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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to 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:Barbara said, oh, dear Emma, presents are presences, especially when now time slowly fades away to memory time. Because when you make now time connections that are new, those carry into making new, safe, and healthy memory time experiences. We are glad you had such a sweet birthday. God bless your friends and you all. Oh, I'm so grateful for that actually because that's a good reminder that we have focused on how memory time can invade now time even though it doesn't have the power to change now time.
Speaker 1:But I think you're right that for the first time we have enough new now time experiences that are healthy and positive and good for good memories that maybe for the first time, now time is invading memory time. That's really big, and I'm gonna have to think about it some more. Tammy says, hi. I am so happy to see the podcast. I am someone who has for many, many years been interested in DID.
Speaker 1:I have worked with clients with DID and am currently finishing up a dissertation on the topic of DID. My focus is on having clinicians tell me what tools they have used when they diagnose someone with DID. I would also like to know which tools worked for them best and why. This is important as the research shows that many individuals with DID are either not believed or are misdiagnosed for years before finding someone who understands and believes in the validity of DID. In my research, this is in part due to the fact that many clinicians in training are taught that DID is extremely rare and that they will likely never see it.
Speaker 1:So my response to you, Tammy, is I'm glad that you have found the podcast. And then also, I suggest you connect with the ISSTD or through their resources on their web page as they address all of these issues. And the latest conference that we just had last week included research about how it's not rare at all. And so I think getting in contact with ISSTD would really be your most helpful thing. I appreciate your hard work and I'm glad to hear from you.
Speaker 1:Elise says, I'm so thankful for your podcast. I'm a clinical counselor, and I work outside of Vancouver in Canada. You asked for a suggestion for EMDR clinicians, so I wanted to pass a couple of names along. Oh, thank you for that. That's really so very kind.
Speaker 1:She says, I've learned so much by your courageous and beautiful podcast. Thanks again. Elise, I really appreciate it. That was very kind and very encouraging. I will contact those people that you've mentioned.
Speaker 1:FG says, I have an online friend with DID, and we have recently become closer in terms of her opening up to me about her internal world. My friend has an alter who self harms and is suicidal. I'm wondering if it's okay to talk to or interact with this alter when she shows up. It concerns me because it isn't clear to me what role this alter may have or what impact it might have for her internally if I try to engage with this alter. Other alters have expressed fear of the suicidal alter, and one alter even told me that the suicidal alter did not belong in the system.
Speaker 1:I would feel suicidal if I were told I did not belong, by the way. That's I don't know if that's entirely helpful. I want to show my friend that all of her is acceptable to me. That's really kind, but it sounds like and I don't know the person, so I don't know. I'm not the therapist, and they need to talk to their therapist, but it sounds like that's very kind of you to want them to know that they are all acceptable to them, that they are all acceptable to you.
Speaker 1:But it sounds like that they need to learn that all of them are acceptable to them. And also, while we can accept all of ourselves, we don't need to accept that putting ourselves in danger is okay because it's not. So there's some teamwork to be done there and safety things done with therapy, and I would recommend letting them work on that. FG says I also want to make sure that I'm not causing her any distress or difficulty. She has also told me that suicidal alter wants to go back to previous abusers.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure if that's a relevant detail. I have tried to research about this to see what kind of information may be available about it, but I'm having trouble finding anything that seems to talk about a situation like this. I know all systems are different and that you can't really say what's best for my friend, but if you have thoughts about it, as someone who experiences DID and has clinical knowledge I would be interested in hearing your opinions, that's actually a very common experience, so I'm not sure where you're researching. But if you I would again encourage you to read some of the free resources available from ISSTD and let the therapist help them for safety concerns and just continue to be present and supportive in the ways that you can. That's really very kind of you.
Speaker 1:But also remember the good boundaries of what is their work to do and accepting all of them is is very kind and a wonderful presence to offer them as they learn to accept themselves. Lisa says, your ISSTD new job title sounds lovely. What a perfect project for the system to work on together. IT for Zoom room, connection and networking opportunity, and badges for John Mark to hand out. Nice.
Speaker 1:And kudos to you all. Oh, thank you, Lisa. I would tell you that becoming the professional training program administrator has really been a lovely experience. I am able to have an illusion anyway as I'm still learning my job helpful in a tiny, tiny way. Like, what I do is so very small and insignificant, no one's even going to notice.
Speaker 1:But it's something that I'm functioning and a way to contribute. And besides this, I've been able to get on some committees and start participating in some professional ways, and that's been really, really good for us, as well as the friendships and connections we've been able to build through membership with the ISSTD and learning what they're doing and how we can help survivors and other clinicians and finding a place where we are safe and can belong and be understood even while we continue our journey of becoming healthier and stronger and continuing our healing. And so I'm really, really grateful to them and many, many, many individuals that make up ISSTD. I cannot tell you how gracious and kind and accepting they have been. Chantel says, howdy y'all.
Speaker 1:I love the podcast. I've been binging it at work for the last few months, and I'm finally caught up. I am also a survivor. I want to say thank you for this last episode and the reminder that now time is still safe even during the pandemic. This has been particularly difficult for me because my parents were pastors and teachers in a church that emphasized the study of end time prophecies.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. There's so much I could say right now. I'm so sorry, first of all, and and I'm so understanding of how this is triggering in ways that I don't know that I can even share on the podcast right now, but I hear you, and I understand you. That's I want to say that. Anytime some major event like this happens, it feels like a little too much, like the end is here.
Speaker 1:The slogan, now time is safe, has been such a help. I changed it to be my password at work, and typing it these past few days has felt like a joke until I heard this last episode. Thanks for the reminder, and thanks for all you do to educate the world about trauma and life with DID. I hope you and your family stay safe and healthy during these times. Oh, that's so kind of you.
Speaker 1:As of this morning, I'm recording this. We are in week thirteen of quarantine, and we have not left our house. We are being especially cautious because of our daughter. So we have been outside but only when there were no other people around and we could get fresh air that way and be in the sunshine a bit for the children. But we have not gone anywhere or done anything to risk our quarantine status because, we are waiting on surgery for our daughter.
Speaker 1:So it has been very, very difficult, but we are doing as well as we can in these circumstances. Thank you so much. Stephanie says, I clicked on your Patreon link to sign up and support your podcast. Oh, we're not actually on Patreon. That's from, like, two years ago, and I couldn't get back in to delete it, and I didn't know how to do it when I tried the first time.
Speaker 1:And Julie said I did it all wrong, and so I just left it, and I've not even been back there. You can support the podcast on the website, systemspeaks.org. And I think we say that on every episode it shares that. So I hope that helps. And I'm sorry about the confusion.
Speaker 1:I'll try to get the other one taken down because I just don't have the capacity right now, especially during the pandemic, to run any extra things. That's also why the Facebook page has come down, not because of any, internal drama, just for a focus capacity while we're caring for the children. Beth says, I am 34 year old survivor living in Australia. I received therapy for less than a year when I was 17, but my therapist retired. It was also very dangerous work as he was dealing specifically with freeing people like me.
Speaker 1:Since then, I've tried many different psychologists, but all of them deny the existence of DID or MPD as it was known when I was first diagnosed. When I heard your podcast, it was the first time I've heard anyone talk openly about it, and I'm so grateful to all of you for your bravery. I know I need continued therapy, but I just feel like a crazy person as no one else professionals believe my story. Do you know anyone who can help me in Australia? Thank you so much for this podcast.
Speaker 1:I've laughed. I've cried. And most of all, I'm grateful to feel understood. Oh, Beth, I'm so glad. I hope that you can look through the podcast and find the episodes about the Blue Knot Foundation.
Speaker 1:I think that that would be an excellent starting place. You can also search on the ISSTD for a therapist in Australia. And even if there's not one who is local to where you are, they would maybe know someone who is. So I would give you those two places as a starting place and I wish you well on your journey. Echo sent us a message asking us about something on Reddit, and we are not on Reddit at all.
Speaker 1:So that's not us at all. Sorry, for any confusion, but thanks for checking if that was our system. We are not on Reddit, so that is not us. But I'm glad you have found some support. I listened to your most recent podcast with Jess and multiplicity and me.
