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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 3:You are back. I'm back. We are not talking about sex lives No. Ever again. Ever again.
Speaker 3:But you said you have something that you saw something, a show or a is it a movie or a show?
Speaker 1:It's a series. Yeah.
Speaker 3:A series, and it felt DID to you.
Speaker 1:Not DID specifically, but there's a lot of things about trauma and recovery in it. So this is a cartoon series on Netflix.
Speaker 3:What's it
Speaker 1:called? It's called Centaur World.
Speaker 3:What?
Speaker 1:Yes. It's called Centaur World. And I watched a little bit of it, and it is aggressively unpleasant to me.
Speaker 3:The like the content or the presentation?
Speaker 1:Well, I I didn't watch enough of it originally to understand any of the sort of deeper layers behind it. I can talk about what's what what I find so distasteful about it in a moment. But then just a couple days ago I watched some videos like video essays where people were pontificating on the the deeper meanings of Centaur world and I was actually really impressed So I have tried to watch some more of it and I still really do not enjoy it. It's one of those
Speaker 3:things. You would have come on the podcast. Are you just this is okay. Last time I was on the podcast that didn't go well. So now I'm gonna come on and tell you about something terrible.
Speaker 1:Well, other people may love it. It's just what they are saying, I think, is really good, and how they are saying it is just really not for me. It's so I should say I'm gonna talk about the show in general. So if you would like to watch it without spoilers, you may want to do that. I don't know when the right time to give a spoiler warning is.
Speaker 3:How very considerate of you.
Speaker 1:I try. I try. So there's sort of two sides to the cartoon. Initially, it begins as what would be called, like, adult animation. It's kind of like
Speaker 3:Like adult adult?
Speaker 1:No. Not like sexy adult. We're not back to there. But like, Legend of Korra, Dragon Prince, bits of anime. It's a little anime influence.
Speaker 1:It's sort of a dark, gritty war cartoon when it starts out.
Speaker 3:I'm really sorry that none of what you just said makes sense to me. But these people that listen are very cool, and some of them are going to understand what you're saying.
Speaker 1:So it starts out in the human realm. There's a war. We're focused on a girl warrior whose name is just Ryder because she rides a horse. Right?
Speaker 3:Well, makes sense.
Speaker 1:And you follow them through battle. There's instances where things are extra dangerous and the way they face it is by just charging ahead and fighting their way through until finally they end up on a cliff. And on the cliff, the horse slips off and falls down into the bottomless pit below.
Speaker 3:But not the rider?
Speaker 1:Not the rider.
Speaker 3:Just horse.
Speaker 1:The horse and the rider get separated. The horse finds itself magically transported to Centaur World, which is an aggressively childlike cartoon where it's like manic all the time. All the characters seem to be screaming for some reason or another. There are characters with
Speaker 3:That's that's why I'm sorry for interrupting. That's why you don't like it, why it feels aggressive because we already have children who scream.
Speaker 1:There are there are characters with long necks that can curl around like snakes to, like, be intrusive, like somebody's head, like, wrapping around your neck, like an arm around your shoulder. Like, it creeps I me I do not like the style of it. It does have musical numbers, which are actually quite good for the most part. But you have this wonderful conflict between this war horse, right, which it remains in that animated style from the first part of the cartoon, is now in this sort of candy colored bizarre nonsense children's cartoon world.
Speaker 3:So it feels like it doesn't belong.
Speaker 1:It absolutely does not fit in. And she meets up with a herd of centaurs of various kinds. There's a giraffe, there's a bird centaur, some that I can't even identify everything in this world is centaurs there are tree centaurs and tornado centaurs and everything is a centaur but the leader of this particular herd is named Wama Wink, which I cannot bring myself to say out loud again. So I am going to call her the llama centaur. So it turns out if you look at the show holistically with the horse, I guess really all of the characters, you're dealing with people who characters who are dealing with trauma.
Speaker 1:Both of their worlds have been severely damaged in warfare. Both the llama and horse have lost their families when they were little, but they have developed completely opposite ways of dealing with it. So Warhorse who can now speak in centaur world she could not before she faces any stress, any fear that she has by charging blindly forward to fight with whatever is ahead of her because that has been what she and Ryder did. Right? That was the only strategy she's learned for survival.
Speaker 3:The fight response.
Speaker 1:The fight response. The llama centaur has developed, I guess, a combination of flight and fawning. She has I
Speaker 3:love that you even know this.
Speaker 1:She has literally developed a protective bubble around her valley so that no hints of warfare can get in. And she has these other animals in her herd that she has basically infantilized to the point that they cannot provide for themselves at all.
Speaker 3:Like bad therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Seriously, I was just talking about this with somebody, maybe it was in a group, about how when you're overly dependent on your therapist, that's why you feel like you're in crisis between sessions. But when your therapist helps you know how to care for yourself and trusts you to do that as you always have, then even when a lot's happening, you're actually okay between sessions.
Speaker 1:There's a later episode where the llama is unconscious for quite a while and everyone else is getting hungry. But the other centaurs, it turns out, don't even know how to identify food, let alone find it because the llama generates magical pancakes from her hooves. And so, like, here's a rock. There's food. Here's a book.
Speaker 1:It's food. And the war horse is completely condescending. She's like, that is not food. Food is like an apple. They're like, okay.
Speaker 1:Tell us how to get it. She's like, you just stand here with your mouth open until Ryder puts the horse the apple in your mouth. She's like, I don't know how to get food either. Oh
Speaker 3:my goodness.
Speaker 1:So there's this whole wonderful level of these two characters having to learn from each other how to change their response to all of these triggers. There's so many wonderful moments like there's a spooky forest they have to go into that it turns out the llama centaur has had a bad experience in in the past. And intellectually, she knows she needs to go in there. But while she is saying that, her body is walking backwards away from it. Right.
Speaker 1:Association between mind and body.
Speaker 3:Also like therapy.
Speaker 1:Yep. At one point, she conjures a magical bubble just around herself so that she can't hear anybody.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 1:The but as I was watching more of it, the all of the characters have these weird sort of issues they're dealing with. There's there's one of them that has, a magical chasm in herself. There's like a magical void, and she's constantly stealing things and storing them in her void as if that's going to like, she literally does it as a stress response. When she's anxious, she starts stealing things and stuffing them into her chest. There's one that is just highly aggressive and unpleasant.
Speaker 1:He will not listen. He has these ingrained biases against horses even though it's a centaur. There's one that's extremely vain and at one point in an episode it turns out that he has the ability to break the fourth wall and start talking to the audience like he's in a reality show doing one of the confession cams while everything else freezes in the background. Except it turns out that the other characters are still aware. And the experience of freezing like that is like having your body on fire.
Speaker 1:So anytime he wants to, like, turn to the audience and dish out all the secrets that he knows, everybody else can not only hear him, but they are experiencing excruciating pain as he does so.
Speaker 3:Woah.
Speaker 1:So as it goes along, one of the things that happens is the war horse, I think she has the most sort of dynamic arc over the season. She as she begins to accept that there are more sides to her than just fighting
Speaker 3:Oh, snap.
Speaker 1:She begins to physically change in her appearance. She becomes less like the anime inspired war horse and more cartoony.
Speaker 3:Like the child cartoony? Yes. Or balanced between them?
Speaker 1:She doesn't become one of the centaurs, but there are more child cartoony elements. At one point, her tail begins to talk, and she has a whole love hate relationship with a talking tail.
Speaker 3:Story of my life right there.
Speaker 1:But she she has to learn to accept that who she is is not necessarily the one part of her that she ever had the opportunity to exercise when she was in conflict.
Speaker 3:Woah, say that again.
Speaker 1:She has to realize that who she is is not just the one part of her that was needed in conflict. The only way she could survive and be safe in war was to be a battle horse. But out of the context of battle, even though she's still doing hard things, that is not the only side of her. She she discovers that she has, like, funny sides of her, and she has parts that like being, like, performative and singing and stuff and sillier parts of her and friendlier parts of her, even though it's not presenting as like dissociative parts specifically, more like me, you know, fish tank, we have parts. But she has to accept who she is outside of the context of having to be a war horse all the time.
Speaker 1:And then thinking when I ever make it back to my rider, is she still going to like me when I'm not the same horse that I thought that I was? If I'm not the same horse that she saw me to be because we only ever had that particular relationship fighting together. And then there's another layer, the big bad of the series is called the Nowhere King. Oh, but to get to the Nowhere King, later on, Warhorse herself develops a magical power. Her magical power is the magic of backstories.
