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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over:
Speaker 2:Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 3:This episode begins a conversation we have with a friend from college who endured religious and relational trauma alongside us in the same situation as referenced in the Hallelujah and Rumi's episodes from last year. As part of that conversation, those traumas are referenced religious trauma, relational trauma, and child abuse. No details are disclosed, however. But as always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 3:So for something easier and lighthearted, I'm kidding, it's not lighthearted, that was a lie. But easier in a way is that there's a secret you and I share that I'm going to announce right now, if that's okay. If it's not okay, I can cut it out. But you are actually recording the audiobook for the memoir, If Tears Were Prayers.
Speaker 1:I am, but I'm really excited to be able to finish it up during, you know, the school year while the kids are there. And despite the heaviness of the topics, I am enjoying it. As long as I just pretend you're Vet Midler, everything's fine.
Speaker 3:So I have to tell you, I told your Vet Midler story in the community because it was amazing that because the content is so difficult in the book to do the recording, you have this whole setup with a Bette Midler picture and just pretending like you're recording a movie or a book of a stranger instead of recording my story.
Speaker 1:Yes. That's how I get through it.
Speaker 3:It's really intense. Right?
Speaker 1:It is. It is, but it's good, and I'm so glad to, you know, give a a voice to your story. So it's kind of an honor.
Speaker 3:How how do you pretend that you are Bette Midler when there are parts of that story that you were there for?
Speaker 1:I don't know. It's too much to think about.
Speaker 3:My favorite part was when you texted texted me after reading about our description of the dean of women. Oh, good times. Those memories. No. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3:They were not good times. But we laughed a lot in our rooms while we were Yes. Locked
Speaker 1:Do you remember my impression of her? That's
Speaker 3:so funny.
Speaker 1:Won't do it. Do you want me to do it? I want you to do it. I really don't even say anything. It's just a look.
Speaker 3:It's a really scary look. Yeah. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:And now this school has a whole underground Facebook page of people who were shamed and kicked out and told that they were not good enough. That that is trauma. I mean, if they're trying to use humor as a coping skill, it is trauma that there is a whole crew of people, a whole population of people who were told in God's name, you are not good enough. That's not okay.
Speaker 1:It's just so awful that it that it continued, you know? Like, you think you finally get away from it, but there's more people going through similar things. And I don't know, I was thinking about recently about what my worst nightmare as a parent would be. It would be that my kids want to go to this
Speaker 3:school. No.
Speaker 1:I had to, tell them. They saw the yearbook that I had out, and I had to tell them, I went to a small Christian college for a couple years before I met daddy, you know? And I just don't know how I am going to one day tell them to stay away from what seems so good, you know? Right. So it's really tricky.
Speaker 3:It is. It's and it's a valid thing. When we talk about child abuse, then people seem to understand, oh, no wonder it's hard for you to feel loved or to be loved or why you feel like being loved actually feels dangerous. Like, people can somehow grasp that all your circuits are rewired in the wrong places and that it's really hard to fix. And it's really hard to not feel wrong because your circuits got interfered with, right?
Speaker 3:But when we talk about religious trauma, I had my father as the music minister. I had the things my mother said to him when she refused to go to church because of things he had done. I have youth group things where our youth minister was, not not even about molesting people. My youth minister got arrested for going to open houses and stealing people's jewelry and that was the children's minister. And the youth minister at a different church so, like, that church doesn't feel safe, so I go to a different church.
Speaker 3:That church, the youth minister was having affairs with girls from the youth group, which I now know is called child abuse. But no they said he's just having affairs, those girls are just loose girls. That no, that is molesting, that is abuse, that is not okay but no one ever said that, no one ever talked about it that way, right? And then I go from that to this college experience where all of this happened there.
Speaker 1:Then they do the same thing. They blame the victim to like, they will literally ask what part you played in your own abuse.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes. And I it makes me very angry.
Speaker 3:That piece is so slippery. It's so hard, the part about the gaslighting of being blamed for what was done to you and how to navigate that even in other areas because then it becomes a trigger. So for example, recently, this is completely off topic, but that dynamic plays out or connected because we recently had this conversation with a husband about sexuality of all things, but where we were talking about how early in our marriage we were aware, and I want to say this really carefully because I'm just talking about my own experience, We met so late that there was no time if we were going to have children for things to really go wrong and then get fixed. Like if we were gonna have fertility issue, like there was not a lot of time because we were already 35, 36. And so we didn't have ten or fifteen or twenty years to figure out if we want children, do we not want children?
Speaker 3:And so there was this pressure of time and sort of the pressure of culture of that expectation that we should have children. And so I think in that case, I don't feel like he ever pressured me. I think he's the opposite of pressuring me, but I felt this urgency of if we're gonna have children, we have to have children. And it wasn't working. It wasn't working.
Speaker 3:And it was awful. These were awful years, not because I was being harmed, but really because I was doing something to myself, not realizing I was doing it to myself. And this was not because the church told us it was not because my parents were dead. It wasn't because my parents were pressuring me. And we filled out foster care paperwork, like, on our honeymoon.
