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, 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 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:Okay. We're doing a recap of wait, where is it? Psycho ISSTD twenty twenty three psychodynamic psychoanalytic virtual seminar.
Speaker 2:Yes. That was some nerdy stuff. Super nerdy, like nerdy to the max.
Speaker 1:So we actually are doing a good job. I think we're doing something different than we've ever done before. We'll see if it comes full circle. I don't mean that as pressure. I'm just curious and observing.
Speaker 1:We are pacing things by there were, like, four two hour intense seminars a day, two days. And we decided, no, that's a lot. That's intense. So we are actually pacing ourselves differently. So we watched the first two live and we'll come back to the other six another time.
Speaker 1:So the first one that we're going to talk about was Dissociative Multiplicity and Psychoanalyst by my friend John O'Neill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who's been on the podcast before.
Speaker 1:Yay John, shout out to John. So where to even start with this? First of all, it was a lot of psychology history. Yes. All about Freud as well because psychoanalysts.
Speaker 1:So he just sort of introduced things talking about Brewer and Freud and how they were the ones to first document officially in the literature that every case of what was called hysteria at the time also had a double consciousness, which comes from a French word. But also at the time it was about multiplication, not division. So just a caveat to explain that John O'Neill is in the Emma camp of structural dissociation is not actually how we are arranged. Is a model of divisibility. It is not accepted by everyone everywhere and this is why.
Speaker 2:So what is your model?
Speaker 1:Well, you'll have to read our next book to find out.
Speaker 2:Oh, I didn't know I was gonna give you an opening for a plug for your book.
Speaker 1:That's all. Did we bring the crickets today? I can get them
Speaker 2:for you.
Speaker 1:No. It's good. It's good.
Speaker 2:But he talks more about how it's multiplication, meaning additional consciousnesses added instead of one being fractured.
Speaker 1:Right. So what's really important to understand historically, like take what is good and useful for you. Like if there are things like I like from structural dissociation, I like how it normalizes multiplicity that everyone kind of experiences these different versions of themselves in a very normal way. I'd love that. But also we have to understand what we're actually saying when we talk about it.
Speaker 1:And the structural dissociation model uses the word personality differently than anything else in the literature and any other time in history. They're using a different word that sounds like the same word. It's a homonym that is the word. Like like they're saying something different. So they are saying it as one person, but they're saying personality divided up into parts.
Speaker 1:So when you say, I like the structural model of dissociation, you are saying that you think it is one person divided up into parts that never integrated as one person. When we have throughout all literature and all history of psychology talked about multiple personalities, we have talked about there are more than one person in a body. There is more than one experience in a body, more than one consciousness. It is a multiplicity of experience, not one experience divided into parts. So that's a whole different thing.
Speaker 1:He did not go into that only referencing that, but what he did talk about was that for someone to have a dissociative disorder, they have to have capacity for hypnotizability. There has to be some trauma and also there has to be an area or experience or multiple experiences of deprivation of the good missing. He said the research has shown clearly that the lack of rescue and comfort is even more significant than the number of traumas. Yeah. How did that land with you?
Speaker 1:This is where we push the cricket button.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Chirp, chirp, chirp. It is continuing to be repeated in all the things I'm seeing and reading and learning and being taught, which I guess means it's real. But it goes against all the things I knew for decades about trauma that I thought I knew. How so?
Speaker 2:Well, like the assumption that the bad things that happen to you are what's bad. They never talked about like the neglect piece or the deprivation piece really.
Speaker 1:So going back to what Steve Gold said when he was on the podcast, we have to remember that deprivation is neglect, like what you just And sometimes we see terrible examples of that, like where kids are found in homes that have not been fed and they're like tiny or malnourished or starving. But there's also emotional neglect where it is about not being allowed to have feelings, your feelings not being tended to, not being comforted, not being nurtured. Those pieces are the deprivation pieces that we're talking about that are actually the protective factors. Like we as humans, and I've seen this all over the world in war zones and disaster sites as humans. I guess that's in my head because Anne was here for dinner last night.
Speaker 1:We were talking about work and deployments and what that's like. But as humans, we can endure a lot of hard things. It doesn't make the hard things okay, but we can endure them. But to endure them, to be healthy on the other side of them, we need responsiveness. We need care.
Speaker 1:We need tending. We need nurture. So whether or not bad things happen to you. There's a crash downstairs.
Speaker 2:I think it was just a microwave closing.
