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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over:
Speaker 2:Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Guys, we have almost made it through the book, Not the Price of Admission by Laura Brown. We're on chapter seven. Chapter eight is the last chapter. We are so close. She says, if it's not uncommon to find yourself defined as disrespectful or even abusive, or if you repeatedly allow others to disrespect and violate your boundaries, or if your relationships are disruptive instead of nourishing, then you have some important pieces of personal work to do.
Speaker 1:You've been paying a price in damaged relationships for having been raised by an anxiety provoking or disorganizing attachment figure. None of this was your fault. It's entirely unfair that you're the one paying for the errors and sins and crimes or simple inadequacy of your caregivers. You aren't the problem. You are the solution.
Speaker 1:The potential to turn things around rests in your willingness to make some changes to your insides. These are the pieces of the puzzle that you can solve. This is why it's so important for us to come full circle and so important to truly, really focus on ourselves. I know that not everyone is in any kind of recovery program, and that's okay. You don't have to be.
Speaker 1:But one thing that's really interesting is that people come to recovery because of other people, but we stay in recovery for ourselves. And so often you can tell in meetings when someone is new to recovery because they are talking about other people. And I think as we have gone through the last year with this book and all the way back to Doctor. Tema's book, when we first experience the attunement of the words that these authors are saying or the things that we are sharing, it feels like, oh my goodness, what I experienced was real when this happened or when that happened, when so and so did this, when so and so did that. And there's this feeling of being validated and experiencing attunement, which is what gets us back into our own skin.
Speaker 1:But what recovery shows us and teaches us and what Laura has talked about is that we can't actually change other people. There's nothing we can do about that. We can't control how other people treat us. There's nothing we can do about other people. We can't make someone love us.
Speaker 1:We can't make someone speak kindly about us. We cannot make someone speak gently to us. What we can do is be kind to ourselves. And what we can do is speak gently to ourselves. And learning that how we treat ourselves is the echo of how we were treated when we were little, and healing those wounds is what helps us have better interactions with others.
Speaker 1:Even when other people do behave badly or require prices of admissions for us or from us, even when other people behave badly or require prices of admission from us, we don't have to stay there and endure it and try so hard to make it work the way we would have before. She says we need to develop several new emotional capacities. These are skills that people with good enough attachment experiences, like, have already learned from their childhood. Since we did not learn it then, we have to learn it now. And, also, that is our hope that things can be different.
Speaker 1:And that starts with compassion. As we take a deep breath, as we breathe in and out, she says breathing is something that each of us does from the moment we exit the womb until we die. And we mostly take it for granted unless you've had asthma or COVID or some airway problem like my child. We just do it. And that's why it is something that we can use as a starting place of being mindful and paying attention.
Speaker 1:And Christine Forner puts that in the context of secure fullness. So when we remember that when we are in safe enough relationships where we are not harmed and receive care, we can practice those secure attachments right away. And putting that secure attachment experience with the groundedness or mindfulness in our own selves, being centered on ourselves, who we are, where we end, and where we begin, That is the kind of meditation that can be so healing for us because it is oriented to time and space and attachment, which is the infant skill of learning who I am in space in relation to others in the space around me, and that when I have needs, those needs are met. This is really interesting, even more so since Laura wrote this book. I was in a DBR training this weekend, and one of the things that they talk about is this orientation to where we are in time and space in a way that was both challenging for me as a deaf person because my vestibular system is absolutely impacted.
Speaker 1:And it turns out our vestibular, like our balance and our orientation to space, is impacted for any of us that have complex trauma. And it's why so many of us get mislabeled as clumsy or why so many of us sometimes lose our balance even if nothing's wrong with your ears the way they are with mine. And, also, I found it really powerful as an indigenous person where we're always orienting to where is the North, where is the South, where is the East, where is the West. Even our water blessings, I go through all the directions. Right?
Speaker 1:I know where I am in space. So even when other things about balance were tricksy for me, I had that context and framework to work from. And we can talk about that more in another episode, but it connects really powerfully to what Laura is saying here. So noticing what is happening in us and our relationship to what is happening. So when we have a thought that comes up or a feeling that comes up, just breathing with it, not judging it, just noticing it, and bringing it into awareness without judging it, the thought or the feeling, or without judging ourselves.
Speaker 1:And she says that is the beginning of compassion. She says mindfulness practice develops the capacity to observe, describe, and not be distracted entirely by the productions of our minds, particularly the critical self hating, self blaming productions of our minds. Compassion is an absence of negative judgment. It is the practice of observing and describing without evaluating. Self hatred, self criticism, shame, and mistrust are all productions of our minds.
Speaker 1:You guys, those are all echoes. They're echoes we are continuing to remember and play out, whether that comes through specific parts. Those are echoes from memory time, things people did to us, ways people talk to us, tones people used with us. And when we internalize that or project that onto other people, we are acting out of memory time and are not oriented to now time. When we treat ourselves that way, we are acting out of memory time and are not oriented to now time.
Speaker 1:She says they are products of lenses that were put on our inner vision by less than adequate attachment experiences by abuse and by neglect. And really in process, what that is is going back to Cartman's triangle where we become the persecutor either of our partners in whatever ships we have or of ourselves and doing that to ourselves. Anytime we are doing that, then it means we are making our partner in whatever ship or ourselves, depending on if we're internalizing or externalizing. Right? We are making them the victim.
Speaker 1:So when we make them the victim, then that is requiring the next part of that drama triangle, which is rescue. Right? Which then turns that judgment into pity. So I'm struggling and in pain, or my partner is struggling and in pain and personalizing that as rejection, or I am bad, or I'm not good enough, or I can't do it, or I'm unwanted or I'm rejected, wherever that is, then we don't wanna be pitied because we can feel the judgment that is in the pity. She says because compassion is often used as a lazy synonym for pity in English, many of us recoil at first at the concept of compassion for ourselves.
Speaker 1:But we don't have to be in the triangle that is still enactment even if it's within ourselves, even if it's not within the external ships, even if it's just me with myself or my system, that's still enactment. And we don't have to. She says self compassion is the opposite of pity. It's noticing ourselves and not judging, seeing ourselves clearly. It's telling myself.
Speaker 1:I noticed that when I am in close relationships to others, I begin my narrative if inadequacy. It's not telling yourself how screwed up am I? Every time someone gets close to me, I sabotage it. I convince him or her that I'm not good enough. Notice the feelings that emerge when you run the latter version of yourself in your head, anxiety, depression, and despair.
Speaker 1:But what's possible when you speak to yourself through compassion? You can see your behavior, which allows you to make choices of your behavior. That is liberation. Liberation is not about whatever ship was bad or that other people are bad. Liberation is I do not have to internalize my memory time experiences as enactments that become reenactments against myself.
Speaker 1:This is why therapy makes the difference. Therapy prevents enactments from becoming reenactments internally or externally. When we become more skillful at letting those judgments go and noticing the present, mindful compassion for ourselves supports living as much as possible in the present. Okay. That sentence is so important because it is also the clue of when we are being made smaller, whether that is because something is not safe externally with another ship or in context like politics or something, or whether that is a specific ongoing abuse like interpersonal violence, religious trauma, whatever that situation is, or whether that is internally of I am enacting this against myself, any time there is a situation or experience where I am being made to be smaller or less than.
Speaker 1:So, like, for example, with the podcast, if I think I need to start taking episodes down, I don't feel safe to continue, and wrestling with, is it good enough? Is it useful enough? When I start asking myself those questions, that is the earliest red flag that I have already let trauma and deprivation come between me and my values because I'm being made smaller. That is putting myself back on the blanket, not because of anybody else. I'm talking about what I'm doing to myself.
Speaker 1:And so it means that I have gone so quickly back down to my limbic system in the back of my neck here that I am focused on my environment and hyperfixated on what other people are going to do or planning to do or how they're hurting me or how they already hurt me instead of being up in my frontal cortex, focused on myself and my system. And this is me and what I have to offer the world and just living as fully as possible in all the space that I can take up that is congruent with me and my values. That being said, always in any context, we have to address safety first. She said at the beginning of the book, if you're not in a safe situation, you first have to get yourself to safety before you can even begin any of this work. She says, nothing in this model, even of compassion, excuses anyone from behavior that is dangerous or cruel to other living beings.
Speaker 1:Compassion isn't the same as letting someone off the hook. Compassion doesn't offer excuses for being cruel or dangerous to others. We can continue to have negative and positive judgments of another person based on the effects of their actions. A person who does harm to other creatures or the planet is both a fallible human, which is the compassion part, and violates the basic norms of decency, which is the judgment, and they have the natural consequences that may come from that. In the same way and kind of a recovery context, compassion for self doesn't mean we don't hold ourselves to an ethical standard.
Speaker 1:Rather, self compassion is about how we observe and respond to ourselves when we fall short of that standard. I can be unhappy with myself when I break my rule of never be the subject of your barista's therapy session, which is my shorthand code for wanting to treat others with respect no matter what. If you shame yourself for violating your own values, you're going to avoid contact with people altogether to avoid shame. You won't change the behavior. You'll simply add to your load of self hatred.
