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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, 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
Speaker 2:we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
Speaker 1:for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. So therapy. Therapy is going well if you would think I would ever say those words. She's doing a good job checking in and letting us know like where she's at in the book, she's reading our book, and where she's at on the podcast.
Speaker 1:She started at the very beginning of the podcast and we are talking about it as we go. And part of how that's helpful is because it's one way to keep all of the things that we've already learned and it's a way to sort of process part of what we've been through for the last several years. So that's actually come up a lot and we're going to talk about that in a minute. But the other thing is that she's trying to find a way for helping us get back into journaling. And this feels heavy and it feels a little bit scary because we poured literally so much of ourselves into the notebooks in the past, but we never got to process them.
Speaker 1:And it took us so long to get them back and then we got the book put together and threw away the notebooks and so it feels daunting and scary to try and trust again, but she says it won't be difficult in the same way or heavy in the same way because we will process as we go. So things won't build up so much and we get to keep our progress so that now we are able to talk about things as we share about them in the journaling or notebooks or whatever instead of not being able to talk about it or not getting to talk about it. And so that makes a big difference in how built up things feel. And so it's part of us continuing to check-in as we go both for our relationship and for therapy itself. So we still do that.
Speaker 1:And let me be clear, at the very first session that we had before she even knew about like all of our therapy traumas, she talked very explicitly about boundaries and about accessibility. So we know exactly what is okay and not okay and how to contact her or not and how she will respond or not. And I can't tell you how helpful that is because we know upfront going into it and understand very clearly And because we are able to have that understanding and because she is responsive when we do reach out, it really takes a lot of that drama out of things because we know how we can contact her and what's okay. So we are not actually having any anxiety about how to interact with her or when to interact with her because we know what our options are very clearly, and that's been huge. I think that it was one of the biggest challenges in the past that led to some of the reenactments, and I feel like it has made such a difference in this go round that it's part of what has rebuilt safety over the last few months.
Speaker 1:So that kind of feels like a big deal. So we see her once a week, we go to group several times a week, and then on Mondays and Fridays specifically, she checks in on the portal and will reply to anything that we've sent, but we don't actually need a lot of extra contact that way. I mean, I'm sure sometimes we need more than others, but mostly what we have needed is that when we did need that, she responded And she has responded consistently and quickly, and that has made all the difference in the world. And I think was the piece that felt too raw and too vulnerable. And I don't know why that makes such a difference with safety of actually getting a response and having that contact, but somehow it does because it is like when you are in those moments where it feels like you're in the dark and no one is there and did you even make up the therapist or not like are they real?
Speaker 1:Being able to reach out through the dark and feel that they're still there makes all the difference And so it's huge that she is so responsive and I think a huge part of what we have needed. But we are still on telehealth and because we don't see her in person and because I don't think that we could do notebooks again because that becomes its own trigger really from before. So I don't think we can do journaling in that way, but because it's an important piece to us and writing seems one way that we're able to communicate well, she says it's worth it for increasing cohesion and cooperation. And so she's worked out a way for us to do that online and then we actually process it in session, which is different from the past where we poured it into the notebooks but then never talked about it. Now we are starting to process things that we share and things that we write and it makes a huge difference.
Speaker 1:It's terrifying. It's new. It's very unfamiliar, but it's amazing and it's working. The other thing that she's doing with us are mandalas and so we're not in her office where we can do art with her or like sand tray or something but we have discovered by accident actually at the Healing Together conference that mindful movement is actually a big deal for us. And now that we've identified that both for a safety plan and as a coping skill, it's something she's wanting us to utilize.
Speaker 1:And so we basically have homework to every day go on a walk around our home, which is out in the open in the country and next to the woods. So there's like, we can go hiking in the mountains or around the lake or through the countryside or whatever, and to gather up little bits of nature and to use that as a meditation and as a grounding thing to smell and to see and to touch and to hear and to feel what we feel and notice in nature around us mindfully and then bring some of those things or even just out in the country we don't have to bring at home but right there where we are use some of those things that we can feel or touch or see and use them to make mandalas and it has been a lovely little project of very gently and safely re engaging those parts of us that like to create or to do art that have been tucked away for a long time since we lost our previous therapist. It's different than anything we've ever done before, so it's not too triggering, but it's safe and gentle and distanced so we can sort of engage but safely.
Speaker 1:And then we can talk about what it means and what things are. We even have done a map that way and talked about the circles a little bit and starting to talk about names are and how we can talk or not or who can communicate with each other or not. And all of those kinds of conversations in therapy are kind of a big deal. So it has been a soft and careful and gentle way to kind of re engage with that process. But also as part of that she checks in with us every single session explicitly and directly about transference and about our therapeutic relationship, how we're feeling about her, how we're feeling about therapy, how we feel after therapy, how we feel before therapy.
Speaker 1:She's tracking that really, really well because we do have these therapy traumas in the past and I think it's a piece that we never knew needed tending to and it is helping a lot. That also helps pace things so that it's intentional and it is conscious so that we're not having to act it out to get our own attention to pay attention to places or to communicate to her how we're feeling because we're talking about it directly and explicitly and that has been very very powerful. We have talked a lot about different therapy relationships we've had in the past growing up all the way up into adulthood and how things went wrong or boundary crossings versus boundary violations and different things that we've experienced that made it really hard to get help this whole time like since we were a child. And one of the things that we have learned is about how memory time is actually more complicated than what we realized. Because when we talk about memory time, often we are talking about childhood.
Speaker 1:But as it turns out, there's actually a lot of traumatic things that we have been through as adults as well. And so she gave the example, just to keep things neutral and to share on the podcast. She gave the example of how when people talk about, of like everybody right now after the pandemic, that that was a global experience we all shared, even though different people had different feelings about masks or different feelings about the coronavirus or different feelings or different experiences of lockdowns or not, different kinds of quarantines in different places or not, and that everyone had a unique experience at the pandemic. But that one thing that's super interesting is that when people mention last year, they don't actually mean twenty twenty. They mean 2019.
Speaker 1:And it's like this global dissociation from how hard 2020 was for everyone so that when we say last year, people mean 2019, even though last year was 2020. But because it was so intense and because it was so traumatic, no matter what your views were or what side of things you were on, that it's like we are all suspended in this timelessness and all of us got triggered in different ways, whether it was because of the pandemic or the protests or the politics, and that when we get triggered, our frontal cortex goes offline, which I should know because she taught us that with emotional flashbacks. And I learned that from the ISSTD conferences and classes. Like, I've learned so much about the brain and how it works that I should have known this, but I never thought about it directly in the pandemic other than, you know, our own presentation that we gave. So when your cortex turns off and your lizard brain activates, it activates a child consciousness that we have no power, that there's no one we can trust, and all of these big feelings.
Speaker 1:So when we get triggered, time consciousness goes down and child consciousness comes up and time disappears. So you don't just feel helpless. You feel helpless endlessly. So really what we need to talk about is like memory time but also there was pandemic time. Or we could even say like remember there was that lady that came on the podcast to talk about reenactments and she called all of her clients Kelly when she was talking about different cases just to protect people she called all of them Kelly.
Speaker 1:If we started doing that with all of our therapists just calling all of our past therapists, just calling them Kelly, then we could have memory time from childhood and then Kelly time from therapy and the difficult things that happened in therapy in the past and contain it in that way just the way the same way we learned how to do with memory time. So there was memory time in the past, then there was Kelly time, and then there was pandemic time, and now, in now time, it is a new now time. And this was huge for us. This was a huge shift to help bring us back into the present to 2021 because some of the things from Kelly time that we thought we were still struggling with really happened two or three or four or even five years ago. And if we talk about all the Kellys, some of those things happened ten or fifteen or twenty years ago.
