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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:I missed check-in group this weekend while the whole family was coming back from Oklahoma. And then this morning, so many people shared in my Al Anon meeting I didn't have a turn, and also I wasn't the first to raise my hand. I am feeling powerless against the days between the end of summer and school starting, and the chaos is unmanageable. And also, they're doing fine, And I'm adjusting better than expected. Maybe because my summer was so good and so healing, I was more ready for it than I knew.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to give myself some credit for my hard work in therapy and the reclaiming of summers and the intentional rest that I did while they were all away and not just give credit to the new Taylor Swift album dropping just when I needed it. But all silliness aside and within the context of things being okay enough and safe enough despite the chaos of children going back to school or the chaos of what is happening in the world around us. When I just sit with me and I can until the children find me, they've gone to the park and to the library and are meeting me here at this cafe and I get to talk to you until they find me. And when I sit with only me, there's fear. And when I look at the fear, even trying to do step four in the progress workbook or whatever it's called, so much of it keeps going back to therapy where it's like not being shiny happy with the steps, but using them as information and recognizing that there are so many of these topics from step four, including fear, that really are therapy issues or trauma issues and needing to skip them in the steps to go tend to them in therapy before I can give accurate answers even to myself because everything has been so violated.
Speaker 1:But of all of the different topics for taking an inventory of how I'm showing up in my own life, the biggest one that I was most familiar with and knew the most about was fear. Again, the fear. And coincidentally, in the same timing of continuing to release old episodes that had been taken down and getting them back up. As of this summer day, we've got all the way through 2021 back up. And that included the episode when we released the memoir.
Speaker 1:And listening to that and remembering that that was even a thing, like, I keep forgetting. I know avoidance. But I have such a strange relationship with that book that is so specific to what my therapy experiences have been. And then coincidentally, before they even knew those were the episodes I was working on, several different people in the community also posted pictures of them reading the book. And so suddenly, it was all around me.
Speaker 1:If you remember, because I barely do, that book came out of salvaged journaling pages, unprocessed material that I was trying to condense and save and use in some transformative way, contain in some healthy way where reclaiming my voice meant something, kind of like the podcast. But it's all stuff that needs to go to therapy. I mean, I got it to therapy. That's why I had the content, things that had come up in therapy over years and journaling that we took to therapy, but we had not talked about yet. And then I lost that therapist, which I have since grieved, and it no longer feels like an open wound, although there will always be a scar there.
Speaker 1:But the years between the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic, which is interesting that that's even part of the story because the children have been talking about that in the context of recognizing how slowly we did the divorce in part for their sake, in part for safety, in part because everyone wants to daydream. It's easier to say Nathan is good and kind than to say I have the need to be myself. We had good therapists during that time, therapists who kept us alive those years even though we didn't get to keep them or stay with them. And then when we moved out West by ourselves and had those months of adjusting to ourselves, working but not all the time, having free time because not parenting and spending that in the community with extra Zoomies, healing our soul, looking to find who are we, and then trying to be us, and then daydreaming a new relationship that could not be and never was, no matter how hard we tried and not seeing that it was the same trying too hard in a different shape and that it was already what we said we couldn't do anymore.
Speaker 1:And it's been eight months now, living in safety. And the earth is so steady as if it knows I have liberated myself. With the sky so expansive that I am free to walk about the cabin, that the heart palpitations in my chest have stopped, That I can breathe again. And I know there is air in my lungs because of the wind in my hair. And I have been to the sea and sailed out to see the whales and the orcas coming up for air.
Speaker 1:I am no longer a drowning whale. I may be old and wounded and scarred, but I am strong. And I can swim up, and I can get air in my lungs again. I am breathing. I am alive ing.
Speaker 1:I am living. And the quality of my life has so improved and so increased. I feel like I am myself again. Not only did I liberate myself like escaping bondage in Egypt, but I arrived at Sinai to receive the care and nourishment of my soul, returned to my community and that support, and found new therapists and meetings and friends. I have found my soul skin and put it back on again.
Speaker 1:I am myself again. It feels good to be me again. And also, there is still fear. Fear because having safety again and steady therapy again and gentle support again means picking up where I left off five years ago, going back in recent memory time, where parts of me could see that I was going to drown, where parts of me knew that I was running out of time, where parts of me began thrashing about against the waves trying to get to the surface. And while returning to memory time things in therapy feels daunting, I do not mean that it is easy.
