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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: 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:We have listened to the last four episodes, maybe a hundred times, Sharing about the English teacher and letting those interviews play was maybe the most vulnerable we've been thus far on the podcast. We edited them maybe a billion times at least, and the husband listened to them several times with us as well, making sure that all of us were comfortable with what was left to go on air. What's funny is that in the end, the hardest part wasn't sharing on the podcast because the people who listen have been nothing but kind. And we had good boundaries, taking out names where we needed to, trying to be wise even as we shared, and knowing that because she was a teacher from junior high, that all the littles were safe because none of their story was in it. And so those limited disclosures were appropriate for older alters who had capacity to consent.
Speaker 1:We didn't share anything from those who could not. We also had good support because we do have a good therapist now who's going to stay and for better boundaries this time around, but to still get our needs met. We paid her extra money this month for her to spend the time to listen to the podcast and talk to us about them and help us process besides what we were doing in therapy or really as part of it. So extra sessions, I guess, to get us through the healing that this brought, even though it was really hard, and it was a lot. But ultimately, the hardest part was staying present for it, was listening to it, learning from it, and hearing it myself.
Speaker 1:It's been a whole year since we learned about getting on the boat. I don't know if you even remember that podcast, but it was a talk we heard that I'll never forget about crossing in the storm to get to the other side. I didn't know then that everything was gonna change. I didn't know then that we were going to lose so much. I didn't know then that we would barely make it to the other side or that it would be as hard as it has been or that it would be our own feelings that were the stormy seas with waves crashing over us until we nearly drowned.
Speaker 1:If I had known, I wouldn't have done it. I would have stayed silent, and things would have stayed the same. It would have been easier. Safer even, maybe. But I don't think it would have been better.
Speaker 1:It had to be done. Continuing with the podcast over the last year has been really difficult, not because the podcast is hard and not because we're ungrateful to the many, many people who are so kind about it and supportive and encouraging as we continue our journey, but because it's hard to speak when you have no air in your lungs, And it's hard to keep trying when it feels like you've lost everything. And it's hard to stand still in the storm and see what you see and know what you know. And it's hard to feel the waves of those emotions all the way down to the depths of them, the big feelings, the shame, the betrayal, the violation of those who said they would help and didn't, of those you hoped would help but lost their way, of those who wanted to help but weren't strong enough. It hurt more than anything else has ever hurt this last year.
Speaker 1:But it is true that I did make it to the other side. Barely. Barely. But getting to the other side and learning that you can't go back, I wish someone would have told us that up front. I wish someone would have said things would never be the same.
Speaker 1:I wish someone would have stayed to grieve with me that part of things and all the loss that came with it. I wish a lot of things, but I also learned a lot of things. And that's what I want to share in my response to these last four episodes about the English teacher interview and our past. Because while that was a really difficult conversation, even with the parts we edited out and did not include, it was really helpful to see patterns, to have the validation of someone who witnessed some of what we went through, and to hear someone else who was there say, you were only a child, and it was not your fault. And that which you've carried for twenty years never was yours to carry.
Speaker 1:So as hard as it was to talk to her and to share it, Listening to it over and over has set something free in me. I have all these years thought I was evil for running away from home. Never until now did I stop to think, to ask how bad things had to be for all the children to leave as soon as they turned 16, how intentional it all was, how much we wanted to get away. I haven't answered those questions yet, and I don't know that that's work that I will share on the podcast. It's pretty private.
Speaker 1:But they're questions I've seen and questions I've asked out loud now and questions I sent to my therapist. It was also helpful talking to someone to help get a timeline. When I write the story of my life, it comes in pieces. And even when I work to communicate with others inside who no longer go outside with other people, not even in therapy. Because for us, it was not safe after all.
Speaker 1:But even when we're working together, the information I get or the stories I remember or the flashes that come just come in pieces, and putting them in order maybe isn't important to anyone else. But it's hard to develop a sense of self with a capital s when you don't know what order you happened in. And so somehow creating a timeline was really powerful in ways that we didn't expect. Getting things put in order of what happened and where it happened and why it happened provided a structure of our own history, something to cling to, something to reinforce who we are somehow, like giving bones to that capital s. Even if it's not all fleshed out yet, something there is becoming.
Speaker 1:It also helped to hear someone who had been so close to that foster mom that we lived with in high school to know that she really had her own problems and her own issues and that so much of it wasn't about us at all. Because all this time, I just thought I really was that hard and really was that bad and really was that unwanted. And that's another thing That's its own kind of trauma, I think. While it still would have been hard, it would have been easier if people didn't promise things they couldn't do. Some of what was so hard, much of what was so hard in some of those relationships, was that they promised to be my family, but then they weren't.
Speaker 1:Or they promised to keep me, and then they didn't. Or they promised to adopt me, and never did. And we've been left waiting since we were four. I even identified some anger with that, unexpectedly. Someone else, kind of, in a way, Maybe part of Courtney's problem, my problem, I mean.
Speaker 1:Maybe in defense of the Littles, maybe in protection of me as a whole. But understanding now why I didn't believe good people. But understanding now why parts of me didn't believe good people when they made promises, even though everything seemed okay, because part of me knew better. It was also helpful to hear some background things explained. I know that's not always possible, and even when it is, it's really painful and hard to stay and hear or see or know.
Speaker 1:But it's one of those things I wish someone had told me sooner, understanding what happened or why things happened the way they did. Because when you're a child, they don't explain those things. I never knew that that therapist that I lived with was the therapist for all the churches in that town. I never knew that that's why the college sent me to her in the first place. I thought they sent me there because she was an expert.
Speaker 1:I never knew that the foster mom had read my journal and that that's why she wouldn't let me come home again. If someone would have told me that, I could have learned the lesson, and I would have stopped writing sooner instead of just this year. But because no one told me that or explained that, I wrote in those journals for the therapist at the college, and that's what got me in trouble with my parents. And then when I found my diaries from when I was a little girl, like second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade. I gave them to a piano teacher to keep them safe because I didn't want them to go back to my parents like the other notebooks had.
Speaker 1:But when the school told her I had DID, she decided that wasn't real, which meant I wasn't real, and she threw them away. And there are more stories I don't want to talk about right now, but that seems to be one of the patterns of my traumas in a small t way that to me feels like a big t, that there's this pattern of me writing over and over again and it always being lost or stolen or taken away or destroyed. And I wonder if maybe that's part of why the podcast became so important to me, even though it's so counterintuitive and was so terrifying to do. Because this time, it was my choice to send my words out on my own terms instead of them being taken away and sent to everybody else. It was also a fascinating experience and maybe kind of a relief kind of way.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure the word for it yet. But to learn that DID was a thing before I even knew what it was. So it wasn't just me making it up or a bad therapist diagnosing it. It really was an issue, not something I made up or the therapist made up because it was there before any of that. I didn't know that she could see or notice all of that in my behavior at school or church or in the notebooks of my journals that she got to read before I ever even met the therapist that diagnosed us the first time.
Speaker 1:That's part of why it was so powerful to have someone who lived through those experiences with me as a witness, even who witnessed the attack of my family that followed my leaving home or saw clearly that I was a child at that time or noticed that other people were toxic and abusive and that it wasn't just me that was the problem. To have someone be a witness and say that I was not responsible for the relationship with adults when I was only a child, that I was not responsible for the abuse that happened when I was a child. I know that therapists say that all the time. And I know that not everyone has an English teacher to come back and say, No, I was there, and it was not your fault. But that's one reason it felt important to share this interview, even though it was so hard and so scary to share.
Speaker 1:Because not everyone has someone to say that to them, so maybe they needed to hear it from me, from her to me, to us, all of us, that we were children, that we were not responsible for the behavior of the adults in our lives, that we should have been taken care of, that we should have been cared for and loved and nurtured, that we should have been safe. That absolution she said so many times, You were a child. You were a child. You were a child. Is maybe one of the most healing things anyone has ever said to me.
Speaker 1:And in this case, because she was there, maybe that's why I could believe her. Talking to her also helped me see what happened was really not okay and that it really was damaging and that it matters not just because of my own guilt or shame or however it got internalized, but because it means what happened to me was real and it's actually okay to ask for help dealing with it. Because as long as the problem was me, I was left helpless and hopeless because there's nothing I can do to change that. There's finality in that, that it's me that's wrong, my nature that's wrong, something about me that I can't change. It is me who is the problem.
Speaker 1:But when that is proven false and I am not the problem, it opens up room for the possibility of hope that I can get help with my problems because it's something outside of me, something that happened to me instead of who I am. And you guys, if that's possible, do you know what that implies? It implies that I am someone, and I really wanna know who that is. I really want to be just someone, a human being that counts, that matters. I don't need things or attention or any kind of special treatment.
Speaker 1:It's not that kind of drama. I just wanna be a human. And so here I live in the country now, away from everyone, and a pandemic where disconnection is justified. But I'm happy with my family and my trees and my land and the chickens, watching the sunset behind the horses, hiking over the hill to the lake, camping with my children as fall comes, realizing that even the part of me that I thought was the scariest has something to offer, Teaching my children about berries and leaves, nuts and flowers, and all the things that you can do with them in good and safe and healing ways, that things I was trained to do and given knowledge of can be used for good. The things that the English teacher talked about were really hard to hear.
Speaker 1:Some of them I knew from journaling, even if they didn't feel like mine. Other things were really hard to hear and also unexpected, too much even. But I had my tappers and was able to let those pieces just come at me and sort of absorb the shock but stay present, which was new for me and somehow made me feel strong. Like, maybe my bones were growing flesh on them. Like, maybe that's the someone I'm becoming, someone who is strong.
Speaker 1:Another piece that was difficult was that she called the therapist I live with abusive and a perpetrator. That's still hard for me and doesn't sit well. I was told that that's called trauma bonding, when you support your abuser because your life depends on them. And my life did depend on her. But I'm not sure about trauma bonding, and we have different perspectives on it, and it doesn't feel good to sit with that peace.
Speaker 1:I feel like she was trying to help and really did save my life. But also, maybe we had to redefine what was actually helpful. So it's hard to see that as bad, because helpful is good, right? And she talked about that therapist that we lived with as being something that was not good for me. But I don't know that living with her was the hard part.
Speaker 1:I was young enough that it was very much like any other foster care situation, and that what was hard was that she didn't really choose me back. It's hard sometimes when people in the name of ministry or service or God are kind or good because it's who they want to be and who they think God is. But they're doing it for those reasons, not actually because you matter or because they know you or because they want you. So while sometimes there are really good people in the world, even good people of faith, we we've worked hard on our own faith issues even. But what matters is when someone loves you for who you are and chooses you back and comes after you in good and healthy ways, like what the middle school counselor said about initiating and taking turns and seeking you out.
Speaker 1:If someone really cares about you, They think of you, and they respond to you, and there's evidence that they choose you back. But many times with foster care and therapists, it mattered when we were there because they want to do a good job, but they didn't notice when we slipped away. And with foster parents or the therapists that we lived with, They just let us go. Maybe they were respecting our agency or trying to let us feel like they were safe because we got to make our own decisions. But I already know I can make my own decisions because I've had to since I was a child.
Speaker 1:I've had to keep myself alive. I already can do that. So don't tell me that's nurturing because it never was. What's nurturing is when you really care, even if you've got all your healthy boundaries in place. I don't want to be on someone's list, and I don't want to be a project that people are assigned because being on someone's list is about them and how important and how good they are.
Speaker 1:It's not about me. And being someone's ministry makes me an assignment, not a person. And when they go on to their next assignment or their next person on their list, I'm left behind every flippin' time. And it's quiet there when you fight back tears, while the world moves on without you and doesn't seem to notice. So I don't know if it was trauma bonding or not.
Speaker 1:I can work on that in therapy. But mostly it just felt like foster care, with no one noticing when you moved on. And someone asked me about the going back. So that piece is still tangled a bit, and I think it's why the last year was so hard for us. Not only is that piece tangled, but I had to do some very hard work to be sure the last year was not the same thing.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't until talking to the English teacher did I realize that the whole last year was a trigger for all of that back then. And the English teacher said at one point that line about how you can't go back to your perpetrator. But I kept trying to go back to that therapist or this last one before, waiting to be noticed, trying to engage, but it never works. And that doesn't feel like trauma bonding or foster care. That feels like domestic violence.
Speaker 1:That's what it feels like because you keep going back to get hurt on purpose, and there's something gross about that and something shaming about that. And these interviews helped me set myself free from that and just let it go. But the last year has absolutely been its own trauma. And because the pandemic happened in the middle of it, it was like being on pause for six months, alone in sorting it out. And it was absolutely one of the hardest years of my life, hands down, and I've been through a lot.
Speaker 1:But this was maybe the hardest. Another thing that I learned was with my friend who's a good person, but not good for me. I had to realize it was okay to recognize that. She's self absorbed in her own issues the way I am with my own stuff, like with DID or just because I have six children. But that doesn't make her bad or me bad.
Speaker 1:So it's okay to recognize she's a good person but not safe for me to share things with, because she wasn't going to hold pieces for me or reflect them back to me. I'm not going to get anything from her, so I've got to stop giving pieces of myself away. That's important to notice and recognize and receive so that I can adjust my expectations of that friendship. And once that work is done, I can also see it's a capacity issue that she has. She can't go very deep, but also a preference she has because when she does, it's not going to be with me.
Speaker 1:And understanding that helps me see it's about her, not about me. So I don't have to try so hard. I can let that go too. It's okay to be me, okay to not need her, but also okay to let her be who she is and meet her needs in her own way that are meaningful to her. I don't need her.
Speaker 1:I'm okay and actually healthier without waiting around on her to nurture me. She's not going to. She's not dangerous, but she's not nurturing. That's okay, but it's important information for me to see clearly. But it's also okay to know I'm in a place of wanting to be more real and more present and more nurturing to myself and others in my relationships.
Speaker 1:So it's okay to recognize she's not a good match for me or that it's not a possibility. There's freedom in letting go of what is not good for me. Another piece from the English teacher that was really, really big for me, that was really, really big for us, was about being kept a secret when the English teacher talked about being groomed by her therapist. The obvious layer is that there were secrets from the abuse when I was little. That piece is there, so secrets are bad.
Speaker 1:Right? But then in foster care, it's a common thing to be not quite included. For example, your pictures are not on the wall with the biological children, or you are not taken on vacations with the rest of the family, or you are not invited to extended family events. It's really hard, as if the grown ups are playing pretend and the game is you belonging, except none of it's actually true, and all of them are lying. That's what the last year felt like.
Speaker 1:That's what living with a therapist felt like, and that's what foster care felt like. So when we were foster parents, we made sure to do that differently in the ways that we could. We made sure to always get group and family pictures when new children came to the home and hung them up so that they would see they mattered. We took them to the cabin with us, to the husband's parents with us, and made sure they were included on vacations and holidays, because I know what that's like when you're not. So to go through that with my therapist, for her to say we're a family and then have extra moments of not being included and also not get a new therapist, that was hard.
Speaker 1:I remember once being introduced at her Christmas party as her mutt, the stray that she had picked up along the way. I didn't want to be her mutt. I didn't want to be a stray picked up along the way. If it wasn't going to be real, I was better off on my own. I knew how to manage that.
Speaker 1:I didn't need a fake family to reject me on top of everyone else. No wonder I had attachment problems. So with these pretend people and pretend family and pretend friends who were not real, even though they thought they were doing good, I was a person and not a project. No one took my picture and tagged me and was proud to know me. No one said sweet things about me that others could see.
Speaker 1:I didn't need public acknowledgment. It wasn't about that. It was about not wanting to be a secret, because that feels bad. That's why it was so meaningful to me when my friend who also had a mom killed in a car accident showed up on my front porch with sign language she had learned, because it was my language and her seeing me beyond what was just easy. That's why it was so meaningful to me when my friend, who also has a sick child, posted on her public profile on DID Awareness Day.
Speaker 1:She didn't tag me because of confidentiality and respecting that, but she still spoke up in her own way, and it meant something to me. That's what was so weird, good weird, in a healing way, and why the award from the ISSTD earlier this year meant so much. Not because I needed an award to keep going and not because they like everything that I say or do or because of some kind of need for approval. It was because I was acknowledged as a colleague even though I am also a survivor, and I found that I was not the only one and that I am not alone. It was powerful to find out so many of us are here because we are not the secret.
Speaker 1:So the last year has been painful and hard, in part because it really was that hard what happened and how it unfolded, but also in part because I stayed present to feel it. And things are harder when you're feeling instead of when you're dissociating. Things are harder when you feel your feelings instead of avoiding them. But it doesn't mean things were worse. Things were harder, but they were better, and I am happier now.
Speaker 1:I learned that I am actually capable of maintaining friendships. Even when it's hard and even if I do it differently, I can do it in a way that works with me, for me, and be unique in my own self, with a capital s, and what I have to offer my chosen friendships with people who choose me back. It helped me reclaim parts of myself, like recognizing when the English teacher talked about how she once asked me if my joining a specific church was because of my cult experiences in the past. What I learned from thinking about what she asked and what it meant, there is part of me that loves ritual in a good and healing way. There is a ring of familiarity and ritual that is very comfortable to me, a part of me that does not get many opportunities for expression in safe and healthy ways.
Speaker 1:Even if that ritual is starting the day by letting the chickens out or ending the day watching the goldfish in the pond, Ritual can mean many things. I talked about how hard it was having friends that I love but am not able to share parts of my life related to DID, and how that feels like going undercover because we have to be more covert about switching and our presentation. That's true, and I needed to say it out loud. That we change circles entirely, and I cannot even explain that to them. That the ones they knew are not here, that I'm learning them starting from notes scratched onto pages, that we are a different me than we were a year ago.
Speaker 1:But I also wanted to add, because it's true, that it has been good for me in ways I didn't know it would be. It was hard, so hard, to hold the idea of being safe, but it not being safe to present all of me however I wanted. It was brutally painful. But also, it taught me to regulate in new ways. It didn't have to be false, just calculated, not in a bad or fake way, but like how that one therapist taught me it was okay to dissociate on purpose as part of containment and regulating.
Speaker 1:When I am with those friends, I have to dissociate from parts of me that can't be there. At first, it was traumatic. I think, really, it is a trauma, and I will have to talk about it in therapy. But I think what was hardest was that at first, no one told me the rules had changed. It took me three months to figure that out, and another three months to adapt to realize the rules had changed.
Speaker 1:I think it would have been better if we had just talked about it openly. Part of me really felt oppressed or patronized or betrayed something, I'm not sure, Because the decision was made in my best interest, but without me there, that didn't feel safe, and I think contributed to some of the isolation that I felt that was so traumatic and ultimately almost cost me my life. But it didn't, and I'm still here. And I see what was good was that I learned to have friendships with only parts of me, but still authentically, and I think that was important. I could do that before, but it was role specific, like a job, for example, and so it would happen through splitting or creating a new alter.
Speaker 1:And that's what happened last fall. But this was about me as a wall outside my own system, fronting to protect those inside when it wasn't safe for them to be out front, and protecting those outside when it wasn't permitted to connect with those inside. I have never known so much grief in all of my life. But I learned more about my friends on the outside because I was more focused on them instead of my own system or being so self absorbed with my own traumas. But I also learned to be more present and tolerant of parts of myself that needed safety in a time when it felt like we had lost that.
Speaker 1:I learned to stay for my friends instead of running away, because in the past, I would have just disappeared. But they didn't let me, and that means something. But I also learned how to attend to myself in ways that gave good care and comfort to me. So it was a very hard year, but it increased my capacity both in friendship and internally. I learned that we, as a system, are, or me, as myself, I am capable of deciding what is best for myself, who I can be friends with and what that looks like, who is good in my life but I can adjust my expectations for, and what I am or am not open to or okay with in the relationships in my life.
Speaker 1:And that's a lot of power, as it turns out. And it's mine just from the work of the last year. And it's mine now even if I haven't finished therapy. I am a work in progress and already okay as I am right now today. I am what makes now time safe.
Speaker 1:So you know the way other people watch streaming videos to escape. Survivors find people who mean well and give them a taste of what regular life is like. But the show always ends, and you're back to where you started. No one actually gets you out of there. It doesn't actually go away.
Speaker 1:That's another reason toxic positivity or false validation is so triggering and will so often backfire because of its incongruence. How do you navigate that, being who you are and having endured what you have? It's like watching the stars. I can learn a lot about them, but I'm never going to be one of them. I will always be below, somehow, left in the dark, while they shine and dance with each other, singing songs I cannot hear and will never know.
Speaker 1:I will be far away and looking up and overwhelmed by the goodness of such beauty, but never a part of it. Still, just me, sitting in the dirt, hiding behind a tree, waiting for the sun to come up. Because when it blinds me enough to outshine the stars, I don't have to look anymore. I'm not left alone anymore. I'm not cold anymore.
Speaker 1:I'm warmed. I can play. I can be where I'm supposed to be and just be me. I remember that it's okay because I don't really wanna be a star anyway. So the day is easier and safer if I just close my eyes in the night and dream about forgetting instead of waking to stars.
Speaker 1:But it never works. Because I always dream that I'm back there, and then the pain comes back, whether that's a nightmare from abuse in my childhood or the betrayal of so many at different times in the stories the English teacher told, or whether it's the therapist's office from last year. That's not even there anymore. It's like having a dream about someone who's died, when you get to hear them and see them and feel them again for just a moment. But then when you wake, somehow the loss is deeper because you know they're not coming back.
Speaker 1:And the English teacher says, I can't go back. And the pain of that is deep and real. And I felt so foolish, forever having opened myself up to that. But what I realized in the end was that the trigger was that I needed you, and you weren't there. That's the pattern with all the toxic foster parents, with the therapist I lived with, that meant so well, and the whole last year that tried to kill me.
Speaker 1:I needed you, and you weren't there. And that was not my fault. And I was not bad for needing in the first place. I was not wrong for wanting help. We are not bad for not wanting to be alone.
Speaker 1:So all of this hurt, but the reason it was important to share is so that we can together remember that we are not alone, that we can get through, that we have gotten through, that even when it's hard, things are better now than they were. And the leaving was good and right even though it seemed impossible. And to remember when you listen to it over and over again, you can't go back. Don't go back. Sit in the sun.
Speaker 1:Let it warm you. Feel the love around you from the birds and the trees and the changing colors of the leaves. Watch the fish dance in the pond. Watch the horses play in the field. Dream you are a bird in the sky.
Speaker 1:Watch the children play with the chickens. But don't go back. You can't go back. 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.
Speaker 1:Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemsspeak.com. We'll see you there.