Speaker 1:And that's memory time even if it wasn't childhood. So this is a huge theme for us and it's really shifting so that we have memory time, we have Kelly time, we have pandemic time, and then we have a new now time. So do you get how that for the first time we are not just able to try to put things together like okay we have these notebooks and we have these different people have shared different things let's try to put it into a book And now the book gives us all the content, but still not a timeline. And we could literally cut out chapters and try to put them in order and like make a physical timeline, right? And that timeline can be so tricksy to do, but that's not the same as experiencing it.
Speaker 1:It's not the same as feeling a timeline or being able to associate with a timeline. So even if you do it on paper, whether you cut it out or whether you tape it down or you use objects or a sand tray or art or just writing it on paper, however you do a timeline it's still dissociated from the experience. But this for the first time helped us associate to the experience of a timeline. We have memory time, we have Kelly time, We have pandemic time, and we have new now time. And even if that's just putting our whole life into, like, four chunks, They are big chunks, and they're in order, and we know how to find our way through them.
Speaker 1:And that is huge. It is giving our experience and our internal world, like a whole new dimension that we have never had of time. And so it also helps us orient to ourselves that when we're having an emotional flashback, when we are able to track down the trigger, like what happened and what is it stirring up, we are also for the first time being able to identify at least a general version of when that happened. And that's huge. And I suspect, or I hope, or I wonder, or I'm curious if we continue to practice this if there could be more times along the way that we could sort of divide things up into.
Speaker 1:But even if we did that, each smaller category could still fall under one of those categories of memory time or Kelly time or pandemic time or new now time. And that would keep us oriented to know that when we're talking about something a particular time in childhood, for example, we would know that that is in memory time which is not happening now. New now time is happening right now. That's why it's new. And so it's almost like an anchor that we can put into place to help hold us to where we're going, but also to find our way out.
Speaker 1:So if you're a big metaphor person or an image person, it's like being able to say we're going to memory time and hooking onto a tether and then dropping down into memory time like mission impossible. Right? But also because of that tether, or you could do like breadcrumbs in a fairy tale, like being able to get back out to now time. And so it is a powerful thing that has changed everything for us in a level of perception and a level of experience and a level of safety to be able to talk about things and at least be able to reference with our therapist, this is from memory time or this is from Kelly time or this is from pandemic time or this is from now time. And for us to be able to do that at all is huge because when our cortex is offline there is no now time.
Speaker 1:It's all happening then which is why for a year and a half it's felt like okay maybe now time wasn't even real, maybe it's not a thing because I don't feel it. I can't find it. I can't touch it. And the way we measured it by was having, I don't know, Kelly there and Kelly's not here anymore, so there is no now time anymore. That's what it felt like, right?
Speaker 1:And so being able to navigate and orient both in process and experience to time specifically, even if it's just a category of time, this is a huge breakthrough for us. And in fact, it's so huge that if I could describe it, if I had words to explain it, it is like we have been on pause for two years and someone just hit the play button. Like that is literally the best way I know how to describe or explain what we are experiencing or how much of a difference this makes for us. I think that when we lost the last few Kellys and when we were in those groundhog days of the pandemic and when we lost the notebooks and everything that was so traumatic the last couple of years, when all of that happened, it's like we lost now time altogether. And I feel like part of why we were stuck, yes, there were big feelings, and yes, we didn't know how to feel them.
Speaker 1:And so, yes, learning how to feel them was messy. All of that is true. But it's also true that part of the problem was we didn't know how to find our way back to now time And losing all of those pieces that we previously used and, like, depended on navigating to now time, when we lost those pieces, we didn't know how to do it without that. And so this is huge in our development because we're learning how to find our way back to now time without being dependent on a specific Kelly or specific things related to memory time because there's a whole lot that's happened between memory time and now time. And the pandemic itself feels like it was such a huge long year that it is in itself a hinge point, a marker in time and place and space of all of a sudden in our adult lives when we were feeling overwhelmed and there was so much happening and we couldn't keep up with everything, everything literally stopped.