Speaker 1:Okay. Whether or not bad things happen to you, it is not healthy and good and healing to not have the good things in life. So just having clothes and being fed and enough privilege that you're not starving is not the same as being cared for intended to.
Speaker 2:That is the piece, I think, that was never in any of my trainings or maybe just in my awareness until I started listening to your podcast and, like, found ISSD. Nobody talked about that really or even about how hard not having a healthy attachment is. It was just like, yeah, that can happen. But that's probably just the training camp I was in and then places I was working.
Speaker 1:I did not hear about, I mean, heard some things about attachment, but I did not hear how significant relational trauma is until Simone, which we now know her last name is Rinders is how to say it. I'm saying it wrong. I've said it like three different ways and they were all wrong. Oh no. This could also be wrong because I'm a deaf person.
Speaker 1:But my understanding now is that her name is Simone Rinders. So I'm so sorry for saying it wrong. But she's the one who did the research on the neurobiological level of the fMRI research that relational trauma, not having nurture, not having emotional support, not being allowed to have your feelings or take up space in the world is actually more damaging neurologically than physical or sexual abuse.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It is such a truth bomb. And every time I hear it, it is like, it doesn't get easier.
Speaker 1:One thing that I tell my clients is that, because I am working again, I even have my first DID clients in a long time, in a long time and accepting new people. And that is intense, but also I'm really loving it. They're such special people. But what I tell my people, even if they don't have a dissociative disorder, what I tell them is that Wait, I forgot what we were talking about. I forgot.
Speaker 1:We're talking about
Speaker 2:relationship. What
Speaker 1:I tell them is that if someone, I say this to them, I say if someone punched you in the face, I don't want anyone to punch you in the face but I say this and I say it several times to the same people like over and over again because it's so hard to hold on to right so like I don't want anyone to punch you in the face but if someone punched you in the face, you can point to the black guy, I know from experience, and say this is where the wound is.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 1:with relational trauma, is invisible. There's nowhere to point to say this is what hurts. And so, because it's in the space between us and just doesn't exist, like badness, bad things happening, trauma happening, you can see the evidence of it and tell the story of it. This is what happened. Relational trauma is invisible.
Speaker 1:There's no story to tell. I mean, can get there and with therapy, right? But like, there's nothing to point to because it's what was missing. So there's nowhere to point.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it includes by default, almost this gaslighting experience where, why are you upset about anything? Nothing happened. Literally nothing happened.
Speaker 2:That's the problem, right? Right. Can I tell you a theory I have? Oh, and not just me, lots of people with self harm is like it makes the wound visible. So there's something to point to and then tend to and then heal.
Speaker 2:Oh. Sorry. That's rough.
Speaker 1:So going back to John But
Speaker 2:that's why these presentations are so intense because it's not just learning information. It's like how it hits chords inside too.
Speaker 1:Right. Which I think it's actually self care that we did not do all eight sessions today. I think it's good that we just went to two and we're like, that's enough. Okay. Enough.
Speaker 1:And we started with John O'Neill which was delightful. Okay so John O'Neill did go back to talk about structural dissociation one more time because he said the way they came up with that model was actually following Pierre Genet instead of Freud. Pierre Genet had a theory that dissociation happened because of weakness. So when there was added stressor or trauma, that weakness led to fragmentation. So basically we were already weak and then we shattered, which feels yucky to me.
Speaker 1:But I know the whole Genet Freud battle has so many layers like we could talk for days just about those stories but that is where the fragmentation of structural dissociation is coming from because they're coming from the Genet thought instead of the Freud school of thought. Other thing he mentioned explicitly that I loved sorry, it's a little weird. It's okay. Was that he had a whole chart of your theory from our mapping project that was about opposites.
Speaker 2:He did have a chart about opposites.
Speaker 1:It's math.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it was
Speaker 1:Pythagoras table of opposites. Yeah. And he also compared that to Kleinian polar opposites.
Speaker 2:I pulled it up.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:Do you
Speaker 1:wanna tell about it?
Speaker 2:Well, it was just apparently Pythagorean had this theory of opposites. 10 principles which arrange in two columns. Limited and unlimited is one of, like one of them. Odd and even, one or plurality. It had all these ideas of opposites.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting to me because it's just math. Like it's very, actually very, very binary. And also the nuances are non binary, but that works in math too. Kate could speak to this better, but we have the math of these are the binary, like not binary numbers, counting binary, like computers or something, but this is a one or not. This is a two or not.
Speaker 1:This is a three or not. And also, talk to the kids in elementary school, like curie downstairs with the number line. Like you can break it up more and more and more, and it turns out a one isn't actually only a one and a two isn't actually only a two. So both things are true at the same time. It's like how light is made of waves and particles.
Speaker 1:Like, what? There's both things are true at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that was really interesting. The other thing to understand for context is that in these original schools of thought about psychology, one of the things that they talked about was subject and object. So you can think about this like grammatically, but I'm going to use a different sentence than John did. We can do crackers because there are crackers on the table. So I subject, eat is the verb, crackers is the object, right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So he was talking about how traditionally personality disorders and then borderline personality goes through a process that is about splitting the object. So these crackers are good and these crackers are bad. These crackers are plain. These crackers are cheese. Getting to the binary, this or that, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. But with dissociation, what is different is that we split the self and then the others inside then become the object. So this altar is good and this altar is bad, or this altar is functioning, this altar is not functioning. And again, it's not really that binary, but when we're talking about like the mapping project, I don't think they've heard that yet actually. No, probably won't.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about that, that's part of where that comes from and why things like DID get misdiagnosed as borderline. Why trauma is overly diagnosed as borderline because they're seeing the evidence of the splitting, but not understanding that's actually dissociative in process rather than functional. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, wasn't John I didn't know if I understood how he got there. Maybe you did because you're smart. Where he was talking about splitting isn't dissociative. Or there's like splitting is separate from dissociation. And I couldn't figure out that.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. So he was saying that dissociation is operational and splitting is well, to even understand where we get the word splitting, we kind of have to back up again to what he talked about conscious, preconscious and unconscious. We talked about this very early on the podcast, but it was very early on the podcast and they think that we didn't get to come full circle back to it. So it's good that we are now overly simplifying, keeping things very simple.
Speaker 1:Consciousness are the things that we're aware of. Pre consciousness are things we are not aware of that can easily access. Unconsciousness are things that we're not aware of and it's hard to access. So historically in the field of what is dissociation there have been two theories and we've talked about this a couple of times. I think Colin Ross talked about it and someone else addressed it.
Speaker 1:Maybe it was John. I'm not sure but there's two different theories. One is the horizontal splitting and one is the vertical splitting. The horizontal splitting is the repression theory. So thinking that there are things that like a repressive repression is like a horizontal split between the preconscious and the unconscious.
Speaker 1:So we're not aware of either, but the preconscious we can access and the unconscious we cannot access. So it looks like amnesia because we cannot access it. But when repression or amnesia is not complete, then it slips up back into consciousness and we become aware of it. And he was saying that when that happens in the body, then we get conversion symptoms like body memories, for example. So what is unfortunate is that in the modern day hospitals and emergency rooms, especially not trained in dissociation have come to equate conversion with fake, Like pseudo seizures, fake seizures.
Speaker 1:That's not what it is. That's not what's happening. It's not about faking. It means symptoms in the body, almost like somatic, way we use somatic. It means symptoms in the body and goes all the way back to Briquette syndrome, right?
Speaker 1:Which is a whole different talk that we give. So he was saying what happens is that with dissociation, each alter has their own conscious, preconscious and unconscious.
Speaker 2:Like, so the vertical split, is that so like? Yes. Each side has all those things instead of, there's just one set of consciousnesses.
Speaker 1:Right. There's different, every alter has their own conscious, preconscious and unconscious. So when there is incomplete repression and it slips back up into consciousness and sometimes because we share a body, it slips up into the wrong person's consciousness. That's when we get flashbacks on body memories. He called it a he said body memories are an expression of compromise between awareness and repression, like a leak.
Speaker 1:So a body memory or a flashback is a compromise between I can't hold it down anymore to stay not aware and I'm gonna be just a little bit aware for a minute. Obviously that's more unpleasant an experience, but that's kind of the language he was trying to use to describe it that body memories and flashbacks are like a leak in repression.
Speaker 2:And so if the body memory shows up when another consciousness is posting, like that's when it slips between two consciousnesses.
Speaker 1:Right. So here's the other thing. Historically, if we go back to Freud, Freud talked about ego, superego and id. And John was saying, well, so the ego is the same as the subject. I am the one who's doing something.
Speaker 1:My I, the I that's me. Superego is the personification of that like how I do it, my wishes, my desires, the mask that goes on, the different how that's mitigated and navigated, right? And then the id is like the biological drive or how we call now sensory motor. But the reason like sensory motor therapy, for example, takes off is because it's working through the body and everyone shares the body. So John called it the id like the basement for all of the altars who themselves have their own ego and superego, their own consciousness, pre consciousness and unconsciousness.
