Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over:
Speaker 2:Welcome to the System Speak a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 2:This episode continues the conversation from the previous episode and may contain difficult material. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I think that's such a big deal, especially as women, and that's what we would be called in the church, right? So I'm not just talking about like sis Yes. I mean, we have to be women, we have to look like women, all the doilies, all the things. Just to be clear and so listeners can grasp this, we're just responsible as women for being worthy. We are responsible for the worthiness of our family, that I am responsible for keeping my husband worthy.
Speaker 1:I am responsible for keeping my children worthy. And my worthiness, even if I do all the things, is still granted to me by someone else.
Speaker 3:Yes. And I don't have I don't have children, but I can tell you that I spent a large portion of my life still feeling as a as a as the oldest daughter, especially, but as a child in my family, I I spent a lot of time and energy feeling like I had to be responsible for the worthiness of my family. My father was excommunicated when I was a teen and I just felt like it was just my responsibility to bring him back to the church that he had been kicked out of. And I just I just felt really, really responsible for that. And then my mother was excommunicated several years later, and and I just felt really strongly that it was my mission to, like, help her recognize that she had fallen out of the grace of God and she had to to come back and be part of the group.
Speaker 3:And and once they were both gone, then I felt really strongly that it was my responsibility to help my siblings with their worthiness. And I became what my family have referred to for years and years as just their sort of, like, guidepost of church goodness. The choices that I made, they were always looking at me as the sort of, like, pinnacle of just, like, church churchy goodness because I just did everything I could. And when I started dating, I also felt like it was my responsibility to take on the, like, worthiness of the people that I dated as well. And and I and I was taught that in lessons as well.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it it it's a lot. Earning worthiness is a lot.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I love that you shared that because part of my story is that I part of my story is that I met the missionaries through my ballroom dance teachers. And Oh. Like, out of state. Out of state.
Speaker 1:Like, far I mean, I know it can be anywhere, but where I currently live, I did not know there would be so many here because convert, so I didn't know this was, an extension of Utah. But met the missionaries through my ballroom dance teachers, and they were a lovely and kind family and very supportive of me. And also, part of the message from the missionaries right from the get go was that this would be the way to pull my family back together. My mother had died feeling unloved, and I had been raised as the child who was supposed to save her. And then ultimately, she died.
Speaker 1:Like, she was killed in a car accident on a day where I said I could not drive her. So, like, the first time I said no to her, she was And like, I'm not laughing because it's funny. Just like, of course, that's how it happened. And so I have this burden of it was my fault and burden of having failed my contract. And then for other issues, that's too long to get into today.
Speaker 1:My died of cancer very slowly, and it was awful. But his last words to me were, I will never forgive you. And so, basically, my friends introduced me to the missionaries as a way of like, here's where your hope is. Like, you still have a chance. Like, this is your last chance.
Speaker 1:If you can do all the things, you can get your family back together. And part of me, and I even made a joke the first time I ever talked to the missionaries, I was like, having met my family, I don't want to be with my family forever. They don't want to be with me forever. Like, you're going to need a different plan to get me in. But ultimately, that's where it came down to is that vulnerability really being appropriated and taken into you're responsible for literally all of your ancestors.
Speaker 1:You're responsible. You're the one who's supposed to heal all of this, which is very different, but a fine line difference of, look at me living life differently. Look at me having access to therapy in ways generations before me did not. Look at me building community safely in ways people before me did not have access to, or look at me reclaiming heritage or land or, like, history means to me. Just that burden of responsibility of you have to do these things or else your entire ancestry is lost.
Speaker 1:It's not just, oh, you're going to go to hell. It's like everyone is lost.
Speaker 3:Yes. Yeah. I think as many things as we could be made responsible for, we were. And that included our ancestry because there were times when I literally lost sleep over who have I not spoken to, who have I not helped, because not just my ancestry, but everyone I knew, every friend I'd ever made, I had a responsibility to help them come to God in the right way. And so it I I literally lost sleep over it, over, like, who am I not helping enough?
Speaker 3:Who am I not doing enough for? Who am I not enough for? Was maybe the biggest question that I asked myself all through my life.
Speaker 1:So for me, in this context of joining the church, thinking it was a way to save my family, like I don't join the church with the informed consent of this means this and this means this, and you can't do that anymore, you're going to have to give up this. They just do a little piece at a time and add a little piece at a time. And the expectation then is that if I don't do the things that I'm not supposed to do and I do all the other things, then, like, basically, I sacrifice myself and my earthly experience to provide my whole ancestry with what they didn't have a chance to get.