Speaker 3:Backstories? Yes.
Speaker 1:She can leap into someone's chest and witness a scene from their history. Woah. So she can learn about the motivations behind people's experiences.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:And so they meet up with the Nowhere King, which is this sort of big evil giant deer monster. And instead of fighting it, she leaps into it to learn this backstory. And it turns out that the that this monster started out as a centaur who was part man part elk. But this centaur fell in love with a human princess. And he was so ashamed of the elk part of him that he used magic to split himself into his human and elk parts.
Speaker 3:What?
Speaker 1:And then he tries to kill his elk parts, but he can't do it because it's also part of himself.
Speaker 3:Oh, snap.
Speaker 1:And so he basically cuts himself off so completely that the elk no longer fits in the centaur world and or the human world and sort of grows into this big monstrous thing in the land between in the space between these two worlds where it doesn't fit anywhere, and so it's going to destroy everywhere. Right? And so instead of having to destroy the nowhere king, she has to help it come to terms with who it is as a whole being and reunite it with its human half, which I thought was really interesting. So there's a lot going on. It's it's a cartoon that I don't enjoy watching.
Speaker 1:I think
Speaker 3:it's so weird? Not because of the content, but how it's presented?
Speaker 1:There's something there's something in the tone. It's one of those moments where I think, oh, okay. I'm old now. Because I know it's a tone very similar to a lot of children's cartoons now.
Speaker 3:So it's like an adult cartoon for people, young adults who were raised on Coco Melon?
Speaker 1:Maybe who raised on on this sort of manic style of cartoon. They will probably find it very familiar. But there's so many there's so many insightful moments. At one point, they go to a pair of magical trees, and the trees say that we will grant you what you need, not necessarily what you want. Oh.
Speaker 1:And so the the angry bird centaur who's biased against horses, like anti horse racism, he goes to ask for what he wants, but it turns out he's turned into a horse so that he gets perspective.
Speaker 3:Woah.
Speaker 1:And the llama who's going berserk because of all of her anxiety and trying to take care of everybody, she goes to get her wish granted, and she just falls asleep because it turns out that's what she needed. And the horse
Speaker 3:Instead of taking care of everybody Yes. She just needed rest.
Speaker 1:She needed rest, and she sleeps for, like, an episode and a half.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:And then the war horse who really just wants to get back to her rider goes up and to ask for what she wants. But what she needs, it turns out oh, she she suddenly disappears from where she is and shows up in a place that's, like, been devastated by something. And she sniffs the air and says, fire? Despair? Death?
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm home. It's like, oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:That baseline.
Speaker 1:Yes. That's what's familiar. That feels like home. But it turns out she's not home. She has gone into the past of the Lama Centaur to learn that the Lama Centaur lost her entire village, including her parents, when she was a small child.
Speaker 1:And so what she needed was the empathy to be able to start connecting with the Lama Centaur. I was like, that's like, it's really profound. It's really well done. I wish I liked it more.
Speaker 3:So the content and how they're presenting it, really love. It's the cartoon style that
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's too much for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's just too much. Maybe it's because I'm an introvert. It just feels like the characters are yelling at me all the time, and they're aggressively stupid. There's there's a giraffe centaur that earlier in one episode he kept this is very childish.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. He kept farting. And every time he would fart, he would say, oh, father. I'm so sorry. Don't be disappointed in me.
Speaker 1:It's like, what is happening here? And he goes to the wishing trees, and they change it so that when he farts, he now hears positive messages from his father figure. He breaks wind and hears, I'm proud of you, son. Like like, profound, but also
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness. Oh, I don't even know how to respond to that.
Speaker 1:That was how I responded to it. But yeah. So, anyway, if somebody is looking at a looking for a weird exploration of trauma and recovery.
Speaker 3:Is there any recovery in the show, or you didn't watch enough to see any recovery?
Speaker 1:Over over the course of the series, she comes to terms with these the horse the war horse character comes to terms with these changes in herself. She is even able to reunite with Ryder, but with a new kind of relationship where they are peers, I guess, rather than writer and subservient. The writer has gotten a new horse in the meantime, and so that causes some drama. There has been some, as I was watching these video essays, there was some complaining about the character of the Lama who does have to overcome her insecurities, but they felt like her arc was not treated as as fully or as clearly. And so but there is I mean, it's there.
Speaker 1:It's just not it's not done as the focus is not on on her as much even though I feel like there's a lot of potential there. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So does it feel like it's just so directly about trauma or as a whole kind of like a union dream that with those parts, it feels like a metaphor for DID in therapy.
Speaker 1:My understanding is that the oh, that's interesting. I think the creators of the show were literally trying to address issues of trauma and and getting recovery from those issues. As far as being specifically about DID, I mean, I'm sure you can look at it that way. It's it's hard for me because most of the characters are so annoying. I I would hate to imagine them all being crowding around in my head at the same time.
Speaker 3:But that's what it feels like in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Right? Goodness.
Speaker 3:Like, later, the same thing. As you learn about their traumas or why they're there
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You learn their backstory, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Goodness. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And and it be you understand and there's more connection and more familiarity and you start to have a different perspective. But in the beginning, it really can be so annoying and you just wanna get away from it. And I can't even watch. Why would I even tend to this?
Speaker 1:Especially, like, the varying levels of maturity, like having this war horse character who at least perceives herself as being older and more mature and having, like, littles or adolescents or people just at different stages in life inside, like, you're just gonna see the world differently. And I can imagine how that would be a real struggle.
Speaker 3:That it yeah. That's absolutely what it's like.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:And frustrating because of trying to communicate even the same principles or ideas or concepts or therapy updates through all of those layers. And so, you know, if there's something I can read a book about and then understand, that's one thing, but that's not the same as how you tell a little about those same concepts.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's not the same as you get through to ones who don't have the same attention span or who aren't paying attention because they wanna eat or wanna play or wanna do other things than learn something or grasp a concept.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I guess in the way that, like, each of these characters is dealing with their own personal trauma in different ways that is kind of literally what each alter is. Right? It's a different way of surviving a different form of trauma. It's Interesting.
Speaker 1:And all I mean, and, of course, throughout the cartoon, all of their different quirks become useful in different ways at different times. So, like, learning to value what seems other in the others.
Speaker 3:Right. Right. Well and that's why we work towards blending. Right?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Or or that sharing space with each other because there's something that you can do that I need. There's something I can do that you need, but also the more motivated we are towards the same goals or the more motivated we are to make sure everyone's needs are met, then the more motivated we are to work together towards those needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's, I mean, that's one thing that I love about your system as you have grown over time is the way that all of you do that. You work together really well. That by allowing different selves to exercise their strengths, to have opportunities for the things that bring them joy, Like, everybody together is able to be more functional than when any one of you is is aggressively trying to take over or sabotaging others or it's like working together allows you to have more joyful wins than than in times when you guys were less supportive of each other.
Speaker 3:Well, and we've come so far in that. And I think that's part of what we've been talking about really, even with the playground and all of that of working together intentionally so that we can have what we need and so that our needs are met as opposed to working towards against each other and knowing getting their needs met. And then somewhere in there in the middle was this whole phase of working together because we have to, like the lower law of it, right? Working together because we have to or because we're supposed to or because we need to learn about each other before we can work together. And so those early phases of learning who's here and what they need and what they do and who they are and how old they are.
Speaker 3:Like all of those kinds of things really shifts over time. In the same way, like every day that outside kids come out to the breakfast table, you're not like, how old are you? What is your name? What do you need today? Like we just know each other.
Speaker 3:And so feeling that inside really starts to shift. And in fact, one of the things that we're talking about in therapy is not even, like, integration has such a bad connotation at Right? This And not even other words like fusion or this or that. What we've been talking about and thinking about is inclusion.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 3:And part of that is because it's a word we already have from the world of disability. Right? Like accessibility and accommodations and things like that. So if we have permission to feel what we feel and have permission, like from ourselves, I mean, because we exist as opposed to before in therapy, it was like, you're not allowed, I mean, before from trauma where you're not allowed to exist, you're not allowed to have needs, you're not allowed to have wants, you're not allowed and not allowed or punished or in trouble or things taken, whatever. But now as an adult, with adult resources to have the right to take up space and the right to have needs and the right to have expression
Speaker 2:and the right
Speaker 3:to have wants and the right to have preferences and the right to just be, then how do I include all the pieces of me and all the layers of me, all the parts of me, memory time, now time, all of those things, how do I include that? And then what is it that we do need and how can I accommodate that? And so for now, it's kind of a new phase for us having this language to use for those concepts when other things have not worked for us before. So maybe it's just because of our own disability or because of having a house full of children with disabilities, but that language of inclusion and accommodations is working for us right now.
