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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 longtime 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 don't know if I can do this. It feels too hard. All of it feels too hard. I woke up, and I've missed three days, half of this day. There's a note on my desk that says to just push this button and talk about what it's like having DID.
Speaker 1:I know my husband talked about the podcast idea, but I don't really know anything to share, and I don't know what to say, and it's already pretty embarrassing. Like, I don't mean any disrespect. I just mean this is really hard, and I don't really know how to deal with it or what to say. I don't talk about it to anyone. I don't have any friends that know.
Speaker 1:My husband knows, but I try not to talk to him about it. He's never been unkind, and he seems pretty supportive. And he's actually helped me understand a lot about it by just simply sort of explaining how, like, he's no different. I just have walls between my parts, he says. But he's got all the same parts.
Speaker 1:Everybody does. That's what he says. I just don't remember mine. I don't know if that's really right or how it works, but it's my starting place, I guess. I write in my journals.
Speaker 1:I have those. I guess I could talk about those. They're just regular notebooks, like spiral notebooks, the same as my kids use for school. I can buy them without anyone asking questions because people just think I buy them for my kids. Right?
Speaker 1:But I go through two or three a week. I write them, and I give them to my therapist. I like her, but I'm really scared, and it's hard for me to go. But I always feel better after I've gone, but I don't actually remember anything. I know I've been there, and I feel better, but I don't really remember even going sometimes.
Speaker 1:I think I've only actually seen her twice and not for very long. And we've been going to see her for almost a year, every week on Mondays. So I have these notebooks, and I write in them. Sometimes other people write in them, I guess. Some of it I can look at, and some of it I can't.
Speaker 1:Some people draw in them. Sometimes there's little kid drawings. Sometimes there's scribbles. Sometimes there's things I can't even look at. Lots of times there's things I can't even look at.
Speaker 1:Here's a whole section that's clipped off, like, with I don't know the word for it. Not paper clips, but bigger than that, like, binder clips, I guess, or something. I'm not sure what they're called. But the pages are clipped together, which I guess I mean, it's not a written rule, but I assume that means someone doesn't want anyone to see, and so I just skip a whole chunk of the notebook. Sometimes it's just me trying to grasp what's going on, where I've been and what I've been doing, where they've been, what they've been doing, the others inside.
Speaker 1:But I don't like when they say they're inside of me because I don't think anyone's inside of them or me. I can't see. I can't even talk about it. It's so hard. It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:There's not good words in English for how to even describe it. It makes my head hurt. There's no one inside me that doesn't make any sense. But I know there are others there, but I'm not inside that. Like, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's boring what I write, and so maybe it's a waste of her time. She says she reads all of it. And there are times I wanted to talk about something and brought something up, and she knew what I was talking about. So maybe I can believe her, but it seems like a lot to do. She doesn't I don't pay her to read it.
Speaker 1:She doesn't charge me extra time to read it. We've had some really bad therapists before, so I know I'm lucky we found her. I don't even remember how we found her. But, like, this page, this page is just boring. I don't know how it helps with anything, but sometimes it's all I can do just to stay present.
Speaker 1:It just says I was sitting at the table with piles of papers around me, and one of the children came running in, shaking me. I don't know what I was doing. I don't know why I couldn't come out of my fog. I felt bad and rushed out. The school bus was there and wouldn't let the children off until I went out to meet them.
Speaker 1:I guess they had been waiting on me. I was embarrassed, but thanked my daughter that she woke me up. Like, I know I wasn't sleeping at the table. That doesn't make sense. But that's what I wrote about because that's what it feels like, like waking up in strange places and waking up in weird situations or waking up and not knowing where you are or what you're doing there.
Speaker 1:Or even sometimes, I know I'm there, like, in the kitchen or trying to do something with the children. And all of a sudden, it's like I'm watching it happen, but I don't know what I'm doing. Or I am there, but I can't remember what I was doing or what I was trying to do even though time didn't go away. I don't know how to explain it, but sometimes time just goes away. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know. All these pages have different handwritings. The ones that I can look at, I'm supposed to be learning who is who and learning about them, but it's like my brain doesn't retain the information somehow. Like, I should know this handwriting goes with this person, but I can't keep it in me. Like, I can't remember.