Speaker 1:And yes, it was hard and yes, it was disorienting and yes, it was confusing. But also we have had this year to regroup internally, year to regroup as a family, and a year to regroup where and how we want to live. And it has changed everything. And so just like other people in the rest of the world may have like pre pandemic and post pandemic lives, for us pandemic time itself is like a marker. So it is like post Kelly time, which was post memory time.
Speaker 1:And so these categories, I know I keep saying it, but for us it's so profound and it's so visceral that we are actually able to latch onto it and hold it in ways that have never been possible before. So there's memory time, which would refer to childhood. There is Kelly time, which refers to memory time as an adult through all the different therapists that we've had. And then there's the pandemic time, which means last year, which really has been two years, like we're in the second year of that, right? And then the new now time where we have a good therapist, our family is in a good place, we know that we are safe, and we know that we've made decisions for what our options are for returning to work or not or how, and returning to school or not or how, like all these kinds of things that are going to create what our lives are like for the next few years, that is in now time, the new now time.
Speaker 1:And so this is huge. Like, I feel like in history class where they have those big timelines with dinosaurs and everything else, then they're like the Mesozoic era and this era and this era and this era. Like, this is a whole new era. This is a breakthrough in therapy. It is huge.
Speaker 1:Even though it's such a simple thing, it changes everything because we can now, on our own without help for the first time ever, we can orient to what is memory time, what is Kelly time, what is pandemic time, and what is now time. And I know I have said that like 20 times already, and so maybe this podcast should only be like two minutes long and instead I am just repeating myself. But it is it is sinking through all the layers of me and it is like different parts of me, different circles, different like the light bulbs are going back on and it makes sense. It's a way we can respond and organize ourselves and we can orient ourselves. No one has to move from where they are and yet suddenly everyone has a place.
Speaker 1:It makes sense and it's huge for us because it also helps us put into context the last few years that really have been a while ago. So, I'm trying to find an example of how to share this. So, for example, in the book we give the example of sand tray therapy because we really liked it. It was really effective for us, except that we kind of needed to process that. And depending on the sand tray that you do, some people process that and some people you don't process it.
Speaker 1:Some people you just do it. But for us, whatever, we are very top down driven. I guess that's why we need a podcast. I don't know. But we give the example of SandTree in the book, right?
Speaker 1:So when you read those chapters about the SandTree, that was actually really powerful experiences and really helped break the seal, so to speak, of being able to talk about things because it was the first time we demonstrated, even if it was through the sand tray and even if it was before we could even do it in art. Like, that was the beginning of things. There was something powerful about that because of the bottom up stuff. Like, we've learned about the brain, so it all makes more sense now. But that feels like it was just a little while ago.
Speaker 1:And so sometimes we're like, well, that was just yesterday, or that was just a week ago, or that was just last year that that happened. But really, that was almost six years ago. And that's an example, just for neutral stuff, of like how slippery everything feels, of time not existing at all. Or for example, with the husband. It feels like we've just met, we're close.
Speaker 1:That relationship is one of the safest ones and most stable ones we have, but it still feels new and feels like, oh, we just met yesterday or last week, or, like, it really is hard to know. Like, it doesn't feel like it's been that long, but we've actually been together for nine years. That's almost a decade, which maybe isn't like a sixty or seventy year marriage, but I mean in the context of a timeline, a whole decade is a pretty good chunk, and it's not been just a week or a couple of months. It has been nine years, and a lot has gone down in those years. So we could even have, like, a husband time, like, all the things that have happened just during the time we've been married to the husband.
Speaker 1:So maybe even with categorizing some chunks, not necessarily by topic, but by experience, that that would be another time that we could add in. We could have memory time as far as childhood stuff, Kelly time for all the therapist experiences we've had, and then pandemic time and what we all went through with that, and then new now time, which includes the husband. So I think that's why we didn't have a separate husband time, because he's part of new now time still. But really, even that's Trixie because he's not. He's been gone since Valentine's Day when he had to go to take care of his parents.
