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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast,
Speaker 2: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 did it. I found a therapist, one we get to keep. Just like before, I won't say her name out of respect for her own privacy and respect for my own process. And I cannot tell you the weight of relief that has been taken off my shoulders or how much better I feel just having talked to her. I was scared.
Speaker 1:It's been hard months. Nine months. Like a baby being born. It took me these months to grow and develop and change and heal and claim my own life enough to say, I am here, and I want to live. I didn't always want to live, and I'm not trying to be triggering.
Speaker 1:But I want to be honest and transparent because I had a very serious attempt. I didn't mean to. I wasn't planning on it. Things were too hard for too long. I tried to hold on to what I could like my friends and my family, But what I was doing was harder than what I knew it would be, and I wasn't prepared for that, and I shouldn't have done it by myself.
Speaker 1:And that's the only reason I'm sharing it with you here now is so that I can tell you to not do it alone. I struggled to find words for a long time to explain the changes that have happened, or as we've called it, restructuring, because it's changed everything, and it's too big to put into words. A year ago or more than that, we shared what it was like with the three Emmas, becoming one Emma, what some call integrating, some call fusing, some call associating. This is different than that. What happened is different than that.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to explain it still. And also, it's hard because I don't want to share too many details because it's not actually safe for us as a system to tell the world how our system is organized. And so I feel protective of that just to be safe. It's also hard to talk about because people get so defensive about structural dissociation or this kind of dissociation or different ideas about how they think DID works. And I'm not arguing about that.
Speaker 1:I only know my system. I only know me. And I've got the right to experience myself as I do and the right to express myself as I can. And so with what I can share, and as I can share, the best way I can explain it is that in therapy, back in Oklahoma, for the last five years, we've been doing work with the different parts inside, personalities, alters, whatever you want to call them. We've been learning about DID.
Speaker 1:We've been interviewing people about DID. We've been taking the classes at ISSTD. We've been reading the books. And now we have colleagues who are friends, who know about DID, and with whom we can talk about DID without it being therapy, but also a safe place to just be. And through it all, we've met other survivors at the conferences or listeners, Some we've never met, but whose words have been consistent and faithful and kind and whose support has saved us.
Speaker 1:We've done the workbooks. We've done journaling, hundreds of pages a week for five years. We've done a lot of work, and we're not at all finished. I don't mean that, but I'm saying we've come a long way, and every bit of that progress counts. But if they're calling it a journey, then the journey brought us to a whole new place last fall.
Speaker 1:Because when you do therapy for real, it changes you. You can't stay the same and also get better. And that's true for anyone, not just people with DID. And it came to the point of being healthy enough and present enough with our family that we literally came to a place internally as a whole system, as one being, that we had to make a decision. Not a choice anyone gave to us and not a choice anyone made us make, but a healing choice.
Speaker 1:That if we were going to get better and live a life that we created for ourselves, then we had to be present in it. And if we were going to be present in it, then we couldn't keep going to therapy in Oklahoma. What happened was therapy served its purpose, and I got better. Not all the way, not finished. But we went into therapy because we were confused and disoriented and didn't know what was wrong and scared about all the time we were missing from the family and the confusion about work and how many jobs we had and all of those things that were dramas because of trauma.
Speaker 1:But as we got better and could be more present in our family, those problems went away because we knew how to orient ourselves. We knew how to talk to each other and how to communicate. We knew how to know what was going on with the family. And the better we got, the less we needed to be away from the family. And we could no longer be away for a whole day every single week and avoid our family if what we were learning was how to be present with them.
Speaker 1:And the unfolding of our choice happened while we were deployed in The Middle East, and it felt like we would never get home. And then we came home and had to go to the fires in California. And while we were going through all of this and trying to come home again, we let the therapist know. Not because we wanted to avoid talking to her, but because we were literally not home to see her, and because being away for so long provided opportunity to see things differently and to embrace our choice while already out of the habit of living it. Because here's the thing, and I'm telling you this as a survivor, not as a clinician.
Speaker 1:I don't know the research or the theories or the science of it, so I'm not trying to misspeak or say something that's not true. I'm telling you my experience is that dissociation may come from trauma, and dissociation may come from problems with attachment, And dissociation may have saved my life as a child. But what I want to be very honest about and very transparent about for myself, as much as anything you may be learning, is that at some point, in that process of where they say what saved us as a child isn't effective as an adult. At some point, the habit of dissociation, dissociating itself, the process itself, became my whole world. And it became my whole world so much that I wasn't living in the world anymore.
