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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 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 we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I've just had therapy, and I need to talk about it. I feel like after the recent things that we have been going through and the husband taking over the podcast. No, I'm just kidding. I feel like coming back on now and talking about therapy directly again is like meanwhile back at the ranch. No.
Speaker 1:So if you hear clicking in the background, I don't know if you can or not, and I don't know if it's a sound, I'll be able to hear in editing. So I just wanna be sure that you know. If you hear clicking or tapping in the background, it is because it is sleeting outside really hard. So there's ice pinging against the windows and on the roof, and I'm as far away from all of that as I can be, but I don't know if you can still hear it. So I just wanna apologize in advance, but also wanna clarify for anyone who is anxious about the background sounds.
Speaker 1:But I think it's okay and it's showing okay, so I'm just gonna go ahead because that's the best I can do. So here's what I wanna tell you. I feel so different, and I don't know if I can even put into words, which makes podcasting difficult actually. But it's not bad. I don't know if it's good either, but I feel different.
Speaker 1:But before I talk about this, I wanna give some context that we have been with this therapist for more than six months now. Most all of that six months has been focused on our relationship. We have talked about that there is therapy trauma, but not lots about what it is. We have talked about transference and countertransference and built a pattern of checking in about that regularly because of what happened to us in the past. We have talked about boundaries and navigated what that looks like for us, not just for her rules for her office, but also for us.
Speaker 1:And so we have not just built a rapport at this point, but we also have lots of safety measures in place. And by that, I mean, I understand what I'm coming to do and feel confident in her capacity to help me. I am still both anxious and avoidant, which I didn't plan on saying, but that came out, of our actual relationship or trusting her or letting our guard down, so to speak, letting those walls come back down. And so in some ways it feels so backwards to be back in therapy starting at the beginning because of therapy trauma. But at the same time, there's also this layer of I'm actually further along than I've ever been because I get to keep all of the progress that I have made so far.
Speaker 1:It's not really starting over at the beginning because I know about DID. I know about trauma. I have an outline of my own history. It's not in order yet, and I don't have all the pieces or the right pieces in the right places or things like that. But there's an outline.
Speaker 1:I know what we're talking about, and I know that she can help me. And all of that is progress and all of that counts. We also have tangible physical ways to actively track where we are in feeling safe with our therapist specifically. And that goes back to like our marble jar, which we've talked about in the past that we keep track of both with an actual jar of marbles and in our bullet journal. So all of that helps with safety because ultimately, one of the best things we've learned, and it's taken us, what, seven years almost to learn, is that we are safe in now time not because now time is safe, which is huge for me to say out loud, but because in now time, I am an adult with the capacity to protect myself and utilize resources to keep myself safe and respond to danger.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? Because in real life, in the beginning of therapy, NTIS is really, really important. I'm not saying that that is wrong or that it's untrue. I'm just saying as we were just talking about recently, that it's more nuanced than that because stuff happens, life happens. I had a therapist who died of COVID.
Speaker 1:She didn't plan on that, but your therapist can't promise they'll be there forever because life happens. Larry at Healing Together talked about his therapist dying, and life happens. Okay? And right now, there is wars and rumors of wars, and there is the pandemic we've all just lived through and is ongoing in different ways. There are ice storms happening outside right now.
Speaker 1:Like, life happens as part of living on this planet. There is danger. It's part of the experience. Okay? So it's not that we can avoid everything that's uncomfortable, and we can't avoid everything that is risky even, and trusting a therapist or any person in any relationship brings with it the risk of getting hurt.
Speaker 1:That's why they call it vulnerability. But when we have measures in place and capacity and skills to be safe anyway or know how to safely respond to those risks or dangers or vulnerabilities, then even though all of that is happening, we can still care for ourselves and keep ourselves safe. And we can tend to ourselves when we don't feel safe or something is threatening. So one of the things that's really important for us in therapy now, different than ever before, is that we own our therapy. And what I mean by that is that our therapy experience is ours.
