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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.
Welcome to the System Speak podcast, a podcast about dissociative identity disorder.
Speaker 2: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
Speaker 1:to the podcast. Thank you. Doctor. Rick Hoffler is a clinical psychologist graduating from Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in 1986. He has maintained a private practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin area for the past thirty years, specializing in psychological trauma since 1986 as co manager of an inpatient program treating survivors of abuse at Rogers Memorial Hospital, where he also co managed an inpatient program treating children and adolescents until 1995.
Speaker 1:He continues to treat adults, children, and adolescents suffering from disorders associated with severe developmental trauma, including a special emphasis on dissociative disorders in private practice. This specialty was also applied within the Wisconsin Department of Corrections from 02/2008 to 2020. He has provided supervision consultation to therapists and case managers from a variety of agencies in the Milwaukee area for the past twenty years, with consultation affiliations having expanded internationally. Rick is a faculty member of Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he teaches courses in traumas and dissociation. He is a member of ISSTD and was elected to their board of directors in 02/2016.
Speaker 1:Since 02/2014, he has acted as a moderator for the virtual book club sponsored by ISSTD. He has presented professionally on topics related to trauma and dissociation locally, nationally, and internationally. He has published papers relating to working with trauma dissociation in forensic settings and is in process of releasing a paper regarding the regulatory aspects of shame in dissociative disorders. Welcome, doctor Rick Hoffler.
Speaker 3:Can I ask you something? Yes. Do you go by Emma or Emily? I never know quite which one to use for.
Speaker 2:Yes. No. That's a fair question. My name is actually Emma Line. And Oh, Emma Line.
Speaker 2:Okay. So it has I have used Emily sort of by default in the past, but I am Yeah. I am going I am changing that to Emma legally.
Speaker 3:Okay. Okay. Alright. So, Abby, is that how you prefer to be addressed? Or
Speaker 2:Yes. Okay. Gotcha. Yep. Alright.
Speaker 3:Well, I look forward to seeing you in the conference next week. I I will be there as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, good. I am both excited and terrified.
Speaker 3:Well, you're a plenary speaker. My god. What an honor. It's nice.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. Right? Well, I so appreciate you doing this. I know that you've been on the podcast already, and I appreciate you coming back. But something that you said on the listserv just really blew me away.
Speaker 2:And I know you have talked about this before, and I know we have talked about shame, and you've done so much about that. I I just I wanted to come back to this piece. And to be clear for listeners, we're not talking about shame like being ashamed of ourselves because of our diagnosis or something like that. We're talking about shame that gets internalized or shame as part of relational trauma or developmental trauma. So can I just start with reading this little paragraph that you wrote?
Speaker 2:Would that be okay? Sure. Yes. You were talking this particular thread. It was specifically about protector altars, which is why I was like, oh, that's a hard thing to talk about by myself.
Speaker 2:So maybe if I talk about it with you, it would help make that be a topic we can talk about on the podcast. You said I'm gonna quote just what you said, part of what you said. You said, quote, protector altars typically carry the worst and most humiliating aspects of abuse and tend to carry this function throughout the abuse history, thus aging chronologically with the host while other child alters become traumatically fixated at certain ages.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And then, quote, it would also be likely that even though this alter, meaning protector alters, was not identified in childhood, he was present in some hidden way and probably enacted the torture as a form of trauma reenactment. You could check this out by asking whoever recalls this behavior to tell you if the memories are depersonalized when they think about them. Right. And then the last part, I so appreciated that you included this. You said, quote, the rest of this system is understandably fearful of him, but don't lose sight of the dynamic that the humiliation is always accompanied by rage that is usually dissociated and always feared as a sign that they are no better than the abuser.
Speaker 2:And Yes. Oh my goodness. There's so much in here to unpack. Let's just start just with protector altars. How do you, like, explain that or define that?
Speaker 2:Or how would where would you even start, like, for a new clinician who's new to DID, for example?
