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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
Speaker 2:we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
Speaker 1:for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. Okay. You guys have now heard Doctor. Tema.
Speaker 1:I hope you have looked up her stuff. I can't even tell you how big of an influence this has had on me. Doctor. Tema's work fits very well for me with what I already understand and practice clinically and brutally impactful for me personally, along the same lines as Laura Brown's work, especially through Price of Admission and the Wolf's book, which I will continue to talk about forever with you all. So coming back to Doctor.
Speaker 1:Tema, I have not even gotten to her relational book. I can barely handle the book. Her other book about relationships, I can't even y'all will have to circle back to it. But for now, listen to just the chapter titles. Chapter one, she introduces what homecoming means and what she's talking about there.
Speaker 1:We'll come back to it in just a minute. But then chapter two and three are the internal signs of disconnection and the external signs of disconnection. I can't even. And then she gets right to it with chapter four, reparenting yourself, chapter five, emotional intelligence, and chapter six, community care and self care. And then part three, now time stuff that hurts when we are in process.
Speaker 1:Ruptures and repair, grief, like invisible losses, healing from breakup and divorce, coping with healing from toxic workplaces. Did you all ever think about that, that reenactments also can happen in the workplace? I am having to change everything about that. Right? I think it's even part of what happened with the nonprofit, so I'm learning so much and healing from that.
Speaker 1:What do I want that to look like moving forward? How is it going to be different and better? And then resisting oppression and in society. Right? There is so much here.
Speaker 1:just to get the language so I can share about this book is let me read this quote from the introduction from Homecoming. She says, As a minister and psychologist, I am glad to be among those who are bridging the gaps between faith and mental health. Mental health challenges, including mental illness, exist across faith traditions. People are multidimensional and should not be made to feel that they have to choose between the diverse pathways of restoration. For that reason, homecoming is a spiritual and psychological guide that will not require you to neglect any aspect of yourself.
Speaker 1:Homecoming is a sacred work in that I believe miraculous things can happen. Change, growth, and transformation can occur. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some miracles have already happened. For people to have lived through trauma and still have kindness, a sense of humor, compassion, dreams, and a seed of hope that their lives can be better is pretty amazing. So before we even begin the journey home, honor yourself for the ways you have survived.
Speaker 1:Perhaps you have some scars, but you are here nonetheless. The journey home is also political, which is, again, like she talked about Judith Herman. Judith Herman says you cannot separate healing from the political, from societal context. This is connecting back with that. The journey home is also political for members of marginalized communities.
Speaker 1:If you have faced individual and institutional barriers that have made it hard for you to be at home with yourself, this journey is a radical revolutionary act that resists erasure, stigma, stereotype, racism, sexism, and oppression in all its forms. It is beautiful to see you setting the intention to make your way back home to yourself despite all the naysayers who have systematically tried to tell you that you were unworthy of justice, wellness, and compassion. My goodness. I have cried through her podcast. I have cried through the books.
Speaker 1:I have taken pages and pages and pages of things to therapy. We're going to keep talking about this. And, yes, she includes homework in all the things. And as she mentioned on the podcast in the interview, it all comes to fruition through action, through sharing what we have learned and how we have grown. She gives a quote from Howard Thurman, a great African American theologian who once wrote, don't ask what the world needs.
Speaker 1:Ask what makes you come alive and go do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. You guys, with relational trauma, we literally have been trained to be unalive. So to alive ourselves is to throw off the oppression from the beginning that we have endured, the oppression of trauma, and those of us who are in any version of marginalized communities or groups of people to endure through and throw off other forms of oppression as well, it is so much, and we are here to talk about it. She says in the chapter, as you come home to yourself, you begin breaking free from the mandates and dictates of others. Should dos are the instructions that you have received from those around you or from the larger society.
Speaker 1:You may have received should dos from your family, your teachers, the media, your friends, people you admire, and even people who despise you. We are bombarded with so many messages that tell us that because we belong to a particular family, community, race, gender, religion, age group, or whatever, we are supposed to live a certain way. Some parts of these scripts may resonate with us, while others don't ring true. As you shed the weight of other people's expectations and demands for your life, time, and resources, you come home to a life that resonates with, awakens, and animates you. You have come to a place in your life when tolerance is not enough.
Speaker 1:Just getting by is not enough. Staying in the lane that others have forced you into is not enough. Homecoming is about living fully, abundantly, and taking up space, not adjusting to a life of dissatisfaction and discontent. I invite you to declare today, I refuse to participate in the silencing of myself. I do not consent to the erasing of myself.
Speaker 1:You guys, this has changed my life literally in every way. I don't even know how to tell you to where I'm serious when I say I feel like I have come back to myself in a way I have not been for at least the last year, the last three years, five years, decade at least. I cannot even tell you. She says, take a sacred pause now and ask yourself where you're going. A sacred pause means taking a moment to breathe and check-in with the silenced or ignored parts of your self.
Speaker 1:What road have you been following based on your investment of time, money, and relationships? Where does this road lead? Is that where you want to go? I invite you to go within instead of letting others be your compass. The only way to change directions is to start by being honest with yourself about the ways you have felt lost, disconnected, unfulfilled, or stuck.
Speaker 1:Can you admit to yourself that you miss you? Some of you may miss the person you were never free to be. If you grew up with constant trauma and stress, you may never have been able to be at home with yourself, to be free from shame, to experience healthy eating and and sleeping. If you miss the person you never were able to be, you too have experienced homesickness, a longing to connect with yourself as you have never been safe enough to do before. You all, she is talking about mother hunger, except instead of the mother child dynamic, just the experience with myself.
Speaker 1:How did I let myself slip away? How did I sacrifice myself so much for other people, trying so hard for other social contracts that I left myself along the way? How do I go back and find me and bring me into the present and recreate the life I have every right to live? Not in a toxic positivity way, not in a prosperity gospel kind of way, in a way where it is me getting to be alive and enjoying my own life. In the chapter, she looks at how does this happen and internal signs of disconnect.
Speaker 1:She says, many of us were raised to dismiss our feelings based on teachings around our gender, race, and religion. Boys and men are often discouraged from showing emotions besides anger. This requirement to shut down emotions includes not only sadness and fear, but also joy. This messaging has limited many men by restricting them to define and measure their manhood by their ability to disconnect. Difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions in healthy ways is a major barrier to living authentically.
Speaker 1:She says religious and spiritual teachings have also been used as tools of suppression. Certain emotions are labeled as sin or evidence of one's lack of faith. This can lead to toxic positivity or toxic spirituality in which human emotions are unacceptable. People are taught erroneously that if they experience uncomfortable feelings, like anxiety, sadness, and anger, this means they are not grateful enough, spiritual enough, or trusting enough of God. As a result of struggling to contain these emotions, people experience shame, which amplifies their distress and self judgment.
Speaker 1:Then she adds, some of us become emotionally shut down from exhaustion. If you have faced recurring hopelessness, powerlessness, or confusion, you have learned to check out as a coping mechanism that has now become your automatic unconscious response. You may be in a place where nothing or very little phases you. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as dissociation. People experience you as hard, heartless, cold, inaccessible, distant, or strong.
Speaker 1:You may have become so used to telling people that you're fine or even believing that you're fine that you're not sure when exactly things within you fell apart. The disconnect can be a way of protecting yourself from the vulnerability of feeling. And going back to what Doctor. Tema said about not shaming ourselves or each other, if you are experienced as cold or dismissive rather than shaming that as bad behavior, your supportive ships or community are saying, We're experiencing the freezing. What are you freezing from?
Speaker 1:How can we support you so that you are not in danger? What is causing danger? How can we add protection? How can we increase safety? That is what being curious looks like and supportive looks like as opposed to shaming and blaming.
Speaker 1:She says, stress or trauma leaves others unable to regulate or contain their emotions. You may often feel overwhelmed, or you may have labeled yourself as sensitive or too much. You may be so in tune with the suffering within and around you that it is difficult to contain or communicate what you feel. Feeling things deeply and being criticized for it may have led you to build walls. So then with those walls, you may be someone who's got really big feelings, but then they come out sideways because you don't know how to express them directly because it's not been safe to do so.
Speaker 1:Right? So, again, with healthy ships, we support safety, and then it's easier to do that work, but we need safety She says, I want you to know that part of the homecoming journey is being able to express and honor your feelings. When we are emotionally disconnected, we can neglect our needs and make decisions that aren't in alignment with our heart and our values. We may sabotage our relationships with lack of communication, transparency, or affection. Others may assume that we don't care or don't need anything because we seem unmoved.
Speaker 1:Some of us learn to remain hyper focused on the feelings of others while neglecting our own emotions in order to survive. This prevents us from setting healthy boundaries and from being even aware of our needs, wants, and feelings. Emotional intelligence is about being aware, not just of the emotions of others, but our own feelings and being able to regulate and communicate our feelings. Relationally, to come home is to be able to hear my heart's song without it being drowned out by the songs of others and to be able to hear the songs of others without assuming their songs are the same as ours. Oh, I love that because I get to have my own ship.
Speaker 1:Right? And then shout out to myself. She literally says in her book, your tears are prayers. Y'all, that's the name of our book. If tears were prayers.
Speaker 1:And she's saying, yes. Your tears are your prayers. So she talks about depression and grief and how they show up in nontraditional ways, even, like, high functioning ways. And she includes a list in this chapter of things to help notice what is contributing to your depression, including how we're judging ourselves too harshly and how one of the best ways that we can care for ourselves is by spending time with people who affirm us and reducing or eliminating time with people who make us feel worse about ourselves. Then in the next chapter about external disconnection, she says, we often carry a lot of shame and or guilt about actions we have taken at different times in our lives.
Speaker 1:Y'all, there is not one single rupture in the community or one single episode that I've taken down that I do not ruminate and wake up from nightmares about. Like, we are so hard on ourselves for the things we couldn't do or didn't know how or didn't have the support to accomplish. And we judge ourselves against what we never had access to, and that's so cruel for us to do to ourselves. It's so harsh to treat ourselves that way, To just recognize things as development, as learning, as part of our healing, then we can hold ourselves accountable to do better, to be better, to know better, all of the things without shaming and condemning ourselves against a false matrix that's not even real. She says, we have engaged in some behaviors that we would rather not broadcast or publicize.
Speaker 1:Well, then we should not have a podcast because it's all so public. If you have found yourself acting in destructive, conflictual, or unhealthy ways, aspects of your story usually help you understand how you ended up there. Stress, trauma, and loss cause you to lose sight of yourself. Disappointment and betrayal also derail your life's journey. For some, rejection by others led to rejecting yourself.
Speaker 1:Societal barriers to reconnecting with ourselves include poverty and That losing sight of ourself, I feel like is part of what I experienced just owning my stuff. Right? Like, I can take it to therapy more in-depth. But owning my stuff, that is part of what I experienced on the podcast and in the community the last three years. I lost sight of myself, and I was disconnected from it.
Speaker 1:And folks who felt it and didn't understand were confused or even betrayed by that. I'm so sorry. And also other folks who understood more pieces or who just cared enough to stick around for themselves and for me. I so appreciate it. It means the world to me.
Speaker 1:I will never forget who was there in those dark days who still found ways to connect, who did that work, and also showing up for themselves so that it's healthy and reciprocal. It means everything to me. She says disappointment or betrayal may also have derailed your life's journey. I feel like that is absolutely part of the story in what's happened. Even with having to let go of the nonprofit, absolutely in different ways felt like disappointment and betrayal.
Speaker 1:I'm just using this as examples because they're already public. And then rejection by others led to rejecting yourself. Like, I it's not that I don't feel it if people don't like what I say on the podcast or don't wanna be in the community anymore because they don't like how I do things or this or that or don't like me. It's totally okay for other people to not like me, and it's totally okay for other people to get help elsewhere or to find support or connection elsewhere. That's cool.
Speaker 1:You do you, boo. And, also, it's not that it doesn't sting or that I don't feel that. When people are mean or say hateful things or gossip, of course, all of that hurts. It's very deeply wounding and makes it really hard to continue showing up. Societal barriers to reconnecting with ourselves include poverty and discrimination.
Speaker 1:Y'all, I talked about that too in the context of the podcast and the community of having to work so hard just to provide for our big family and also the loss of support. When I say support, I don't just mean financial support. I mean, in the beginning of the podcast, when there was so much support and it was the only podcast, then it wasn't just about financial support. It was also I got the emails of encouragement. And so I knew there was something useful and helpful to keep going and to keep trying and to keep showing up.
Speaker 1:And then when we talked about fawning, for example, then people thought they could not compliment the podcast. That's not fawning. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about caring for others instead of yourself and sacrificing ourselves to do what others need instead of doing what we need to do for ourselves. So when people misunderstood fawning and stop sharing how the podcast was helpful, I lost that emotional and mental support.
Speaker 1:In the same way as talking about shiny, happy, or queer colors and those kinds of things, lost financial support. So then it does make it harder because there's so much I'm swimming upstream just to get to do what I wanna do that it's harder to have the internal resources, strength, or clarity to be able to do what I'm trying to do. She says, facing professional and personal attacks leave you doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud or even impostor syndrome and lock you out of certain opportunities for promotion in addition to the locks put in place by the systemic oppression. I have experienced this repeatedly with the podcast and with the community. I don't mean the folks who are in the community are bad.
Speaker 1:I mean, the closer we get to being able to offer this new thing and then something happens so we can't. And then we get close to being able to do this and then something happens and we can't. Like, we have to have this safety and stability. And I would add even security to have enough internal, not just external, but internal resources to be able to do what we are trying to offer. I love that she speaks to this because it's so rarely verbalized.
Speaker 1:And, honestly, I think it's one of the things that I resonated with when people started telling me about Taylor Swift. It's not that every single song is my favorite, and it's not that I think everyone should think she's the best. What I resonated was her story of being targeted in public and having to come back as herself in spite of that and despite that and beyond that. She said, Living and working in places with pervasive oppression can require such vigilance that you overlook your needs and your care. Additionally, I think that's true with any of us with those parasocial relationships.
Speaker 1:Those of you who have been online or in different social media or hold leadership positions where people see you and notice you, but don't necessarily take the time to actually know you. If I have these experiences that because I am a public figure by default, people try to be in my circle without supporting my work or pretend to be my friend so that I can date me and then when I say no to the dating, act like an enemy instead of a friend, then were they ever really my friend in the place? No, they were just objectifying me. It's one of the dangers of parasocial relationships. So then how do I even know anyone who I can trust when that keeps happening over and over again so that my interactions with the, quote, quote, public becomes saying no and setting boundaries and setting boundaries and setting boundaries to the point that my family has to repeatedly flee for our lives.
Speaker 1:That's the whole thing that happened with Katniss, right? With Kat in our system of how are we supposed to tell who is our alliance and ally and who is trying to kill us because it kept happening over and over again? She says, there may have been times when you stepped out of the shadows and risked showing up only to face disappointment, rejection, and closed doors. These painful experiences can cause us to withdraw from others and even ourselves. It means so much to me to see this in writing on the page.
Speaker 1:So then she goes on with the rest of this chapter to talk about the different ways this can show up as the like, being overly busy, of of being distracted in dysfunctional ways, and then also unhealthy relationships. She says, another indication of homelessness or disconnection from self is being in relationships that dishonor you. Whether the abuse you experienced was emotional, verbal, sexual, or physical, or all of it, you must acknowledge that being in the relationship made it impossible for you to authentically be at home within yourself because you were not affirmed, appreciated, respected, or cared for. When you have sought the affection of those who demean, reject, or ignore you, you've had to neglect yourself to varying degrees as that other person has also neglected you. You may have tried to make the relationship work out of fear, boredom, loneliness, insecurity, love, or hope that it would improve, but being in an unhealthy relationship weighs down your mind, heart, body, and spirit.
Speaker 1:When fear keeps you in a place destructive to your well-being, you often have to emotionally disconnect. The longer you're in the relationship, the more you disconnect from your heart and even your body. Disconnection or detachment as a survival strategy may feel like a superpower, and it may have allowed you to make it through the days, months, or even years. However, the more you are dishonored, humiliated, ignored, or abused, the greater the disconnection required. Mistreatment usually escalates over time.
Speaker 1:So what you have so what may have started as minor offenses can escalate to major assaults on your psyche. When we adjust to that level of dysfunction, including dysfunctional relationships, the cost is too high. We end up paying with our very beings the essence of who we are. That to me goes right back to the price for admission and what Laura Brown said about all of those things. She says, I invite you to consider that you can be worthy of something you have never received or experienced, Even if you have never been loved for who you are or without the or without the contamination of fear, I invite you to consider that you are worthy of that.
Speaker 1:You are worthy of safety, respect, truth, and authentic love. And as you consider this, you may want to start with giving those things to yourself. Oh my goodness. That goes back to the four questions. Do you remember that at the beginning of the year in the attachment episodes where our therapist did that activity with us with the four questions?
Speaker 1:And one of them ended up being these are the things I am waiting to provide myself. She says, as we heal the wounds that may have caused us to doubt ourselves, we began to walk or even run away from spaces and people that hold our voice, body, heart, mind, dreams, or safety hostage. The truth is how you are treated is not a reflection of your worth or identity. You may believe or you may have been told that if you deserve better, you would be treated better, but this is not true. To devalue and demean another person speaks to an issue with the abuser, not the abused.
Speaker 1:Some of us stayed in an unhealthy relationship, not because of insecurity, but confidence. You believed you could change them. You believed your love would be enough. You believed your loyalty would be rewarded. Your faith and effort could be strong enough to make them treat you right.
Speaker 1:But today, you can make room for authentic love, a relationship and a partnership rather than a project or a rescue mission. I invite you to consider the fact that sometimes success is walking away from people who are destroying you. Stepping away from mistreatment is not a failure. It is a win. It means you are walking in faith toward what you cannot yet see, but what you believe is important.
Speaker 1:Walking away from mistreatment means walking toward wellness, mutuality, respect, freedom, hope, and even love. Escaping unhealthy relationships means walking back toward yourself. Today, homecoming is about choosing to see what is, not just what we want, and living from a place of truth. In the field of social psychology, there is a concept called sunk cost, meaning that the more time, effort, and resources you put into something or someone, the harder it is to walk away or release it. Some of us stay in unhealthy relationships because it feels too late to start over.
Speaker 1:You may feel like you have already put so much into it. You might as well stick it out. I invite you to consider not just what you have already sacrificed in the past, but also what you want for your future. Not just what you can tolerate or endure, but what you can enjoy and embrace. Researchers have found that violence usually escalates when the abused person tries to leave.
Speaker 1:For you, the issue may not be about what you want, but about what is safe. She goes on then to talk about people pleasing and how that is an example of abandoning ourselves and how controlling behaviors or self sabotage can also be examples of external disconnect. 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.
Speaker 1:One of the ways we practice this is in Community Together. The link for the community is in the show notes. We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also care for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually.
Speaker 1:I'm there to heal too. That's what peer support is all about. Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.