Speaker 1:I think in the past, one of the things that, not that we did wrong because it we didn't know and we weren't aware, so it's not like we it wasn't bad behavior. But I think one of the things that happened to us was that our healing and our progress and our safety was so wrapped up in our therapist specifically that when that therapist was taken away from us by circumstance and therapy trauma drama, we fell apart and we collapsed and we were in crisis because all of that that we had developed was centered on and attached to her. And we had no way, no skills, no awareness, no capacity, like nothing to be able to maintain that on our own. And what we got out of that was a very dark and depressing couple of years on the podcast. So I'm very sorry about that.
Speaker 1:But also I'm not because, yes, during that time, what we learned was to recognize, identify, and tolerate our own feelings, which is huge. Okay. So guys, I I am explaining this because I don't want you to hear this and go, oh, that worked for them and that was helpful. So I'm gonna go Google that, find somebody who can do that, and then I'll be fine. That's not how it works.
Speaker 1:This is all the work we've already done before we ever got to this point. Right? We're in phase two phase two of the podcast. So so this is not at the beginning, and we have a very specifically trained therapist who is not just using this tool or technique as the only thing they do. Our therapist has also been through the ISSTD PTP classes to learn the most researched and best way to treat trauma and dissociation, including having access to knowledge, awareness, and skills about psychodynamic process, like the relationship between us and our therapist and the therapist and us and what's happening in the room, not just the content of what we say, and also the relational aspect of therapy as well as the traditional phase based treatment approach.
Speaker 1:So I'm in good hands for starters. So know that because just because someone advertises something under their name or on their wall or on their website doesn't mean they have all of those pieces. So you have to be really careful. It took us, as you know, those of you who listen know, it took us a long time to find all of those pieces in one therapist. And still our therapist is human.
Speaker 1:She's not perfect. She's going to make mistakes or get confused or drop a thread. Like, things are still gonna happen. What's different, though, is that when that happens, we talk about it. And when that happens, we deal with it together and work through it together so that ruptures are repaired and so that safety is maintained and so that my therapy is still my therapy.
Speaker 1:So if she died from COVID tomorrow, which I don't wish that and I don't want that to happen, I'm not saying that would be easy or good, but I mean, if that happened, as hard as that would be, it would not be the same kind of hard as what happened to me before. Because my therapy is mine and I understand now how to contain that myself, not just rely on her for my world to be safe. Does that make sense? Your therapist is not God. Okay.
Speaker 1:So let's get this straight first. So so I have all of this background. I have a good therapist with good training who gets trauma and dissociation, a variety of tools and techniques, lots of experience. And this woman, y'all, she is spot on in noticing things that is happening in my body that I'm not even aware of. Like, she'll be like, oh, I can see your face is doing da da da da da.
Speaker 1:And I'm curious about how that relates to da da da. And I'm like, woah. How did she even see that? Like, Okay. So I just wanna be clear that we've done all of this prep work before we even got to this therapist.
Speaker 1:And even with this therapist, we've had months and months and months of preparation for using this specific tool for this specific thing. So what I'm talking about is EMDR, which is not for everybody and not eye movements all the time and not eye movements for every alter or every person or every like, it doesn't it's not always what is best in every circumstance. It is a tool that can be used sometimes for specific things with lots of containment and safety and follow-up. Like there's all these conditions to it. People who are just like EMDR is the best answer.
Speaker 1:That's not no. No. You're not understanding how brains work much less how EMDR works. Okay? So I am not at all saying that.
Speaker 1:So those of you who are like hesitant to even listen when I say those letters, just bear with me because I'm not at all saying that. And if you don't wanna listen to it at all, then just skip. That's totally okay. But I do wanna share my experience of how I approached it once we had a very specific target in place. And the reason I decided to go ahead and like as a system, right, consenting to this process is because our therapy trauma is getting in the way of therapy itself.
Speaker 1:So because of what happened with our previous Kelly, our previous therapist, it is very difficult for us to engage in therapy again. We have had so many therapy traumas, I don't even wanna tell you. You know this if you read the book, but I just can't, I just can't. But I need therapy and I know that and I want to get better, which means I am in a place having done all of this work for these years in the background. Right?
Speaker 1:So in the context of me specifically and my own work I've already done, I have come to a place where I'm going to have to directly address the trauma of what happened to me before in therapy and having to leave therapy because it's getting in the way of engaging again. So we have made it through a very general narrative about what happened with our previous Kelly. That's how far we've made. And we've we've written her a letter. We've actually sent that letter.