Speaker 1:And when I try to read it, everything just gets blurry, and I can't. And then I don't remember what I read. I think there's something wrong with me. It feels so crazy sometimes or like I'm stupid or something except, like, who's not intelligent enough to read the words on the page if you know how to read? I I know how to read.
Speaker 1:I just I just can't. Sometimes Sometimes it's just about other things or trying to figure out what is right. Like, this is from last week or the week before. I'm not even sure. But it says, I want to put up the Christmas tree, but I guess it's still too soon.
Speaker 1:Also, only the decorations are pulled out. The Christmas tree is in a box in the garage, and I can't go in there to get it out. And my husband has been sick. Like, why can't I go in the garage? I don't even understand.
Speaker 1:It's not a big deal. I just need to go ahead and get the box. I just need to go get the box, but it was, like, two weeks. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 1:I don't know why. Like, I'm not depressed exactly. I mean, I'm frustrated, and I'm exhausted, But I just it wasn't about motivation. I don't know how to explain it. It was just too much.
Speaker 1:I couldn't do it. I don't know why. Sometimes I try to write about my dreams, but that's hard. My dreams are so weird. Like, I think there's something seriously wrong with me.
Speaker 1:This page from last week and the weekend, maybe the weekend before, I don't know, it says, I was standing in front of an open door. Well, it kind of opened itself. That part was creepy, but I did not feel afraid. I was anxious, but not scared. Behind me was a long hallway with rooms off on each side.
Speaker 1:It was dark there, and I knew I didn't want to go that way. Ahead of me was a flight of wooden stairs, and I could see a little bit of light from a window. Like, it was like a skylight, but at night, not bright. The window was not a fancy one, just flat panes on a slanted roof. I've had this dream before, but this time, I climbed the stairs and went up.
Speaker 1:I don't know why this time was different. I could feel the sound the stairs made, but I could not hear it. I could feel with my fingers the wood slatted wall as I went up. I could smell the air. It was unpleasant and stung a bit like dust and stale urine.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to describe it. Cats uncared for, maybe. I don't like the smell of cats, and it reminded me of this. But cats are so sweet. I don't know why that I can't handle the smell, but there were no cats in the dream.
Speaker 1:From the window, I could see fields. There were cows and horses in a faraway house. The house had a swing set. There were trees like woods in the country to the right. The land dipped down like a small valley before going back up to the other land with the cows to the left.
Speaker 1:I was taking all this in and about to turn back to the room and see what I could see when someone from behind me came and startled me so badly I screamed. But it was just my daughter waking me up from my dreams and crawling into my bed for the morning. I was so disoriented, and it took me a while to wake up. So see, I can't even finish my dreams. Maybe that's because of parenting, though.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Sometimes I don't even know what to write in my journals, so I just write quotes. I really like the book. There's a book I like. I've had it for a long time.
Speaker 1:It's very marked up, and all the pages are written on and highlighted and marked up. It's one of those books, but maybe my favorite book of all time. Maybe my bible, I guess you would say. Like, it's scripture to me. It's sacred.
Speaker 1:It's a text. Like, I don't know how to explain it, but it's called women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pincola Estes. And so here's a quote from that book. It says, while the sides of a woman's nature represent separate entities with different functions and discriminate knowledge, they must have a knowing or a translation of one another to function as a whole. If a woman hides one part or favors another part too much, she lives a lopsided life which does not give her access to her entire power.
Speaker 1:This is not good. And then it says later in that same chapter, this is from chapter four, it says, the loss of a woman's psychological, emotional, and spiritual powers comes from separating these parts from one another and pretending the others don't exist. Starved creatures often lose their memory of what they were about. So, like, I feel like those are powerful quotes. They reflect to me some of what I've talked about in therapy or in my journals or I'm trying to think about on my own even if I'm not good at remembering what happens in therapy.
Speaker 1:But, also, even those just feel like just beyond my grasp. Like, I start to see what it means, and then it just slips through my fingers like time just slipping through my fingers like sand. I don't know how else to describe it. Oh, this was this was a new thing that happened just at the end of last week. For the first time, I heard two voices distinct and clear, not just noise in my head.
