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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 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:The audio today is taken from the Al Anon book, How It Works. It's also really interesting to me because it's exactly what we talked about in therapy today. We I'm sorry. Let me just own for a minute. My brain is distracted.
Speaker 1:I thought I have a meeting right now, but it's not for another hour. So I feel like I have been given this time in a higher power kind of way completely unexpectedly. Like, my kids are completely occupied. And so I just have this space to be here, and I'm grateful for it. And so I just felt the need to acknowledge that.
Speaker 1:In therapy today, we talked about the movie Heretic. And I will try to share this without spoilers or anything too scary. But, basically, talking about I was sharing things I'm learning in recovery, weekend, and processing all of these things. And my therapist went to see Heretic, which was very kind and caring, but also so that we could talk about some really hard things and have that as a framework. And I knew we were going to talk about religious trauma, shiny happy, and all the things.
Speaker 1:And we did. We talked about things like about how consent wasn't really consent because it was not informed, and how once you get in, it's hard to get out. And the inverted templeness of like, in the movie, they go from room to room in a descending way. And in the temple, you go from room to room in an ascending way. Anyway, so we talked about these different things and the details a lot.
Speaker 1:Like, so I knew we were gonna talk about those hard things, and I was prepared and ready and willing to talk about those things. What took me by surprise is that my therapist also used the movie as a metaphor for my recovery in that what is the same and what is different. I understand through recovery that I can be angry and upset and frustrated with trauma and with codependency and things like that directly and explicitly and even out loud in ways that are so liberating. And also, I cannot rescue. Like even in the movie, both girls had to choose for themselves.
Speaker 1:And to be healthy in a relationship, in any relationship, not just with me. So I can hold space for all of those things that are true. And I think leaving isolation, that is I don't know if that's recovery language or not. I think it is stuck in my head because it has been so profound for me. But leaving isolation includes saying those things out loud so that I can have an accurate understanding of what is happening to me and when I am safe and when I am not, and what is safe enough and what is not.
Speaker 1:And all of that is really, really important. And I am learning to expand that circle carefully and slowly and pacedly. Does that make sense? So all of that is really good because I can't see clearly what is happening without that accurate reflection of people also seeing what I am seeing. And I have needed that.
Speaker 1:And, like, the metaphor there is, like, they use their phone as a flashlight and being able to be able to see even where they're going. Right? So we talked about that in therapy. And, also, I'm trying to tell this part without the metaphor. Like, I don't wanna give the spoilers.
Speaker 1:So I may come back to it later. But for now, just let me say that ultimately, all of that can be true and is really important for me to be aware of because I have to know that I have been trapped in the house. So like codependency, the impact of other people's family having alcoholic dynamics, my extended family alcoholic, like all these things, trauma and deprivation, all of these things are the house that have trapped me in this situation that is so painful and scary and really terrifying at times. Very important for me, that is my step zero. I have to see what is happening.
Speaker 1:I have to recognize it. I have to say all the things out loud. I have to give an accurate reporting of what is happening because dissociation is so strong with this one. That to see it clearly, I have to be able to really be awake to what's even happening. Which brings me to step one, which is the fact that everybody has their own lives.
Speaker 1:And that's fine. That is their work to do. But my life is my work to do. And my therapist and I were talking about how you can't stay in the house and also survive. I cannot stay in the relationships.
Speaker 1:I mean, with codependency. I mean, with my trauma. I mean, with deprivation. I cannot stay in those relationships and also survive. Like those examples, I have to divorce my relationship with codependency, with trauma, and with deprivation so that I can heal.
Speaker 1:Because as long as I stay in those or reenact those, I will not heal and I will not survive. Whatever is approved. I don't mean that as a threat. I'm safe. But I mean literally.
Speaker 1:Right? So not just metaphorically. But it's huge and it's epic. And in the movie, part of what is not informed consent is that the house is made of steel, which he tells them, but he doesn't connect why that matters. So that's why it's not actually informed consent, right, because they go in, but they can't call for help because there's no cell reception, because the house is made of steel and metal or whatever.
Speaker 1:So, like, no one is coming to rescue them in the same way that there's no magical thinking of God. And I don't mean faith or higher powerness. I mean magical thinking that is going to save me. Situation is what it is, and I am where I am at, and all the things that have already happened have already happened. My trauma and deprivation already exists.
Speaker 1:I've already entered into a relationship that is not always healthy. I've already gone into the house, and I am trapped inside. Codependency, trauma, deprivation, all the things. I can't pretend that I'm not trapped inside. Right?
Speaker 1:And also, no one's coming to get me out because I'm a grown up. I'm an adult. And this is my life. It's not anyone else's life. It's not even that other people don't care about me.
Speaker 1:It's that this is my life. I'm the one responsible for it. And yes, sometimes that is super hard and exhausting, because with parentification and deprivation, I've always had to be responsible for myself. So, yeah, it's activating, and it sucks. And also, it's my life.
Speaker 1:So I can use my tools, and I can use my resources, but it is my responsibility to get myself out. It is my responsibility to see what led me into this and to be responsible for that, because I will die if I stay. I will not survive staying in it as it is. And in the movie, in the metaphor, this might be a little spoiler, so I'm sorry, except it doesn't actually happen. So I'm sorry if I'm spoiling a movie, talking about my stuff.
Speaker 1:But in the movie, he tells them at one point before they know why it matters that the house is built on a cliff. But also, the double bind is they have to go through the house to get out. What I did not catch that my therapist caught is that the double bind is if you stay, you're going to die. But if you get all the way through and can go out the back door, you're going to die because it is a cliff. You will step out and die because there's nothing there.
Speaker 1:So basically, either way, you're not going to win. You can't win. I said, I can't win this. There's no way to win. Like so many double binds, there's no way for me to win.
Speaker 1:You don't have to fight this. Heal it. And that helped me so much to get out of the double bind. And also the next step, that's step zero for me, if I can use that. Is that appropriate?
Speaker 1:I don't mean appropriation, or if I'm misunderstanding things, forgive me. But for me that was step zero. Right? And step one now is that, okay, now I have to heal my stuff. I can't control that either.
Speaker 1:Right? But I have to I'm responsible for me and my healing and my work, and I have to get myself out. So ultimately, what happens in the movie is I'm trying to say it without spoilers. It's hard. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Basically, she has to retrace her steps. Steps. Isn't that funny? Steps. She has to retrace her steps and come back through the path she followed to find the alternate way out, because she can't go out the front door.
Speaker 1:It's locked, and she has no control over that, literally. And she can't go out the back door or she falls off the cliff and dies. And she can't stay or she's gonna die. So it's the perfect metaphor for this in that it's completely unmanageable and zero control over anything, which is exactly how I feel, both with trauma and deprivation and also my relationship stuff. I have no control over any of it.
Speaker 1:Even my teenagers, I have zero control over anything right now. Zero control. And yet it is my responsibility to get myself to a healthy place. And that's completely entirely on me. And the way to do that stepwise I love that she used steps in therapy, and we're talking about a step now is to retrace my steps, not to undo what I cannot undo and not to undo what I cannot change, but to see how I got myself into this, to take responsibility for it, and to find a different way out.
Speaker 1:Because I can't undo that I'm here, and I will not survive pushing through or staying. Forcing it, I will not survive that. Staying as it is, I will not survive that. I have to find a different way out that leads me to safety. And it feels terrifying because that breaks the contract of my childhood where I'm responsible for everyone.
Speaker 1:But I'm responsible for me, and I have to get myself to safety. And that is what we talked about in therapy today, is finding what is safe enough for me that I'm not in the house. I don't want to be in the house of horror, in the house of hell. That's not where I want to be. I want to be in the field with the butterfly.
Speaker 1:I want to be outside grounded in nature and my higher power and my nature as my higher power sometimes. Right? I want to be practicing health, progressing. The metaphor of the nature outside with all the green and the trees is so powerful to me, even though it doesn't the movie doesn't show police and ambulances. Because help doesn't come in the movie.
Speaker 1:Right? And that's like, no one's coming to rescue me. That's the whole point. But the movie starts out on a dreary day and cold in the snow and ends with this beautiful scene in greenery. And that's what I'm responsible for is my own greenery.
Speaker 1:So using my therapist, using my therapy, using resources, using my own healing, using tools of recovery, using support and allowing myself to seek out and receive help. That is where my healing is going to be. That is how I get to greenery. That there are ways I have never seen before because I didn't even know I was trapped. But now that I'm trapped, I can find other ways out than what I have been told.
Speaker 1:I'm not on anyone else's contract. I am writing my own contract for what health means to me and for me and my own responsibility. But yeah, I would underline the whole chapter and highlight the whole chapter. I would use colors for parts like this. I can see how it could take five years or like a lifetime.
Speaker 1:Like it is already feeling to me Clarissa level. Clarissa meaning my favorite author, Clarissa, Pincolo Estes, who wrote Woman Who Run With the Wolves. This feels like that to me in a different way. Like, it has its own poetry even, not about the skill of writing, but the implications and the level of life changingness. And it's gonna go hand in hand with me.
Speaker 1:I can see how that integrates I wanna use the word integrate. Isn't that funny? How it all is congruent. And that feels good to me. And I feel more whole just being grounded in my own self and having hope and choices and a way out that is not staying in hell or forcing myself to push through hell, but creating something new altogether.
Speaker 1:That is my own life. And just being here to witness with them and cheer them on because I care, because I'm a human with a heart and I have compassion for them even when trauma and deprivation make our lives really hard sometimes. And just seeing the humanity in all of us, I think. 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.
Speaker 1:Not like this. Connection brings healing.