Speaker 1:We've actually talked to her about that letter, and it feels like really good closure. So that is an important piece I wanna point out because I am not saying, oh, I wanna look up an EMDR therapist and that will fix everything. I am not saying, oh, I have DIDs, so I need EMDR because that will fix everything. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm also not still in the active and ongoing trauma that I'm trying to target.
Speaker 1:Okay? I could not have done what we're doing now two years ago while it was still happening. We finally, and this is big for me to even say out loud, but that therapy trauma is finally in the past. That is memory time. I don't see that previous Kelly.
Speaker 1:I don't talk to her. I'm not interacting with her. She's not contacting me. We have had closure finally, which we worked really hard for on our own terms. And even once that happened, there has still been some time and some space before we came back to it in therapy because we need that to heal.
Speaker 1:But I feel like we are finally in that good place. But I'm feeling solid enough about it now that it was time to approach it. But to be able to do that, to be able for all of my system, anyone who is participating in this, to be able to actually consent to being able to do EMDR, even if we're just talking about eye movement specifically specifically regarding this particular exact issue, that involves all of my system also knowing how to signal no. Now this is a big deal because this is true of anything regarding consent. You cannot consent to something if you cannot also say no.
Speaker 1:Your yes means nothing if you are not able to say no. Okay? So one thing so when I say, oh, we did EMDR today. That's true. We finally got to some eye movements today.
Speaker 1:That was not my goal, but it just unfolded to where that was appropriate, and we tried it just a tiny bit, and I'm gonna share about that. But what I'm telling you is to get to that, we have spent five months at least just practicing how to say no. Does that make sense? Because this can be so vulnerable, open yourself up to flooding, it can be so difficult to contain if you don't have all those circumstances in place of a therapist knowing when it's a tool and when it's not, or a therapist who understands trauma and dissociation, or psychodynamic stuff, or relational stuff. Like if you don't have all of those things at once, it can be so dangerous and unsafe and dysregulating and really mess things up.
Speaker 1:So you have to be super careful, and part of being super careful is being able to say no or when to stop. Okay? So all of that is part of what's happening now. The other thing that we practiced for several months was simply identifying patterns of what was coming up, not even processing them, just identifying patterns. So with ENDR, there's this thing called TISES.
Speaker 1:Those are just letters like an acronym. Right? And it stands for thoughts, images, core beliefs, or cognitions, like your, like, what you believe or understand because of something that you experienced. Right? And then emotions and sensations, like physically or somatically in your body.
Speaker 1:Right? When you feel things, but it gets expressed through your body, you're feeling it through your body, that's called somatic. So tices sort of categorizes how things come up. So like is when you have a flashback, is your flashback visual? Is it auditory?
Speaker 1:Is it an image? Is it a thought that you have? Are they emotional flashbacks? Are they somatic flashbacks in your body? I didn't know this was a thing or that they expressed different ways.
Speaker 1:So not looking for it, not trying to make something happen. I just mean when things were already happening or things were already coming up in therapy, one of the things that we did for several months was simply identify those patterns. Oh, that was a thought. Oh, that was an emotion. Like, literally recognizing it.
Speaker 1:You guys, the same as you would with a child who's learning colors or days of the week or any kind of category skill. So it was not something that we did explicitly of, oh, we're gonna work on EMDR today, and this is what TYSES means, and we're gonna look through all of TYSES, and let's review. You get your TYSES quiz today. Not like that at all. I mean that when things were just coming up naturally as part of the process, learning to identify how it was coming up, like what car is it driving?
Speaker 1:And so what is the modality or the vehicle or the way, pathway that it's showing up and either getting in the way or intruding or becoming noticeable? What is bringing it to the surface? How is it coming to the surface? Does it make sense? Because EMDR, the way it works, utilizes those different pathways.
Speaker 1:So if there's something as long as it's coming up through one of those pathways, like if you think of them of like streets in a neighborhood, EMDR can drive the car on any of those streets as long as those are, but it's not gonna go off roading. Right? So you need to be able to know kind of what is coming up. You need to be able to do it well and to do it safely. You need to be able to have the skills to not just be aware of what you're experiencing, but to be able to really identify what you're experiencing and what's coming up with that.