Speaker 3:Yes. So Which which on its surface looks really beautiful. Right? I'm going to sacrifice myself so that all of these others get what they need and what they deserve. Has a has a really from the outside, it looks very pretty.
Speaker 3:And there are lots of, you know, there are lots of movies in about someone sacrificing themselves for other people. Lots of lots of stories are about this kind of self sacrifice thing, and and a lot about the society we live in wants us to be these kind of self sacrificing people, and my church certainly pushed the sacrifices that we have to make for others to have what they need and what they deserve. And what's missing from all of that is that you are the only thing you have. And so sacrificing the only thing you have is actually not gonna help anybody. And that was something that it took me a long time to learn in therapy.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Like, oh, I can not drink any alcohol or I can not drink any coffee. If giving up coffee will save my family, that's an easy sacrifice. Sure, I will agree to that. I can absolutely not drink coffee if that will save my family.
Speaker 1:That means I can now go to the temple, But then at the temple, I find out, oh, also you can't be gay anymore. And like, okay, so what am I supposed to do? I can't complain. Oh, so if I don't have sex, that will save my family. Okay.
Speaker 1:So that's harder, but it feels foolish. Like, I'm so mortal that I would choose sex over my family. Like, that's how it's presented. And so, like, one step at a time, like, who says that? Oh, I would rather have sex than my family.
Speaker 1:Like, if those are the choices, but that's where it starts to get really hypnotic and binary where that's not what it's about. And ultimately, just more and more and more is asked of you, and that's where we shift from high demand religion into a little bit culty of, if I have sacrificed so many different aspects of myself that I literally no longer exist as myself, that's not about God or becoming God or saving my family. That's about there's nothing left of me to give.
Speaker 3:Right. Exactly. And that was my literal entire life until I I left the high demand religion. And and I just have to say, I didn't actually leave this religion because I stopped believing in it. There was no way for me to just suddenly one day stop believing in it.
Speaker 3:Like, I mean, not certainly not in the experiences that I was having. I was just so unhappy. No matter what I did, I was just never enough. And the shame spiral was so big that one day I just didn't go to church. And not because I didn't believe in it, because I still did, and I beat myself up for not going to church, but then I just didn't go back.
Speaker 3:And at the time, I couldn't understand why. I couldn't I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me that I had just decided to not go to church. Well, what what I didn't know at the time was I didn't make that decision. Another part in my system made that decision and would come to the front and not go to church. And so I didn't make that decision, and it took me a much longer to deconstruct religion because it wasn't really my choice to leave to begin with, or at least not not me, Nicole, the host of my system.
Speaker 1:It's so complicated with a system. When so so for me, the in the same way, of with the gay piece of saying, oh, you can't be gay anymore. And also here's some conversion therapy to help you not be gay anymore because if you're righteous enough, you won't even want to be gay. So the whole pray the gay away kind of thing. Externally, it looks like, look, I can make this choice.
Speaker 1:Look, I am doing the things. But really what's happening is a change of shirts, a change of parts, a change like, that's an alter. Okay. So pack away all the gay alters. We can't be gay anymore.
Speaker 1:New host in front will just fawn as beautifully as needed for all the things. Because, of course, I have little bitty tiny parts of me who would do anything to save my family. And it took all these years of therapy to realize I'm still trying to save my family so that I can save me. My family's okay, I will be safe finally.
Speaker 3:Right. Exactly.
Speaker 1:I I missed that window. Like, for me, even my parents are dead. Like, they're never going to be the parents that I needed in those ways, and I have to grieve that, not replace that.
Speaker 3:I mean, you're never gonna have the parents you deserved and and me neither. And so what I've had to do is become my own parent and reparent myself and my parts. And that's what I am currently working on in my own system is just being the adult that I always needed to be there for me. Now I have to do that for myself. And it feels unfair because it is unfair, but but it's also it's also beautiful and transformational.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think that's a huge moment in both therapy and deconstruction of recognizing how hard it is to reparent ourselves when we already had to parent ourselves all along. Yes. Becoming Without the skills. Or resources.
Speaker 1:Right. And, like, there's a lot of parenting my outside kids that I can do that is the opposite of what was done to me. But when we have deprivation and the good was missing, like, I don't even know what's supposed to fill that hole. Like, what is supposed to be intuitive in me to do that easily and well? And it was actually one of the first things I struggled with the church in that if I did something wrong, like, no one told me.