Speaker 1:So this is why we have to come out of isolation because we literally can't learn without the context of relationship. We've talked about this in the past on the podcast that we need to be in relationships, all kinds of different ships, including therapy, to heal relational wounds. And, also, those ships need to be safe ships. If they are not safe ships, they're infecting the wounds or adding wounds, which is not the same as healing them. And also being responsible to own our own mistakes, to own our own developmental learning curve, while also having compassion compassion that we literally don't know because no one taught us, and we can do better.
Speaker 1:I have a lot of public examples of this. When the kids come on the podcast, my parenting is very exposed, and not everybody likes it. Not everybody agrees with it. Some people love it. Some people learn.
Speaker 1:I learn. Sometimes their ideas of, oh, there's boundaries around this, or, oh, had you thought about saying it this way, or, oh, when you say this, that. So, like, I have a learning curve. Right? Another pragmatic example is with boundaries around podcast content.
Speaker 1:I work so hard to have a delay between what's happening now and what you hear just for my own protection of my own therapeutic process, which is great. And not everybody inside participates in the podcast as part of protection and consent. That is great. And, also, I have safe people in my life, like my friend Kim, who come and say, hey. Here's some boundaries of this, and here's some boundaries of this.
Speaker 1:And did you think about that? And other safe people in my life who say, I actually disagree with that. Here's why I think this is okay, but that was not okay. And other safe people who say, hey. When you were doing that, I heard your voice really high and little, and I don't think you realized how little you were, and that was my first clue that you were not safe.
Speaker 1:Are you safe? Can we talk about your safety? I'm concerned about your safety. Right? Bringing up these questions.
Speaker 1:Other times, they are more pragmatic. Having compassion for ourselves of this is a learning curve, or this is what we're doing, or this is what we're learning, or these kinds of layers changes what we actually have capacity to treat ourselves. If I only shame myself, I got this wrong, or this piece wasn't right, or I didn't know how to do that yet, it's so hard. When I first took my youngest child home, I didn't know how to do g tubes yet. I didn't know how to manage oxygen yet.
Speaker 1:Those are things I was able to learn so that my child is safe and healthy. The same thing applies to ourselves. When we have not been parented or are unparented or had many parents, when we did not have accurate mirrors that were stable and consistent, it is really hard to view ourselves in ways that are stable and consistent. But if we only shame ourselves for what we don't know or what we can't do or for the struggle of peopling in general, then we stay isolated because of that shame rather than learning to ask for help, learning to come out of isolation, learning to connect with others for the support that we need, and just ask ourselves, what can I do differently? Here's a fun thing.
Speaker 1:Rather than shaming ourselves, Laura Brown suggests we learn how to smile, not in a toxic positivity way, but in a gentle compassion with ourselves way of, yeah, that's rough. I didn't know how to do that. But when in memory time or sometimes in now time, when abusers shame us for what we didn't know or accuse us for what we couldn't do right instead of helping us, that's when it goes back to coercive control. That is disempowerment instead of empowerment. And she says one way we can re empower ourselves is by just asking that question, what could I have done differently?
Speaker 1:And smiling in an opposite action kind of way, which comes from DBT, of where we just do the opposite thing. Instead of shaming ourselves, we're like, hey, kiddo. That was rough. That was hard. And also, look.
Speaker 1:We have the opportunity to learn a new thing. Like, I learned how to link the receipts to the spreadsheet directly. Now I love this spreadsheet because it's so pretty, and I can just show anybody at any time. Look. Look.
Speaker 1:Look. Here's everything all linked in. And then also when something's still hard, instead of shaming ourselves of I can't or I can't figure it out or this is too hard for me, just that's not my skill set. Here are resources because I'm an adult, and adults have resources differently than when we were alone as children. So here's who helps me with that.
Speaker 1:Here's who does this for me. Here's who teaches me or supports me or double checks me or helps me or whatever the thing is. So turning ourselves around that 180 degrees and doing the opposite thing, laughter cannot coexist with annoyance and anxiety. That's what Taylor Swift does in the actually romantic song. She's not actually engaging in that way with someone who's harming her.
Speaker 1:She's saying, wow. You're paying so much attention to me. Like, a joke out of the pain of why can you not let this go? If you don't like me, why don't you just leave me alone? Like, just let it go.
Speaker 1:So but it's a classic example of trauma and deprivation where all the energy is being put forward, but not in a healthy or safe way.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing.