untangling what I believe versus what people say or do or badly represent, what I do believe. Like, that's a lot for me to untangle, much less parts or how that's all interwoven. And so that's why.
Speaker 3:Because it's everything, because it's the heart, because it's the root of me.
Speaker 1:I wanted to share with you something that I have experienced religious trauma in in two different religions. And because I came from a Catholic origin story in the closed adoption system and have a lot of grief around who are my original people, while at the same time, I was raised in an Ashkenazi Jewish family where we I believe all of us have been affected by the holocaust among other things. And I have learned as a result of reuniting with my birth family that I've got intergenerational trauma in both of my primary family trees. The fact that I experienced clergy abuse in particular
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:By a rabbi and by a minister, and my life is permanently affected by those. And I'm discovering more and more just how much that ruined a sense of there being safety in this world, it makes it all the more difficult. If if there's no trust in safety being something I can count on in my home, And then that also happens in the context where there is a place of worship that is supposed to be safe, and I happen to also have there be abuse, and I lost therapy as a safe place. That thing you quoted doctor Laura Brown saying about death of hope happened to me. Yes.
Speaker 1:And I just wanna say that is probably that combination is probably more specifically responsible for how it is that I have ended up feeling most safe in community at this stage of my healing. It's that particular combination of difficulties. And, excuse me, I didn't say, I also had a major trauma in the workplace with a a hate crime shooting, which has made it all the more difficult to find any place to feel like I can, what I said earlier, drop my guard and just be.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It's really a hard a hard piece and a hard layer when it permeates everything. When those layers become interwoven, it's so hard to find what is safe, and it makes safe enough time or or any kind of attunement of I understand this also because so, so powerful, which I think is the benefit of the community as long as we're doing that work to to have good boundaries and be safe in groups and things like that so that it is healthy, which I think we're doing right now. We've just had a lot of things to learn. And I think we have done generally, and the reason we've gotten through things that were difficult was because we were all taking care of ourselves and each other, that otherwise it wouldn't still be here.
Speaker 3:So I think that's powerful. I wanna go back to what you shared about sobriety because that's another thing that we share in common, but also that you have such unique contribution to, which is why I asked you to come on the podcast. You were very gracious to do so. I am oh, time. What?
Speaker 3:Fifteen years sober? But mostly for me and my story, that is about I realized I was dating alcoholics and that was part of the problem. And some of those alcoholics I love dearly, but they were not safe to live with or not functioning and not able to tend to things that they promised in ways that just broke me, and I cannot be in that world safely. And so I stopped to just stop all of that. I don't know that my drinking was prob for me, I don't know that my drinking was problematic so much as my choices were problematic.
Speaker 3:And what I found was when I stopped drinking, I didn't have any friends left. None of the people in my life at the time could also be my friends sober. They literally didn't know how to do anything else. And they all had their own traumas. I don't mean that in shaming, but their functioning was so through that.
Speaker 3:And I had dissociation in a way they didn't. And so I just stopped, but then it also cost me my friends. And just again, for story and context, as we get to know each other, it was the same time as I was getting cochlear implants, which is not a thing in the deaf community. And so that I stopped drinking and got cochlear implants the same year and lost all of my friends. All of my friends.
Speaker 3:And so that happened to be just coincidence. Right? Because trauma, trauma, trauma, that just for timeline of my story, that happened to be the year before my parents died. And so I think it's part of why I ended up back in therapy because once my parents died, one I knew was dying and then the other was died unexpectedly. So it was like bam bam.
Speaker 3:I had no support system to turn to. I had no one around me because I had already lost everyone because of getting my cochlear implants and not drinking and so I think that's part of why I was so isolated in my grief besides the fact that my grief was complicated because of the trauma in our families. So you are doing this project. Do you want to talk about your sobriety first, just generally anything in your story? Sure.
Speaker 1:Sure. Let me just say I appreciate you sharing your story with me so much. I started to date for the first time in high school, someone who was a member of Alatine, which is for young people who are affected by someone's drinking. And she got there because her mom got sober in AA. I never looked for twelve step community.
Speaker 1:I really feel like twelve step community found me. And my first girlfriend is still one of my best friends today, and I consider that to be one of the greatest blessings of my lifetime. And I credit that friendship with a lot of how I have managed to live through everything. And because I knew a member of Alatine, I learned about Al Anon, which is a name that is a nonsense name. Like, when I say Al Anon to people who haven't heard of it, they don't know what the heck I'm saying.
Speaker 1:It's it's an unfortunate name for something that has been a lifesaver for me. So it's for family and friends of people who are problem drinkers. And I didn't know when I started dating her that I qualified for Al Anon until she went to college, and I started dating somebody who was a member of AA. But because the person I was dating was a problem drinker who told me they were a problem drinker. I discovered I could go to Al Anon, and that's a very convoluted way of describing how I got to my first meeting.
Speaker 1:I was 17. I went to an Al Anon meeting rather than an Alateen meeting because the Al Anon meeting was listed in the schedule as a women's meeting doing special outreach to gay women. And I knew that I needed to be in a space where I could authentically describe who I was dating and not have to worry about homophobia. So that's how I managed to step in the doors of that meeting, and I've never left. My biggest problem was the ways that I survived loving someone who was actively suicidal, and the drinking was one of the ways my partner was killing themself.
Speaker 1:So years later, I discovered I had a particular, I'm gonna say, deadly combination of attraction to people with complex PTSD who identify with the borderline diagnosis. I don't particularly see them that way, but they saw themselves that way. And I can see why they saw themselves that way because they were actively killing themselves in the relationship. And I spent about twenty years with different partners who were acting that out with their drinking. And Al Anon by itself didn't help me stop losing my life down the drain with their self destruction.
Speaker 1:And I didn't know I was dissociative then. So I'm so grateful to Al Anon for helping me to find my way into my own truths in in places we call outside help, you know, in therapy rooms, in support groups, in all the different places that I love to find what's going to help me change my set of behaviors that's hooking with their sets of behaviors so that I can find some freedom. And I didn't know that I qualified for any diagnosis around substance use disorders. And I I stopped drinking and I stopped using cannabis mainly to support other people's sobriety and other people's recovery. And it's what motivated me in the beginning.
Speaker 1:And I then I did a I went through an intervention. I mean, I'm sorry. Not an intervention. An assessment. I went through an assessment, and I let a psychologist ask me all the questions so that I could stop trying to figure it out myself and let a professional help me.
Speaker 1:And she said, I qualify as a potential alcoholic because I have alcoholism in both my nature and nurture, both my birth family and in my adopted family. So I and she said, you the best thing you can do for your health and well-being is to not drink because you have enough of the predisposition to become alcoholic if you drink any alcohol at all. So I recommend you not even have beer. So that's how I resolved for myself that I didn't seem alcoholic alcoholic enough to qualify, and it also didn't seem wise. And I just wanted to share that with you because I've heard you describe a choice to not drink and at the same time feel like you're not quite comfortable calling yourself alcoholic, And and this is how I've resolved that for myself.
Speaker 1:And then I discovered I have other compulsive behaviors that are part and parcel of my overall picture that I realize I I describe as a whole as as addictive. And I I between you and me, since we're talking about trauma and the larger picture of dissociation, I can say I have reenactment difficulties that have felt to me like like addiction. So I frequently call myself an addict when I'm in the rooms with other people who are in 12 recovery, and I don't tell them what exactly I mean by that. But it's and and let me just say that where I am in therapy, I don't fully understand how introjects work and I haven't heard you talk a lot about introjects. But for me, what I understand so far is that I have parts that feel like I have to act like the role models I had in order to be in relationship at all.
Speaker 1:Wow. And I can feel it's like an undertow. I can feel pulled under by this facet of my survival where I think for example, I'll give you an example. I think butch means aggressive. So aggressive can mean drunk and abusive.
Speaker 1:And I think that some of what I learned from what I witnessed as a child is continuing to identify with a set of behaviors that are not me, and yet I learned them.
Speaker 3:That I I that's fascinating to me, the intersection of introjects and reenactment. I'm going to really have to think about that. I'm gonna write it down actually and come back to it. That's massively huge. I think when I think about these things, one of the ways that I struggle with addiction, the idea that especially, I didn't do drugs, but with alcohol specifically, because I made that choice to stop, I feel like I could have gotten sucked into that world the way you're describing.
Speaker 3:Right. Right. But I feel like it's the one thing I did right, so I think I hold on to that really tightly. But I also know about the transfer of addiction. And I know, even though it makes me super uncomfortable to say, that that's part of dissociation for me.