Speaker 3:So it wasn't even him in my case. In my case, I'm not speaking for everyone. But in my case, it was not even him pressuring me. It was literally, like this awareness of time, like do I do I have time to fix this? But I think the need to fix it goes all the way back to this where at that school we were supposed to get married, we were supposed to be women who studied music and then kept our mouths shut while our husbands were preachers.
Speaker 3:And we weren't supposed to really talk or have opinions or think or say anything, you know, and just get our MRS degree and get married and get married and have families. And I think that this urgency I felt when I got married, I don't think I realized until the husband and I had this conversation a couple of months ago that it goes all the way back to that. And I think it's deeper than that, but I can't even get into that right now. But I think it goes all the way back to that where to be good, I need to be married and I need to have children, and I need to be quiet. And instead, I have a mouth, and I have a podcast, and I sit in the van during church, and I'm raising other people's children, and I've completely restructured my whole life this year.
Speaker 3:And so so what what where does that leave you when your whole experience of childhood is I have to be good to be safe, but I'm never going to be worthy. And then you become an adult and you have this rite of passage of going to college, and my circumstances were different, and everybody knows that from the book and the podcast, but but you get to college and it's supposed to represent your adulthood. And then those people say, no. You failed good and you failed worthy and you failed god. So you don't really have any hope because there's no way to fix that.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. It's not like if I go to class and show up for class, my grades will be better. Or if I study more, my grades will be better. This is literally a rejection of who we are and disapproval and disavowal of who we are. And then with no one to support that or sort it out or clean it up.
Speaker 3:And that's what's so traumatic about it, even though all these other things were also not okay and also unsafe.
Speaker 1:It's so sad because even looking back, like, at college during those times, I could see that you were trying so hard to be good for people. You know, you wanted that approval. And, and, I mean, who wouldn't? Who wouldn't want to be good, right? But, you were trying so hard and I don't know if you try a little too hard, but I
Speaker 3:don't know. No. No. No. No.
Speaker 3:That is. That's exactly it. Right? Like, that's what fawning is. The trying to be good to be safe, trying to make them pleased so that I'm not in danger.
Speaker 3:I will lay on the keyboard with my deaf head, even though it's not a piano that gives vibrations, and try really hard to guess your ear training lesson so that maybe you'll give me my childhood diaries back.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's funny. And no. It didn't work. She threw them away.
Speaker 3:I didn't get them back.
Speaker 1:It's so wrong. It's it's so wrong. I yeah.
Speaker 3:What are you thinking? Because you went from this is overwhelming and it's too hard to talk about to filtering.
Speaker 1:How what you said reminded me of something you mentioned on a podcast about how, your previous Kelly sent you a letter and said we are not friends. And I don't know if you if that is not a good topic right now. But you know how wrong that is, right? You know how wrong that is. I mean, I know there's a a therapist client relationship and that it's really complex.
Speaker 1:But she knows you have parts and she knows that she's also talking to, you know, a 10 year old. I My son is in therapy, and I think about I don't know how he thinks about that relationship, but if she were to ever tell him we are not friends, that that's wrong.
Speaker 3:-It was devastating.
Speaker 1:How are you supposed to understand the relationship? And you don't define the relationship after it's over. You define it more in the beginning. And, you know, it's not just unprofessional. It's something else.
Speaker 3:That made me cry that coming out of nowhere. But it's the same thing. Right? Like, are my footprints. That footprints episode about that teacher in high school.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I know that one.
Speaker 3:Giving giving us that pen and and even that was symbolic because she was the music teacher. So of course it's a thing, and of course it's a reenactment of abuse from when I was little, and of course it's trying to make that right. And I think that happened in college as well with the, I don't know what I call her, the piano teacher. I think it was the same thing of, I will be safe if I can be good enough to make her happy. Nobody made her happy.
Speaker 3:That way, it was not, it was not something I could have done.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But but also why I don't know. I see that same layer play out, and I think that's one reason it's really hard to see or trust. Like when we talk about child abuse or neglect or something, again, people can conceptualize, okay, that messed up the circuits. Need enough healing, they think healing is, to untangle all those circuits and get everything laid back out the way it needs to be to feel better. And everyone can kind of hold space for that.
Speaker 3:But when we talk about betrayal trauma, like what happened at the college or institutional trauma, even to that degree of what we went through, or relational trauma with the individuals of what happened, I think what happened with that Kelly, what happened with the piano teacher, what happened with the professor's wife, what happened with the other therapist in Tulsa, what happened with the footprints choir teacher, that teacher. Like, it's all the same thing, right, where you're almost seen. And if you can just try hard enough or be good enough, then maybe they'll see you and maybe they'll love you and maybe you'll be safe. And that feels reinforced when it seems to work in the beginning. And so that makes it hard to trust or feel safe in other relationships where, is this just the beginning and it just fawning?
Speaker 3:Are they fawning? Am I fawning? Are we safe? Are we not safe? How do you tell?
Speaker 3:And so I think that's part of what's been significant about getting connected with you or having friends that we have known for six years now because of the podcast or or or that length of time to where, no, the evidence is contrary to that. Here's what the evidence says. Here's what my internal experience says. I'm trying to untangle all of that because it is a hard thing to feel safe when everyone else not just hurt you, but kept tricking you. Like, why why why was that a necessary step in things?
Speaker 1:I don't know. It wasn't necessary.
Speaker 3:It's very telling, I think, and kind of you to think of that moment and bring that into this conversation because it was a very similar wounding where a single moment felt like losing everything. A single conversation took away who I was, the help that I had, the support that I had, the resources I had, and God. And that gave for a very dark podcast for a couple years. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:It's okay.
Speaker 3:What are you thinking?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh.
Speaker 3:You went far away. I saw you.
Speaker 1:Oh. I was thinking a little bit about singing for me and how off trails that went. And I think it does have a lot to do with that experience there. And I've never really thought about that before. That might sound odd, a lot of this, haven't really thought about before.
Speaker 1:Like, I only just recently started to realize that some things weren't my fault, you know? So I don't sing at church, and it's hard when you're back in your hometown, which I am. People know I can sing, and it's just like they don't understand why I don't. Maybe I don't understand why I don't, but that might be something too.
Speaker 3:Yay therapy. Well, becomes, when we have trauma that deep, it becomes somatic, right? Like in our bodies. And that's one more thing that gets dismissed because so many times people think somatic means faking. But it's not about that.
Speaker 3:It's about our memories and our traumas and our wounds coming out in physical ways in our body. And so it's not that you can't sing. We know you can sing. It's that this trauma literally in the music department disrupted things and that wound is there. And so people are confused only because they don't know those pieces and because they believe in you, which is great.
Speaker 3:But the last time you believed in something, it got you hurt. It was dangerous and it was awful. And so it's hard for you to believe in you and hard for your body to trust that.
Speaker 1:I still have nightmares about the music, department, that area in the Maybe I shouldn't say the building. I have nightmares a lot about when I dream about the college, that's usually where I am. I think a lot of things I was able to express myself there in the privacy of a practice room, not to an actual person, you know, but there's just a lot of intense emotions, I think, around music because of it.
Speaker 3:I think that for me, the practice rooms, for people who are not music majors, it's like a whole hallway of soundproof ish rooms where people can practice their instruments or piano or singing, right? And I think for me, practice rooms were the holy of holies because no one came in there to bother me. I could play and sing and cry and those emotions coming out and getting expressed the way you're talking about and describing. There was something powerful about that, but the feelings that came out were sometimes hard and scary feelings, not just, oh, I'm happy and it's a lovely day, let's play piano. Although there's also that escape, you know?
Speaker 1:I interrupted you once in there. You were gonna record, a piano piece that you've been working on, and I interrupted you.
Speaker 3:That's so funny. I don't remember that at all. Don't mind you interrupting me, you weren't hurting me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You okay? Mhmm. Baker. Oh, I'm just kidding. Someone wrote into the podcast, and it's about to air, so by the time this airs, people will hear it if I if I share this, but someone wrote into the podcast who is a music person and they were talking or calling out the intro to the podcast because it's the out of tune piano And all I can think is, like but it represents so much.
Speaker 3:And I think there are times where I don't want things perfect on purpose because I'm so done with perfection making me safe because it didn't work. It didn't work. And so even though I, now that, like especially now that we're back here for now, where the husband's parents live and they have a grand piano and a regular piano or pianos at church or the keyboard and I can use those others and I have since, but I have never gone back to rerecord that intro because I recorded that intro right after we moved to Kansas City when my daughter was dying and that piano is the old piano that has been moved over and over and over and that moment that I recorded that, even though even with my ears, I know it's bad. But but that was the moment I decided to use my voice, and I don't think I can fix it. I don't think I could swap it out.
Speaker 3:Like, initially, when I first read the email, I thought, well, that will take thirty seconds for me to just pop over somewhere and rerecord that really fast and then come back. But that piece, that song was my recital piece from that college. It's it's a phrase out of there, and it was like my reclaiming. And I didn't know it would end up with me talking to you or with me talking to her about college, but it's from one of my pieces. And so I can't, I don't think I can because it was my decision to speak even though what happened first was recording, right?
Speaker 3:But I couldn't say anything until I had the podcast set up. And to set it up, I had to have an intro because that's how podcasts work. That's what the husband said. And so that was the first thing I did even before I recorded any speaking at all for the podcast was record that. And it was the turning point for me.
Speaker 3:And so I kind of don't care what it sounds like. Or that it was on the old out of tune piano that's been moved so many times that a tuner couldn't fix it. Like even if I called them, they can't fix it. It's just, it's done. It's sad.
Speaker 3:But it was my moment of speaking up and speaking out and starting this. And so I don't I don't think even now that we've talked about it, I don't think I could change it or swap out the sound file because it just is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Don't do that. You're reclaiming your your voice and music and pretty inspiring.
Speaker 3:This was an intense conversation and some intense avoidance of other conversations. How are you feeling after all that? Is that too much to ask?
Speaker 1:No. It's actually really good. I might, you know, cry for a while, but You need a nap. Yeah. We'll take nap.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:This conversation will be continued in the next episode. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing.