Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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 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
Speaker 2:to the podcast. Thank you. We have emails today, and the first one says, I cannot even with you. Canada to America, your country is not our fireball. I do like a good road trip, for sure.
Speaker 2:Here's another one says, Your road trip episodes are always some of my favorites. Oh my goodness. Thanks, guys. This email says, I'm sorry that sometimes you feel like no one understands or if anyone can relate. I just wanna be clear that lots of us relate, and we're so glad you're out there.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. I also got a picture of someone raising their hand in the community. Someone raised their hand and posted a picture of them relating to. So I don't even remember what episode that came from, but I'm really grateful. You guys are so supportive.
Speaker 2:Someone said, I was asked to donate to System Speak for someone's birthday. I just wanted to offer my appreciation and gratitude for all that you do. Thank you so much, and also happy birthday, happy New Year to those peoples. In the forum, I totally got called out. I got totally called out.
Speaker 2:They said, Emma, m, maybe it's not fair for me to call you in without listening to the whole episode. But, hey, you deserve love and support and help, and you've got it backwards. Asking for help doing your codependency homework is not codependent at all. It's part of the solution. Remember what you read about isolation?
Speaker 2:Doing it all alone is codependent. Yeah. No. I don't remember that at all. Hey, parts of me.
Speaker 2:Are we listening to this too? I hope so. If we believe in order to be deserving, we need to learn a program of recovery that is codependent. Feeling undeserving of loving support is codependent. Thinking of recovery as homework is codependent because, again, it centers our isolated labor instead of the give and take of loving energy in a supportive community that is the actual opposite of codependent.
Speaker 2:Remember what you taught us? Connection brings healing. Oh my goodness. Connection brings healing. In program, we have the opportunity to approach a member whose sharing speaks to us and who has learned something we want to learn.
Speaker 2:If we approach that person, we may ask them to sponsor us or take a non hierarchical fellow traveler relationship and work the program together. It is literally the least codependent thing. Okay. I will go listen to the rest now. I needed this reminder so much I can't even tell you.
Speaker 2:So in the most uncodependent way, I just wanna thank you truly. Oh, they followed it with your sharing your experience, strength, and hope with us in this episode, as in so many others, is definitely helpful in a not codependent way as long as you let it become a place where you can receive and not just give. You are doing amazing work for yourselves, and I feel so grateful to be in community with you. Okay. I had to give some time and space before I could read that out loud because it made me cry really hard for a long time.
Speaker 2:You know what else did? Terry's message. Terry, you also made me cry. That episode, Right to Run, they didn't even say anything. In the podcast forum, they just posted a picture of a wolf, and I lost it.
Speaker 2:Terry, thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart. Oh my goodness. I can't with the feels tonight. Terry also said, about the road trip episodes. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I really needed these happy episodes. I've been working on codependence and gaslighting in therapy and in life. I've been studying and following references from podcasts, and I don't see a way out. It's so much. So this was a very welcome podcast.
Speaker 2:It made me laugh and gives me hope. Oh, I'm glad. It was a coming up for air for me after a year for sure, and you will hear about that later. Lisa said, I'm the co. This episode, oh my.
Speaker 2:I'm getting the book. Thank you for bringing it to my attention and giving a snapshot of the content. So many toes stepped on. I am also a codependent. Thank you for all that you share.
Speaker 2:Also, someone else shared that, along with that, hope for today and a little time for myself, the Al Anon Daily readers are similarly revolutionary for recovery from codependency, and they are recommended. For dissociative people, having things in manageable one page chunks is huge. There you go. So some more resources. Wow.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay. I'm just reading all the things. Michelle says, we are so grateful for what you share and the journey of becoming yourself even while still getting to know yourselves. Sometimes it's hard when the road is long, and it's hard enough to track where I am in the present anyway.
Speaker 2:So to see the ups and downs of your journey, but in the authenticity of who you are and the good that you are offering us even when it's just what you are also learning for yourself. It is everything to us, and we are grateful. Also, my therapist is grateful. We are all learning together for sure. Charlie writes, I would like to know when more OG episodes are coming back.
Speaker 2:It's been a hot minute, and we're excited. Trying not to hold our breath here and don't mean to put pressure on you. We just wanted you to know that we are all still interested. Oh my goodness. I so appreciate this.
Speaker 2:You guys, the only reason all that came to a screeching halt was literally because I have children and summertime happened and work and all the things. I have been working really, really hard. I don't know where the line is. Okay. Let's just talk about this for a hot minute.
Speaker 2:It is off topic. Sorry, Charlie, but thanks for the segue. It is a hard line. Wait. No.