Speaker 1:But relistening to the old episodes from 2021 and hearing myself plead for what I needed To deign to hope that things could be different, that is step two. Knowing that it could be different, hoping that it could be different, that things could be better. And to be arriving here in the 2025, recognizing that I am now actively in the process of giving myself what I was asking for back then, and it never could have come from anyone else. It could only come from me. I could daydream all the days.
Speaker 1:I could wish for all the nights on all the stars, and it would never be real because the only one who could give it to me was me. It was no one else's responsibility. There's no white horse coming to save me. There is no rescuer I need because the victimness is in the past. My wounded children are in the past, and the greatest breakthrough I have had all year is finally understanding that my attachment wounds are not labels on my forehead, but responses to my environment.
Speaker 1:So when I am feeling anxious attachment or what we call approach strategies. I know I'm swinging left brain a little bit, but that's what happens when it's integrative. When there is blending, when we are including parts of ourselves to say and see and hold and feel the things. When I feel that anxious attachment and I'm seeing myself using approach strategies, it is not because there is something wrong with me. It is because there is care that I am not getting.
Speaker 1:When I am seeing my avoidant attachment patterns and I witness myself using avoidant strategies, it is because I am being harmed. I am trying to get myself out of a harmful environment or relationship or situation. It is right to run. It is right to approach care. It is right to avoid harm.
Speaker 1:And the chaos of that does not mean I am disorganized. It means my environment and my relationships are disorganized. And to have this breakthrough of realizing that when I am safe enough in relationships and environments that are nurturing enough so that what I am receiving is care and not harm, which is the opposite of trauma and deprivation and includes support. Remember, the absence of danger is not safety. The presence of support is safety.
Speaker 1:I know the world is messed up. I know it's probably going to get scarier before it gets better. I know that there's so much to validly be afraid of. And also, when I am tending to my own system because I am the one who is responsible for doing that and capable of doing that, I am the one who can do that effectively for me rather than neglecting myself by waiting for others or wanting others to do that. And when I am in safe enough environments and relationships and situations, then I have secure attachment because my environment is secure, because my relationships are secure.
Speaker 1:I am not condemned by my attachment wounds. Attachment strategies cannot be weaponized against me. This is my liberation that when I am caring well for myself and choosing wisely my relationships and situations and environments so that I am safe enough inside and outside, My world is very secure. And when we come together in community, it is healthy when each of us is doing that for ourselves alongside each other. The times it has problems is when we expect other people to do that for us or to fix us or to rescue us Because then when they are human, they are the enemy.
Speaker 1:They are the persecutor, the prosecutor, the offender, which puts us back in victim. That is the drama triangle. That is Cartman's triangle. That is disease. That is unhealthy.
Speaker 1:That is unsafe. And, of course, in those situations, anxious attachment and avoidant attachment escalate because we are actively being wounded. But when we are healthy and safe with ourselves and each other, we can face the fear always coming back to safe enough. And that is where I am, safe enough inside, safe enough outside, safe enough to go back to therapy. I mean, I've been in therapy, but going back to myself in therapy, as in in my therapy sessions, talking about me, letting go of those who have hurt me, letting go of those who didn't choose me, letting go of being unwanted because all of that goes back to that baby inside of me.
Speaker 1:And the only person who can take care of that baby is me. I'm the one who needs to want that baby. And as long as I am not wanting that baby, as long as I am rejecting that baby or shaming that baby or avoiding that baby, that baby is not getting care, and I will act like it in the outside world. But that is me doing it to myself. I don't have anyone to blame.
Speaker 1:There's no drama story I could say. It is me doing it to myself. But when I face my fear of looking at those littles inside of me, my inner family, my inner child, that baby, whatever you wanna call it for yourself, when I do that work with my therapist, because no one else can do that. My bestie cannot do that work with me or for me. A romantic partner cannot do that for me.
Speaker 1:I can only do that for myself. And here's why. Not because once again, I'm raising myself when I wasn't even parented the first time. So, of course, I can have feelings about having to parent myself again still. That's true, and that's fine.
Speaker 1:And there's times and spaces for those discussions. But the truth is I was that baby back then. That inner child, I was the child back then, and I am the one who got to the other side now. So I'm the only one who knows what it was like back then, and I am the only one who knows what it is like to be on the other side now. And that is why we need each other, me and that baby, me and those littles.
Speaker 1:And it has been terrifying. I have said for years on the podcast, I want to avoid it. I want to avoid it. I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna do it.
Speaker 1:I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. And I have been running. And the reason I have been running is because I was not safe.
Speaker 1:I was in institutional, organizational, relational. I was still in harm's way relationally, institutionally, organizationally in ways I could not see clearly, but I could feel, and that baby could recognize. And so that baby could not trust me until I got my adult self to safety. And I could not hear that baby crying out in terror until I got me to safety. And only now can we listen to each other.
Speaker 1:And while I know that babies can be cute and cuddly and adorable, I also know they cry and they hurt and they're cold and afraid and need to be held and all the things that for us, many of us were deprivation growing up and that we missed growing up. They need eye contact. They need love, and they need care. And all of those may feel foreign to you. They do to me, and it is hard to receive.
Speaker 1:And that is part of why we need safety, not just the absence of danger, but the presence of support, of community, of care, of safety and stability to settle that baby. I'm also afraid of littles. I know some of them are cute and adorable and funny and sweet, and god knows we need any good in ourselves that we can find, and I am grateful for that. And we all know we need that anywhere we can find it, and I am grateful for that. And, also, some of them know things I don't wanna know, and that is why I'm afraid.
Speaker 1:Some of them have been hungry. Some of them have been hurt, and some of them have been sexualized in ways that no child should be sexualized. This is the other reason I am the only one that can go in there to help those children. Romantic partners cannot save sexualized children because sexualized children cannot be romanticized without it being abused. There's no consent in that.
Speaker 1:So it doesn't matter how much we want to support someone or rescue someone or do for someone. We cannot do that. That is a therapy issue, and partners are not therapy people. I can do that for me alongside you doing that for you, but we cannot do it for each other. So it is another reason to be afraid because I have to go in there alone.
Speaker 1:And also, even that is from memory time because in now time, I'm not actually alone. I have really good therapist that is super specific to attachment. And I continue to visit with her because attachment was so weaponized against me, and it is a wound I have to heal. I have a therapist who's a badass and tells me all the truth bombs and helps me see so clearly the things that are so hard for me to see clearly because she is my therapist. And that is her job, and she is good at it and takes care of me within the context of that.
Speaker 1:And I have the community which has reclaimed itself in beautiful ways and is thriving in the ways that are healthy, and that is delightful and healing and restorative. That, yes, there are wounds and, yes, look at us, heal them together. How advanced topics is that? But me healing my things and you healing your things and giving back to each other in reciprocal ways that are building healing upon healing, that is exponential. And, also, that leaves me afraid too because the more you care, the more it starts to matter.
Speaker 1:And the more it matters, the more you don't want it taken away. And the more you think about it could be taken away, the more you don't want to be the mistake. Hear that? Be the mistake that makes it go away. And, also, that brings us back to step one.
Speaker 1:That brings us back to the beginning. That brings us back to memory and time. Because in now time, we can keep ourselves safe from harm, and we can approach care, asking for care in the ways that are healthy and the ways that we need specifically for us. And when we do that together, that's secure. Even when there is repair work to do, which there always will be because we are different people.
Speaker 1:And that is part of the healing too. Because when we are under coercive control, whether that is in childhood or religious trauma or relationships in adulthood, We are not allowed to be ourselves. We are not allowed to exist to take up space, which is so sad because we cannot be in relationship without existing. So we grieve parents who didn't know us. We grieve gods that were false idols, and we grieve relationships that were daydreams.
Speaker 1:And also, in doing that work of grieving, we heal ourselves, and we come back into our own skin, and we stand what we can see, and we face those fears, and we realize that we are strong, and we realize that we are still breathing. And that's when we begin to learn how to live because it is our lives, and there is no one who can come in and save our day, who can undo what has already happened, who can rescue us from what others did or fill in the holes of what others didn't do. It's too late. All of those things already happened in memory time. And, also, we can give it to ourselves.
Speaker 1:We can be present with ourselves. And then none of us inside are alone anymore. 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.
Speaker 1:One of the ways we practice this is in community together. The link for the community is in the show notes. 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.
Speaker 1:I'm there to heal too. That's what peer support is all about. Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.