Speaker 1:And so we see him some, but he's not living here hardly anymore. And, that has its own challenges and is disorienting in some ways, but also we've been okay. And we've been able to hold on to him and hold on to our connection. And that relationship is solid and the children are staying connected and we're going back and forth with more of us vaccinated now. So somehow that stays part of new now time.
Speaker 1:So I think that's why we don't have a separate husband time, because he has remained in new now time. And so that even helps us define some other things of where there are places in our life where we're feeling grief. And it's like, why are we grieving this? Or why are we grieving that? Why is this shift hurt so much?
Speaker 1:And I think it's because we recognize in a way that is somatic, like in our bodies, we can feel that we're grieving because that peace belongs to Kelly time or pandemic time. And we can tell that it's not coming with us into new now time. And that can hurt our heart. That can be very painful, recognizing some things or some people or some relationships are not being transferred over or that people are not responding or what you thought might be a now time or what you thought might be in the future. And when you get to new now time, it's not there.
Speaker 1:And that is a very painful thing, But in other ways, it can be a very liberating thing. So for example, and this is kind of crazy, for example, and this is wild, but I'm just gonna tell you, when the mother was killed, alright, she was I don't know if you've read the book or not, or if we've talked about it on the podcast, the mother was killed by a drunk driver. So just using this example, when the mother was killed, we had to very quickly, with all the siblings, we had to divide up everything that was in her house and clean out her house very quickly because it was right before it was time for her to pay rent again, and we couldn't pay rent for another month. So even though we were in shock and grieving, we had to clean out her house really fast. Okay?
Speaker 1:That's the Reader's Digest version. And because of that, we had so much stuff. Like, our garage was packed floor to ceiling, and there were clothes and jewelry we had to sort out. Like, not fancy things like costume jewelry. She was not a wealthy woman.
Speaker 1:There weren't like fancy things that we got, but there were things that like there were these attachments to that I didn't realize there were attachments to. So for example, it took us probably a whole year to be able to go through just her clothes and her shoes. And were there any things that we needed to wear because we actually needed clothes? Were there things that we were never going to wear? Were there things that, like, nieces and nephews or our kids needed to wear or to have?
Speaker 1:Splitting up the costume jewelry amongst all the girls, the nieces and or her grandchildren, I guess. Like, those kinds of things. And it took a lot of work. Right? But there were other things that had different attachments that have just been fascinating to watch.
Speaker 1:So for example, there she had this set of wooden trays that are, like, little tables that you can set up in front of a chair to play cards on or eat on, like, little dinner trays, but they're wooden. So of all the random things, it's, like, one of the fancier things that she had. They weren't, like, plastic or metal. They were wooden. And so they were very nice.
Speaker 1:We were never allowed to use them. We never used them. We just moved them around a lot as we moved over the years, right? But for whatever reason, because of the pandemic specifically, we have had to use those all the time. We use them to prop up videos when the kids were homeschooling.
Speaker 1:We use them for our son who has cerebral palsy. If we watch a family movie, he uses one to put his popcorn bowl on. Like our kids use those all the time. And it's such a weird experience when I stop and notice because we were never allowed to use them at all. And the other thing would be like the grandmother's quilts.
Speaker 1:Like, we have these whole stacks of all these quilts that our grandmothers made and we were never allowed to touch. And you know what? It's great to have lots of blankets, and I'm actually grateful that they were cared for well because we have lots of children. And that's why we've been able to make sure that everyone had blankets and they all have a blanket on the couch because we have all these blankets that people made. And so I'm grateful that we have them, but also we use them.
Speaker 1:Whereas growing up, like, we were never allowed to use them or touch them. And even to sit on the bed, we had to, like, pull the blankets off. Like, it was just strange and interesting rules and how it's a culture shift. And I cannot enforce that many rules with my children. There are just too many children, too many bigger issues we have to worry about.
Speaker 1:And so they use the blankets and they use the trays. But also there's like another table that's just a little round table that's kind of off to the side because it always sat by a particular chair and that's just where it was. But the the children broke the chair, so the chair is gone. But the table's just sitting there, but it's sitting there by itself next to the wall with a lamp that doesn't work. And I'm like, so, mister husband, let's talk about this.
Speaker 1:Like, why do we still have the table? Like, how emotionally attached am I to this table? I have no attachment to this table. Do I really have to keep this table just because my mother had this table? I don't have to keep the table.
Speaker 1:Like, can we get rid of the table? And just recognizing that the tray tables our children are using in now time and so they matter in now time for those reasons. The blankets are from memory time because they're from grandmothers, and so that is something from memory time that has been brought into now time, but used differently. There were two blankets that had specific negative, like trauma memories that we were able to get rid of, But the rest of them are neutral. They don't have positive or negative connotations.
Speaker 1:I just know where they're from. And so it's fine that the children use them, even though maybe my grandmother would be horrified. So I don't mean to offend her, but also she said to save them for my family, and this is my family, so now my family uses them. But the round table by itself by the wall is kind of still in memory time. Like, no one is using it.
Speaker 1:No one really needs to use it, and it's not really serving any purpose, and it's not, like, a nice piece of furniture or an important piece of furniture or a sentimental piece of furniture. Like, there's nothing really about it that, like, why is it here? Why do I have this piece of memory time in the way? Like, let's just get rid of the table. And so being able to recognize what was happening, that there were things in now time in the way from memory time, that was huge, and it helped us get rid of the table.
Speaker 1:And it's such a simple thing, but kind of a big deal. In a similar way, there are, like, a few childhood items that survive for us to be able to pass on to the kids. So the husband had some things, I had a few things, and there are some things we can pass on to them. And look, these memory time things, that's super sweet that they're in now time. Other things, we're like, no, this is not something I want in my now time.
Speaker 1:Like, let's just get rid of it. Or for Kelly time, I talked about on the podcast how we had all of the appointment cards from one of our Kelly's. I'm just going to start saying that now, Kelly's for ex therapists or previous therapists. Like, there's a whole slew of them, right? From all the way back to when I was 17.
Speaker 1:So to reference any of them from now on, I'm just calling them Kelly. I like it. It's working. So thank you Maureen McAvoy for that idea. But yes, so one of our Kellys, we had all of the appointment cards, but you guys, I don't actually need that.
Speaker 1:And it's not something that helps us maintain a connection to therapy and now time because that's in Kelly time. And so it was okay to finally gather those up and let them go. And in fact, there were several Kellys on my phone and our therapist in Now Time helped us take that off the phone of like, just don't, like it's not helpful. Like that's different from visiting memory time in the context of therapy to bring healing or to bring hope or to help bring back to the present. This is just a trigger of memory time.
Speaker 1:Like, there's no reason that a Kelly needs to be on my phone except for my current therapist. And so taking all of that out and blocking all of that and saying, okay, I'm going to recognize that this is in Kelly time, that it's not in now time, and let go. Because here's the thing, I cannot live in new now time as long as I'm still living in memory time or Kelly time or pandemic time. And I can visit those times in therapy, or there may be parts of me who are still in those other times that are learning about therapy and getting oriented to new now time. But I am going to feel stuck in the past and with those emotional flashbacks that have such big feelings, as long as that's what I'm orienting myself to.
Speaker 1:So if I want to orient myself to new now time, then I have to let go of the things from memory time and from Kelly time. The things in my childhood and the things of my young adulthood are in the past. I am in the present. I am in mid adulthood, if you can imagine that. And I have my own family and need to be a new now time with family time.
Speaker 1:That's where we are right now. And I don't mean abandoning any parts of myself who are still in memory time or still in Kelly time or still in pandemic time, but knowing where they are and how to get there and help them get back to new now time is different from all of us or this body being trapped in memory time or Kelly time or pandemic time when new now time is moving on. Like I have to get on the train. I have to keep going forward. If I'm choosing to live and I'm choosing to move forward, then I have to do that in new now time because that's where I live.
Speaker 1:That's where my body exists. That's what's happening right now. And I can do that sensitively and cognizantly. Can I say that? Can that be a word?
Speaker 1:Of those parts of me who are in the past, but also with the perspective that it is the past and that it's over. My family cannot hurt me now the way that they did because they are dead and I am an adult for both of those reasons. Kelly Tyne people cannot hurt me now because I am an adult and I have adult resources, and I have a therapist who gives me evidence ongoing consistently and intentionally of how therapy is going, and we discuss it directly and explicitly so that I don't get stories in my head or confusions in my feelings. And she responds consistently to me when I do reach out so that I am aware of exactly where I am and how I am instead of waiting and wondering and wading through all of those kinds of confusions. Like, there is so much less confusion and so much more peace in my life now these last few months that it is like I feel better just because of that.
Speaker 1:Like there's no magic wand cure to all of this. And I know we still have a lot of work to do and I know that not every day will be a good day. I know it's hard to have DID and hard to process DID things. Like I get it, I get it, I get it, but I am doing so much better. We are doing so much better because we have this level of safety and this oriented to a new time that is also safe, which is different than pandemic time that hurt so much and we were so isolated without help, or Kelly time where we floundered so miserably, or memory time where we were abused so horrifically.
Speaker 1:And so for the first time in two years, I am able to say, now time, new now time is safe, but also it's safe because of this and this and this. And so I don't know what that's going to look like going forward or if we're going to be able to start engaging in therapy again, or if it's just like therapy two point zero at like a whole new level where we are able to actually process things, talk about things explicitly, and stay in now time, new now time, recognizing that what we've lost in the past really ultimately was ourselves. But in new now time, we have found ourselves. We are oriented to ourself, to our time, to our place, to where we're at, when we're at, who we are, who I am. And that is huge, even if there's still more work to do.
Speaker 1:And it feels like a really big deal. And so I wanted to talk about it because it's a way to contain things, and what I understand now is that memory time for us no longer has the power to invade the present, because the present is new now time where I understand that memory time is in the past. I don't mean I won't ever get triggered or that parts won't struggle to practice or that emotional flashbacks or abreactions or things will never happen or body memories won't ever come up. Like I know that that's part of the deal And I know we have to navigate that carefully, but I'm navigating it with myself on board. It's not just that we have a new therapist, although that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1:But right now having a therapist in new now time, having peer support through groups, having friend support through people who themselves either have or understand DID like Peter or friends from group and being able for the first time to orient myself to new now time, that's powerful and it changes everything. It doesn't solve everything. It doesn't make everything go away. It doesn't undo all the terrible things that happened. But I know that they happened to me.
Speaker 1:And I know that I'm still here on the other side of it. And being able to hold on to those two things with time, that's like a whole new triangle that's not even a circle. I know what happened generally. I know what happened to me And I know I made it through. Those three points, if I connect those dots, that makes like a container with which I can hold myself, with which I can hold myself.
Speaker 1:And that's a game changer, even if there is still hard work to do ahead. And I still hate therapy, but I do get excited for it now because it's helping. And I do feel better after each week when I go. And it turns out it's true that I didn't have to lose any progress I had already made from other Kellys before. So maybe if this were back in our fairy tale that we wrote for therapy, I don't have more of that written yet.
Speaker 1:But if that's where we were in real life, I've got my shoes on, and I've got my backpack on, and I'm ready to start walking. Let's do this.
Speaker 3: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 3: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. That's what peer support is all about.
Speaker 3:Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.