Speaker 3:It's really hard to let go of dissociating. Yeah. I don't wanna say that in a way that makes it sound like dissociation as an intentional bad choice or bad behavior because I know some of so much of that is automatic and we've learned so much about the brain. And learning about that has been one of the most liberating things when I got those pieces finally in 2020. But also now as I continue my healing journey, the pull to that is so much greater than the work of not, of staying present, of letting myself blend.
Speaker 3:And so I feel, yes, there are there's this natural process of dissociation, but there's also this, it's much easier to defend myself than to let those walls down, whether that is in relationships or in functioning. And when we talked about the community earlier, one of the first things that was really hard was that I realized people themselves, when we were first starting, they were so scared to come, and they were so brave to come. But when they did come, they were waiting to see who I was there because they knew some of me from the podcast. And there were some groups and some people that were expecting, like, a lot of Sasha ness. But the podcast is so far behind what is happening in therapy that it's like, I am really working on containing that and being more vulnerable and calming that down and not not expressing that, not denying that, but blending with this and trying and so there was this I remember sitting in the community one day and someone actually talking about that, and I just sort of froze because I thought, can't be that anymore.
Speaker 3:I have to let that go. I can be me and include that, and that's where we're at right now kind of using those inclusion is where we're at right now trying for blending of I can include that. I wanna see what that looks like, but it's much easier. I feel that. For me, that's where the pull is.
Speaker 3:I can feel that pull to if I could just do this this way and be this, I could make them happy and make it easier, and we could let go, but there's no growth there.
Speaker 1:Wow. What I have just discovered is that I needed a world where I could occupy space in myself with the desire to run as far away from the pain as I can. And I saw people using drugs and alcohol as a kid. I was so young. I was wasted for the first time when I was nine.
Speaker 1:I had I almost killed myself in two different ways. When I was under the influence, the very first time I drank, part of it, I could have died from alcohol poisoning. The other part was I did I fell from the top of a staircase to the bottom in such a dramatic way. I could very easily have died. It was a really frightening fall.
Speaker 1:Anyway, the point being, I identify with a desire to run from feeling. And in that way, I now have found my people among dissociative folks. I didn't have a way back then of differentiating between who is drinking or using in a way that's to escape the pain versus those who have other motivations for drinking and using. And we're not all talking about trauma in the 12 step room, so let me just say that. It's taken me decades to find my people, and where I found my people is ultimately in survivors of Infest Anonymous and in the adult children of dysfunctional families program.
Speaker 1:Because what we're getting at is those are the two programs where there are meetings for multiples, and we're talking about coming to terms with being multiple. And drugs and alcohol is one of the ways that we thought survival, but also oblivion. And and what I'm realizing is I feel better talking about being a survivor than I do talking about being an addict. But along the way, what it has meant to me to talk about being an addict is acknowledging that when I use my force of will alone, I end up falling back into compulsive, what I call now, reenactments. But I didn't realize that how I ended up basically chasing my own tail in the rooms, in in the 12 step recovery rooms, is that I needed to escape the places where people were drunk.
Speaker 1:I could escape the people who were drunk in a room full of sober people. I needed to escape the professional world where so many things that happened were abusive. And I could do that in the 12 step rooms because there's no objective exchange of money in some professional way. I also could escape the questions about who exactly is my god. I don't have to know whether or not Jesus loves me as a little Jewish kid, which was always a problem for me.
Speaker 1:You know, that whole idea. Jesus loves me. This I know. I always wanna say, I don't know that because I'm a little Jewish kid. Anyway, I was in a Catholic school at one point, and that was very confusing.
Speaker 1:But to be able to be in a room where I can decide for myself who God is and whether my higher power is God, I mean, I I could do all of that in 12 step rooms. And and I finally thanks in large part to listening to episodes of your podcast and all the reading that I'm doing with the help of my therapy, I'm starting to see that it's recovery itself that has given me permission to develop this bridge between my carbs. There's something about having my last name be anonymous, which is what all of us do in those rooms. And then discovering Jamie Marich, who is so open about being a 12 stepper in addition to having OSDD and being a professional. So I know that it's possible that I can build bridges between what I would call my like, my healthiest self and a career and a family and, you know, my activism.
Speaker 1:I am definitely not there yet. But something I wanna share with you that I'm not I've shared is that maybe you have heard me say this, that my nephew died at the beginning of the pandemic from an overdose. He's one of the the casualties of the opioid epidemic, and he was 16 years old, and he's queer. And he left behind a transmasc partner and a transfem best friend. And I see him as very he was using hehim pronouns the end of his life, but at one point, he was using they, them pronouns.
Speaker 1:I see him as being very genderqueer. He was describing himself as queer queer. That's what my brother said at the end of his life. But the pain that his death has brought up for this part of my family, and it's my birth family, has really shined a mirror for me on what it was like for me to be a kid who had gender complexity and queer identity, and I was unable to I well, I was. I was unable to grow up into a world where I wanted to be alive.
Speaker 1:And I think for me, watching my nephew leave the world the way he did, I feel I had a certain level of willingness that increased about living living out loud and letting my grief about his passing become a path towards being more alive. And that's ultimately why I started my podcast.
Speaker 3:You're just giving voice to so much, so much. What is the name of your podcast? The world has been waiting and waiting. It's called it's called a meeting in progress. A meeting in progress.
Speaker 1:Correct. And the idea is that I am in recovery for more than one thing. I invite people to share about being in recovery for more than one thing. In addition to talking about things that are often taboos in the 12 step rooms. A lot of people in the rooms think that talking about racism is an outside issue.
Speaker 1:That's a phrase, outside issue. And a lot of us have created special BIPOC meetings where we know racism is an inside issue and on and on from there. I also am finding it necessary to be in rooms where we talk about Jewish recovery, and it's it is breaking one of the traditions to talk specifically about our faith and culture and ethnic identity. And so I am inviting people to to share their story and and especially their Jewish context on my show. Like, I'm just creating a different space where people can go into detail about outside topics that that it's like coloring outside the lines.
Speaker 1:And in the process, I am being very open about being multiple and practicing merging my public facing self with my private facing self.
Speaker 3:That's so hard. That's so intense and so vulnerable. I don't even have words. It's so, so difficult.
Speaker 1:And look, I thought I was becoming a therapist, and a lot of my difficulty has come in discovering that as of right now, I have a very clear internal voice saying this thing that I love that is very funny to me. I don't want to be in the mental health profession because those people are all adults. Who knew? I was like, okay. So I'm having I don't wanna join a community that's full of adults.
Speaker 1:I can't argue that. So I don't know what's happening with that part of my professional life. I really don't. It's very confusing for me. I, myself, at this particular time, am finding it quite challenging to be multiple and add a professional identity.
Speaker 1:So instead, I am investing in creativity, creative expression. Apparently, people can express ourselves creatively and not have to be adults.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 1:That's my mic drop.
Speaker 3:I love it. I love it. And I know you just sent me the link to is it Therapy Chat that Jamie Marich was on another podcast and mentioned?
Speaker 1:Therapy Chat is my favorite therapy specific podcast led by a therapist who's trauma informed. And Jamie Marich just published. She was just interviewed by Laura Reagan. For Dissociation Simple? Yes.
Speaker 1:For Dissociation Made Simple, and they talked about you as the only other therapist that Laura Reagan, the podcaster, knows who is so open about being dissociative. And Jamie was saying she's friends with you, and Laura Reagan is not yet friends with you. And I'm gonna suggest to Laura that she invite you on because she's really responsive to the podcast listeners. And it's just really exciting to be able to see you becoming more and more part of the public discourse.
Speaker 3:I have not heard this podcast encouragement, and she's also helped me think about hard questions I needed to think. She asked me a difficult question about a professional organization, and I took a whole year. I took a time out and said, okay, let's pause this and think about this question seriously. And I did. And and I love that about her and and the challenge that she has given, and it was kind of her to mention the podcast.
Speaker 3:In the show notes, I only just, like, two weeks ago learned that's what it's called. In the description for the episode, it's called show notes, which is funny because I don't think about it as a show. But in the show notes, we'll put the link to that episode from therapy chat, and we'll put the link to a meeting in progress, which is Lev's
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:New podcast that's kind of not new anymore. We've been excited for a while, kind of have been dropping hints for a while, but we wanted to really debut it, I guess, through this conversation, which we have needed some time and space to make happen. And I'm so grateful we did today. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you, Emma. It's just great to meet you.
Speaker 3:Bye. Bye.
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 us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing and healing brings hope.