Speaker 1:I just sort of was silently in trouble or looked down on or frown so I knew some I had misstepped, but I didn't know what my misstep was.
Speaker 3:And So then you have to be hypervigilant and start reading people's minds.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Right. Which which was my whole childhood.
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 3:had to I that was just part of just the way I was raised was just it's my job to just be hypervigilant and know what's going on even when I don't know what's going on and and to guess so that I can make everyone else's lives more comfortable, guess what they need, guess what they want, guess what they expect out of me, and learn from the way they react to me what I've done wrong and how to correct it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Parts of me really liked that piece in that it's, like, so progressive. If I get good at this piece, I'm given the next piece, and I get the next piece, and I get the next piece. But then if I'm speaking at all the things because I figured out all the pieces and then realizing that's as far as it goes because there aren't more pieces to give because the pieces I have don't actually match, and that I'm trying to think of a concrete example. So like, for example, if we are functioning well enough and doing all the things as a family, then even my husband gets, like, the next level of priesthood.
Speaker 1:Right? But then when we literally sacrifice everything or foster these kids or like literally give up everything, that's what we're asked to do in the temple, to give everything. And we give up everything to do those things, and that reward even spiritually, like, is not happening or not coming. I'm like, well, I should be patient, and I should be patient. And then I find out, no, it's because we don't have money to tithe.
Speaker 1:So he can't he can't have that because we don't have any money to tithe. But we don't have money because we gave up everything doing all the things we were supposed to be doing. And so realizing those catch 20 twos and those double binds of there is no way to win this.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well and and it's a game that's always changing. And and so there's always more. There's always more coming. Every time you you think you've, like, you've done enough, there's there's more pieces to uncover to show that there's more that you have to give.
Speaker 3:And here's the thing that I did is I would be like, okay. These are the things I have to do to earn whatever, whatever it happened to be. But then if if I was like, okay. I was told so I am also gay, and I was told that I just needed to pray. Right?
Speaker 3:Just pray. Just pray and read your scriptures and and do all the things. So I did all the things, and I I prayed, and I read my scriptures. And so anytime I felt any kind of what they referred to as
Speaker 1:Same sex attraction.
Speaker 3:Same sex attraction. That was actually hard to get out of my mouth. Anytime I felt anything like that, I I was like, oh, I'm just not praying hard enough. I'm not doing it right. I'm not reading the right scriptures, or I need to do it more.
Speaker 3:You know? There's just I was always looking into myself to do more because the blessings weren't coming. The feelings that I didn't want to have that I was told were sinful weren't going away. So it it it just it never worked because no matter what I did, I I it I wasn't enough, and so I just had to keep coming back to myself to get more from the nothing I had left because I had sacrificed everything.
Speaker 1:I think this showed up for me also in working for the church's counseling offices and sort of, I say sort of, that's minimizing, like, explicitly, like getting in trouble because I won't say the things. If I have someone who comes to me because they're gay or comes to me because their husband is being abusive, I can't tell them you're bad for having these thoughts because I know they're not bad for having the thoughts. If the woman wants to leave her husband because she's unsafe, I'm not gonna tell her to stay. That's not appropriate or healthy or safe or correct. It is
Speaker 3:not true. Harm.
Speaker 1:Right. And so being faced with this recognizing that I was being betrayed in who I was being asked to be and that ultimately I could not betray myself. And so I feel like I didn't even in the beginning of all this for me, I didn't even want it. I felt like they were drawing lines in the sand. And, you know, in in shiny happy, we talk about it as, like, the blanket training and having to stay on the blanket.
Speaker 1:Except my blanket I I couldn't stay on the blanket anymore and also care for other people, much less care for myself. And recognizing that this version of high demand religion was reenacting things from my childhood and betrayal trauma from my childhood, I could not stay and also be healthy.
Speaker 3:So just for myself, I'm I'm hoping to just clarify. When when you you said that the Happy Chinese People documentary came out, that you that that was, like, really difficult for you. And I saw that documentary, and it was really eye opening because it showed a different high demand religion that did a lot of the same kinds of things that happened in my own family, in my own in my own life, Even though it was a different religion than and a different reality than than what I lived or or a different a different vehicle than what I took, I still ended up in the same place. Yep. That's terrifying.
Speaker 2:This conversation will be continued in the next episode. 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.systemsspeak.com. We'll see you there.