Speaker 1:And then, like someone turning on the lights, I saw them standing there across from me watching the children. One was taller with glasses and a ponytail, and one was older with shorter hair. They were not there before, and I knew that they were the others. They were talking about the children and shame and connection. The wounded boy came running to me crying, but the older one stepped forward and intervened before he got to me.
Speaker 1:The one with glasses and a ponytail coached her through it, and it was amazing. I just stood there watching. So that's just what I wrote because it's what happened, but I don't know what it means or if it counts. Does that count as therapy? Is it worth writing?
Speaker 1:Sometimes I can write questions for my therapist too. I wrote, is that a hallucination? I don't know what happened, and I don't know if seeing them for the first time means I'm getting better or if I'm getting sicker. I just feel crazy all the time. I don't know if I'm getting any better or not.
Speaker 1:And if I am getting better, I don't even know how to measure that. Like, how can you tell? Who who decides what better is? What does that mean? What does it look like?
Speaker 1:What do I have to do to make it happen? Here's a quote I wrote from an Adrian Rich poem. She's a poet, a writer. It says, since I was a child trying on a thousand faces, I have wanted one thing, to know simply as I know my name at any given moment where I stand. Here's another one she wrote.
Speaker 1:But we have different voices, even in sleep, the past echoing through our bloodstreams. And this is she with whom I tried to speak, whose hurt, expressive head, turning aside from pain, is dragged down deeper where it cannot hear me. And soon I shall know I was talking to my own soul. Here's one. This doesn't happen very often, but this here's one where it's like somebody wrote me back.
Speaker 1:Like, I wrote, I don't know if we work today or not. How do I tell? Because sometimes I can tell that we got up early to work because we have the watch that shows, like, what our sleep patterns was, so I know if I was awake in the night or what time I went to sleep and if I stayed asleep and what time I got up or not. Or if I was wandering around the house in the night, I know it because the steps are counted. And so, like, I try to track it and I try to pay attention, but sometimes I don't know.
Speaker 1:And that night, the watch was charging, so I didn't have the watch on. And I slept to a different time, and so just little things like that threw me off really easily because I don't know what's happened to my day or or what I need to do or not do or how to do it. So I wrote that down just to ask my therapist in session. But then somebody wrote me back, like, in a completely different handwriting, and I don't remember writing it. And it's not my husband's writing.
Speaker 1:When I said, how do I tell? He wrote back. It just says, ask me. We did. I worked.
Speaker 1:I'm finished until Tuesday, but we have to give a talk and you need to look at the notes about the podcast. But I didn't know about the podcast yet, so I didn't know what notes they were talking about or what to do when somebody wrote me back. Like, I don't know. It was disturbing. And then more about your dream.
Speaker 1:Right now, I keep having these dreams about a house. This says, I dreamed I was in a house. It was dark, but I was not afraid. It was dark like dusk, not like night. I knew the family was not home, but it was filthy there.
Speaker 1:There was a foyer where I was standing and a living room where the ones I saw the other day were standing. One was talking to the other like giving them a tour. The kitchen was in the back and horrifying. And by the foyer, there were stairs that went up and stairs that went down. I saw a small child at the end of the downstairs hall, but she ran to hide as soon as she saw me see her.
Speaker 1:I did not want to scare her, so I did not go down the stairs. When I turned to look at the other stairs, a boy with a black eye was sitting at the top of the stairs. He smiled and waved, but before I could talk to him, I heard the other adult there that say something to the other one that I moved to see what they were looking at. But that's when she woke me up, and I can't remember what I saw. So I guess I don't don't even know.
Speaker 1:Just trying to put pieces together, I guess. Don't know if this matters to anyone. And and there's lots of different kind of drawings. Some of them are just children's drawings. Some of them are really good.
Speaker 1:Sometimes there's paintings. I can't paint. I can't sketch and draw. Like, some of these drawings, I don't know if I could even draw as well as the kids' drawings that are in here. Sometimes it's markers.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's crayon. Sometimes it's just scribbling. We there are a bunch of pens. Like, we have pens that are different colored pens, and some of them always write with the same pen, and some of them like to use different ones. And I don't know that it means anything.
Speaker 1:Some of it's scary. Here's that whole page that's talking about NTIS and explaining about now time is safe. So, like, I learned that because I saw it on my hand for three weeks. I had Sharpie on my hand that every time I almost got rid of it, it came back again. And I don't know, I guess, one of the others writing on there, but I don't know why or how to make them stop.
Speaker 1:But then I learned from the notebook, I guess, it was something that was helping somebody. But, like, how does that work? And my experience is just that I keep trying to wipe this marker off my hand, and it won't go away. So it can just be so confusing, but I'm trying. I don't know.
Speaker 1:And then today, here's what I wrote today. I can share this, I guess, because it's like what we're talking about, those other dreams from last week, mommy. Because I have really bad dreams. Like, they're terrible. Sometimes I'm not even asleep when they happen.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to explain it. But here's what I wrote this morning. Oh, not this morning. This well, this morning, like like, it was nighttime after midnight, like, two in the morning. Okay?
Speaker 1:It says, I had horrible dreams. I woke up on the floor curled up and too scared to move. It took me an hour almost just to get across the room to the notebook. My hands are shaking. I can't breathe.
Speaker 1:My heart is pounding out of my chest. I have this strong feeling to tell you about my dream, not just defending or because I want to or it's interesting, but it's more like an urge, like a need, like someone else's need. I don't know how to explain it. But, also, at the same time, I am afraid. It makes me feel small and scared.
Speaker 1:Also, the dreams themselves are not appropriate. My dreams are always nightmares. They're violent. They're grotesque. They're horrific.
Speaker 1:I won't watch movies or TV, and still it happens. I feel so bad, even guilty, for the terrible person I am to have such dreams, and I don't dare write them down. Sometimes it's like one bad movie, one long story, start to finish, a nightmare I can't wake up from as it plays out worse and worse and just escalates. It doesn't stop until I wake up screaming and have to throw up and lay there shaking and afraid. It takes me a long time to recover from those.
Speaker 1:Other times, my dreams are like tangled threads of different colors, like watching a hundred movies on a hundred screens all at once, except someone keeps changing the channel, so I can't make sense of any of it. These are less scary but more overwhelming, and I'm startled to wake, stressed and anxious and confused when I finally do. Sometimes there are only flashes. This happens even when I'm awake, out of context, and terrifying, like someone throwing pictures up in my faces. Or sounds.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it happens with sounds or even smells. It's a cruel torture, these flashes, and they startle me and frighten me. Sometimes they're just random, or sometimes a lot happens in a row, like an old flipbook, or sometimes it's the same one over and over. Sometimes it's one slowly that fades in, and the more I look, the more hypnotic it becomes. Sometimes there are many of them quickly startling me, leaving me dizzy and spinning and knocking me off balance.
Speaker 1:Always, they are unwanted and violating and disturbing, graphic and frightening and sickening. And even after they are gone or I wake up, their shadow lingers over me, haunting me. This is almost worse than even losing time. Losing time is disorienting. Not knowing where I am is scary.
Speaker 1:Not knowing or being able to guess what I was doing or saying is embarrassing. Not being able to find anything is frustrating. Not knowing about my husband and children while I am gone is worrying, but the dreams and flashes are terrifying. All of it makes me feel crazy, but the dreams and flashes make me feel bad. The voices and chatter is confusing, but has always been there.
Speaker 1:And you say you know those others and trust them, and they are safe and good. But the nightmares and flashes are not good. I don't know. That's where I am today. I don't know if that helps or if journaling it out loud on this makes a difference.
Speaker 1:I don't I don't know, but that's all I can do. That's all I can try. Thanks. I do appreciate the people in the groups or online who have been so supportive and helpful and contacted me or listened to me as I'm trying to sort things out or been patient with the others. I guess who knows so much more than me.
Speaker 1:It's like I can only process so much, but finding others who understand or are willing to listen, it really helps, and I appreciate that. Thanks, guys.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening. Your support really helps us feel less alone while we sort through all of this and learn together.