Speaker 3:Sure. Well, you know, I I usually don't like to speak categorically, but there do does seem to be some or we have similar brains. You know, we all do. So under extreme duress, we tend to, default to similar protective mechanisms. And one of those is that, under traumatic duress, you know, at least traumatic duress that occurs early in development when we really have no way of externally protecting ourselves, at least very minimal.
Speaker 3:There's, there are several, very important needs that we as kids have, regardless of whether or not traumatic things are happening to us. So, one of those is to attach to caregivers. So if a caregiver is instead being very frightening or abusive, That poses, a very fundamental dilemma for a child. What do you do with that? How do you, maintain proximity to someone that, that is hurting you and is terrifying to you?
Speaker 3:So in some ways, that informs, how the mind separates. And, so there is, an aspect of the mind that still exercises a need to be close to an abusive caregiver, which is usually what informs ashamed posture. So in other words, kids will tend to accept a humiliated frame or ashamed posture in relation to the abusive caregiver just in order to maintain that proximity. And it's a survival thing, and it's something we all would do. And, but along with that, during abusive episodes, many times, you know, and I'm I'm speaking about this in a in a rather, again, a very categorical way.
Speaker 3:It doesn't always explain individual cases, but but in many cases, what happens, when kids are exposed to, an abusive caregiver And depending on how, difficult it is to tolerate, sometimes many self states will present. And by self states, I don't it's probably a misnomer at this phase. But when kids are starting to be abused, they he'll go through that dorsal vagal freeze. So they become either immobilized or they be they go into a dorsal vagal freeze that makes them, malleable and suggestible to the abuser. And so there's an evacuation of feelings.
Speaker 3:There is sometimes a depersonalized. Many times a depersonalized perception of the event. You know, in the in the case of very well, almost anyone any abuser's intent is to humiliate their victim. It's something that motivates them. And, there is an intent to harm.
Speaker 3:There's an intent to do something to the child that has nothing to do with the child's best interest or welfare. It has everything to do with the desire of the abuser. And because that of that reality, a child that needs that abusive caregiver cannot really fully realize that. And so the intent to shame, the intent to harm is something Rich Jeffords has written about too. The intent of the other is is dissociated.
Speaker 3:In other words, it's not realized because there's too much of a need for that person. But, nonetheless, there is an intent, by the abuser. And, it seems to be a very natural consequence of being intentionally hurt that we feel, a desire to fight back. You know, there's a rage response when there's an intent to harm us, and there isn't anybody. We may not choose to exercise it, but it's there.
Speaker 3:And so in kids, of course, they cannot exercise that rage, and so it becomes sequestered. And, what ends up happening in my view, and I don't you know, I'm not sure if there's research to bear this out. I don't know how anyone would or could, but it's certainly been written about for quite a while. Ruth Blizzard has written about it too. But, there is, hidden rage.
Speaker 3:And over time, that rage becomes, seen as a, something that is unwanted by a functional, by by a functional state of mind. It it's it's not, it's not something that, will, that will work, in in anyone's functional life. So it won't work to feel rage toward an abusive caregiver. It won't work to, externalize that rage in other settings, although some people do, some kids do, especially boys. But, protector states embody the rage and the humiliation that was intended.
Speaker 3:So sometimes we call them, we reference these states, these protector states as shame rage states. And this is why, because it's born out of shame. It's born out of humiliation, really. And, and rage is is a shame defense. So, anyway, that that's my thumbnail sketch of a protector state.
Speaker 3:And over time, these protector states, they many times will take on the, personage or the rhetoric of whoever it was that abused them. We see that many times. Sometimes it's more literal. Sometimes, a dissociative a dissociative mind will, give protector states like this the, the appearance the physical appearance and the, an audible sound of the abusive caregiver. And we call those interjects sometimes.
Speaker 3:The interject is a form of protector state. So I I noticed, Emma, that you re are referring to protector states in the male gender, and many times that's true. Not always, but many times is. And for that reason, it's like, you know, males are seen as more powerful so that they can withstand, pain. They can withstand, fear, and, protector states like this, something I've written about and maybe talked about in the last one.