Speaker 1:So for me this is a big deal and part of why EMDR, even if you are using EMDR once in a while, starts way before anything that has to do with eye movements. Because with dissociation, it's very easy to not even be aware of any of those things. Like how many times have you thought, I don't know what I'm feeling right now, I'm just having big feelings, or I don't know what I think about this, or I don't know. I didn't even realize I believed that or, what is my body doing? I don't know what like, it took so much sort of embodiment and practicing and being aware and all of that is the opposite of dissociation.
Speaker 1:Okay? So it is taken, if you wanna talk about from the beginning of therapy when I was 17, or if you wanna talk about the beginning of therapy for DID like seven or eight years ago, if you wanna talk about just since this therapist six months ago or last fall sometime, then that's a long time before we ever got to eye movements. I just wanna be really, really clear about that. And then again, going back to consent for just a minute, the other piece about being able to say no, we kind of developed a list of seven things. One, we had a hand signal which I'm not going to say because that's just personal to us and it's not something I want to give away, But you could you could come up with, a code word or a code signal or both or a combination of something, some way to communicate no even if you can't say the word no.
Speaker 1:Okay? And we also talked about other clues that we're moving too fast or that it's not time to share something or that we need to stop or that we need to just pause things and contain it and come back to it another session so that we're not falling apart between sessions. For us, one of those things is it feels like our mouth won't open. Like, the walls it's the I don't know until hindsight that the walls have gone up, but what I noticed in the moment is that I can't get my mouth open. Broca's area is shut off.
Speaker 1:We are closed for service. Right? Another thing is that impulse or need to turn off the video so that we can't be seen or to literally push away if we're in person or to scoot back or or shut down or cover up or something. All of those things mean it's too much too fast right now, and we need space and time to regroup and to bring things down a little bit. We also talked about the avoiding eye contact or not being able to pay attention.
Speaker 1:And then the obvious one of, like, dissociating or switching. Right? So when any of those are going on, they all are indicating that we are going outside of our window of tolerance. So if you're on phase two of system speak here on emerging self, you should know what window of tolerance is. Oh, that sounded really shaming.
Speaker 1:I didn't mean it as shaming. I just meant I don't wanna waste your time explaining what you already know. But that whole concept of what is too much and what is not enough and staying between those boundaries and knowing how small or how big or how much your window is open, how much room there is in there. Because our therapist said anyway, and I'm sure she's not the expert of all experts, but she's our expert. She's our safe person guiding us through it.
Speaker 1:She said that EMDR, like the eye movements especially, can be can only be effective if we are within the window of tolerance and if we are in some way connected to the present moment and or the therapist. And I say that carefully because when she first said we had to be connected to our therapist, I was like, no. No. No. No.
Speaker 1:No. We can't be connected to you. That's what went wrong before. That's what we're doing MDR about. And she said, no, no, we can totally do MDR about that piece.
Speaker 1:But we need we need some conscious awareness. I don't mean which part or who. I just mean some awareness, whoever is participating, some awareness of now time. So if we get outside our window of tolerance or slip back only into memory time and can't stay in now time, then EMDR is not going to be helpful or effective. And that's often when EMDR goes bad, especially with DID people and all those things about EMDR being never for people with dissociation.
Speaker 1:That's why they're just going out of the window of tolerance or not staying connected to now time. So so we need these layers of safety and we need one foot in the past and one foot in the present, so to speak. And that gave me enough of an image that I thought, okay, I feel like maybe, especially in recent months, we've really gotten better at that. I understand that if we have new traumas that could get slippery again, but I feel like we have fought really hard for this. Like for me, that's the whole concept of an emerging self, right?
Speaker 1:That I somehow my experience of being myself somehow includes all of that in the past, in the present, in ways I don't understand yet. So not just unfinished, but definitely connected somehow and emerging, not necessarily co conscious, although it can include that, but also not limited to co consciousness either. So there's something new and shifty, which is why we had the whole butterfly cocoon feeling for the last year or two and how we renamed the podcast for this sequel and painted the new butterfly pictures because there's something new happening that's never happened before, and we're just holding space with that. So with all of that as background information, what happened in therapy today was that we decided and consented and continued consenting until we didn't, which I'll talk about, continued going ahead to use that specific tool as part of today's session. We did not do this the whole session.
Speaker 1:It was very brief, actually, to use that tool to help us resolve some of what happened, what we experienced with our previous therapist. And I think the reason it was important to me for this is because two years ago, back at the time when we were leaving our therapist and we first thought we already had a new therapist, and we even had our previous Kelly call our new therapist, our new Linda. When we had them make that official transfer call and we thought that was gonna be our new therapist and assumed we would be with her for years and years and years, that is our that was our first experience with EMDR. That therapist, that new therapist had done with us a little bit of containment and taught us about eye movements a little bit. So we did not get to stay with her because we were across the state line and her agency said, no, she couldn't do that even though we were ten minutes from our house.
Speaker 1:So anyway, it just feels like it all connected appropriately in a way that because the the trauma, the actual experience trauma of everything that unfolded and everything we realized after we left and the consciousness of that, the awareness of that that came since then, EMDR is kind of where we left off. And so somehow for this specific issue, it seemed like the appropriate tool because it felt like closure. It felt like going back to where things started and kind of wrapping that up a little bit. Now we're only just starting. There was no wrapping up, I assure you.
Speaker 1:But what I'm seeing is for our context, it all just it was a good fit. It felt like a good match, a specific target, and it just seemed appropriate in this context. And so that idea, actually, even before we started any eye movements, actually gave me a feeling of relief. Almost, like, significantly, almost as if I had been holding my breath for two years, and now finally we got to go back. That's probably what my kids feel like going back to public school.
Speaker 1:Like, there is something about the bookend of it, of, okay, we are back at it. We are safe, and let's pull this full circle and get back into a routine. There was something settling about it. There was something regulating about it. And so we were like, okay, let's do this.
Speaker 1:But before we even started, she reminded us again, we can stop at any time. And I think that is really important to us, especially with this particular trauma that felt restorative. Because one of the things that went wrong is that we did try to stop and weren't allowed to stop, and that is part of what caused some problems. And so I think even just that piece was very healing. So we spent a lot of time practicing scaling.
Speaker 1:Scaling is when you say, like, between a one and a 10, how are you feeling? With one being not distressed or not bad at all and 10 being like full blown crisis. Right? So we practice some scaling just for fun, just to kind of ease into things. So she was like, on a scale of one to 10, how does it feel talking about this?
Speaker 1:And I'm like, well, I feel relieved, but also it's unpleasant. So what is that? Like a five, like right in the middle? Yeah. And then she got us signed in to this program where we can do eye movements online.
Speaker 1:And so then I was like, woah, now I'm at a six or a seven just because you brought it up and you showed me how it works. There were some fish or some clouds or some different things that were like little balls we could watch as they went back and forth across the screen. We got to pick what colors they were. We got to pick how high or where they were on this so that they matched our eyes and we were comfortable. And so just sort of setting things up, we're like, oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:Now I'm at an eight. But then we stopped and talked about some things, and she made me laugh about something, and I don't even remember what that was. But I was like, okay. Fine. Now I'm at a two.
Speaker 1:We can do this. So we kind of even that we've had some practice at. And now I just scale everything all the time because I was like, oh, they're sleet, and the school says the kids are not coming home because they wanna clear the roads, but I'm also aware the roads are getting worse by the second. And so I feel a nine. Like, I'm just scaling stuff all the time.
Speaker 1:Oh, lunch is ready. I'm a one. Like, like, it's really pretty fun. Now all the kids are scaling stuff, so I'm telling you, even before we got to eye movements, there were months and months and months and months of practicing different aspects that are good tools anyway. So whether you're talking about EMDR specifically or whether you're talking about therapy in general, it's way more than just the eye movements or a specific technique.
Speaker 1:I just wanna keep saying that. But I'm excited to share this with you, not because therapy is pleasant, and I'm not going to share all my therapy details just because boundaries, but you all know what happened with the therapist. And so it's an example that I can share safely and a bit transparently because you already know the story. It's not like disclosing childhood trauma that is too many details for the podcast. Right?
Speaker 1:So in that way, it's a great example for us to use, and it was such an experience I just wanted to share. So with all of that, and now you've listened to a whole podcast and we haven't even told you what happened yet. Like, that's what therapy is. Right? So here's what I wanna tell you.
Speaker 1:I could see my therapist. It was like a Zoom window, but it was not Zoom. But I could see her and I could see myself just like you do on Zoom. But she could push a button once we were ready for actual eye movements. She could push a button, and it changed the screen so that our video window was tiny, and most of the screen was just black.
Speaker 1:But then we got to pick out a shape, and we got to pick what where and we got to pick how high or low that was on the screen. And then we got to pick the colors of the shape, and she kind of adjusted how fast it moved. I didn't I don't think we would pick that. But, anyway, we got consent to all of those things, which I really, really loved and kind of helped expose us a little bit to what it was gonna be like and what it looked like before we got started. But once we were all set up, what she did was ask us something, and I'm not using all the right words.
Speaker 1:Okay? Like, I'm I'm not giving super details, and I didn't write anything down. I was focused on my session. So I'm just sharing this as I remember it, so my apologies. She asked us first to think about that previous Kelly or that therapy experience and what was coming up for us.
Speaker 1:And that was really hard because the first thing that came up was like the a vision of her laughing, which is really sweet and tender. Right? But that was completely unexpected. And so as soon as I saw that, then I was like, I'm gonna just start sobbing already, and we haven't even started yet. And so what I told her was grief.
Speaker 1:Now that I'm talking to you about it, I think what came up first was the image. You remember the tices? Right? It was the image of her, but that's not what came out. What came out was grief.
Speaker 1:So we went with grief and and those big feelings that were coming up. And then she asked another question, something kind of clarifying what I saw or kind of clarifying the image. And so then because I was feeling grief, I didn't wanna look at her. I mean the previous therapist, not the current therapist. And so I didn't see her laughing anymore.
Speaker 1:What I saw was her chair and her office, which isn't there anymore. So there you go. Grief. And so it was super fascinating because I had this very general reference to, okay, I could see her sitting in her chair in the office, and that's my visual, so let's do this. So whatever.
Speaker 1:So she pushes whatever button she pushes, and it starts And these little shapes that we picked, the color that we picked, whatever, which is our business, but those shapes, the two things start going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And I don't know how long we did some back and forth, but I just was supposed to follow with my eyes, not even like following it. I was supposed to pretend like I was pushing it with my eyes so that I don't know why or what the difference is there, maybe some intentionality. But anyway, so we did some eye movements and then she asked me again what was coming up. This was really interesting because and I don't know if this is how it's supposed to work or what, but what I experienced was that vision of her office all of a sudden was like snap, like super, super detailed.
Speaker 1:Like, all of a sudden, I could feel the texture of her couch in her office. I was aware of the tassels from the blanket behind on the back of the couch behind me, I could see her shoes on the floor. Like I usually never looked at that therapist in the face, right? Like I couldn't look at her face or in the eyes, I just looked at the floor. And so I could see her shoes, her little boots that she wore, and, how she held her feet on the floor.
Speaker 1:I could see a little bookshelf that she had. I could see the table that was next to me. I could see the paintings that were on the wall and where her papers were on her desk, the pen that she used, the little lotion bottle thing that sat next to her chair. Like, these little details all of a sudden became very, very vivid as if I were in the room. It was bizarre to me because before that I thought, oh, I remember that.
Speaker 1:But I didn't know how vivid I could remember it until after we did the eye movements. So that tells me like no wonder it's so intense when you do it with trauma trauma, like extra big t trauma or something. Like, that's intense. And this was just only a visual of her room. I didn't even know that was in me.
Speaker 1:And here's the other thing. I thought I was remembering it very vividly until I remembered it after the movements with like a capital v vivid. And so then it was like before I'd only been looking at a snapshot, but now I was in the room is the difference, is what it felt like. Except that at the same time, I was fully aware that I was in my chair at my desk looking at my computer watching the eye movements. Like both things were happening at the same time, which now that I'm talking about it, I think the other thing that adds safety is that I had so much practice being in that chair and on video, not just for telehealth, but with all of our groups and feeling safe in that context.
Speaker 1:And so I think that is also what made it possible in a way that it had not been before. So when I said that it was super vivid and started describing some details, and she was like, okay, cool, whatever she says. And then we do the little back and forths again. And so the eye movements are going and we do that, and then she asked me more questions. And it's just very short, like when we do the eye movements, the back and forth, it was just like seconds or hours.
