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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 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 we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 1:The content note for this episode includes a trigger warning. The topic of discussion is integration but please understand it is in the context of someone's lived experience of natural integration not a treatment protocol or something done to a patient. In addition, despite the integration process that's happened naturally for this person, they still identify as plural which they discuss. It is also noted that our guest references suicidality. This is only in passing and not discussed in detail at all.
Speaker 1:As always please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Alright. Hello, every many. Our name is Cleo and we are the hostess of our system, the How Network, short for healing our wounds. And we are a plural being who has experience and is in sort of the beginning stages of final fusion or integration which we understand can be a very triggering topic for many systems and we also host a YouTube channel by the same name Healing Our Wounds that will be linked in the description. And we would just love to share insights with you and share a sort of positive experience of how integration can be really a wonderful next step in the healing journey for systems when it happens naturally as a result of healing our trauma and doing that kind of integration work.
Speaker 3:We're so happy to be here today.
Speaker 1:Us a little bit about your experience of getting diagnosed and what your journey has been like. Just not I don't mean to be intrusive at all, but just just in general, what has that been like for you that's led to this place where you are now?
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. We'd love to share about that. Yeah. I mean, basically, it's been, you know, probably fifteen years since we sort of realized that we had trauma. I would say that our awakening came when we were, you know, physically 19 years old, and we realized like for the first time that we were being abused.
Speaker 3:We were so dissociated our whole life. We had no idea and we're stuck in the cycle of abuse and we actually had a suicide attempt at that age and, you know, it's the first time we were on our own away from our family away at college in New York City at an art school and just, we had no idea yet about the dissociative identity disorder. That only happened in the last few years but we remember coming back home to California and then we just sort of realized like someone gave us this book that told us we were supposed to love ourselves and that was kind of the key that started our entire healing journey because we realized you know after what we had attempted to do that we didn't and we didn't even realize we were ever supposed to because of our sort of abusive childhood and the way we were programmed to survive that and then it was just a long journey as it is for so many of us sort of in and out of consciousness about trauma and dissociation being dissociated right up until probably six years ago or really actually it was like nine years ago we experienced traumatic flooding and we're focused on healing our complex post traumatic stress disorder but it seems like during that time like no matter how much we learned about trauma and abuse and getting out of the cycle we could never break out of it like the switch would flip and we'd end up in the cycle of violence like with abusive people and predatory people of all kinds like all over again.
Speaker 3:And you know we were diagnosed with many different disorders. We thought maybe we have bipolar two, maybe we have some borderline characteristics, maybe we have you know just dependent personality disorder and it was all these different things and it wasn't really until the last few years we actually were with an abusive partner who told us we had probably had dissociative identity disorder and he was trying to sort of like hurt us with it you know by showing us some sensational Hollywood movie about DID where it's portrayed completely inaccurately to what most of us are like, you know. But that kind of planted the seed and then over the last three or four years we were able to finally come into co consciousness specifically like almost exactly a year ago when we hospitalized ourselves again and yeah so basically over the last year in particular we were able to solidify our co consciousness in a way and create this sort of, you know, family system where we could finally heal and remain conscious of the DID.
Speaker 1:You mentioned learning to love yourself. What has that been like? What does that mean to you all?
Speaker 3:You know, a really difficult process. The book we were given, How to Heal You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. Our aunt sent it to us. And you know it's that sort of new age spirituality of you know just look in a mirror and say that you love yourself and then with positive affirmations and then you know you'll be fixed and that wasn't our experience right? In reality it's a very difficult process because for most of us with severe childhood trauma particularly abuse trauma you know we had to program ourselves most of our parts are programmed to sort of hate ourselves and self destruct in order to survive those early environments.
Speaker 3:Know our self hatred or sabotage or the opposite of self love, a lack of self acceptance, self sacrifice, like all those behaviors were learned and programmed into us so that we could survive our parents basically and the environments that we were in. So it was really difficult and a really long process.
Speaker 1:How did all of your work or internally or otherwise in learning to care for different parts of yourself and all of this, how did that lead to where you are now? And how what did you what did you think or how did you even find out about the concept integration?
Speaker 3:Yes. So, you know, we I anyways. So, basically, we just were on this path just dedicated to healing from our trauma because the experience of the effects of it were so debilitating. Know, the last nine years of trauma healing, like, took us out completely. We've been disabled.
Speaker 3:And so we really, for a long time, were just trying to, like, shame ourselves into self love, I think, because that was our patterning. You know? But I think when you experience enough pain, there's, like there's there are breaking points that happen in the healing process that motivate you. Know some people can call them a breakdown or a nervous breakdown but we see it as like a breakthrough or a breaking open and the last round of that was really seeing how, our mother fell ill, and she's one of our original, you know, persecutors. And with leukemia and seeing her unable to care for herself or take care of herself and seeing how that was the best she could do for us, you know, really shifted us.
Speaker 3:I think also, like, meditation for us is really important in developing the inner safety, which is very difficult to do when you have persecutors, right? But something just happens that's magical and showing up for yourself every day. Probably the biggest thing that we've done that helps create this sort of self acceptance, is what led to this spontaneous integration, which we didn't even know what that was we were just doing trauma healing work and realized we had DID. We didn't have a therapist pushing us to integrate or even stop dissociating at all. She's very she's kind of a renegade you know and just believes that if people are still dissociating then they probably need to be even if they're still dealing with difficult life lessons.
Speaker 3:It's not something that can be forced so even though some therapists maybe even are coming from a good place when they try to do that and push integration on systems you know, it can't really truly happen unless it happens genuinely. And it comes from that place of building that inner safety. Through our daily practices, we believe self care is the path to self love, which is really just self acceptance. So when we could hold that co consciousness, we just felt this like love open in our hearts, probably from meditation. Sounds cheesy, but it happens when you meditate every day.
Speaker 3:So building this sort of self care routine and self care practices to show up for ourselves every day created this inner safety and then this part that's speaking now Cleo who we've all integrated into sort of became this loving parent self, which she learned to be in therapy, like, that safe space where we had a therapist who accepted us exactly as we were. And then through this part, Cleo was able to model that to all the other parts and, you know, persecutors turned to protectors, and then we all just came into this alignment and sort of healed our wounds and were able to develop through our, you know, developmental stages to just come into alignment so that we no longer really have parts they're more like sides. So I hope that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Those are a lot of pieces of language even so I want to break it down a little bit. When you're saying persecutors what are you meaning? What does that mean to your system?
Speaker 3:Sure. Sure. Yes. So our system, we had five different alters or parts, and two of them were sort of like persecutors where they were sort of self abusive or abusive of other parts in the system when they would front or take, you know, take over the system. One was male, one was female.
Speaker 3:The female one had sort of like some like borderline type aspects and mostly self harm aspects and the male was a sort of part that was actually exiled most of our lives that like came back online. He was like our anger sort of modeled after our father. So it was like a but most of that aggression was turned inwards on our own system. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. How did you learn to communicate or cooperate with those kinds of parts?
Speaker 3:That's a great question. With compassion, basically, or, you know, there's a lot of words for acceptance. What we realized was we had this sort of breakthrough, which I'm sure our therapist helped guide us to. She's amazing. But we had this breakthrough where we realized, and a lot of our writing that we used to do was based on this too, that all of our parts that were like that were created at some point in time to quite literally keep us alive and then, you know, psychologically, even physically as children, that what looked like persecutors were once trying to protect us.
Speaker 3:So in essence, they were protectors. And when we were able to give those parts compassion and honor them exactly as they were, their anger about maybe some actions and see that in their own way even if it didn't look like protection now that's what they were trying to do originally and even thank them for like the ways that they served us and kept us alive when we were little you know, and even as adults when we were repeating the trauma compulsively and stuck in that cycle of dissociation, you know, then just just it just something unfolded and they were able to begin to heal and learn new behaviors that were more supportive of the system.
Speaker 1:What about integration? You are being so brave to come and share about this and talk about it and it is a triggering topic. What makes it so triggering do you think?
Speaker 3:Yes, we think there's like two different reasons it's so triggering. One is because, you know, a lot of therapists, whether they have good or bad intentions, can't speak to an individual. Really push it on systems, you know, in the best of cases because they want to protect their clients because when we're dissociated, you know, we can't really protect ourselves sort of necessarily the best way, you know, and we can become victimized again by trauma and re experiencing and in other, you know, ways. And so I think it's mis misguided and a lot of people seem to have had experiences like that where they had therapists or people in positions of power trying to, like, control them, which I think is very triggering for all of us. Most of us have complex PTSD where we were trapped in traumatic situations.
Speaker 3:So anything controlling like that can be really triggering. And then second of all, from our own experience, we feel it's also a very natural, healthy, and understandable fear of, doing the trauma integration work, which many therapists also push and which we believe cannot be pushed. You have to build the inner safety for trauma to truly process and integrate, and that requires a safe environment where we're not being pushed, where we can learn to feel safe and feel it in ourselves. But you know basically all of our systems were designed to help us you know carry and survive and manage trauma. And for most of us, that means remaining blind to it.
Speaker 3:We know it took us thirty years to really process and integrate it once we had created that foundation. And so naturally, the system, out of self preservation wants to avoid integration because this is the way it's operated in the world and learn to survive the world and most of us are still operating that way. For example, our integration has been kind of confusing because we're used to having five different parts to respond to the world sort of automatically and we've had to just relearn and repairing ourselves on like how to survive.
Speaker 1:That makes so much sense. What what has your experience of that been like and and how is it different now even from those early experiences when you realized that's what was going on?
Speaker 3:Yes. I mean, in some sense, it's challenging, right? Because wherever we're at on the healing path, first of all, is exactly where we should that's the biggest thing that we would like to say, you know? We shouldn't really beat ourselves up for not being further along. Like, we're exactly where we're meant to be, you know?
Speaker 3:But it's been confusing and after we developed this sort of our system sort of turned into this loving family and, you know, we felt so like we belonged in the world finally in ourselves and complete in ourselves and when we eventually came through you know having our morning check ins with our parts after meditation and then all of a sudden there's no parts anymore as each of them sort of fuse and integrated. It was actually like a feeling of grief and loss for us you know but what we've learned to do is show up for ourselves regardless of whether our feelings are good you know or negative whatever you want to call them So we just went through that grieving process and we felt like we had we did feel like we had lost parts of ourselves which I think can also be triggering for systems but then in the end we realized quite quickly we were all still here it's just more like instead of separate parts there's no more walls between us and we more like how normal people talk about having sides. So we're all still here, we're all still healing and growing, we've all gotten to the level we're each at you know but kind of just sort of aligning and those parts are still present and they still are sides of us so we didn't really lose anything.
Speaker 3:It's more like we feel more plural than ever but at the same time we're becoming this sort of singular aligned identity. So it's been challenging you know and it's a long learning process that certainly isn't over just because we are in the stages of final fusion.
Speaker 1:That feels so like if we were if we were only looking at the language of it, integration, but I still feel so plural, It feels contradictory, but the experience that you're sharing is talking about are you meaning awareness and that being able to hold presence with with a variety of different parts of self so that it's experienced as, like you said, sides of me? Or how would you explain that to someone who's trying to understand?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's difficult to explain, right, because before we have integration, if we ever do, right, which isn't necessarily a goal for all systems even, for us it was important because we needed to stop becoming prey for predators. Like our life was very dangerous. We didn't have safe people around us but it's difficult to explain it until you've experienced it, like so many things with the evolution of consciousness. It's very strange, right, to to to have gone from it's really kind of a bizarre experience for us. You've gone to full co consciousness of having parts and being separate parts existing that way right to now sort of not feeling them anymore and just feeling like we have sort of like different personality traits or different states of being that are all conscious and happening at the same time.
Speaker 3:In the beginning it was kind of like clunky right because now we're experiencing five responses and reactions simultaneously to a stimulus if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I'm just reflecting on that. What is the difference between that feeling five things at once in your example and feeling like one person. Does anyone ever feel like one person?
Speaker 3:Yes. It's but it's almost like it doesn't exactly happen overnight. Overnight. We do feel like one person now and sometimes like if we see oh that experience and our sort of reaction to that thing happening felt like this part used to be and then we check-in but that part is integrated now. Is confusing and we're doing our best to explain it but the difference really is that it's sort of like no matter what happens in our life now we have so much inner safety and sort of solidity in ourselves that we don't fragment anymore.
Speaker 3:It's just all sort of happening in one cohesive whole.
Speaker 1:That you are still using plural language and identifying as plural?
Speaker 3:Yes. And sometimes we don't. It's depending on who we're talking to right. I think the identification as plural is just something that felt right. We do a practice called meta meditation where you say sort of like prayers or intentions for yourself and then you say them for others and when we use the singular it just it didn't feel right.
Speaker 3:Like when we use we it feels like our true identity and so that hasn't changed. In fact it's just felt like it's become more of a sort of testament to who we are and a sort of honoring and part of the process of honoring our experience of life and you know our dissociative identity disorder and everything we went through to heal and grow, like, it feels more like a celebration, like, just a way of speaking in the world, you know, and existing in the world that sort of honors where we came from. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:So when you say integration, what do you all feel, like has integrated? What has come together?
Speaker 3:Yes. Probably the reason that term is even used is because it represents sort of integration and processing, you know, processing and integration aka healing of our trauma. That's probably why those terms are kind of like used in two different ways we feel just from our own experience. What really happened, right, the whole process, this whole fifteen year process of sort of waking up to the DID and going in and out of consciousness about it like so many of us naturally do until we can develop, you know, enough of the tools and resources to have co consciousness for example because that's a process you know when we didn't learn those things as children. It's just sort of like creating this safe inner space right is how it started and that allowed us to finally be grounded and not so dissociated so that we could A protect ourselves and B our trauma just naturally started processing and integrating so that it no longer really triggers us.
Speaker 3:Like we'll have trauma come up just sort of on its own and we're able to sort of witness it and be with it hold ourselves through it and the memories now don't have to keep looping the triggers now become very very mild if at all like our family doesn't even trigger us anymore which is a wonderful place to be in, right, because then those triggers don't happen out in the world as much and we're able to sort of stabilize and hopefully, you know, pursue like our other dreams in the world in a in a way that we weren't able to before.
Speaker 1:So I'm sorry. It's so hard for me to get my fingers around like, to grasp. I'm just it's slipping through like sand, but I'm trying so hard. So you're saying that in your experience, there has been an integration of experience so that when something comes up, like with a trigger, for example, when something comes up, the experience is integrated enough that you have awareness because of increased awareness and you have communication or cooperation or whatever you wanna say, like less phobia among parts so that you have, I guess, access to all the different pieces of that experience. So it's the experience that's integrated so that you know, oh, this is what's coming up for me.
Speaker 1:Here's how I feel about it. Here's what I remember or here's what goes with that. And all those different layers are still kind of separate pieces, but you have access to all of them.
Speaker 3:Being experienced simultaneously because there's no amnesia, right, between parts anymore because we're becoming one being.
Speaker 1:So I'm I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3:No. I think you're asking great questions. I'm sure I I yeah. Well, I'll explain as best as we can. So
Speaker 1:what is the difference then between co consciousness and integration?
Speaker 3:Right. So that's the real question. Right? The difference is that we just we no longer have parts. We really don't.
Speaker 3:With co consciousness, right, there's, a dialogue between parts. Oh. Parts have individual identities still, and parts are still separated almost like there was five of us. Now we're just, like, one being with five sides. It's really the only way we can explain it, but even the sides are sort of merging because integration is a process.
Speaker 3:You wake up and it's not like you wake up and you're fully integrated and then you step into the world and you're a singular being. It's probably a long term process and it's gonna look different for every system as well. Individuals.
Speaker 1:I'm still thinking. Sorry. It's okay. So so not just access to the experiences and everything that goes with it, but access to all of those selves so that it's really, like you said, simultaneous. There's not this time lag of having to work out the pieces because you're having to communicate amongst parts.
Speaker 1:It's just a knowing it's all there so quickly. And Yes. It's all you already so so okay. So instead of having to navigate between parts or amongst parts to get access or to gather the pieces, you already have the pieces so you don't have to like talk about the pieces or who has what or where they are because all the pieces are already there and you have access to all of that even though there's different pieces of the experience.
Speaker 3:Way to explain it. This is actually helping us just talking about it sort of understand what's happened because it all just kind of happened on its own, right? So, you know, we talked to our therapist about it but like who else really understands what we're even saying? So thank you.
Speaker 1:That's a lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Wow. It is a lot. And it's it's you know? And so we existed for a long time just as you were saying, like, very much like that in that sort of fragmented state.
Speaker 3:And that was what was perfect for us at that time. Right? Because that was the level of sort of grounding we were able to stay in when facing these horrific memories, right, that we needed to shut away and create this brilliant system in order to survive. And so now, you know, but now the miracle that feels like a miracle that's happening, you know, is if we are triggered, then we can so we have the full memory, right? And it's and it doesn't really even trigger us.
Speaker 3:Like we have emotions but we don't think of them in a sort of negative way or we don't need to dissociate to deal with them because we've developed other coping skills and resources. That's what the fifteen years was about and it took the time that it took for us. Know it was very painful. Really something that we don't think is talked about much is like as you go along in the healing process what we're really doing is learning to tolerate more distress and more suffering and more pain. For us DBT dialectical behavioral therapy has been really helpful for that, and the mindfulness practices that go with it to be able to sit in those states and not have trauma flooding and the intense re experiencing that we used to when we started having all the memories come back and the amnesia walls break down about nine or ten years ago.
Speaker 3:Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:It does. So when we talk about triggers and being able to tolerate that and know how to navigate it, does this phase that you're in now, do you feel like you're also able to navigate like some of those missed developmental tasks or that was part of the work you've already done before you got to this phase?
Speaker 3:Yes, I'd say we're probably still doing that you know but it is part of the work that got us here as well. It's still a learning experience though right? Healing is not like a straight line on a graph. It's more like we like the something one of our mentors used like that Shel Silverstein children's book Falling Up. It's sort of like this upward spiral and we kind of go around those lessons.
Speaker 3:So say those developmental lessons you're talking about kind of over and over again it can feel really frustrating but really each time we progress sort of upwards to like a new level even if we feel like we're going backwards. I don't know if that makes sense but we find like different metaphors for healing kind of helpful in this sort of straight linear western approach that we think it's gonna be.
Speaker 1:That's so much, thank you. Else about this did you want to share with us today?
Speaker 3:Yeah just you know like we said wherever you're personally at in this process we just want to respect and honor that you know our sort of the level of healing we've gotten to isn't where everyone should be and allowing that for ourselves is really the path to healing. Know, learning to meet ourselves where we're at. Like, that's the one thing that we did that allowed us to heal so that we can sort of navigate and exist in the world in a more peaceful way, you know, and sort of move forward into becoming the person that we really wanna be who can, you know, live our dreams and do the things that we really like to do.
Speaker 1:I have another question, and I don't at all mean to be offensive. It's really just a question. But how do how do you know when you've really reached that phase and that there's not just more waiting that you've not been exposed to because you were still protecting yourself from them? What's the difference there?
Speaker 3:Totally. We've actually been thinking about that recently. What is the difference there? So, right, like it like the parts haven't just maybe gone back into hibernation or whatever you wanna call it. Is that what you mean?
Speaker 3:The difference is being able to measure, right, with a great therapist as well. We couldn't have done this without her. She's incredible. But just being able to measure by our response to life, being able to measure like how we respond to experiences and how different we are right. It's often best to like look at ourselves we're at when our healing in our healing not like where we think we should be but like where we were say a year ago and then to be able to really measure the changes over time in that way.
Speaker 3:So now we see that you know we can see the way we're showing up even in responding to the same people or similar experiences with so much more sort of ability to stay grounded and not dissociated And occasionally we still, you know, can dissociate a bit but it's not it's not the same as having parts was. And we're able we because we've cultivated the skills of mindfulness and meditation we're able to stay present to that happening even as it's happening, which is another confusing thing to explain. But basically, the tool is, you know, developing self or self awareness. You know, that's the healing process.
Speaker 1:So you're not just not losing time, but you're aware of what's going on and you're present in that. So when you have encounters or triggers or just everyday life things, there's not phobias that you can't figure out why or emotional flashbacks that get you stuck. But you're able to say, oh, this is what is going on and identify it and work through it without missing any pieces.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And then it's sort of this way of existing where each thing that happens then becomes the next learning experience. Each trigger or experience shows us what's within us. That's sort of the next thing to be seen and sort of embraced or understood. And then the healing trajectory just kind of like perpetuates itself at that point.
Speaker 3:When you're responding to life as a sort of series of learning experiences about the self, it's very difficult to be triggered or sort of like ungrounded.
Speaker 1:I feel like that piece really makes a lot of sense even in a way I can can hold on to that's really what trauma is about, right? Not being responded to. So even when harm is caused, that harm is caused by overcoming walls of not responding to us. And so if there's anything we've learned about trauma over the last couple years, it's this piece that response is required if it's really care and if it's tending to and for healing to happen. So it makes sense to me that the more that we do that for ourselves, the more exponential our healing becomes.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It's really and my therapist would agree like that's what healing is, is learning to respond, right, and care for the self and that's what really builds this sort of mythical concept of self love, you know, not necessarily looking in a mirror and saying affirmations which can be a wonderful thing but it's the real showing up that in ways that we weren't shown up for whatever that looks like for us individually as systems.
Speaker 1:What else? What pieces have missed as an unintegrated person not yet?
Speaker 3:Well we'd like to say that as an unintegrated person you all haven't really missed anything right because the subconscious is you know the real mass of our consciousness. It's all there and honestly hearing things like this whether we can take it all in or not is what's right for us but you know seeds are being planted. Seeds that were planted in us you know is why we've created our YouTube channel as well. It's like to just share our insights because we know that there are certain pieces that people need that we wish were being talked about right like learning to show up and respond to ourselves when we're in pain like that's the path to authentic positivity or whatever you know to responding to life the way we've learned to. That there are just so many key pieces that we just want to be of service and help share with the world.
Speaker 3:You know, but it's individual for everyone. There are similarities, right? There are these sort of keys to healing of like that piece of showing up for the self and learning to do that. Learning to do it gracefully and knowing that there's nothing wrong with you if you can't do that fully right now. It's you're doing the best you can with you know what you learned.
Speaker 3:So you know it's for us it's just a you know it started as a self love journey and then we really came to understand what compassion meant and that allowed us to have compassion for all beings even the people who wounded us which is a crazy other level we probably shouldn't get into right now.
Speaker 1:That's so much truth in in that concept of responding to ourselves or or as she said showing up for ourselves being present with this is where we are. There is so much to unpack in that because if this is where we are and we just accept that with all of our progress so far, all of our limitations that we still have and just being present with where we are right now, there is so much tending to those layers, responding to the progress we've made so far. And there is so much about so much information about what we need as far as boundaries and exploration and practice. And there's just so much information in just that piece. And I think sometimes when we're so dissociated, that's something that we miss.
Speaker 1:It's so hard to know what our needs are because we're not being present with ourselves to know what we need.
Speaker 3:Yes. It's very hard to remain present present when we're dissociated and then in those moments the practice is learning to accept that we need to dissociate. Maybe we need a distraction tool or we need to just be in a state of dissociation. Maybe we need to binge watch some Netflix or like eat so many cookies. Practice becomes accepting the need for dissociation as being, you know, our need at the time.
Speaker 3:Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:It does so much. I'm so grateful. Thank you for sharing with us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm so grateful to be here. My life our life has been you know a series of deep trauma and chaos and near death experiences so we're just grateful to have made it here and to be able to share this with the world. We're just super grateful you know we're so happy that we got to have this conversation with you all today and we're so grateful for the work that you're doing in the world. Thank you so much for showing up and doing this. We know what it's like to do this kind of work sort of unintegrated and we had a lot of chaos personally with that to call our work down at one point.
Speaker 3:So we just hope you're really proud of yourselves and what you're doing, know, and your courage and authenticity and vulnerability really inspired us to send you a message and come and talk about this today. So thank you.
Speaker 1:That's so kind and very gracious. I think that every single day we feel like, oh, maybe we should just take it all down. And I don't mean that as a threat, but, like, protective. Like, is that scary. It is that hard, absolutely, to to to live it up and to keep going for sure.
Speaker 3:It's all self protective. We have been designed to not be seen. Most dissociative identity disorder systems are covert and the ones that aren't aren't really aware of that, you know? It's our survival mechanisms. That's probably the last thing we would say is like when you're butting up against and struggling with this healing process to stop and try to remember, you know, as a practice to honor yourself that the ways you're responding into the world kept you alive.
Speaker 3:And it's a really deep thing to think about. There's a lot going on there. You know?
Speaker 1:I think that's so true. And I think that really that's the only reason we've been able to do the podcast is because it does meet a need in that way. In that in the context of our trauma, there were pieces of our story that were very public because of just how things unfolded with abusers and and what happened publicly. And so being able to say our own story or tell our own story in our own words has been very healing in a reclaiming part of our story, in a way of meeting that need of where we were violated in the past and being able to respond to that but also trying to balance that with not exploiting ourselves, you know, and having this structure and boundaries enough to be able to be authentic but also safe and finding ways to do that, it's been a tough piece of showing up.
Speaker 3:Absolutely and the process is so empowering but it can feel so disempowering, right? Yes. And it's so healing to share these kinds of things with the world and learning those sort of personal boundaries about what you're willing to share is a big part of that practice you know definitely. We're sorry to hear that you know that was public for you all that sounds really difficult.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for sharing with us today your experiences and coming on to talk about integration, which is such a taboo topic because it's such a terrifying topic. You were very brave to come share your perspective with us. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you so much. We're so grateful to be here.
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. One of the ways we practice this is in community together. The link for the community is in the show notes.
Speaker 2: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. I'm there to heal too. That's what peer support is all about.
Speaker 2:Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.