Speaker 3:They become sort of internal internal regulators, if you will. And internal regulators, meaning that they are hypervigilant internally. We tend to think of traumatized people as being externally hypervigilant, and that's true. But usually, protector states have more internal hyper vigilance because they do not want, attachment deeds, especially those in other affects to become, awakened. And so they they keep an eye on usually the most vulnerable parts of the self.
Speaker 3:So they usually are more, connected to, trauma bearing child states. And if they start to wake up and flashbacks or want help, they use the rhetoric of the abuser to silence them. And so protector states have a very major role in dissociative systems because of that. So they're used to keep everything dampened, and they, use what they learned from abusers to do so. In the analytic literature, many times this has been referred to as identification with the abuser.
Speaker 3:And I understand why they say that. I think forensier originally coined that. I've never quite liked it because it doesn't really describe the dynamic. It's not that, the self is identifying with the abuser. I think there's fear of that, but it's like borrowing in my view.
Speaker 3:It's like borrowing, the rhetoric from the abuser, in order to keep a shamed posture of the of the externalized aspects of self and to disallow, affective experience from burgeoning because that's a dangerous thing to do. So a
Speaker 2:couple things. I didn't want to interrupt you because it was so powerful what you're saying. And I think both from lived experience and even clinically just being sensitive on the podcast, it's really hard to talk about. So when I saw what you had written, I was like, these are the words. These words are safe enough that you and I could have a conversation about this hard piece safely on the podcast.
Speaker 2:And I was so grateful. But I do I didn't wanna interrupt you earlier, but I do want to say clearly for listeners that I agree with what you said about it not being an individual case thing because I know that I know your work, and I know the way you do consultations and education on the listserv or in person at ISSTD. And I know that you have, like, really your I mean, I don't mean to speak for you, but my experience of your career, you have focused so much on Shane and the dignity of the individual that I just wanna say out loud for listeners that that is congruent with my experience of you. That Okay. What we are talking about is really specific, but it's specific because I had a specific question, not because you are someone who generalizes this to everybody.
Speaker 3:Although it is frequent. I will say that.
Speaker 2:Right. The pattern generally, but, that you are in your work and in your interactions and in your teaching, you are very sensitive to the dignity of the individual. That's really important to you.
Speaker 3:Yep. Certainly.
Speaker 2:The second thing I wanted to respond to was about the gender piece because I think, especially just culturally right now, it's really important to acknowledge Yeah. That the email where you posted this was in response to a male specific question, which is why it's gendered in the quote and in our discussion.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And so I appreciate that you said it's not always that. But I also think it's really interesting applying what you said developmentally because, like, in my own experience with this, my initial, like, when I was very young kind of protector was male, and I can see developmentally a couple of reasons why that was the case from what you were sharing here. But but later, as, like, even my parents divorced, and so I really, after that, had no male figures in my life at all after that. And so the protectors that I had kind of growing up into an adult were not male. They were female.
Speaker 2:And so just just noticing that and listeners know that a little bit, and so I just wanted to connect those examples. And then the third thing I'm sorry there's so many things. There's just so much to unpack, and I don't wanna miss any threads.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:The third thing is what you were saying about dissociation to maintain attachment reminds me a little bit of Jennifer's work with betrayal trauma Yes. And how we don't just I mean, it's all it all plays together. Right? But oversimplifying, we don't just dissociate because it's so terrible. We don't only dissociate because it's too much.
Speaker 2:We also dissociate because we are stuck in the context of it continuing to happen and have to maintain those attachments to survive.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Exactly my point. And shame shame is is one aspect of that. A lot of times, we as, you know, as a society that studies dissociation, you know, although that's changing now, you know, we, sometimes, miss other contributing dynamics, which and shame is a big one. And, shame in, conjunction working together with dissociation is a very powerful tool, and it's it's how trauma survivors, manage their lives.
Speaker 3:And that's no small feat. You know, it's like you you have to, be visible to others in ways that, they accept you. And so, abusers typically so, you know, when abusers are parents, they typically tell us what they expect and how they want us to be. How they want us to be in the abuse itself, how they want to be in relation to them, and how they want us to be in relation to the rest of the world. They're usually very explicit ways that that the kids are instructed to be.
Speaker 3:And so shame is how is is one dynamic and a very powerful one that keeps the sense of self invisible, that keeps your your own affect, your own subjective experiences squelched. And, dissociation provides the mechanism of compartmentalizing affects and ways of being us, that is more genuine. And so dissociation helps us put ourselves in boxes, and then shame is the mechanism we use to keep those boxes.
Speaker 2:So what is fascinating about this to me, and maybe this for listeners, this may be a more advanced topics kind of conversation. But what is fascinating to me about this is that when we talk about things like flight and fight and freeze, I think in my head, until I read your email, I had thought of them sequentially
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Of, like, I am in this one or I am in this one, almost in a binary kind of thinking kind of way. But when we go back to this psychodynamic or analytic piece of those expectations in childhood or, listeners know I just released another book, and it talk it's about psychodynamics. And so in the book, it talks about, the social contract view, the the social contract of childhood of this is how you get approval to be safe, and this is how you get punished and are not safe. And so when we're talking about those issues and that compartmentalizing of dissociation, I think because I just experienced me, like, until later and with therapy and all of that, I I only experienced one of those at a time, the flight or the fight or the freeze. But what you're saying here and in the context of us as a whole system is literally that all of those are happening at the same time.
Speaker 2:When when I am in freeze to maintain attachment for dissociating for that, that's freeze. When part of me is escaping, whether that's mentally or through dissociation, that part is in flight. And this part that has the hidden rage that I'm not permitted to express, they're in flight even if I'm not aware of it.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Yeah. It's there. It's loaded. And, you know, the this is why, well, this is another topic.
Speaker 3:But, in most people, protector states like this are very hidden And for the reasons you just described, it doesn't comport with how you're expected to be. And so even in in doing therapy, protector states, as therapists, we have to be aware that they exist. They really have to. And, typically, they do not show themselves. You know, it's a frequent, very frequent, experience for most therapists who deal a lot with DID that therapy can, when when someone is really amenable to psychotherapy and begins to explore their own dissociative system, when therapy gets really gets some really positive traction, there usually comes a point where it comes to a screeching halt or something deviates quite a bit.
Speaker 3:And this is because protector states reach a threshold where they just can't abide this kind of, this kind of activation of feeling. And so they start to, express themselves at least internally. And so you might have an ex you might, you know, start to well, it could be almost anything. It could be, you know, processing the memory successfully. It could be, just discovering what it's like to, be subjectively awake.
Speaker 3:Something that, you know, that in general, but something begins to happen that, threatens to destabilize a precarious system. And then so you might have a really nice session, and then you get a phone call, you know, later that night that, they've been cutting or, you know, something self punitive happens. And, that's usually, the sign that there's a protector state that doesn't really think what you're doing is a good thing. So I try to stop it. Sometimes it's been my experience anyway because, I'm I lean into people's experiences, pretty intensely.
Speaker 3:And so, sometimes I will because of that, I get pushback from protector states. And I kinda welcome it, to be honest with you, because otherwise, they kind of they kind of wait in the weeds until, you know, things are going swimmingly until all of a sudden they're not. And, I would rather, you know, engage with these protectors rather than just worry about when they're going to show up. So I I typically ask about them. You know, I will ask questions a little bit.
Speaker 3:You know, when things are going well, I wonder if there are some thoughts in your mind that doesn't really agree with what we're doing. Do you notice anything like that? So I make a point of of asking about them and inviting them.
Speaker 2:I think I have experienced sort of an extreme version of this piece in that, several years ago, I had a significant therapy rupture that ended up meaning I needed to change therapists. And without even getting into all that, listeners already know that story. But without getting into that, it took me several years to find another good therapist. Like, I can't have a colleague from ISSTD. I can't right.
Speaker 2:Like, so who who is there that can be my therapist? And so it was really hard to find someone who was available and and that I had access to and who could, like, be willing to learn and grow with me enough to actually be helpful. Right? So for all of those things to land into place, it took a hot minute. And when I did, what shocked me was it was all of a sudden, like, everything was flipped inside out of, like, it was my protector who was going to therapy.