Speaker 2:Hard to see the line, a blurry line. I don't know where the line is. That's the problem. I know that overproductivity is flight and that that is a trauma response and that there are so many of us out there, especially with relational trauma, who are overfunctioning. And, also, when you are the only one providing for an entire giant family of teenagers, like, it's just exhausting, and it's hard.
Speaker 2:And I am working my tail off. I get to work every morning around six or 06:30, sometimes earlier, like, closer to five. It depends on how long it takes me to walk and all that stuff to get ready in the morning. And then I am working until five or six or seven. Some nights, eight.
Speaker 2:And I'm just worn out, and there's literally no time for anything else. And so if I do get off earlier, like, at five, then, of course, I'm parenting. But then by the time it's actually bedtime for me, like, I'm worn out. And the other issue is pragmatic that I don't have a computer at home right now. And so if I'm not at my office, I can't go to groups.
Speaker 2:I cannot work on OG episodes. I cannot work on, like, system speak or the website or approve people or get things moving. So I'm just kind of limited right now in time and energy and spoons. And, also, I've been trying really hard not to stress about it because there's so much on my plate. I'm just taking care of the things as I can and being grateful when I do have time that can be more flexible.
Speaker 2:Right now, I just gotta feed my family. And so I am pro OG episodes coming back. I hope that as the weather cools off and things settle down a little bit, that I will be able to get back to that. And, also, I'm not promising because I just got an email from Rich Lowenstein, and he's telling me we have to completely revamp and review and edit the, like, emerging adult treatment guidelines, and that now they are not going to come out or be published until 2026 because they did not make the deadlines this year for them to be published next year. So that puts our whole guidelines completely out of date.
Speaker 2:And so he sent me all this stuff I have to edit, and that is a huge project. And I lost a lot of my team, so it's gonna be me until I get some more support for that. So I really think that, there's just a lot of things happening. And I don't mean it's more important than OG, but when, like, I have to get my work hours done or projects other people are waiting on or something that's, like, legit important for the community, like the treatment guidelines, it just feels like OG episodes are a silly thing on the side. They're not really, and I know that even having that thought means that my life is a little out of balance.
Speaker 2:And, also, I'm aware that it's out of balance. It is a season, y'all, and I am doing my best. I know there are so many of us that understand this because there are so many of us that, like, are just not privileged with resources. I'm just gonna say it like that with no shame. Okay?
Speaker 2:And I know that by default and because of support that, like, I'm just grateful. I need to feed the kids. I need to keep us housed, and I am doing my best. But thank you for checking in. Sincerely, I mean that, and thank you for the encouragement to keep trying.
Speaker 2:I think I also have a little panic a little panic of just being worried because I know when I get the episodes back up, it throws off people's numbers or episodes that I like, I know it's like, I can't fix what I've already done. Right? It's already in the past. I took them down. Getting them back up is a pain.
Speaker 2:It messes up your feed. I'm sorry. Some people get anxious about that, then I get anxious about that. But I am learning to not be distressed about other people's distress. I don't mean in a cold and dismissive way.
Speaker 2:I mean, in a not my fireball way. What is my fireball is say I'm sorry that I took the episodes down and learning how to navigate it more safely and to learn and to practice tending to the people I care about and listeners who support the podcast. So I'm gonna try to do all those things. And also, I am doing my best. But, Charlie, thanks for hanging in there with me, really.
Speaker 2:Dani says, Leaving the garden was so powerful, super vulnerable, and very personal. And I don't mean to interfere or step on your toes or get too intrusive. And, also, I just wanna say your story has paralleled mine a lot this year in that way. And so it meant a lot to me for you to help me find words and expressing in therapy what I was going through. Thank you so much for sharing.
Speaker 2:We would also like to ask questions about how to sponsor more songs because we love your piano music and instrumentals, and, also, we miss you singing. I know that's a licensing thing and that it's expensive, and so I'm curious how we can donate to that cause specifically. Oh, that's so kind. You guys just really blow me away, and I think it's such an example of how it takes all of us together. And that earlier post that was talking about me receiving, that is one way I receive is making it possible what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 2:Like, the number one thing that could help me and my family is supporting systems speak so that we can give what we want to give. Like, making that connection possible and that source of support possible because we can't sustain it on our own. We just cannot. And having that support for systems speak makes all the difference in how we can deliver, what we can deliver. And even right now, I've got a team.
Speaker 2:We've been working on grant writing really hard, trying to get some of the programming. We're ready to start, but we still have to be able to pay for it. And so it's just incredible services and such incredible support. So to think of something that feels like a small thing like music, and yet for some people, that is their language. For me, it is a miracle.
Speaker 2:And I don't mean that in a churchy way. I mean that in an authentic, so much deep gratitude for being able to hear, to reclaim that. And I don't mean that ableist of myself. I mean, in a getting to experience orally what I got to study mathematically and was so curious about before. It's just powerful.
Speaker 2:So, yes, I will email you about some songs. Thank you. This email says, I really do not want you to say my name on the podcast. Okay. You know what I love about this?
Speaker 2:That is a boundary. It is explicit. It is direct. I can understand it, which makes it very easy to respect it. So thank you for that.
Speaker 2:I mean it. What I want to share on the podcast for your emails episodes is that the right to run was one of the most powerful episodes I've ever listened to in my life. It was life changing for me. I took took it to therapy, and we've been talking about it for weeks. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:And we've been talking about it since it aired. Thank you so much for sharing, truly. And kudos to your therapist. Well done. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. My therapist has worked so hard. I can't even tell you how hard my therapist has worked. And, also, it is working, and it is helping. And I have hope even when things are not easy.
Speaker 2:And I don't I don't just mean memory time. Now time stuff is hard too and you're gonna hear more about that in a few weeks. But it's just it has been a lot and also still waiting for pieces to unfold so that we can share more fully some of what we've been through and how much it means to us that not just, like, teasing about accidentally attaching to our therapist, but our therapist, like, showing up. In ways that are really powerful and part of those restorative experiences that are really uncomfortable because they're so painful in the first place, but then feel like sun burn experiences trying to tend to them. And she's now beginning it beautifully, and I'm really, really grateful.
Speaker 2:This email says, I cannot even handle the curvy mountains. Did you even talk to Kim about curvy mountains before you aired that? Because I guarantee the listeners are delighted. The curvy mountains, we were just playing and teasing, and we really have been working so hard. So to get away felt really good, and I feel like the pendulum just sort of went swinging.
Speaker 2:We we I did not go swinging. The pendulum went swinging, to be clear. And, I just oh my goodness. I think it's just something about the freedom away from work and parenting, and then also the freedom of embracing my own sexuality and myself even when it's teasing or playful because I'm not trying to be inappropriate. And also, there's a time and a space for what Clarissa in the Wolf's book calls the sacred profane where you know what?
Speaker 2:We all live in bodies. And part of learning to love ourselves is learning to love our body too. And part of learning to express ourselves is learning to express our body too and responding to those things. So I don't even just mean sexually even though I was teasing about the curvy mountains. And also, y'all need to see these mountains.
Speaker 2:That's all I'm gonna say about that. Joanne says, did I get an email from you from ISSTD? Okay. So what that is is, yes, I have taken back my attendance job at ISSTD. I've been doing that all summer.
Speaker 2:It just really became necessary. And, also, I had taken off last year to do the plenary. So since the plenary was done, I did return to that job. So I am doing attendance again for ISSTD and also sort of, starting to do other things like the certificates and the CEUs and all of that. So it is one of the things that is taking a lot of time.
Speaker 2:And, also, it feeds my children. But that's funny that you recognize my name in the emails. That's really funny. I am so glad that you are connected to ISSTD and that it's been helpful for you. That actually relates to our next email that says, hey.
Speaker 2:It's been a wild ride of a year, and I know that you are taking care of yourself, and I am so proud of you for it. And also, I was curious if you would be having clinical guests again. Okay. This is a fair question, and I appreciate you asking. So, again, last year, I took the whole year off.
Speaker 2:I did not interview people, and I just focused on the plenary. There was so much online stuff going on. There was so much going on with me with faith transition and family transition. I just did not do that at all. I have since done some interviews, including doctor Melissa Kaufman and doctor Matt Robinson.
Speaker 2:I have talked to them. There are obviously legal boundaries on that conversation that don't have anything to do with me. Okay? So it's just getting to know them, how they learned about trauma and dissociation and what they're doing now, very much like other clinical guests that come on the podcast. I did not dig into that further nor do nor was that possible.
Speaker 2:I have been trying to get doctor Melissa Kaufman on the podcast for ten years, legit. So I accepted the terms that were entirely healthy and appropriate boundaries and not mine to set. But I was super excited to talk to them, so that's coming. Also, John Cleveland is coming up. He's one of the funniest people at ISSTD, so I will just let him speak for himself.
Speaker 2:Valerie Sinason from The UK is coming up next year as part of some very hard, difficult episodes in January that I wanna warn you about before we even get there. So that's coming up. And then some others as well. And, also, I'm just pacing things differently. There's a couple things.
Speaker 2:I am not going to pay people to come on the podcast for two reasons. One, it's exploitive of me. Even though I understand people want to be supported for their time, this is a community based thing and a nonprofit thing, and I don't feel like it's a wise use of systems speak funds. And so I'm not doing that, and I don't think that when we're doing conversationals for for peer support in that way, it's not a gift if we're having to earn it, and it sets up the abuse dynamic. So I'm not okay with that.
Speaker 2:I don't pay for guests, and I don't accept payment to be a guest. It's just not part of a culture that I want to engage in even though also I understand people wanna be paid for their time. If someone is gonna pay me to speak as in a presentation, I do a lot of work on that and research in a different way. But just inviting people to come to the table, it is too activating for me, and I have ethical issues with it. So some people just aren't gonna be on the podcast because they demand payment, which is absolutely fine.
Speaker 2:That's their fireball. And, also, I'm just not gonna participate in that. The podcast has never been sponsored. There are no resources besides what I need for my family. I don't have that level of privilege, and we've made it a nonprofit now partly so that the system speak community can survive on its own and partly so that it's not at the detriment of my family.
Speaker 2:So I can't complicate that further for lots of reasons. So one thing is that there are some people that just will not come on. Other things are just difficult. So, like, Ruth Linus agreed to come on. They've been scheduled, like, four different times, had to cancel because of different things, and it's just too hard to track that.
Speaker 2:Like, if somebody wants to be here, they're gonna be here. Bethany Brand, we had her as a guest. Lost it because technology, I will never forget it. Yes. I have brought it up again.
Speaker 2:And, also, they are busy and she is busy enough that she's not coming back on. She was like, no. I'm not playing games. I'm busy. I'm saving the world.
Speaker 2:I'm like, respect. And, also, like, I don't know. It's hard. Maybe if I have some random day where things are calm enough and I can send out an email and they respond and it works out, of course, I would love to keep trying. And, also, I'm just here, and I'm trying to feed the children.
Speaker 2:And if you wanna be on, come on. I also like talking to more lived experience now that we've had a lot of clinical guests, so we focused on that some this year. So we'll just see what the mix is. But the other piece too is that Jules and I have been doing more and more recaps. And one thing that was super fun last year is that during the winter, when there were less things that we could do, we like to be outside.
Speaker 2:When we could not be outside because it snows 10 feet at a time here, not really, we would watch the nerdy webinars and then do the recaps, and then I spread them out of actually airing them throughout the year. So, like, at the end of the year, allegedly, you're going to hear a recap of a webinar of John O'Neil's that we heard, who's a friend of mine, pioneer in the field, wrote the brick, big time stuff. He was part of that psychoanalyst, all day conference. You've heard some of those sessions. We've already done those recaps.
Speaker 2:This one just hasn't aired yet. Right now, it's scheduled for the very December. And, also, it was recorded. Jules and I recorded that, like, last September or October or something. So, like, some things just sort of if it's independent enough and not urgent enough where, like, it's super powerful or super helpful or super or super historical where it's important enough to but not, like, urgent as part of the narrative of my therapy or, like, fresh information that we need to get out, which is kind of what's happening in January, then those episodes just kinda float.
Speaker 2:So they get those are the ones that get bumped around a little bit. So John O'Neil's episode just has gotten bumped back for a year after year. So he has already been on the podcast himself, but this recap, we are excited to share just because it's fun in nerd land, and you can skip it if not. The other question that they asked is about if Nathan is going to be back on the podcast. I asked him that.
Speaker 2:He said he will be back on the podcast if he has something to talk about. But I can tell you let me see. If things don't get bumped around and I never know. Right? So I'm not promising.
Speaker 2:But as it looks right now, there's actually a week next week after this airs, there are family episodes with Nathan and the kids on Monday and Thursday. So, yeah, he's gonna be back. There's no drama there. I'm just gay. Like, it's kinda simple.
Speaker 2:Kinda simple. So thank you for asking about that. And I appreciate also there's there's a section that says I can share generally, but not read the actual email, which is fine. But about appreciating the conversations with Jules and also keeping the balance of me sharing my story, I think we're just sort of letting it evolve. There are times where that is really scary, being by myself.
Speaker 2:There are times where sharing the podcast with someone else is really scary. And I think where I land is when it is safe enough, then having more lived experience voices is what matters because we're not all the same. And I know my experience is so isolated and disenfranchised that it's not gonna resonate with everybody, and that's okay. But Jules has a different story and a different perspective and broader experience in some ways, and so that's really helpful. And, I think we're just learning together and sort of navigating it as we go in ways that we hope are helpful, but also doing a lot of checks with ourselves and each other and our therapists to make sure nothing goes up that doesn't feel safe enough.
Speaker 2:And that just is a lot of work too. But the road trip, that's been fun, and I'm glad you got to hear it because it really was good and beautiful and wonderful. And, as always, I appreciate your support so much, and we are so grateful. And I hope that we get to see you in the community. We have some fun things coming.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community @www.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.