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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.
My therapist has been challenging me to leave my house, to discover my new community, and also what community even means to me. One goal that we've had is walking down the street to the bagel place, where I swear they have the best bagels I've ever had in my life. When they're fresh and warm, lots of me love being there watching them make the bagels from scratch and roll down the short conveyor belt that lands them on the tray where they sit to rise before they're put in to bake. It's hypnotic, really. A new safe place for me in a silly way.
Speaker 1:I went first with the kids because that felt safer if also more expensive. They like to get the pizza bagels and dip them in spaghetti sauce at dinnertime. They think it's a real treat, and it's one of their favorite things right now. I have a couple times driven there to get a three cheese bagel with egg and Swiss for breakfast and taken it to the river to eat and then to walk, and it's been lovely. But one of the places, it's not far from my home, where if I stand just right on the hill and see between the trees, I can see not just the river, but the edge of the bay that goes to the ocean.
Speaker 1:And something about that helps me feel so grounded, so safe. I really love it here. But the goal has been to walk to the bagel place because it's not that far, and it would be a lovely walk to go there for breakfast and walk home again. Not that I can do it on a workday and not that we have money for it often, but it's been a goal. And today, I tried.
Speaker 1:I was feeling brave after going this weekend out to drag, to watch a show with friends and their family. They have a really safe drag place here for queer folks and straight folks. Where they make it family friendly once a month so the kids can go to if they want or teens can go to if they want for a safe place. And this particular show was all focused on safety and kindness and knowing when you're safe and when you're not. And it was so therapeutic, unexpectedly therapeutic, not just a queer cultural event, but therapeutic.
Speaker 1:And I loved it so much, and I was feeling strong and brave. So this week, I used that energy to walk to the bagel place. When I got there, because it was early, it was busy, even high school kids in line, it was too much for me in the small room. And so I stepped out on the sidewalk and slipped off my shoes and felt the small cool stones and pebbles beneath my feet with the sun shining on me, warming my skin. And I waited there, staying grounded until the place cleared out.
Speaker 1:And then I went back inside, trying again, and ordered my breakfast bagel. And the lady there has learned that I can't hear when she calls my name. And so she just brings it to me, which is so kind. And also, that was all I could do. So, I ran home, ran all the way home.
Speaker 1:My therapist says fear pushes us out of our body. And to get back in my body, I can put my hand where the fear is and push gently while I take deep breaths. So holding my hand on my belly or my chest and taking deep breaths will help me get back into my body. And I tried it, and it worked. I thought it was interesting she brought up fear because that's what I was just talking about or working on in my fourth step, about fear.
Speaker 1:What makes me afraid? How do I know? Where do I feel it in my body? Who makes me feel afraid? And how do I know?
Speaker 1:What do I do in response to fear? And where do I see that happening? I told her, In the context of shiny happy, I see it as driving my compliance. And we talked talked about fawning and how it saved my life in so many ways. But she said the problem with that is that it's a way of controlling me so that I am isolated from other healthier ships and don't realize that I have choices.
Speaker 1:We talked about the example of blanket training, which made me so uncomfortable I got really cold really fast. She stopped me then because she's all about what is my body doing and asked me to go get a blanket if I was cold or if that didn't feel safe because we were talking about blanket training, to go get a sweater. I appreciated that she caught that, that she understood that being stuck on my blanket, even for a hard conversation, even for therapy, was super activating and already putting me in a place of trauma, even without anything else going wrong. She talked about how fear is used to control and to take away choices so that I don't even know that I have them and how it doesn't count as agency if I can't actually choose. I told her about when I learned about Shiny Happy, when the documentary came out, and that until then, I didn't even know blanket training had a name.
Speaker 1:I just thought it was part of how I failed being a baby. She said that when we're put on a blanket and not allowed to move off of it or reach for what we want or receive any good while on the blanket, that not only are we controlled and trained to be controlled, but it's also learned helplessness and induces trance. She told me the difference between punishment and discipline is that discipline helps us learn something. Whether someone else is disciplining us, like a parent or a teacher, or whether we're disciplining ourselves, like studying for a test. But punishment creates pain.
Speaker 1:And when that's what we learned, then that's what we reenact. Pain. She said that fear becomes so familiar, I don't even notice it. And pain becomes almost a performance, Not inauthentic, but what we expect to be done to us and what we do to ourselves. She says this answers why war was my baseline.
Speaker 1:Because we are trained to create pain, to receive pain. We come to expect it even. We accept it because we think it's all we deserve. Last night, I was teaching class with ISSDD, and the topic was betrayal trauma theory and how when we're little, if our caregivers cause us harm or deprive us of care, that is a betrayal of us as children. But because we are children and cannot escape, we are dependent on our caregivers for survival.
Speaker 1:And so, we dissociate from the betrayal in order to survive by maintaining the attachment to our caregiver, even though they are betraying us. And in class, there was an article that said, When we reenact this as adults, It's why we stay in abusive relationships or keep going back. And my therapist said it doesn't matter what kind of ship it is, whether it's a partnership or at a job or with friends. That we stay in situations where we're betrayed because we can't even see that it's happening. Because we don't know that we deserve anything different, anything better, anything softer.
Speaker 1:She said it's a kind of undaydreaming. She said that to undissociate from that betrayal is a kind of undaydreaming, that even if there are some good things or some daydreams or, she said, some shapely ships, that if there is still betrayal or harm or lack of good, that as an adult, I cannot betray myself by staying in those waters. She said it's how we get our power back, realizing we have choices, learning how to get off the blanket like my therapist talked about before. Like at the drag show, trying to be unshiny happy and reclaim my own agency, realizing that even if I wanted to have a drink, a drink of alcohol, I mean, that I could. I didn't.
Speaker 1:But letting myself think that I could if I wanted so that whether I did or didn't would be my choice and not someone else's choice. Or adding in good. The way learning about my Jewish heritage includes learning to make challah, which is delicious and nourishes me and my children. It doesn't just make life harder or more hoops to jump through or one more thing to do in my day. It becomes rest, literally.
Speaker 1:Stepping away from my computer after the whole week of work and rolling up my sleeves in the kitchen to make dough and to braid it and to paint it with egg wash after it rises, to cook dinner for my children while it bakes, and then to sit and rest. That resting is part of safety too. And the difference between that and shiny happy, how to embrace my heritage or my culture without shiny, happy ing myself. And my therapist asked me, did I think shiny happy was an accident or designed? And we talked about betrayal trauma again.
Speaker 1:And I said that I think it's easier to think that I'm bad than to think people are trying to control me or manipulate me or harm me. She said that's part of what the design of betrayal is. People getting their needs met, but not tending to yours. That this is part of the control, and that that's how abuse works too, whether that's from childhood trauma or religious trauma. And how to see when that's happening, and how to feel free enough off the blanket enough to notice when it's not happening, like reentry with my tribe and discovering safe community despite politics, despite society, despite the challenges that I can't do anything to control.
Speaker 1:And, we talked about pride again. Not just as a cultural event, but as an experience of safety and connectedness despite what is happening in the world and politics around us outside the barriers that surround the pride festivals and keep them safe. And we talked about my tribe and reentry in the indigenous world that I had felt in my bones for so long but didn't know I was missing. And learning the language for connecting to nature and community and the songs that are said like prayers, but in reflection and intentionally. The first song I learned wasn't even from my tribe.
Speaker 1:It was from another tribe, but we sing it at every well anon meeting, which is what it's called. When we do Al Anon as indigenous people and giving credit to the stories of our elders that must always be told with the songs, of the mother and daughter who drove over a bridge every day on the way to and from school and wanted to sing a song for the water to think it because water is everything. They are our tears. They are the life within our bodies. They are the places that take us somewhere.
Speaker 1:They hold our ships, the waters. It is what embraces us on Earth. It is what holds us together, what keeps us alive, and what reminds us that we are. And I have permission to share it with this story, and I did share it at the symposium. And I sing it every morning before I begin work with my copper cups of water I have ready for the day.
Speaker 1:Creating sacred space for me, within me, around me that is not shiny, happy, but still sacred and serene in a way that gives me serenity. Which, as it turns out, is foundational for safety. And it feels good to be learning that even if I'm still practicing.