Speaker 2:And I was like, why is this happening? Because that's the opposite. But I think because things had been so bad, it was like, you don't get to go to therapy anymore. I will take care of it. I will do the thing.
Speaker 2:And then when it goes bad, I will prove it to you, and you all can be punished for still trying. Yeah. There you go. Right? Except what happened was my therapist, like you're talking about, was just sort of super chill about it.
Speaker 2:Like, could could handle it, and it became a safe enough place for that part of me to where I'm actually now doing therapy at a whole level I've never been able
Speaker 3:to do therapy before. Yeah. Great. That's really what it takes, Emma. I I totally I totally resonate with that.
Speaker 3:So it's, in my experience, once you get a working rapport with protector states, things go a lot easier. And, you know, but I I I think that it requires a fair amount of empathy for protectors. That really is important. So, because think about how difficult it really is for someone, anyone, who has experienced extreme humiliation, to talk about how vulnerable that truly is for them. So it's like to, help a protector who is just based on the shame defense of, attack self and or other.
Speaker 3:Because it really is perceived as both in a dissociative system. It's really they're attacking self, but they view it as attacking others. Yes. And, right? And so, so that shame defense, giving that up, results in experiencing very exquisite pain and vulnerability.
Speaker 3:And so you you have to find a way to find the apathy for the protector. You know, I always talk a lot to consultees about, As therapists, we we want to you know, we're sort of geared and built to empathize with the most vulnerable aspects of people. And that is true, but we sometimes, we lose sight of having empathy for how people protected themselves under extreme duress. And if you don't do that first, trying to go right to the vulnerability will elicit the the ire and defensive rage of protectors. Always does.
Speaker 3:I I can think there
Speaker 2:are two examples of this I wanna mention. One is I think that's part of what happened with that rupture with the other therapist because I was in the South at the time and, in what I now call shiny happy land because of the documentary that was part of my trauma. But also my therapist at the time was also in that church. And so that therapist could not let me be angry or sad or have big feelings or dark feelings. I needed to have hope and good feelings and feel better.
Speaker 2:And so even though like, I wanna be careful. I'm holding both. Right? So there's lots of really good things I got out of that therapy. I got oriented to DID.
Speaker 2:I learned about the language. I learned about what it is and what was happening to me, so I didn't feel crazy. And, also, I started to get sicker instead of better because asking me to only feel the good things or only behave in a shiny happy way actually was increasing my dissociation. Mhmm. Because would have to.
Speaker 2:Right? Right. Right. Because it was putting those further away. Yes.
Speaker 2:The the other thing so, like, seeing that in hindsight helps me understand better what was happening and why parts of me already knew it was not good for me when I was like, no. It's good for me because of this and this and this. But it did not you know, I'm I'm in a place in therapy where I'm learning, like, if I like, to really check-in my body and to trust my body that my body has been here the whole time even when I'm not. And Yes. That neurological response of, do I feel settled?
Speaker 2:Do I not? Even if I don't understand what's happening, my body can tell me the truth. And so my body was not comfortable even when I was trying really hard to get it right. Sure. But trying hard to get it right is part of that social contract from childhood, from shiny happy.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I easily see that. So Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that did not work, but it it helps me understand how my protectors in that case were not actually sabotaging therapy. They were being kicked out of therapy, and so it backfired. Like, therapy wasn't working. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. No.
Speaker 3:I I totally get that. If you don't if you if you you have to get to know an entire system, you know, it's it's you know, there there's, a lot of newer therapists in this field always ask me, well, if I spend too much time with certain alter states, am I just kind of reifying them and helping them believe that they're real people. And and I said, well, that's kinda what you want. You know, it's not that you you are saying that they aren't all part of a system, but these are self states. And we call them self states because they have a sense of of a certain degree of viability as an autonomous self.