Speaker 1:That's good. Like, it makes me think about our kids, you know, thinking of them as as individuals in the way that alters are individuals. Right? Like, we're all people. And how they they squabble in part because they're still learning how to trust that they will get what they need even if they're not fighting for it or using whatever strategy they particularly have.
Speaker 1:Right? Each one of them has different different strategies. But it's been so gratifying to see the older ones start to trust that they will get what they need even if that doesn't mean every moment is going to be pleasant, that they can trust, they can be present in an unpleasant moment and know that they are going to come out the other side. They don't need to panic or retreat or lash out.
Speaker 3:Well, and that's exactly what we learned during quarantine. Right? We've literally had that metaphor of going to the other side and then like basically our boat capsized and we were abandoned there in the water and it felt like we were drowning. And with all of the overwhelm of quarantine and of grief from losing our previous therapist, all of those things and losing friends and trying so hard over and again and over again and over again to have friends and it not working and thinking I'm going to drown and I'm going to be alone and I'm not going to survive this. And still thinking that someone is going to rescue me because they promised or they promised or they promised.
Speaker 3:And then why am I still in the water to the point of realizing I can swim. I can rescue myself. And getting myself out of that, and me doing my work is rescuing myself, and not in a why do I always have to be independent, I don't get a parent kind of way, but in a no, I am an adult and I can get myself safe enough, then to get in a place to where I can accommodate those other needs of parts of me that are included in that rescue. So what do you need? How can I tend to that?
Speaker 3:How do like being creative and finding what love and care and tending to those parts mean and looks like because I am safe enough and also strong enough to do that for myself and with others in the context of others. And so now all this time later, I have friends I never thought. Peter was here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Peter came to visit. And I just talked to Kim yesterday on Zoom for an interview, and we talked about some things. And so I just got to see her and going for girls weekend or this or that, you know, like there are there are all these ways of being creative and actually saying no. I do have friends and look at these people who now, even people I met through the podcast, it's been six years now.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:We are friends, I'm not a problem. These people do still care and they have been consistent friends over the time and watching those relationships develop. Or the clinicians with lived experience group and be like, look, we are still here together and we've cared for each other for these years and look at what tight friendships we've built through that.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 3:the other groups or the other experiences and events in the community and seeing all of that unfold in the same way as with the children being adopted from foster care, no matter how much we love them and no matter how long they live with us, we cannot undo the trauma of the past.
Speaker 1:We
Speaker 3:can't take that away. We cannot rescue them for that no matter how much we want to, But they have lived with us long enough to have built all of these new memories and a life where their needs are met and they are safe and they're happy. Yeah. And that's where I feel like I am. I don't know about your manic cartoon world, but I feel like I have finally gotten to a place where I can say, I'm happy.
Speaker 1:Yay.
Speaker 3:Right? And it took all of this work and I'm not finished yet. I don't mean, oh, I'm done and life is easy. Life is complicated. My therapist said this week, and I wanna keep thinking about this, but my therapist said this week that sometimes it is complicated to meet our needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But it doesn't mean we shouldn't meet our needs. And so I still have more therapy to do and life is very complicated, but also I am healthier and happier than I've ever been in my life, and that feels really good.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:Right? Good. I don't have to argue with my tail anymore. Anything else they need to know about this show that you tell them is so terrible not to watch? Except for you young people.
Speaker 1:They'll probably love it. Yeah. I would be curious to hear people's perspective on it when they get to see it.
Speaker 3:Just trauma response. Yeah. And how they portray that. So the p the creators of the show intentionally are talking about trauma.
Speaker 1:That's my understanding.
Speaker 3:Wow. Are they
Speaker 1:I don't I don't know much about them or or how in-depth they're doing, but that's that's my understanding. I could be wrong.
Speaker 3:Fascinating. Well, thank you for telling us.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I hope people enjoy it, or I hope that was interesting in some way.
Speaker 3:Maisie says it's time for us to stop talking. She wants to go outside. Maisie, are you having trauma because your care is delayed? You wanna go outside?
Speaker 1:She's giving us the squint eye.
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.