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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:Okay. I know that you're tired of hearing about Taylor Swift. And, also, this weekend was the weekend when the final show of the Eris tour came out, the movie of the concert with the tortured poets department set as well. It's a whole thing. Okay?
Speaker 1:Just flow with me. We don't have to talk about that part. What's significant to me, though, is the timing. Because I am working on original episodes coming back, and also, I am to the point in the original episodes that are right before I left Oklahoma. So listening again through these and hearing what was going on and what led me into everything that's happened since, sort of like the dominoes falling and all the way to where I'm at now, that entire season was encompassed by the Era's tour.
Speaker 1:So after I left Oklahoma, it was only a few months later, like as we were getting settled and kids getting settled after we moved up north, it was only a little while later that the ARRIS tour came out.
Speaker 3:The three boys are racing, and I'm gonna decide who's going there.
Speaker 1:Super cool.
Speaker 3:They're racing to the park.
Speaker 1:Where are they racing? To the park. In the parking lot? Okay. I'm just smiling at them.
Speaker 4:We have the advantage.
Speaker 1:Okay. I am not upset. I'm in shock that we're doing this. And also, it's fine. I'm just coming out of shiny happy shock.
Speaker 1:There's no cars. You're fine. Have fun. Try not to roll over your run over your sister.
Speaker 4:You got it.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. They have met. They're calling him a professional biker. We're at the skate park. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:So many things are happening, and I wanna tell you all of the things. We are at the skate park Because they are playing at the skate park and I have already had a really long walk, I thought, oh, I have time to podcast. But, of course, as soon as I start recording, they come to me. And now they are racing in the parking lot. The parking lot is actually empty of cars except for mine.
Speaker 1:I just auditorily and mentally and state shifting ing, it was a lot to process. They're not in danger. They're old enough to take care of themselves. My youngest is well within the zone of safety as the judge for this race. All of the things.
Speaker 1:And, also, we're racing in the parking lot was new language for me to absorb, and it took a minute. They are so patient with me as I continue to come out of shiny happy, And also, it's fine. All the things are true. This is an example exactly what I'm talking about, though. Because when I left Oklahoma, we were definitely oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:I asked the guy, and he said I can call him bacon.
Speaker 1:Okay. Have fun. Oh my goodness. She's calling this other teenager bacon. I'm just okay.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. Okay. Okay. So this is so classic. I would like to give a shout out to Caroline and other moms who still listen.
Speaker 1:I can't even focus my thoughts to share what I was trying to share. And, also, I know from Al Anon, that's a me problem. I'm the one
Speaker 3:who was trying to record while they were at the park.
Speaker 1:I still have to parent, which means I cannot be recording. When I was trying to leave Oklahoma, I was coming out of Shiny Happy and also still in Shiny Happy. I knew I needed to geographically distance myself, and I knew I needed to come up for air. I knew my body was not allowing me to go back into the church buildings. And also, I was thinking that, like,
Speaker 3:oh, no. They're coming to check on
Speaker 1:me because they saw me talking with my hand, so they think I'm calling them over. Oh my goodness. This is so classic. Yes?
Speaker 4:Hey. You you were signing, so I didn't know if you were talking to me. Or
Speaker 1:No. You're okay. I want you to have fun. I was signing because I am recording.
Speaker 4:Let me get my water. If that's okay. Okay. Goodbye.
Speaker 1:Love you.
Speaker 4:Love you.
Speaker 3:Bye bye.
Speaker 1:Okay. I'm just gonna keep this rolling. This will be wild to edit, and I don't know what I will leave in. But this is so classic of every single moment of my life. Okay.
Speaker 1:The Eris tour encompassing the entire time since I left Oklahoma. That is why it is so emotional for me and so epic for me. Coming out of shiny happy, coming out of I cannot pray away the gay, coming out of I need people in relationship with me to participate in that relationship and now also to be respectful of me in that relationship. I had no idea, just like with the Eris tour, I had no idea what was about to unfold in my life or how intense it was going to be or how many things would be happening over the next few years or what would unfold. And also, the Heiress tour playing this backdrop.
Speaker 1:I had so much time alone. There were the summers, the children were gone. There were so many nights I was just by myself. More nights than not, I was just by myself. And having so many big feelings.
Speaker 1:And in a season where any other time in my life, my emotional resourcing would have been based in shiny happy, so I would have reached for my scriptures. I would have reached for those songs. And in a season of having to deconstruct that meant not that I didn't have those to reach for, but meant I had to do critical thinking when I did. Why was I reaching for it? What was I reaching for?
Speaker 1:What am I actually experiencing? What does my body say about it? What are my feelings informing me about it? How am I thinking? How am I feeling?