Speaker 3:Now they are autonomous self that have their own desires, their own memories, all things that are that any self would contain, and yet they're sequestered. And so a sense of self when it's sequestered is incomplete. And they view themselves as having to do certain things in order to stay in their compartment, to stay in their lane. And it's like they're not allowed to relate. They're not allowed to self reflect.
Speaker 3:They're only allowed to do what they know how to do, and we're taught how to what to do. And so my job as a therapist is to encounter these states, and protectors are the best example of it because they see their role as quite rote. Or or at least they I mean, they they are compelled to have a rote life even though they might say, I can do whatever I want. But in truth, they can't. And so my job is to help them see themselves as more than that.
Speaker 3:You are more than what you were taught. You are more than, being just a protector. You're more than that. Can I can I I'm interested in helping you see that? And that's what's disarming the protector states.
Speaker 3:I mean, they push back at first, but it's not hard to convince them if you stay with it. Yeah. They're very wounded. They're the most wounded. I mean, they're more wounded than the most vulnerable little kids stayed in the in the system.
Speaker 3:They're far more wounded. You know, I and harking back to my first description, you know, what the a lot of times, they are the ones that are past the baton at the end of abuse, at the end of an incident. Yeah. Abusers sometimes really want to drive home their humiliating point when they're done. You know, they call you names.
Speaker 3:They make sure that you know that you are powerless, and you'll always be powerless and, you know, all those kinds of nice, you know, sentiments that they leave people with. And, so protectors usually take the worst of it. And they they take home those humiliating messages. And they, they protect themselves as well as the rest of the system by just, it's almost like prescribing the symptom for them. You know, they prescribe the shame that was told to them to keep everyone quiet.
Speaker 3:Supposedly, to keep everyone safe And to keep themselves safe, they don't wanna know. So they put they they put the shame on the others. They, you know, protectors put shame on little kids. Really, they they're carrying the bulk of it. Well, that that's why it's deliberately dissociated in some people.
Speaker 3:But I think that there's such a difference, Emma, between rage and, and anger. I know they're on the same continuum, but when we start to talk about rage, we're talking about a dissociative event. And sometimes in dissociative people, of course, it can be literally dissociative event. And most of us, when we get triggered into rage, what that typically means is that it is touching, some earlier experience that was quite humiliating for us for whatever reason. Yes.
Speaker 3:So dissociate dissociated. What I mean by that is not necessarily that we're depersonalized, although that does happen. When rage is enacted, It happens many times, and I've written about that too. But in the mind, when we are when rage is triggered as a feeling, it's triggered because it is expressing something that we don't know in the moment
Speaker 2:Yes. If
Speaker 3:that makes sense. Yes. That's really what rage is.
Speaker 2:Well and that is actually the place also where I finally was able to connect, not with that because I need more therapy. I'm still afraid of identifying that way. Right? But, for me as a shiny happy survivor, it's that whole theory of I can't get off my blanket. It is dangerous to get off the blanket from blanket training.
Speaker 2:So, like, that's a whole thing. But where I could find compassion was recognizing that as part of fight response, that this is happening because there is hurt underneath that and that the fight response is an appropriate response to being hurt, to being wounded, to to that. But I couldn't connect, like, what else? Like, why? Like, that was my first step of, okay.
Speaker 2:I have at least found compassion, but how do I relate to that? And when you posted this, what connected for me with that connection to littles was actually I have outside kids, and when they're I don't know if you know this. That age when they're, like, two, three, four, five Yeah. They will do this thing where it's time for their afternoon nap, and they will literally stand there crying with their eyes closed. I'm not tired.
Speaker 2:I'm not tired. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And because they are, in fact, so exhausted.
Speaker 2:Right? And I realized this is a developmental thing. This is developmental of toddlers of I'm not ashamed. I'm not ashamed, and I'm really mad about being not ashamed. And then you posted this connecting shame or rage as a shame defense, and that's finally when those pieces under like, flicked into place enough I could understand what I had just witnessed over the last year.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I I think that's true. And, know, Don Nathanson taught us that, you know, few decades ago. And, so, again, there's a difference between being angry about something and being rageful.
Speaker 3:Very different. And so, you know, your kids, you know, having that kind of kind of rage response, in part also, it comes from, you know, kids that age are all about, finding agency. And, you know, stopping them in their tracks is something they hate. They it's like taking agency from them. They don't really know that, but that's what you're doing.
Speaker 3:And they and they and they push back.
Speaker 2:That makes sense with the lived experience community where and I don't mean just clinically, but also, like, with disability groups or the queer community or this. Like, this is what my plenary is about is that Yeah. If if we're not being heard and if we don't have choices and if we don't have rights, we literally don't have access to the world. I know. Like a social justice context.
Speaker 3:You bet. I think that's absolutely true. And then the work I used to do in the prison was, you know, it showed that all the time to me. You know? So, yeah, stripping agency is is stripping self.
Speaker 3:Right? Or at least it feels like that sometimes. To a little kid, it would feel like that. You're stripping away their sense of self.
Speaker 2:It gave me such compassion and understanding in a different way. Like, I am still even though this I have the podcast. Yes. But I am not on any social media because it is too scary out there for me. So not on their call.
Speaker 2:So I cannot speak for them or even understand fully their experience, but I could understand differently the woundedness of it. Not not that they are all permanently wounded any more than I am. I don't mean that. I just mean the hurt of what happened and feeling, like, the the compassion for how the depth of pain in those moments and that what I was seeing that I was scared of were hurting people, hurting Littles, fight response, the rage against all of it historically and now, and just the misattumin of it all. And taking from that again, I can't speak for their experience, and I don't mean that in any kind of disempowering way.
Speaker 2:I just mean those are the steps it took for me to find compassion because I could not do that for myself. So So then to recognize for the first time protectors as vulnerable and my therapist saying to a protector, like like, they're the ones in the most need of care, that just still blowing me away.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's absolutely true, though. You know, I I ask protectors all the time. How'd you learn to do that? And, how did it help
Speaker 2:you? Wow.
Speaker 3:How does it help you now?
Speaker 2:So in some of those states that we're most afraid of, whether that's anger or or rage or protectors, like, those experiences, part of what is what like, why it feels so slippery to face that or to look at that is because it's literally a demonstration of how we were treated ourselves.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yes. Yep. Yep. So, you know, unpacking that within protectors is ex it's it's essential.
Speaker 3:You can't really treat DID effectively without doing that. And that's what's so daunting to a lot of therapists because they it's not usually what therapists sign up for. You know, they wanna just, you know, help the vulnerabilities of of self without realizing what has to overlay that those vulnerabilities. You have to you have to dig through that, and you have to understand how that works and how it got developed after.
Speaker 2:That makes so much sense. I think that's what happened with my first therapist that as long as she was still my white savior, so to speak, as long as she was my savior, I had really good therapy. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But but it's a it's, it's kind of a it's a bit of a scripted therapy.
Speaker 2:Yes. Very limiting. Yeah. And, ultimately, ultimately, almost put my life in danger because then that had to escalate when there's that misetuner or or those ruptures of pushing away literally the parts we're doing therapy to bring forward, to bring up, to do the healing. Like, that's where the trauma is.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yep. Yep. And, you know, it's I typically you know, aside from trauma processing itself, which is important, but it's it's but it just the trauma processing dissolves blockages. It dissolves fixations, but it doesn't do anything to resolve shame.
Speaker 3:In fact, it makes shame more pronounced because all of a sudden you're, oh my god. Here I am. And you're not prepared for that. Yes. You know?
Speaker 3:So, so good therapy is always about shave repair. I mean, it's it's about that every single session.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. I think both it's another reason that psychodynamics is so important, and there's so many new therapists that haven't been trained in that at all. Like, these days, you really have to seek it out.
Speaker 3:Yes. You do.
Speaker 2:But we have to because that's where you're going to feel those things, whether that is the therapist feeling afraid, and that's when we recognize there's a protector somewhere or us in our own systems of feeling afraid or shame and going, okay. That is a protector. I don't actually have to be afraid of that part of myself. That the part I should be afraid of is what already happened to me. But that's over.