Speaker 1:I love Jess's conversation with you and the way you guys diplomatically discussed the ideological differences between plurality and dissociative episodes that are trauma based. We struggled to put away the idea that some of plurality is based more on thought disorders over trauma related ideologies. I accept or try to accept where people are at, but cannot remove the clinical part of myself that watches either. We too can't watch YouTube, like you guys said you don't, and possibly not for the same reason you all don't, but sometimes we see what feels so alien to what we experience. We identify with systems like yourself who work hard to take care of things and not have dissociation completely take over who they are.
Speaker 1:Please understand, I'm not minimizing the impact of how it changes all of us and how difficult it is to navigate relationships, day to day living, and the worlds around us. I just don't want dissociation to be the sole source of what or who we are. In freeing myself of that, we are learning a greater comfort and acceptance no matter how paradoxical that appears. I totally agree exactly, and I think you expressed it very well. Thank you for understanding.
Speaker 1:Our friend Kim says, in recent episodes, I can tell that someone new is talking and that you are not who we think you are. I just wanted you to know that you are noticed and seen and still loved. I hope all is well with your family. Kim, that's very kind. I don't want to address it right now, but I think it's very kind of you.
Speaker 1:We really appreciate you and the friendship that you have offered over the last year. Mandy says, I'm listening to podcast 148. Oh my goodness. Have we done a 48? I don't even know.
Speaker 1:I just found you all about a month ago. I've been diagnosed for about a year. I'm so glad I found you. I have learned so much. All of y'all are amazing for doing this.
Speaker 1:I am a member of the same church. Oh, they know what we're talking about. I hope Emily and the husband enjoy conference this weekend. I really enjoy your podcast, Sasha. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I pray for you all. May you be blessed. That's really so very kind. It's good to hear from someone else who understands. And as we have talked about in the past with others that our faith is very important to us and and it has been a lot of work to come to agreement on on that even though we also respect why faith and church can be so difficult for many survivors and definitely for parts of us.
Speaker 1:Kay says, I'm so sorry to hear about your doctor's surgery being cancelled and the lack of resources and how things are prioritized. I'm going through a really angry day at COVID nineteen. World shutdown. All of this social distancing being pounded into our head is driving us insane. I like how you said social distancing doesn't mean social disconnecting.
Speaker 1:I heard we don't need social distancing. We need social connection and physical distancing. I'm glad you were able to connect with a therapist and really hope that relationship helps. After a year of seeing a therapist online and it not working and finally finding an in person therapist, we now are back online because of the pandemic. It's been so hard.
Speaker 1:Your podcast helps, but not seeing anyone in person is so, so hard. I live alone and ended up in crisis and was hospitalized. I'm so worried about how this is affecting mental health and the fallout of no outpatient resources, not even peer support or 12 step groups. I agree it's a very difficult time for mental health in the entire world and will be complicated by the influx of new people with new mental health on top of people who were already struggling now having their issues exacerbated by the pandemic experience. So I'm really glad we have each other and I am trying to return to the podcast so that we can offer some support and your emails to us offer support as well.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Vivian says, I was introduced to a podcast a few days ago during a Zoom support call run by an administrator from the Facebook group, A Life After Trauma. Since then, I have listened to 10 of your podcasts and hope to listen to all of them in the next few weeks. I am 78 years old and first found out I had MPD, as it was called at the time, when I was 46. At the time, the only way to connect with other dissociatives was through a hard copy bimonthly newsletter called Many Voices.
Speaker 1:It was published by Lynn in Ohio. That was life given to me. Your podcast is indeed a welcome addition, and I like that I don't have to be glued to the screen but can be washing dishes or whatever while I listen. Thank you so much for what you are doing. Vivian, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:78 years old, an MPD since 46 and connecting now. I love it so much and I'm really glad you reached out. Thank you for sharing with us. Ray wrote a wonderful email and I just want to read part of it because some of it was very private. Ray says: I have listened to your podcast since the very beginning.
Speaker 1:I think when I first discovered it, there were three or four episodes. Been with you ever since. I have thought about emailing you dozens of times and gotten scared every time. I have even written your post box address down and have it on a desk drawer, but chickened out in sending anything. Just listened to some endings are beginnings at work today and decided that now is a time for connection, not hiding.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so brave of you and I wrote that down again because I've got to remember a time for connection, not hiding. I think it's really, really a struggle we are having right now. I'll try to make this brief, she says. I have had mental health issues my whole life, so many diagnoses and therapies in hospitals. I also kept journals my whole life.
Speaker 1:In 2017, when I was trying to finish a degree, I was having a lot of blackouts even though I had gotten sober a few years before. Things came to a head, and one day I heard all of these different parts in my head. They wrote to me and explained their presence and directed me to look through the old journals. Sure enough, they were there all with different handwritings and attitudes for years. They'd been there all along, but my denial eyes hadn't seen them.
Speaker 1:I went and got a tattoo of the date of that awakening on my hand because I knew I could try to forget again. I was unofficially diagnosed with DID, kept off my record for insurance and stigma reasons. I have a great therapist who's been with me through it all, and I am now seeing a yoga therapist as well to address physical trauma stuff. That's amazing! It's pretty neat so far but sometimes really hard emotionally.
Speaker 1:The body stores scary stuff. My day job is in pathology, but at my heart, I'm a writer. My current project is a memoir. I had always known I needed to write one, but didn't know why. Now I understand.
Speaker 1:Writing has always been how we share memories, kind of like your circle notebook, and writing our story was going to be how we figured out how we fit together and how to live as a healthy and cohesive team. I've been in a year long memoir class with an excellent teacher and a small cohort of writers. Exchanging chapters and peer reviews and workshops has really been my first time sharing my story, and it is terrifying and also exhilarating. Yes. That's what the podcast is like.
Speaker 1:It is it is so so scary to be sharing everything that we're sharing and to leave it out there. It's it's terrifying. I'm about to apply for a writing fellowship, and as I looked at the personal statements and project proposals and writing samples, it hit me. The self doubt, doubt in my talent as a writer, doubt in my own experiences and my diagnosis. It is a tenacious and vicious beast.
Speaker 1:I have often wondered whether you experienced the self doubt, like where you think I'm just making this up and I'm weak and needy and dramatic. I've heard a lot of you struggle with different emotions, but that's one I don't feel I often see. Do you go through this? Absolutely. And that's exactly why we lost the podcast for two months because it is too much and it's overwhelming not in how much work it is.
Speaker 1:We're willing to do that work when we're able to do the connecting, but the connecting part and being that vulnerable to put it out there is terrifying, and it is exhausting to deal with the terror of it. I guess I'm asking you because you are one of the sources I really trust and even that took me a long time. I was skeptical at first, worried about whether you were making things up, acting like you had DID. YouTube has made me skeptical of everyone. I hate the videos.
Speaker 1:That's why I went looking for a podcast, and there you were. Still, I had to take time and listen a while before I could trust you. I kept coming back because you were so often describing things that I thought only I went through. You struggled through things that made me feel like I was the only one in the world. When I felt alone and misunderstood and isolated, your voice kept me anchored.
Speaker 1:And slowly, my trust and care for you helped me develop more trust and care for myself. I'm still working on it. Oh, that is so touching and so powerful. I could probably write you a novella's worth because I've been saving it all up for so long. But here's the important part.
Speaker 1:You are doing an amazing job of making the podcast, of being a mom, of taking care of yourselves, and attending to your healing. You are consistently full of gentleness and wisdom and insight that I wish more people had. You restore my faith in humanity, and you remind me that it is powerful to be vulnerable. I feel less alone and less scared knowing you are out there in the world. I feel like I can maybe write this book because maybe there really is an audience for it.
Speaker 1:Maybe people will believe me. I would love to get feedback on the writing from others with DID. Most of all, if I can share my story and help anyone as much as your podcast has helped me, it will all be worth it. That is so powerful. I had to print it and cut it out so that I could put it in the notebook so I could read it again and remember what you said because it's so so powerful and so so hard to hold on to.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing your words with the world. I hope someday to have a chance to know you better, but for now I want to thank you and send you love and support. All of my parts feel seen and heard just by listening to yours. We all thank you. Oh, I'm so glad that you wrote thank you.
Speaker 1:Crystal says: In the History of Trauma episode, I really thought you were summarizing a whole book and then you got to the end and said that was just the first chapter. Amazing! I know right? So the book is Trauma and Recovery and we discovered it through a class with the ISSTD and it's incredible. We're not going to go through any more of the book on the podcast but we shared initial part because they were pieces we didn't know and had not learned and it's so really, really well done.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you were able to find it. Lisa says: You are all so articulate. You put words so I feel inside. I wish you the best in finding a therapist. You have had the worst experiences.
Speaker 1:And remember, you are not alone and you know what is best for your system better than anyone. Trust yourself, continuing to reach out to safe friends, and continue learning and teaching about trauma. You help others so much, and thank you for all you share. You do well keeping yourself closed yet open to the public. What a dance that must be.
Speaker 1:I am a singleton, and this pandemic has made me feel a different person also, and dissociation is hard to fight during this time. But it seems that we are controlling it and remaining connected with our loved ones while allowing the system to cope with ongoing trauma. Lisa, I'm so appreciative of you and your ongoing encouragement. I feel like you have been a constant thread through the podcast, just sort of there in the background encouraging me and cheering me on. And I'm so, so grateful for you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for writing in again. C says, in the podcast about the book Trauma and Recovery, the part about connection and relationships is particularly painful to me and explains why I can't have friends and people connected and supportive of me, but I don't feel connected back to them and I don't miss them or long for them. The only people I felt connected to are therapists that I had to pay. And then, like you said, the pain of that connection and the longing is so overwhelming that all I want to do is curl up and go to sleep or escape even though it's what I want most in the world. Then I think something is wrong with me because while I've done a really good job keeping myself safe as an adult, I've never been in a romantic relationship and the pain of that is too much to acknowledge and the feeling of not being real or not being worthy of pure and healthy love attachment makes me dissociate from all those things, so I don't even want or make any effort to meet people.
Speaker 1:Yet, I'm super friendly and connect with everyone at the same time. Being isolated in my house is intensifying all of this since I was home homeschooled. Another trigger from the past, right, in memory time. There's so many triggers from the pandemic and the lockdown. Outside people feel imaginary.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a good word for it because I think that's what's happened. I think that we are afraid. Oh my goodness, I just feel like you have lightning strike my brain. They are all That is exactly it. It's not that I think our friends that we've made before the pandemic and finally have found safe people, it's not that we don't believe them or that they've done anything wrong or that anything bad has happened.
Speaker 1:It's that we believe we've made it up now. Like, that they're not real and we've imagined it all. Or maybe they're imaginary friends but not people inside and because we can't see them inside, then they are not real at all. Oh, you have really solved a mystery for me. Thank you.
Speaker 1:What is that? Is that depersonalization or derealization or something? Is that part of dissociation or something else because of attachment? Oh, Peter, somebody tell me what is this. She says: I haven't been able to work full time for a year, and before the shelter in place I was really getting to where it looked like I was improving and would be able to up my hours at work.
Speaker 1:Then this hit and now I just don't know if I can make it. I have therapist and lots of support in different ways but that's not enough and there's shame around that. Yes, I feel that too, that there's shame in that I'm struggling as much as I am and that it's been as hard as it's been and that I've not done better. And because when we reach out to people who normally support us, because they are also struggling and also helping like 1,800 people, I feel like their tolerance and their frustration level are different. So they are shorter which feels like misattunement, which escalates into I have definitely failed because they are thinking badly of me and it just escalates, like snowballs it or reinforces all of that.
Speaker 1:And it has been very hard for us. I agree. I agree. There's shame in that. I don't think the shame is real, but I know the feeling.
Speaker 1:I know what you're saying. There's the feeling that I've been in therapy for twenty years and made no progress. Then I look back and remember that I used to have nightmares constant anxiety and self harm fats and now I've been sober for ten years, have moments of peace and joy and have surrounded myself with people who care. That is a beautiful summation and I'm so glad you wrote in because you helped me so much. And I think what you said at the end is super important for all of us to focus on.
Speaker 1:It's not just what's hard, but how much progress we have made and how we know that we've made the progress and honouring those moments of peace and joy and remembering to connect with the people we have surrounded ourselves with. That is very, very powerful. Peter Barrish wrote in he is the psychologist who is a past president of the ISSTD and has been a guest on the podcast several times because he's been a good and safe friend for us. And he also was on the team that helped with the guidelines for treatment for DID and we mentioned him in the podcast about Judith Herman's book for Trauma and Recovery and he responded to what we said on that episode. He said in the first of your podcasts on Judith Herman's book you said that you were going to ask me about the timing of my research on DID with relationship to the women's movement and the recognition of PTSD as a diagnosis.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure that PTSD entered the DSM in 1980, which was when I went on to my pre doctoral internship. As I talked about in one of our interviews, that was where I saw my supervisor work with a man who had a phantom limb pain and got over it when he did hypnotic abreaction of the World War two injury that cost him his leg. I saw a number of veterans who had p s PTSD, but nobody had a clue how to help them. Certainly nobody understood the crucial importance of connection in the process of recovery. Can you imagine this guys?
Speaker 1:As hard as it is now, we really have come so far. I can't even imagine this. At that point, I didn't know anything about sexual abuse. We'd been taught in grad school that incest occurred in one in a million children. We had no training in DID.
Speaker 1:All I knew about it was reading three faces of Eve. After my internship, I was hired at Cleveland State University Counseling Center where I'd done a practicum before going to Pittsburgh. It was then that I began to work with some college students who disclosed their history of sexual abuse, including the first person I worked with who had DID. Fortunately, my supervisor at the time was just finishing up her landmark book, Healing the Incest Wound. She was incredibly supportive, and we remained good friends, but she didn't know anything about DID at that time.
Speaker 1:I started with my current private practice group in 1984, first as a supervisor and soon after that as a therapist. Chris Comstock had been working with women who had abused children, and she had gotten some consultation which she passed on to me. At that point I did my first actual research which was an attempt to find Rorzak indicators that could distinguish between adult female abuse survivors who had MPD and those who didn't. It was not a successful piece of research and someone else came along did a better job, but I presented the paper at ISSTD in 1986. I began to attend those conferences, often presenting on the psychodynamic treatment model that Chris Comstock and I were using.
Speaker 1:But I made the connection between disordered attachment and DID around 1991, and that changed everything about how I work. You mentioned Anne Bergerson in the podcast episode. I never met her, but I did hear her present once. She talked about how she presented to physicians to persuade them that sexual abuse was real. She showed awful and graphic slides of injured infants, which she had also shown to medical groups.
Speaker 1:They were persuasive. She worked with a group of FBI profilers who were trying to identify the profiles of serial killers. She's depicted in a Netflix series about the profilers, but it's fictionalized and her character was renamed. That's fascinating and I'm so grateful that you answered our question about the timing of that and the history of DID research and so appreciate your work not just your friendship but the work you've done for our field clinically and for the authenticity of who you are in sharing your story and the history that you are such a rich part of in the unfolding of what we know and where we've come and where we are now. I'm so so grateful for you Peter.
Speaker 1:Catherine writes, those who change the world seldom begin with the knowledge that they will do so. They begin with a passion and a curiosity and a question. Thank you for all that you have done and continue to do and are doing. Oh Catherine, that was so kind. I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 1:I'll have to print that out as well and keep it so we can read it again. Lisa says, I'm back. Heck yeah you are and good for you and keep taking care of yourself. Also, I want to hide away every day. So I hear you, pandemic or no.
Speaker 1:You are a superhero, a rock star, and an amazing soul. You've got this. You can do hard things, and we are here listening. Oh, Lisa, seriously. I can't even.
Speaker 1:I'm so grateful for you. Thank you. Our friend Kim writes, I could tell someone else new or at least new to the podcast is the one talking now. I can tell by your cadence and by the way that you're processing things. I'm not trying to be insensitive and it's not my place, but I want you to know that I'm here and that I see you.
Speaker 1:Your podcast about I'm back was very raw, and I respect your honesty and your transparency. You've got to do what you've got to do for your family. We all do. And that's just the way it is. Thank you for sharing with us, and I continue praying for your daughter.
Speaker 1:I recently received my t shirt. Oh, that's so kind. I'm so glad. That's really, really very kind of you. And, Kim, you are one also who has just been there from the beginning of the podcast, and I'm so grateful for you out there.
Speaker 1:It's so meaningful to me. And I thank you again for your encouraging note and for your presence. Thank you, Kim. Def wrote an email that asked about our journey of integration thus far. She says I'm new to parts work, and my superstar therapist is teaching me to dip in and out and to hold my parts together at the same time.
Speaker 1:And then I notice how how I feel and communicate with each other in and then I am to notice how I feel and communicate with each other in that space and comfort each other. She asked me where I would like to picture this happening, and I originally said like two peas in a pot, but apparently one of my littles doesn't like peas. That's funny. So now we're pencils in a pencil case. I'm wondering if this is something you've done with your therapist, assuming maybe the last one as you're still getting to know the current one.
Speaker 1:And now we've lost that one as well. What did that getting to know each other feel like? I mentioned the podcast to my therapist and had a bit of a ramble about you guys and how much you have helped me understand ourselves and know we're not alone. Steph, I'm glad you feel not alone, and questions about integration and sharing space is a big one. I think I'm not in a better place to answer that right now because of some struggles we're having since the pandemic, but the poem came out, and so I wanted to share it with you.
Speaker 1:And the last week, I watched my five year old doctor's butterflies be born. They came home with us for quarantine, a gift of hope and peace, while she herself is dying, while my children miss their friends and watch their sister fade away. The caterpillars crawled in the grime as they learned to spin, then hung themselves from the top of the cup. I know the feeling. The metaphor did not escape me, this therapeutic process of freeze, where transformation is required.
Speaker 1:Quarantined, in a glass house, hanging by a thread, nothing the same as it was. Before the chrysalis, there was a shedding of skin, I recognized as a shedding of me. For all I have learned the last four years about integration, I thought the debate was between brownies and fruit salad, as if I would get to choose my last meal. But all of it was grime. So I pretended to grow wings while you locked me away.
Speaker 1:I wrapped myself in dissociation like a cocoon of worlds inside. I never invited you in here. No one warned me how sticky it was. I watched their backbones start to form like scales that fell away, like therapy talking away. Therapy was taking away my dissociation while I fought to lock myself in it.
Speaker 1:If you have any heart at all, you want to reach out, to reach in, to touch, to help them free the hardened shell. But you cannot. Because that wriggling work is what makes them strong, is what sets them free, is what makes me, me. And I know how cold and lonely it is in there, in here, where I am, where no one goes, no one sees, no one knows. You promise wings, you promise freedom, you promise flying free.
Speaker 1:But all I remember is the grime, and all I know is the crawling through filth, and all I see is that I've hung myself here, vulnerably, to be stared at and gawked at and not touched, while I'm frozen and cold and hanging here, not who I was and not yet free. You say no parts left behind or lost or abandoned. But I see my shell laying there where I once crawled. And these wings, still sticky, don't feel like mine, and I can't yet fly. You flick at my net to show me that I can, like a bird pushing its baby out of the nest, and it hurts me, betrays me, stings me, scares me.
Speaker 1:Except you don't push too hard, and I feel you wait while I don't want to leave. I would rather hang myself there where being frozen has always kept me safe. I am uncomfortable with so many changes and didn't know I would come out looking so different than how I crawled in. I cling to the net because you taught me how to be grounded, and I have always known how to shelter in place. I can see the outside world where everyone else lives, but I don't at all like you sending me away to go live there because I do not know how to live.
Speaker 1:I know how to crawl. I know how to hang. It makes me angry at you even though I am not, when you try to send me away from the place where I hung, away from where my shadow still stays, away from where my shell lies. I don't know if you understand. That still feels like me, and the cocoon still feels safer, and the sun is still too bright for my eyes.
Speaker 1:I am drying out my wings and saying goodbye while you unzip my world to shoo me out so I can fly. Because you say I was meant for the sky, but all I remember is the grime and how to crawl. And I don't understand why you don't understand that I don't actually know how to fly. But what I do know, more than you know I know, is that there is no going back, and I'm relieved to have the sticky washed off of me. I know.
Speaker 1:I know. You never said I had to leave. But I cannot stay here, looking at the shell of me. 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.
Speaker 1:Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemsbeat.com. We'll see you there.