Speaker 1:All of this critical thinking. What am I actually being told? What is being asked of me? What am I saying or hearing or doing and why? All these questions about critical thinking, which meant that even if I was keeping aspects of my faith in reconstruction, it was not a comfort to me in that season because my faith was work, because it was so activating and took so much energy to think through everything that it was not something in that season for the first time in my life that was easy and soothing and automatic.
Speaker 1:I could not trance out into prayer. I could not trance out into music or songs. I could not trance out into things I had memorized and relied on my whole life. Having something in the backdrop, like the ARRIS tour and all of that music, especially as coming with the first time do y'all remember right before I got right before I left Oklahoma, I got the cochlear implant processors, so the part that goes on the outside of my head, the Kanzos instead of the Nucleus five, which I had had before. So instead of it being the over the ear part, it was the first time, the little dot on the back of my head.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to explain it. Like, I look like I walked off the matrix. But it was the first time they had Bluetooth. So really, it was the first time with that music was really the first time I could hear and understand new music in a new way. And because she wrote music as she was growing up, it meant so much to different parts of my system in a developmental way in the context of having access to music for the first time.
Speaker 1:While I was working through this developmental trauma of religious trauma that really had impacted me developmentally as I was growing up. Do you see how there were all these parallels? And so it gave me a resource and attending and expression to things I was experiencing from memory time and from religious trauma and leaving shiny, happy cultiness that was really so healing and powerful for me, And the sense of community when I was feeling so far away from my own community, but also so alone on those nights and those summers. To have the community that was happening with the Eris tour and the friendship bracelets and all the things was so, so meaningful to me. And then when the tortured poets department, what we call TTPD, right, it's a thing.
Speaker 1:When that album came out halfway through the Eris tour and she added that to the concert, which is what this film is about that just came out. When she added that and it was this lyrical poetry based music that was gut wrenching and sad while and and all about breakups while I was going through divorce, while I was escaping shiny happy cultiness, while I was grieving my children in their own ways with what had been what they had been through, while I was in the firestorms of trying to do relationships that were not working. And I was grieving and desperate and so, so desperate to hold on to, to create, to try hard enough to make these daydreams work that I could see so clearly and the passion that I felt that was so real and also was not real because it was daydreams. And I couldn't make what was happening inside me happen externally. Right?
Speaker 1:And I have learned that from with everything I had gone through with Nathan and the other things about, about how relationships take both people. And I think part of what was so hard about the daydreams and the firestorms was because for all the things that were hard or difficult or challenging with Nathan, primarily the sexuality pieces, the shiny happy pieces, One thing that was really amazing that stands true today even with him as, like, co parent, right, and still being friends, and it being such a gentle and and that relationship really being so solid in those ways is that he was always safe in those ways, and he was always gentle in those ways, and he believed in me. And that was maybe the first time I had someone believe in me. And I understand, like, I'm not idealizing this. This is not euphoric recall.
Speaker 1:Those were just the benefits of those relationships. So I think in my head, I thought I could keep those pieces, adjust to be authentic to my sexuality, my orientation, and build something from what I had to offer in that context. But I can't put that on anybody. I can't make anybody do that. And even over the last years since of any kind of dating or or wondering what is that going to look like outside the church?
Speaker 1:What is that going to look like as I'm raising children? What is that going to look like as I continue to heal in therapy? Asking all these questions. And, of course, with shame and and all the consequences naturally from trauma and deprivation, feeling like, of course, I'm the problem. Hi.
Speaker 1:It's me. I'm the problem. It's me. Who's afraid of little old me? You should be.
Speaker 1:Like, all of these words, like, those lyrics were so powerful to encompass and express what it felt like I was going through. The struggle of relationships and the trauma that and the trauma and deprivation that happens when memory time gets weaponized, it was so it was the hardest thing I've ever been through. And that album was there saying the things, and that album was there expressing the things. And between that and recovery, which I know is not everybody's thing either, and that's okay too. It really is.
Speaker 1:But for me, it gave me language to express the good that was missing, language to focus on myself and to let go of all the things I could not control, all the things I could not change, and to recognize that it didn't matter how hard I tried at anything. I could not make someone believe in me, believe me, believe in themselves, or any of those things that are fundamental to participating in relationship. And so those pieces really ultimately saving my life from and getting me to safety all the way from leaving Oklahoma to moving again after the election and coming full circle back to that as I see my children now thriving and all of them having straight As, not because they're shiny happy, they never did that with shiny happy, but because their needs are met and because they're happy and because they're tended to and cared for and supported. It has been such a powerful experience. And then to get the docuseries aside where she's telling the story in these episodes about behind the scenes of the tour and hearing her talk about things like having to keep going even when terrible things happened, like those little kids that were hurt in Liverpool, like the terrorist threat in Vienna, to hear her talking about those experiences while also having to maintain functioning resonated with me so much and helps me see, like, where my focus has to be.
Speaker 1:And all of this happening this weekend when we had these floods here and we're literally trapped at the top of our hill, We were okay. We had electricity the whole time. We got water bottles before and jugs of water. And, like, we had water. We had food.
Speaker 1:We got groceries before. And school was canceled, of course. And we are watching water just pour over the walls they built around that river that we love, where we literally walk every day. And all of it being so symbolic of I felt during the entire time of that Eris tour, I felt like a drowning whale. I felt like a whale, like I was going to drown.
Speaker 1:And now here we are literally in a flood rising up our hill. The towns of the towns around us literally, like, where my children work, where our post office is, where we go to eat, where we get our groceries, the whole little town at the bottom of our hill being evacuated and underwater. Like, to experience that and the Eris tour docuseries and the show coming out and these original episodes coming up, all of the timing of that coinciding in ways I never could have planned on purpose has been so meaningful to me and so symbolic to me. And talking about it with my therapist, my therapist said, there are times that some whales go very deep for a very long time, and that is not the same as drowning. And this was so meaningful to me because it feels like from chapter seven with the price of admission, I don't know if you've heard that yet or not, but about the difference between what is hard and happening in now time and what was impossible and life threatening in memory time.
Speaker 1:And when we get memory time and now time confused, then we think we are drowning when we may just be diving deep. We think people are hurting us or that we are bad when really those were messages or experiences from childhood. And in now time, I'm safe enough because I take care of me. My family is safe enough because I take good enough care of them, which requires me taking good enough care of me. So I have been here the last year.
Speaker 1:Almost a whole year now, we have lived in this place. And in that time, we have received threats because of volcanoes. We have received alerts for volcanoes, for tsunamis, and now experience this flood. Y'all in Oklahoma, we just have tornadoes, and I know what to do with that because you can duck and cover and wait until it's over, but that is all you can do about that. For these things, it was it was trying to process new environmental dangers and threats without having any idea or experience with how to tend to those things.
Speaker 3:Yes, love. Did you see me running up the ramp so fast?
Speaker 1:You're amazing.
Speaker 3:I ran an old whip of ramp.
Speaker 1:It was so fast. I didn't fall. That was amazing. You're so strong. I'm hungry.
Speaker 1:Are you hungry? Good thing we're gonna have dinner soon.
Speaker 3:What's for dinner? McDonald's?
Speaker 1:No. Not McDonald's. Only for Henry.
Speaker 3:How does Henry get McDonald's in my belt?
Speaker 1:Henry works there. Henry gets to eat there every shift. You can get a job there too when you grow up.
Speaker 3:Oh, are we gonna have a yummy dinner?
Speaker 1:I don't know if you will think it's yummy or not. Oh,
Speaker 3:yay. I'm hungry anyway.
Speaker 1:You are having stew for dinner. Vegetables. Yummy. I have, in that time, come to learn and understand and experience that I cannot prevent danger and cannot control what happens to me. I cannot control what other people do to me.
Speaker 1:I cannot control so many things, but I can focus on myself and my family and what our needs are, and I can do okay at that. Not that it's easy. It has required significant changes. I let go of one of my jobs altogether. Another job, I let go of some hours and trained someone else to do part of what I was doing.
Speaker 1:For the nonprofit, I worked with organizations to get the kind of help and support that we did not have before the first time we tried. And I've gone to a lot of meetings and read a lot of books and learned a lot about how memory time impacts me and my ships and what that requires to have healthier ships, and what that looks like. And both owning what is my responsibility to own and honoring and celebrating with compassion what worked and didn't work as I learned along the way. Leaving wasn't the right thing. I am so much healthier and happier.
Speaker 1:And also wanting and loving was not a bad thing, even when it doesn't work out like daydreams. The last year over and over has felt a lot like, is it still safe to keep going? Is it even possible to keep going? And what I've learned is that I can't keep going alone. It's the support, I mean, the encouraging words and the cheering on that you do That makes all the difference in the world.
Speaker 5:Yes, love? Can we can we go over to the park?
Speaker 3:Yes. Yay.
Speaker 1:You ready? Yeah. Okay. We're going to the park, and I will get out and play with them there. I walked here and watched them, and then I was trying to share with you.
Speaker 1:But I'll go play with them at the park. What a funny adventure today. I know that I didn't have a lot of clarity, and I'm sorry it was so disruptive and rambly. And, also, that is part of parenting. That is part of dissociation, and that is part of reorganizing myself for a new year.
Speaker 1:And that is part of coming out of crisis with the flooding this week. Just like our clarity and functioning is not our best when we're in any kind of crisis, and also showing up to try to say the things counts as showing up for me, even when I'm still working on clarity. Part of the fuzziness is that disconnect from Part of that fuzziness tells me my system is still checking for safety. So, like, there are things I want to say, but it's hard to access the words and to express the words when we're still checking. Is it safe enough?
Speaker 1:Are we safe again? When do we get to stay safe? And not just because the park is far enough from the water that we got to come down from our hill, but because, and not even because it matters what people think about what I say or don't say, or how they respond, because I cannot control what they say or do how they respond. It's about learning to trust myself and remembering that all the way back in the beginning, the whole point was sharing my experiences to practice having my voice. So part of the fuzziness is learning to do that again, and the fact that it is again and fuzzy tells me there was a season when I couldn't.
Speaker 1:It's like hiding under the bed and waiting to see if it's safe enough to come out. That was strange, was it?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We're gonna put our stuff away and then go to the playground.
Speaker 1:Excellent. I'm coming down there.
Speaker 4:Bye, mom.
Speaker 1:Love you, baby. Alright. Did you have fun? Yeah.
Speaker 4:He's a nice guy. Not what I was expecting. Very nice.
Speaker 1:Were you expecting him to not be nice?
Speaker 3:Yeah. How come?
Speaker 4:Because that's usually how it works.
Speaker 1:How what works? People? What? Or experts? Tell me that piece.
Speaker 4:Because usually what happens is when I go to a skate park, I show up with a sucky skateboard because it's little and I've had it for a long time. But I love it because it's rubber wheels, and I'm not actually there to do any tricks. I'm just there to ride and have fun because I don't mind going in a circle.
Speaker 1:You said you didn't like the big one.
Speaker 4:This big one?
Speaker 1:No. But we got you a big one in in Idaho, and you said you didn't like it.
Speaker 4:It was a
Speaker 1:A longboard?
Speaker 4:Yeah. It was a longboard. But he had one that was, like, a shortboard that had, like, the wheels and stuff, and it was it was fine. But
Speaker 3:I'm kidding.
Speaker 4:I don't know. It looked hard. And I just tried to go down the triangle part, and it was scary. Actually, I asked Very scary.
Speaker 3:That you want it.
Speaker 1:So because he was an expert and had quality stuff, and because you're still practicing and did not have his nice stuff, you were worried he was gonna not be nice?
Speaker 4:Well, because what happened in the past is when I would show up, I would get laughed at till left.
Speaker 1:Like, in shiny happy land?
Speaker 4:In, like, Oklahoma, Idaho, pretty much everywhere but here.
Speaker 1:It's so different here. Right? Just the culture.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay. Do want me to take that out of the recording?
Speaker 4:No. I don't mind not being in there.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:As as long as it fits with the topic.
Speaker 1:Oh, no. It was great. Thank you.
Speaker 4:Does it? Yeah. Are you sure?
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Okay. You're very sweet. Thank you for sharing your feelings.
Speaker 4:I should've brought a snack.
Speaker 1:We're about to have dinner. I have stew ready for you.
Speaker 4:Stew. Good.
Speaker 1:Well, glad you're fast, and I knew you'd be hungry because you forgot your lunch. Yeah. Okay. I'll drive the car down there. Okay.
Speaker 1:Love you.
Speaker 4:Love you.
Speaker 1:I've taken this time over the last year to heal me, to go slow, to tend to the things I didn't tend to last year when the divorce was happening because so many other things were happening. I've taken the time this year to care for me in every way from how I move my body to what my work schedule is like and how I rest and doing activities on my own in the community. I mean, like, in town, even without the children sometimes. And the children being in a new stage where they don't need me in the same way. Sometimes I'll go play with them on the park in just a minute.
Speaker 1:And, also, two of them have jobs. A third one is volunteering, and the little one is making friends and just got what she is calling a teenage haircut. I don't have babies anymore, and it's time I stop running from mine. Inside, I mean. And with the support of good therapy and so much recovery, It's time to really synthesize all these things I've been learning in ways that are safe and healthy for me.
Speaker 1:And the whole thing about the Eris tour, this is the end of an era. I have felt that over the last year. And I didn't know what moving forward was going to look like or if I even wanted to. But learning that whales can go deep for a long time and also still come up for air. And also that if I have my own ship, it means I am not the whale.
Speaker 1:And, also, way back in 2020, when we were in quarantine in the country, I talked about feeling like parts of me had been banished to an island, and I struggled to get access to myself again. It was meaningful to me this week that our home literally was on an island as water surrounded our hill. We were safe enough. The water was about two blocks from us, but it gave me days and days and days to just be with myself, to be on the island. Maybe it's like Jonah and the whale.
Speaker 1:Maybe I had finally been spit out again. There on the island. To turn and to find my system and face them again for us to be a team again. And just say, hey. I noticed we're on an island, and it's been a minute.
Speaker 1:What are we gonna do about that?
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.