Speaker 2:So it was scary and it was awful, but also it's done or and also it's done. This part of me reenacting that or bringing it forward isn't actually trying to harm me. This part of me is trying to tell me the truth.
Speaker 3:Well, the truth, but also, part of that truth, as you say, is that, their brand of truth is that if you become alive, you're gonna regret it.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And that's what has to be compact. That's what and you have to do that with that protector state, not with anybody else with that protector state.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you saying in that words, if you become alive, you're gonna regret it. I have talked about that in therapy even in approaching the plenary, and I don't mean that in any kind of threat. I am entirely safe. And, also, we had to be really specific about that in therapy. Because for me, to say the things I'm about to say at the conference, I really will be the most integrated, blended, alive experience I have had thus far in my healing, which also, by default, means I am at the most risk with myself.
Speaker 3:Of course. Yeah. I get that. I mean, I've I've I've had to do that too. You know, I'm not dissociative, but my god, you know, I've had to I'm a very late bloomer, and it's been it's I just I think I've always been good at what I do, but I didn't know what I was doing until someone asked me to tell them.
Speaker 3:And, I thank Rich Jeffords for that all the time because, you know, he's the first person to ask me to talk about what I know. And, I've been doing it ever since, but, man, I it was an anxious thing for a long time. Probably getting to a point in my life where I don't feel so worried about it. And, you know, years ago, if you would ask me to talk about this, I would have been shaking in my boots. I don't do that anymore.
Speaker 3:Right. Right. So so I I kinda know what you mean.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you normalizing that. I really do. And I also appreciate so much your continued advocacy for the dignity of people, for your voicing shame and shame issues. Are there any other pieces you would want to say about protectors before I let you go or anything we left out on that topic? I know it's such a big one.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's huge. And it's very complicated, but it to me, it's just very direct. And, you know, I, I I really enjoy that part of it the most, to be honest with you. And really being able to find a way to connect with someone who has based their life on not connecting.
Speaker 3:It's it's just very interesting. And, that's such a critical piece of of doing this work. And and a lot of people don't you know, they're either afraid of it or they're they think it's not that it's more important just to process trauma itself. You have to know, you know, we process trauma, by the way, with DID folks. We have to make sure that we include every self state that was present for it.
Speaker 3:And that's something that a lot of people don't do very often because they're usually, there's usually more than one, because it if you think about how, you know, the immobilization occurs during traumatic experience, it happens over and over again frequently, especially in very sadistic experiences. And so you have to make sure and protector states are always present for them. They are the ones who just take the worst of the worst. So if you don't know that and you're excluding them, you're excluding a huge piece of the of the puzzle.
Speaker 2:It's such an important thing, and this really has been a breakthrough for me both from my own work at therapy, but also as a clinician working with other people, making the assumption. And I know this is oversimplifying, but just generally for this conversation, making the assumption that with every traumatic incident or relational rupture, there's at least four people present, if not more, because we have the flight and fight and freeze and even fawning all happening at once just to survive that thing. Alright. Yeah. And, you know, some sometimes that's something that forms after
Speaker 3:the fact, but there are times when it happens within the traumatic experience itself. But, so, but, yes, I I think it's, a lot of people don't explore that enough and ask enough about it.
Speaker 2:I think maybe it just took me this long. It's so interesting because I can see it clinically, but looking at myself, it literally took me these years in therapy to realize that because dissociation means I experienced this and I experienced that or or whatever, that when I am, quote, not experiencing or there's a not me, that they are experiencing something else and that that is happening simultaneously. I think I still was dissociated enough that that was disembodied enough or depersonalized enough that it's not just not me experiencing it, but it's over there somewhere and literally only just now connecting that all of that is happening at the same time.
Speaker 3:Certainly can. Yep.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. Anything else? I'm so sorry for using your time. I mean, grateful. I heard.
Speaker 2:See what I did there? I am grateful for sharing time with you.
Speaker 3:Hey, Ed. See, it's great to talk to you too, Emma. I I like doing this. It's it's good. Ask me back anytime.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.