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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.
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:This episode continues the previous conversation.
Speaker 2:How did you come away feeling from that discussion?
Speaker 1:I felt relieved, and I felt better, and I felt empowered, and I felt strong, and I also felt grief. I think that's part of what kicked off my summer of grieving. Thanks a lot. In the I told you about the daydreaming, how I've started noticing that I have this. I'm sure it's dissociation, but I call it daydreaming where in my imagination, real life is not matching that.
Speaker 1:So, like, I told you, like, I spent the summer grieving that I'm not just, like, marrying Jules and don't have to do therapy or parent or all the things. Like, that's not happening. In this example that you're sharing about our marriage conversation, I was grieving the daydream of shiny happy that if I were good enough to ungain myself, I could be a good enough wife to make you happy. Not true. Last night I'll tell you a funny story.
Speaker 1:Last night, I had a daydream where my you know, the kids go to their rooms at here. The kids go to their rooms at seven to read, and then it's lights out at eight. Right? So last night, I had an extra person that I had to see for work because of an emergency. And so I sent them to their beds, but then I had to come back upstairs to see one more person.
Speaker 1:And I that person finished a little bit earlier than expected, so, like, right at 07:45. So I thought if I could hurry up and get my computer closed down and all of this, that I could actually, like, tuck in the children, old school. Right? I could sing with them. I could tuck them in, and it would be really sweet.
Speaker 1:But still, by the time I actually got signed out of things and had everything set up for the next day for this morning and got downstairs, all their lights were out. And so I was like, well but they'll be so happy to see me, and they'll be so excited that I'm done with work that they will be delighted for me to come tuck them in. And we'll have these conversations, and I imagined, like, laughing with them and maybe even I had made popcorn earlier in the day in the big popcorn machine. So I was like, maybe we could have a popcorn fight before bed, and it'll be so sweet and a really good start to our week. That was my daydream.
Speaker 1:No. They were mad. They were sleeping. They're like, what do you want? They were like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:What do you need? And so it was this example again of not just daydreaming, but this whether parts are not, this balance inside me between wild abandon of just doing what comes to me and as big and as freely as I can, which I think is in response or in contradiction both to being pinned up as a child. Right? Like, stay on your blanket, stay in your room, stay in your closet, stay in the whatever. Setting myself free, which is good and right, but there's no boundaries without the restraint or containment.
Speaker 1:And it's really hard for me to do all three of those at the same time.
Speaker 2:That is hard. I think that daydream sounded lovely, though, just so you know.
Speaker 1:But it's not real. Right? Like
Speaker 2:It's not real, but it was very sweet. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it it makes me think it goes back to willingness and desire. Right? Like, I want the good things, and I imagine the good things. But good the reality is that good is not shiny happy. So I can progress and I can evolve and I can learn and I can develop and I can include all parts of myself.
Speaker 1:And, also, I cannot make myself what I'm not. I cannot make myself who I'm not. And I cannot do the healing that I have done over the last year, the last ten years, and also go backwards.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:choosing moving forward looks like what lets me be me and not a pillar of salt. I cannot go backwards. I cannot betray myself. Because moving forward, my tears and all the struggle mean something. But when I go backwards and put myself in those situations again, that's the pillar of salt.
Speaker 1:I keep sorry for the scripture reference. Religious trauma again still. But also cultural. Right? Anyway, then it's only salt.
Speaker 1:It's only tears. There's no meaning. There's no substance. There's nothing but the salt. But moving forward, it's like Clarissa.
Speaker 1:Tears are a river that take you somewhere. There's purpose. There's intent. There's meaning. There's shape to that.
Speaker 1:So I don't mean to I wanna Go ahead.
Speaker 2:I wanted to add on to that, though, that for me, I feel like I go backwards a lot. Not not necessarily, like, seeking to go back to where I was before, but in the process of trying to move forward, it's hard. And sometimes I miss what I had before. And so I slide back or I turn around or I, you know, I am not very good at staying on the straight and narrow because I I mess up and sometimes I miss even bad situations I was in before. But that doesn't mean I'm done, and that I know that as a whole, that's not where I want to be.
Speaker 2:I don't want to go back to who I have been in the past. But I wanna just make sure that I I hope that there is room for turning around just because things are hard even if that's not where you were choosing to go back to, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 1:Like the workbook, the spiral staircase in the workbook?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I can't remember where I I read this. Someone someone was beating a metaphor to death where where they were starting with something kind of like, Plato's cave where somebody has been living in darkness all this time and then they open the door and at first they don't like the light so they close the door again. And they come out and there's like a whole other world outside and then they go back inside because that's where they're familiar. And then they come back out, and maybe they just sort of lean against the door.
Speaker 2:Right? There's this whole process of making progress, but then going back to what's familiar as part of gaining the courage and the strength to move forward. Like, ideally, it would be great if we could all just wake up and grow up and move on our happy way. But I think there's compassion to be had for those of us who who still keep keep running into that same door, in the process of trying to get out. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that's helpful at all, but, thinking of the the pillar of salt seems like such a final story, the threat that any looking back means that you are done. Like, it's biblical Dante all over again. Right? I I feel like I don't really understand the story of Lot's wife turning into salt, that there's something there that I have not learned yet. For me, when I try to apply that story to my life, it doesn't really fit, because I want to have more chances to keep trying.
Speaker 2:I don't ever want to think that looking back is enough to mean game over, I'm done.
Speaker 1:I don't think I mean it in a looking back and I'm done kind of way. I think I mean it in a going back there. It is daydreaming to think that I can go back. For me to move forward, I have to choose differently by choosing myself, for choosing myself, as opposed to only choosing everybody but me. I don't mean choosing myself to the extreme that I'm not actually caring for the kids or about anybody else.
Speaker 1:I don't mean like that. But I can't go back to what caused the damage where I did not exist.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where it was only a shadow of me instead of all of me. That doesn't mean that there's I don't frequently think or feel like I miss when we were all together, or, oh, I remember when this and and and I miss that so much. But that doesn't mean it wasn't hell.
Speaker 2:We've we've talked a little bit about that in reference to our relationship too, of you telling me that that we we could never go back to to how it was when we were married, like, trying to to be the perfect wife and all of that. And my reaction is, that's great. I'm glad I would rather know all of you. Like, I I loved you when we first got married. I didn't realize that that someone new had been sent out to the lions to to be vulnerable around me, the scary man.
Speaker 2:And I love that part of you and I'm grateful to that part of you. But, boy, I I love knowing that there's an all of you there. And I don't want you to have to choose inauthenticity or fawning or any of those things. Whatever whatever our future looks like. I don't know.
Speaker 2:But I would rather know you as you are and are becoming, then some sort of simple crayon drawing of what of what a wife might look like.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think, though, that's an example of the codependency with us in that as much as you want that, you can't do it for me. I have to do it. Yeah. Even when you can see it clearly or encourage me or cheer me on or remind me, I have to do that for myself.
Speaker 2:It's yeah. It's absolutely your your work that you are doing, your growth that you are making. Sometimes, I get the impression that you worry or have expressed concern that that I won't accept you in the more complex version of you that I that I see now. And I guess I was just trying to say that that I love continuing to get to know you, and would rather, you know, know you with all of your layers and challenges and and strengths and all of that put together than than have you try and and fawn over something artificial but simpler. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 2:You are absolutely doing the work, and you are amazing. And I'm I'm inspired, trying to do my own work over here.
Speaker 1:But you're doing it yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and I think, when we first had to live in different places, this recent shift, I mean, all through our marriage shift, we've been in different places a lot. Right? But when you moved up, I think that was really hard for me at first. It seemed shocking and and, like, staring into a void of unknown future.
Speaker 2:But, again, it kind of goes back to the codependency piece that that we've been discussing that part of that was just because I was defining myself in part by how how I was able to serve you or how I was able to be helpful in whatever way. In our in our relationship, you in our marriage, you have always been our primary breadwinner. And as we've parented and stuff, like, it got harder and harder for me to do my freelance work as well as parenting. So we went through a long season of, like, me basically just being the stay at home dad while we were doing the the hard work of earning the income for our family. And I think what I always wanted to do was to do my part in whatever way I could.
Speaker 2:I think in my head that included, like, making sure I was preparing the meals and and trying to keep the house clean and watch the kids. Although the hilarious thing is that you were better at all of those things than I am, but not for lack of trying, like, in my own way. I I tried to do those things, and I've always tried to be emotionally supportive and help with the books in whatever way I could. And I think that was how I was defining my worth was in all of the ways that I could be helpful to you. And whenever one of those ways was not as helpful as I'd wanted it to be, that was like a black mark against me that, Oh, you're not really measuring up.
Speaker 2:And that's really codependency, right? That whole trying to define myself through, how others perceive me. And it wasn't really about how you were perceiving me. It was about how I was perceiving you perceiving me. Right?
Speaker 2:Because it wasn't actually radiating in from the outside. It was me not feeling confident in my own value, and so constantly looking to, you know, cues. How can I I understand what she really thinks about me so that I can know whether I'm okay or not? Am I okay? And so being apart for all this time, although, honestly, I'm much rather be together, it's been very helpful.
Speaker 2:Like, I've had to learn how to define myself without trying to be a pleaser every moment or it's not been a pleasant transition. It is an ongoing transition, something I'm still working on. But I am grateful that even in that process that we can still check-in now and then and and have an adult brain conversation to get our bearings again.
Speaker 1:I think what you've just shared is another good example of codependency of needing sort of projecting that need for feedback to know that you exist, to know that you take up space, to know that you are safe, that you are loved, that you are cared for because you didn't get it directly before sometimes or had to I don't wanna say earn it exactly, but perform to receive the acknowledgment of it. Does that make sense? I know, again, your parents are lovely and kind and generous and not, abusive in some of the ways we sometimes hear when we talk about trauma and dissociation. But that relational trauma is so much harder in some ways, and it's just different, a whole different thing. And I think it's hardest sometimes on people who do not have those kinds of horror stories, and yet were not tended to or loved.
Speaker 1:Or there was the performance even of over loving or overtending. But even in that, there's not space to exist. And so how to care for yourself now in a way that is not neglecting care you've been waiting on all along, where once again you're doing it yourself. And also letting care from others come when it comes and receive that and also be okay when it doesn't is a really tricksy thing, a really tricksy thing. And I think sometimes our experiences are different enough that I'm not sure I can even understand that in the same way because it is such a unique experience.
Speaker 1:I can think of people and faces in the community who have described that, and I think, oh, okay. There it is again. But my experience was just so much of an absence that It's it's a different thing. It's such a different thing to have been, I wanna say silenced, but that surely does not protect you from your feelings. But silenced as a child in that you you couldn't be good enough because she needed all the good she could get, your mother, or, which is different than I feel like I'm not sure if I'm verbalizing this well, but I feel like in some ways, which I know is oversimplifying.
Speaker 1:In some ways, you got this message to your young self of there's no space for you to exist, and I got the message of stop existing. You don't have permission to exist. Like, here's here's your blanket. Here's your closet. Here's your cage, your playground fences, your jail fences, whatever.
Speaker 1:Here's the fences in which like, stay out, stay there, stay in that space, whereas you had to fight to exist at all in a way. I don't know. There's something subtle that's different.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think in my case, this is this is not clarifying the difference necessarily that you're talking about. But looking at my childhood, I I think that my mother is also a very codependent person. And she looked to her children to know if she was okay. And so, like, if we if we did well in a musical performance, then she could feel proud of herself.
Speaker 2:Except she also didn't quite feel proud of herself ever, and so she would also find little flaws in our performances and point those out to make it match so that they were equal. Right? And I think when we felt bad about something that rather than knowing how to comfort us for real, to be able to hold on to your own identity as sort of a safe haven while the child is grieving, that she would then take on that crisis herself. Like, that was her her way of trying to comfort by making it hers instead of ours. I keep there's a a short story I read a long time ago called The Sin Eater, and that's what I keep thinking of it as as the person whose archetypal role in the community is to eat everybody else's sin so they can go happily on their way while this person continues to suffer.
Speaker 2:Like, that's that's what that process felt like. And I didn't want her to suffer, so I didn't It wasn't safe to tell her about things going on. I can't remember if we've talked about this on the podcast before, but, you know, I had one of the seminal traumatic experiences of my life was a sort of public shaming experience in fourth grade by my teacher, shaming me in front of the other students for something I still to this day have no idea what I had done to upset her. I think part of it was she had other things going on. But, as an adult, I was looking back on this and thinking, I can't believe my mom did just march down to the school and have her fired.
Speaker 2:Like, it was a shocking, horrible thing for this teacher to do. And I asked my mom about it. She's like, what are you talking about? Turned out I never told her. I had something terrible happen at school, and I never told her because it was my job to protect her from my own feelings or else she would eat them and make them hers.
Speaker 2:And I didn't want that to happen. So
Speaker 1:With what you just shared, it sounds like you already understood as a fourth grader that if you were shamed at school, she could not could not did not have capacity to fight for you because your shame was her shame. You didn't even get to keep your shame.
Speaker 2:Yeah. She didn't have the capacity to be herself in the presence of my shame. For her, it would have been like she had been personally affronted. Like, she couldn't be she couldn't live in that adult brain space while in the presence of my own big feelings. She could only transfer them into her own.
Speaker 2:But I love her, and I understand that she was doing it out of her best understanding of how to care for me. But it wasn't safe, and I couldn't tell her about even big terrible things that happened. I'm grateful that I was not in a situation in which actual harmful, traumatic, abusive, terrible things happen because I don't know who I would have dreamt to.
Speaker 1:It makes me curious all of a sudden if that is part of why like, we talked about Em and Dante last time. It makes me curious all of a sudden if that's part of why Em's feelings are so big, because we know we cannot put them on the children, that the children cannot be responsible. So when we're away from the children, we have to feel all the things. We have to think all the things. We have to experience all the things so that those things are not even there when we're actually with the children.
Speaker 2:Wow. That's a heavy burden to carry.
Speaker 1:But it makes sense in a way that I never ever understood until this moment that it's like Em's big feelings are really not that they're not valid. I don't mean that. But it's like more venting than reality. Let's put all of these emotional responses and natural exhaustions. Let's put them in this container here so that we don't give that container to the children.
Speaker 2:And that container was him?
Speaker 1:Well and so right? Because then we can think and feel what if we're the worst mother in the world or even when the children tell us because now they're the teenagers. You're the worst mom ever in the history of the world. Thanks so much. That's because I asked them to pick up their sweater off the floor.
Speaker 1:But, anyway
Speaker 2:I got a note from one of our sons calling me a stupid son of a bitch.
Speaker 1:See, our children are not docile, shiny, happy kids. We did okay. But but here's the thing. We can think and feel and experience all those things on our own away from the children because we know not to make it our children's job to disprove those thoughts and feelings. That for me was codependency growing up with my mother as it was my job to solve her depression.
Speaker 1:It was my job to solve her big feelings. It was my job to reassure her that she was loved, except that it was not because that was my parent, and she should have been doing those things for me, but she did not have capacity. And I don't mean that disrespectfully to her. I mean capacity. And so because of that, to maintain my capacity with the children, I know it cannot be their job to reassure me of my feelings.
Speaker 1:And so I have to feel and think those things somewhere else. And I go extreme with screen time, not because of shiny happy, but because when I can no longer function, I wanna make sure you're okay. So they get screen time in chunks the way some people get Halloween candy of here are all your sweets for the year. This day is the day I have to people in Seattle. So when we get home, you can watch all the screen time you want for the rest of the day because I have nothing to give and cannot give you something badly.
Speaker 1:I cannot be inadequate. What?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Your famous movie marathon. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I will make it fun. I will make it feel like vacation so that you are safe and regulated when I cannot be anymore. Except that what doesn't work anymore is that the more regulated I get, the less often that happens, which means even in rescuing them that way, it doesn't happen as much, and they are very confused.
Speaker 2:So you mean they don't they don't have the marathon screen time as much as they as often as they used to?
Speaker 1:They do sometimes, but it's more specific. So, like, when we went to Seattle, they had screen time that weekend. And in fact, some of the weekend, I almost didn't see them because they were literally downstairs playing, but I did not play with them because my interaction was in Seattle with the people, except then I couldn't. Like, I was so overwhelmed. So much was happening in the background then that I my capacity was limited.
Speaker 1:So that is how they got play and also a playground while I was not available, which is different than playing with them, which would be healthier and more regulated. And, also, it was developmentally appropriate because now we have tweens and teens who want space for me. So they asked and requested for time where they got to what did they say? Practice regulating. They tried to throw my words back at me, like, where they wanted time on their they want time on the playground without me, time watching movies without me, time having snacks without me, even though we still spend time together in other places.
Speaker 1:It's like the toddlers. Right? Like, the two year old runs off to play and comes back and touches base and goes off to play and touches base.
Speaker 2:I think in it, I feel like I also see a lot of instances of you having direct interaction with them, doing fun things, doing activities with them, whether it's, you know, traveling through downtown on pride weekend or playing phase 10 with them after school, like, you're not even though there are times where you're overstimulated and screen time provides a buffer that allows them to have some sort of fun while you were protected and able to do the recovery you need for yourself, like, that's not the only interaction you have with them. And I I think that's that's a good thing to to also be aware of.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I I don't think you need to feel bad about sometimes babysitting with children with the television.
Speaker 1:What I I didn't mean to get so off track. I did again, although we're talk we are talking about pragmatics and implications. But in the in honor of holding space for yourself, was there anything else that you wanted to share or say or talk about?
Speaker 2:Not that I can think of at the moment. Not because I'm withholding anything to protect your feelings, but because I really we've talked a lot, and I can't think of anything else, that was on my mind that needed to be discussed. Do you
Speaker 1:wanna share about your interview? Can I say congratulations?
Speaker 2:I I don't know if we're to the congratulations stage yet, but I'm applying for a new job. I've gotten to an interview, so we'll see where it goes from there.
Speaker 1:Because I was not being codependent. I was like, you need to pay for this and this and this yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, a couple weeks ago, I had a big breakdown as you know, where I like, it took me half the week to get out of bed, basically. And part of it was because it turned out that my you know, you've got the hierarchy of needs, the pyramid, and it starts with, like, basic needs of food and income and all those things, and and that got shaken because what I thought was gonna be my part time income kinda went away. And that I had stacked I had very carefully balanced some of my self esteem upon this new foundation of partial income. And so, like, everything just fell over when that one thing fell through and, proceeded to be several days of just emotional implosion until I finally got to talk with it talk with my therapist about it, and she helped me have a better perspective on things and come out the other side. And so that was good.
Speaker 2:I mean, coming out of it was good.
Speaker 1:I think it's an example of those hard conversations and not being codependent and untangling things up. How do we balance things in a healthy way for us and for the children and meet needs, and what is that gonna look like, and all the things. I think that it's an example for me of not daydreaming, of undissociating. Because in my daydream, I can do enough work, and I can work hard enough to provide for all the things so that the children have everything they need and everything they want, and you have all your free time to focus on writing. And we have struggled and struggled and struggled, but I think it's not true.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's real. The needs are too great, and I can't. And if I had not let go of that deployment job, I would have been there. Like, I don't know if I would even be alive. And Yeah.
Speaker 1:So the reality is if I wanna see for a job and I want to be here, what does shifting things in my life look like? If I am learning to prioritize my children in a way that no one ever did for me so that they have what they need just to exist in the world, what does that look like? When I was their age, I had no parent after that. I had like, the triplets and the twins, the twins being in sixth grade now and the triplets being in ninth grade now, I I had no parents after fifth grade, like, at all after that. And all of those dramas, trauma dramas of my early adulthood were because I was so on my own in those high school years and middle school.
Speaker 1:And figuring out all of those adulting things without any help at all. So what is launching these children even look like? What is possible? What is what do we need to accept that's not possible? How do we help them navigate all the things?
Speaker 1:I don't know those answers, but I can't help them if I'm not there. So what is being there look like? And it it means sacrificing some things that I enjoy doing, like extra groups or this or that that are not bad things and that I want and even need. And also when they need me, I have to show up. It's most important.
Speaker 1:And it also means not daydreaming and seeing the reality of our situation and what does that mean for us, and what does that look like going forward. And part of that is simply financial. Right? So that I can't be there for the children if I'm working a job. I literally won't survive.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I can't be present with them after school every day until they go to bed and also work eighty hours a week.
Speaker 2:Sure. You just give up sleeping and eating and going to the bathroom. You'll be fine.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It has been a rough week of bad news with people that I know who have died over there and, losing colleagues and friends and and people who are native there, literally, like, not just, this is where we're assigned for work, but this is where we work. And, also, I was born and grew up here. Like, it's it's really intense, and it's really hard, and it's really awful what's happening. And I still can't quite talk about it very long without crying.
Speaker 1:But, it's all the more reason. And maybe maybe that's a good timing in my life as the children approach those years of development where like, what it feels like to me that's different is that when they were little, they needed us to do things. They needed me to tie their shoes and cut their food and wash their clothes and, like, all the things. And I could multitask those things. I could do those things while I did other things.
Speaker 1:As long as they were tended to and had each other and playing and enough, whatever enough was, like, I can multitask those things. But when they are now in middle school and high school, and I know those are different ages, but we basically have five kids at the same age developmentally, plus Kiri, who thinks she is. And so even though they're different grades, they're all about the same developmental stage, and they don't need those things done for them anymore. What they need now is us. They need our presence, and it's so critical and makes such a difference when we are so present with them.
Speaker 1:And if that's what they need, then I have to make myself available enough to be there for them. I I don't want to repeat what was done to me, and that includes being 17 and completely alone in the world. I don't wanna do that to them, which means showing up, which means making really hard decisions, like not as many podcast episodes or not as many groups or not as many conferences or, like, fill in the blank with all the things. I have to show up for them. It's priority.
Speaker 1:And if I'm going to do that, I have to be healthy when I show up for them, which means less codependency and less fawning and less dissociating. It means being present in my own life, which I have to do before I can be present in their lives, and that's epic.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's true.
Speaker 1:Anything else you wanna add before I let you go?
Speaker 2:That's all I can think of.
Speaker 1:Thanks for talking to us.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me. Aw.
Speaker 1:I I know that we're far apart, so doing episodes is harder, and, also, everything is kind of changing and has changed and will keep changing. But, also, it seemed big. Big conversations, big learning, and good things. Just thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Tell your parents and the boys I said hi.
Speaker 2:Sounds good. I will do so. Bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. Your support really helps us feel less alone while we sort through all of this and learn together. Maybe it will help you in some ways too. You can connect with us on Patreon by going to our website at www.systemspeak.org. If there's anything we've learned, it's that connection brings healing.
Speaker 1:We look forward to connecting with you.