Speaker 1:I don't know. It's very hard to hold on to time. I have no perception of how long we did movements each time we did the movements. But I never felt lost, which is interesting because one of the things I said before we started, like right as we're getting ready to start, I was like, don't let go of me. Like, so maybe that was something else.
Speaker 1:Oh, listen to that. It's like processing a dream. I think that must be a cognition or a belief or whatever I felt about that trauma. Like, she let go of me. I feel like she I poured all of my stuff into a jar, and she dropped the jar and shattered and my marbles went everywhere.
Speaker 1:That's what I feel like happened with that previous therapist. And so as soon as we started to go there to do the eye movements in session today, all of a sudden that was my last minute panic was don't let go of me. And I don't even know what part of me that was coming from, but oh my goodness, I didn't even realize the significance of it until talking about it just right now. So maybe I need to do some journaling about that and follow-up with her on that. But we did a couple of times the eye movement things, right, the back and forth.
Speaker 1:And then after a couple of times, she asked again, what's coming up for you? What's coming up? What's coming up? Whatever. And except that time I was like, I feel like I'm gonna cry, but I don't want to.
Speaker 1:And she's like, well, let's talk about that for a minute because the not letting the feelings out is part of the problem. Right? Like, that's why I'm coming to therapy. So does it feel like I don't wanna cry because that feels scary and we need to kind of do some eye movements on that? Or does it feel like I don't wanna cry, like in the past, I wasn't safe to cry?
Speaker 1:Or, like, kind of explored that a little bit, where are we gonna go with that? And then we did some eye movements on that. And then I was bawling, bawling. I was sobbing, like tears just pouring down my face, but I was entirely quiet. Like, that dissociated crying again where, like, tears are coming down my face because someone else is crying, but I'm okay.
Speaker 1:I don't know. But I felt super switchy and super dissociative and very foggy and spacey, and she could tell. And so she asked me about that and asked what was coming up for me with that. And I said, well, now I'm in a panic because I don't wanna be in a bad place and left there until our next session. Like this was a lot, even though we hadn't even talked about anything.
Speaker 1:I literally did not get past the image of her office. Okay? It's not like we did this like 800 times we went back to the eye movements. We did the eye movements, like, two or three or four times. And so I said, I don't I'm I'm having a panic now, like, at a ten that we're going to run out of our time on session, and that then I'm gonna be a hot mess like this for days or a week.
Speaker 1:And I can't. I can't. You cannot leave me like this. And so that was, like, the best. I didn't use, you guys, I didn't use we had a list of 10 ways to say no or to stop that we have practiced for months, and I didn't use any of them.
Speaker 1:It was just like my hands were waving in the air. You know, like like beauty queens when they're pretending to not cry? Like that kind of thing. But I was my hands were flapping, and I couldn't even speak. I was like, you can't, you can't, you can't, we can't stop.
Speaker 1:We can't, you have to wrap this up. You have to wrap this up. And she's like, oh, okay. Okay. So we can contain this.
Speaker 1:We can pause it. We can contain it. We can leave it contained so that we come back to it in session and so that you are okay until our next session. And we spent, I don't know, I at some point I checked the clock, not in that moment. In that moment I wasn't functioning.
Speaker 1:So several minutes later or later on in the session, I looked at the clock and we still had fifteen minutes left. And so we must not have been doing that very long, but it happened really fast. I think I just put my toes in and it was super intense. And so but she absolutely respected me. We did not do any more eye movements after that.
Speaker 1:She said, like, we talked about our container. And, just for privacy, I don't wanna give lots of details about that, but we kind of walked through our container and putting this away and leaving our container in her office. And I was like, we need the door closed. We need the door closed. We need the door closed.
Speaker 1:So we're making sure the door is closed and leaving it in her virtual, I don't know, office, however that works. And I don't know how that works because you're just saying the words. I know it's not actually happening, but it feels so real. And it works because it works. I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1:And so we kind of put it away. And it was interesting, though. This time it wasn't just like, we're gonna put it in a jar or whatever your container is. She was like, this is a photograph. It's a photograph of a previous Kelly's office, and it's just a picture of what we were remembering today.
Speaker 1:And so we're going to put the picture of what we're remembering today in the container and all the big feelings with it in the container, and we're gonna contain it and close the door and leave it there until our next session. And then we did and I was like, okay. Okay. Okay. That started to feel better.
Speaker 1:And as soon as we did that, and that, I don't know, took ten minutes, five minutes, twenty minutes, I have no reference. But as we did this container exercise, then I felt like instead of a panic at a 10, I was like, okay, I'm kind of at an eight, but she's like, you're still not breathing, so let's breathe together. And so she helped me do some deep breathing things, but she counted them. So she was like, every time we do our breath, we're gonna count up. And we just kept counting up.
Speaker 1:So we started at one and we counted up to 10 or 10 and up to one, I don't remember. Anyway, so like I couldn't at first, but incredibly in sync and got me there and we did some deep slow breaths and counted up or counted our breaths. And by the end of it, I was like, okay. That was intense, and I feel strangely on pause. Like, I don't feel now after session.
Speaker 1:I don't feel out of my body, but I also don't feel distressed by what we did. But there's also this subtle layer of relief and feeling better because what I have been carrying for two years is in that container instead of on my shoulders. Does that make sense? Except also that is with the full awareness that we barely even got started. It's not like, oh, I'm so glad we finished that, and I can check it off my list and just move on now.
Speaker 1:Like, we just barely got started. So I am aware that it's not finished, and I have awareness that we're gonna come back to it in a few days. But I have no anxiety, which is a weird feeling, no anxiety about needing to return to it or that like, there's no impending doom feeling and no messiness like I'm falling apart. Like, it really somehow very strangely does feel very contained in a brand new way. But here's what's different, I think.
Speaker 1:I think it's because it's contained even though it's my memory, like memory time, and I know that. I know that, but it's somehow contained externally with my therapist even though it's not an actual literal container. Like, I didn't actually take a photograph of her office and put it in an actual container in her office. Like, I know that. But somehow it feels, even though it's still unfinished, it does not feel messy.
Speaker 1:It does not feel spilling over, and it feels very on pause but not distressing and very contained but not heavy inside of me. It feels external, and it feels contained, and it feels paused. And by paused, I don't mean, like, I'm frozen in time. I mean pause like Like. I'm trying to find words.
Speaker 1:It feels external. It feels contained. It feels paused. Paused like still. Still.
Speaker 1:Like, maybe peaceful even. Can that be possible? Not peace about it because there's still things about it that are very distressing, but peace with it like being a photograph instead of a movie and being out there instead of inside me and being in that container instead of intruding. That's what it is. That's what it feel.
Speaker 1:It's like deactivated. Like, instead of activated by it, it feels like it's been deactivated. Like, it's paused, meaning like, it's not you know, like, when your phone is dead and so you can't turn on your phone. Right? I feel like that phone is dead, and it's in the container, and it's not charged.
Speaker 1:So it's not in any way intrusive to me right now even though I know it's there and even though I know we're coming back to it. You guys, that is the best way I can explain. That is the most words I can I don't know how else to describe it? It was a fascinating experience. I have the outside kids coming home in about an hour, and I think I need lunch and a nap because it was super, super intense.
Speaker 1:And I've actually got up early to finish my work before therapy because I like it's not always possible. And even when it is, I'm aware that's so privileged that I could even take an afternoon off, but it's also not privileged because I got up at two in the morning to do that. But you know what I mean? I really like having time and space after therapy. And so I think I'm gonna take a nap.
Speaker 1:So I'm interested to see how I feel when I wake up. I'm interested to see how things go with the children. I'm really grateful that at least right now, it feels like a successful containment because this weather is canceling school for tomorrow. And so the kids will be virtual tomorrow, which is a nightmare with six kids. And so I need to be present and kind and nurturing to them, not irritable or exhausted or dissociated while they're home.
Speaker 1:Right? So so I'm grateful that it seems to have worked. I'm a little bit surprised and shocked, but I'm interesting to see how things unfold over the next couple of days and what it's like when we return to it at the end of the week. So I will let you know how that goes as well. And I hope that you are taking care of yourselves and that this was helpful to someone who was interested or curious or for clinicians.
Speaker 1:I don't know. It just seemed important to share. So thank you for listening. Really, really, really appreciate you.
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 as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in community together. The link for the community is in the show notes.
Speaker 2:We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also care for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too, being human together. So, yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.