Speaker 1:And I want to be very careful talking about this because I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings. And I want to be very sensitive to all the parts of you and all the parts of me. I'm not trying to make anyone go away. I'm not saying everyone should integrate right away. I'm talking about if I want to live present in my world, then I've got to be here to do that.
Speaker 1:And if I don't want to lose time, then it means I have to do the work to stay. And so when, through all of that work for five years of therapy, we discovered, I discovered, a part of myself that was myself with a capital s, that in these hard months, something changed. Everything changed. And this is the part that's hard to find words for. But what I've been trying to say is that instead of focusing on all of us and how to communicate with each other and what everybody needed and who was who and what they're doing and all of those things because we had done that hard work for five years, plus the years in therapy before.
Speaker 1:So two years with the therapist before that, and four years with the therapist when we were younger. So twelve years of learning how to do that and doing that work, we knew those things, and we knew how to do those things, and we don't need to keep focusing on how to do those things. We just need to do it. And at some point, we have to stop learning about it. Not really, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:At some point, we have to stop learning about it and start doing it. And so something shifted from us taking care of her, that self with a capital s, and her living her own life, aware of us, knowing us, in touch with us, feeling us, experiencing us, remembering us, but being present in the real world. And it mattered for the first time like never before because of all of the support we have, all of the healing that we have through connection and attachments that are new and good and safe. Learning what friends were not so that we could make good friends. Learning what family is not so that we could create our own.
Speaker 1:And then having a family and a friend who were real enough and safe enough and believed in us no matter what, even in the worst moments, even in the hardest times. I'm using that to broaden the network into more people and more connections externally instead of internally. I don't need new alters. I need new friends. I don't need to rely on dissociating.
Speaker 1:I need to rely on attachment. And I never felt so far away from all of it as we did while we were in that deployment and then facing the fires literally where everything began. They were like bookends where I could wake up and say, this is my life, and I want to live it myself. And so we had to tell the husband about the others so that we could heal from the traumas and see that he stayed so that we could start a new life with him, with a wholeness we've never had before. And I had a friend I loved the same.
Speaker 1:Over time, our friendship grew so deep and strong. I mean a healthy, whole, real, full in my heart friendship, as safe for me as the husband was. And what makes that different is that it means it's not just a fluke. It starts a pattern, that there are other good people in the world who stay, who are good and kind, who don't let you go even when you think you might disappear, who give you a reason to live when you can't try anymore. And if you're going to have a friend who is healthy and good and real, then you don't mess that up.
Speaker 1:And you don't act out things in any way that would hurt them. And when you're human and make mistakes or have limited capacity because you're still learning, then you just say so. And you make sacrifices for what is best for them, even when it's the hardest thing you've ever done for yourself. And that's why we left therapy in Oklahoma. So what was scary was being present in my own skin, was feeling myself in my body for the first time, was staying present in a life that I had created but couldn't remember, but chose for myself to keep, and I chose to stay.
Speaker 1:But it's messy when you're new at it, and it's not easy when you're used to avoiding. And those first times you sit with big feelings you've never felt before, and you're all alone because you're not in therapy, it will feel like it drowns you. It felt, at first, like I was a beaver building a dam, holding on by my teeth while the river roared over me. I thought I might drown. I very nearly did.
Speaker 1:And I say that confession because so many think it's okay not to have a therapist, and not to go to therapy and to just be. You can't just be without another. That's what we've learned. And I know some of you, like us, are struggling to find a new therapist, and I know some of you are having to fight for services. That's different.
Speaker 1:You're still trying. But going through this, what trauma is, all alone won't work. You've got to have another. I'm not going to make a podcast about suicide, and I'm not going to give details of what our attempt was or what happened. I don't want to trigger people or give ideas.
Speaker 1:But we very nearly died, And we're in the hospital for five days before we were in treatment, before we could get back outpatient. I wasn't trying to die. I don't want to die. But I cannot tell you how big the feelings were and how very alone I was in them. And how I had no coping skills left because too much was going on.
Speaker 1:We need each other. Inside and outside. We are a system, you and me. Listeners, supporters online. Friends from conferences.
Speaker 1:Clinicians who write books, clinicians who read them. All of us together need each other to be well. I was fighting upstream to make my way, to build my world, to say some piece of my mind. I had to build it stick by stick, but I knew that wasn't enough. So when one of the therapists taught me how to dissociate on purpose and use it as a tool to be in control of my life and regulate myself instead of just losing time, I took that idea and I ran with it.
Speaker 1:So when she taught me how to build a container, strong enough to hold all the awful things in, I started laying bricks. And when we lost her and couldn't go back to her for a therapist anymore, I started swinging on my hammock while staring at the fan, make my eyes do the same thing that they did when she waved her fingers in front of me. And it calmed me down. It helped me relax. It helped me to regulate, and I just kept laying bricks.
Speaker 1:One brick at a time, lots of hours of the day, several times a day. Brick by brick, building walls. And I know it's risky. And I know it's a bit dangerous. And I know I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't mean to teach bad habits.
Speaker 1:But I was alone in a pandemic without a therapist, with my lap full of trauma and watching my daughter die, and unable to get to any support people that I had just learned how to embrace. And my husband was collapsing. And I had six children I was supposed to be schooling, and everything was overwhelming me, and I was desperate, and it was better than dying. And so I used my hammock and an EMDR app to lay bricks and to build walls, but I promised I followed the rules. I wasn't breaking up other people inside.
Speaker 1:I wasn't trapping them. I wanted peace. I wanted the storm to stop. I wanted my life back. I wanted quiet on the lake when the storm had passed and I had not drowned.
Speaker 1:When I made it to the other side of the storm crossing the lake in my boat, It took me nine months to get across. But you know what I found there? Myself. It's the worst storm I've been through and the hardest thing I've ever done, but it found me. And that's what I built the wall around.
Speaker 1:Because not again will I let them out to be hurt or seen or known and then left. But I don't mean they are abandoned. I mean they are mine. I mean they are me. We are me.
Speaker 1:And I'm not finished yet. And I'm not making anyone go away or be uncomfortable or afraid. I'm just claiming my life because I want to be here to live it. But it's hard because I've not done it before. And the feelings were so big, and I felt like I was going to drown.
Speaker 1:But I didn't. And I'm still here, and now I'm standing on my own two feet, and I know how to feel. And I'm sorry it was ugly, and I'm sorry it was messy, and I'm sorry I had to take a time out. Except I'm not, because it's how I learned. I had to cut out all of the extra noise.
Speaker 1:I did nothing but work and care for my family and care for me. Instead of running away, I run at the park. Instead of avoiding food that I don't know if it will trigger me or cause me problems to swallow, I just started eating what I could. Instead of being afraid, I wouldn't be able to feed my family in a pandemic. I just started growing my own, inside and outside.
Speaker 1:And instead of being afraid, I couldn't help my husband or rescue him from depression. I handed him his phone and told him to call his therapist. And instead of thinking I was failing parenthood because I'm only one person with six children with special needs. I told them to stop screaming at me and to go to their rooms so that I could take five minutes from my hammock and then be a better mom. And they learned how to play by themselves, which they've not had to do because there's the whole group of them.
Speaker 1:And now things are better, and more balanced, and all of us are healthier. Except my daughter, who's still waiting. But even she, of all people, has started asking to call her friends. Her friends who are my friends or my people. She says hello and says one or two things to them and then hangs up on them while they're trying to talk.
Speaker 1:She thinks it's funny. And instead of complaining that I don't live close to my friends, and so have to miss out on their Zoom meetings or their in person meetings, I just set it up myself, and said if you want to talk to us, join us at this time. Here's the link. And instead of saying I don't know how to help people, I took trainings and joined supervision groups, which I've actually never gotten to do before. And so even professionally, looking back, I thought, how could I have been so abandoned?
Speaker 1:When trauma seeps in even professionally? Because here's what it comes down to when you have a self with a capital s, is that I'm not helpless anymore And I have the capacity to empower myself to do what I need to do, to take care of me and my family and those of us inside. But for several months, I felt very protective of this because it was so new and it was so fragile and I didn't know if it would work and I didn't know if I could do it. And I didn't know how to explain it. But I'm here to say that I'm not just back.
Speaker 1:I'm here to stay. And my feet are on the ground, and I know my hands are mine. And when I look in the mirror, I can see all of us. I'm not finished. And this isn't just some big metaphor for integration.
Speaker 1:This is about me learning what associating means and about me choosing to keep the connections that I've learned how to build. And it's about my healing and my life and that it's mine. I've started writing my story so all of me can say what they want to say, except I know it's me and my words are mine. But I know them, and I feel them, and I experience them when I write, and in every moment of every day. No one's gone anywhere.
Speaker 1:We're all still here. I'm still here. I've not gotten rid of targeted anyone or done anything bad to anybody. It's not about that. It's about something has clicked that I don't have words for yet, but I'm growing in confidence, and my healing work continues.
Speaker 1:But I can tell you what it means. It means that I get to be all of me, all the time, in all of my life. And that feels good. But it's not always pleasant because parts of my life, parts of my story that is trauma is really hard and really scary and very sad. And what I've learned is it's not just the memories that are hard about what happened.
Speaker 1:It's that it's my parents or my family or people who should have been safe in my life, teachers, other caregivers or role models. They shouldn't have done what they did, and they knew better, and kids need to be safe. So I'm not saying all my parts have gone away, or I've gotten rid of all my alters, or there's only one personality. I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying that I've worked hard to find my capital s, and that I want to hold that space, and I want to stay in that space.
Speaker 1:And part of that means recognizing that I'm not finished. And it's like twelve years of work brings me just to the beginning, that it's time to get started. And so this morning, I met the new therapist. She takes my insurance. She can see me online even after the pandemic.
Speaker 1:And she knows about trauma and trafficking and EMDR and things like that. And when it's safe and if I want to, she has an office where I can go. It's not going to be easy, but I can do it. And it's time, and I'm ready. And she was warm and kind, but also strong enough for me.
Speaker 1:And you know what she said to me? She said, I've got you. We can do this. She also said, I'm compulsively self reliant, and we're gonna have to work on that. But I don't know that she knows so much.
Speaker 1:She said, The trauma is what happened to me, but my life now is what I've created myself. And she said in therapy, we can use even the hard bits to learn and to support and to help the life I'm creating. She said we won't have to waste my pain anymore. Can you imagine that? Did you even hear that?
Speaker 1:Think about what that means. She said we won't have to waste my pain anymore. That it means something, that it's information, that it guides me, that the hurt and the tears and the awfulness of it all teaches me and guides me and helps me and is valuable, that the most painful part of me means something and is important and valued, and that together in therapy, she can help me hear what it has to tell me instead of avoiding it. She said that when she looks at my external life and the things that I do, parenting foster kids, working in war zones, serving as a chaplain, having podcast about mental health, even about DID. She says she can see me fighting the pain in the world and trying to help, but that internally in myself, I'm still in the cycle of violence and that that's where the abuse hasn't stopped yet and that she will help me learn how to offer the same kindness and compassion to myself.
Speaker 1:She said it's hard because thriving is the opposite of surviving. And so it uses completely different skills and has a completely different mindset. And that's why it's terrifying and so unsettling and so dysregulating because it really does change everything. And then she quoted a verse because I had been talking about my faith as something important to me, but something that I struggle with because there's abuse there in the past and memory time. And so it's a very sensitive topic for me as I know it's triggering for others.
Speaker 1:But in that context, she quoted a verse from the Old Testament, from Joel chapter two, that promises that the Lord will restore the years that the locusts have stolen. And I began to weep, crying, hot tears without any sound or breath, pouring down my face because I knew, even though I had gotten to the other side, through the storm that my life has been. She's asking me to get on another boat, to go to another place that I can't yet see, but that she promises would be good for me. And she said again, it's okay. I've got you.
Speaker 1:I see you, and I hear you, and I'm with you. And when she said that, I remembered a time in therapy in Oklahoma when the therapist offered her hand to help me up in a moment when I was too scared to take it. And part of me has felt badly and as if maybe that's why everything fell apart. As if it was my fault we had to leave. Except that's not true.
Speaker 1:We're just on a journey. But this time, when a new therapist offered her hand, I made sure I took it, even if it was telemedicine telemedicine on a video screen, which I've had the courage to do for the first time because friends have practiced with me so that I could show up with them and with the therapist. So everything changes starting now because this is my life. I'm here to live it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemsspeak.com. We'll see you there.