Speaker 1:So that becomes the vertical split between the ego and super ego and another ego and super ego. And each of those having their own consciousness, preconsciousness and unconsciousness, but sharing the id, which is the body, the defenses, because they're unconscious. The id is even below the unconscious. So he said hosts and altars share the id, which is why it's so important to listen to the body, but each have their own ego and superego.
Speaker 2:Their own ideas about what the body is saying. Right.
Speaker 1:It's a lot, right?
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:There is a pretty graph of this or five that we could add to the community when this episode goes up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he did have some great graphs. I can't talk.
Speaker 1:My friend John O'Neill is famous for his PowerPoint slides.
Speaker 2:He is. Well, and then he was talking about, and maybe this is not in the right spot, but, like, splitting going to ambivalence. Do you remember that part? Like
Speaker 1:yes. There's a whole lot Okay. Okay. So that is what takes us to object relations theory, which comes from Freud's drive theory. So object relations has to do with relating to another person.
Speaker 1:So because it's separate from myself, it is an object, not as an objectifying, that's But as in, I am the subject and you are the object. For you, you are the subject, I am the object. Not that we're objectifying each other. Maybe, just kidding. Okay.
Speaker 1:So object relations has to do with meeting the needs of the id. So the biological needs being met. So in the example we were talking about earlier with trauma and deprivation, that means having enough clothes, enough food, shelter, protection, physical safety, physical needs,
Speaker 2:lowest
Speaker 1:level on Maslow's hierarchy, like however you wanna look at it with all the different theories that being taken care of. And also the ego, I mean, and also the superego, meaning responsiveness to emotional needs and support for wishes and desires, which has to do with attunement. So to have healthy object relations, you have to have those, which is why relational trauma and deprivation
Speaker 2:destroys everything. Dum, dum, dum. Yeah. What do you think? I'm just thinking about that The lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy, doesn't it have, like, love and belongingness too on the bottom?
Speaker 2:Or am I thinking wrong? I
Speaker 1:don't know right It's a good question.
Speaker 2:Look it up. Right there on the bottom.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Not that it matters. It's okay.
Speaker 1:We can It does matter. Let's see what it says.
Speaker 2:Nope. Love and belonging isn't until number three in this one. Let's see where they have it.
Speaker 1:And also it matters where it is because to be a whole healthy functioning person, you need the whole pyramid. The first layer is not a person.
Speaker 2:But you're alive.
Speaker 1:The first layer is a checklist. Yes.
Speaker 2:Good enough. Not, not good enough. Sorry. I'm trying to find the actual. They don't have it on here.
Speaker 2:They're just talking about self actualized people.
Speaker 1:So when the needs of the id are met and the needs of the superego are met. So we're talking about both physical protection and provision and emotional and relational connection, attunement, responsiveness, nurture. When all of that happens, then the object attaches with the self or the ego or the subject, however you want to say it, which is the process of Sullivan's mirror that we've been talking about for a year or two years now about attachment and seeing clearly in the mirror that's when the mirror is whole and not broken.
Speaker 2:Yeah and that's how we develop healthy attachment like an internal working model they talk about of a healthy self. Yes,
Speaker 1:Yes. So when there's trauma, the mirror is broken. And also when there's deprivation, a lack of good, or the good is missing or not nurturing or not responsive or not space for feelings or tending to, the mirror is broken. Not just broken, but literally missing. Yeah, missing.
Speaker 1:Which means we cannot see ourselves accurately or the world around us.
Speaker 2:Or at all, right? Like people who don't even know who they are. Self is gone.
Speaker 1:Exactly. So internally object relations mirror experience with others and our experience of self mirrors this experience of others with the id and super ego. So when we don't have a mirror or when we have a broken mirror, then our parts have the same kinds of object relations struggles and relational struggles internally as we do externally when we're a child. Say more. So like for example, if just hypothetically speaking you were a child who was not allowed to take up space or could not have feelings, then as an adult you are a person who does not allow your parts to take up space or have feelings or needs.
Speaker 2:That's pleasant for someone who would have that.
Speaker 1:Do you still want me to say more?
Speaker 2:Nope not any I got it.
Speaker 1:So this is attachment theory and why attachment theory focuses on deprivation, the absence of good, not just trauma. And he said, it better predicts pathology and severity of dissociation than any number of traumas. But again, the trauma, the bad things that are happening are easier to notice than it is to notice what's not there. It's hard to notice what's not there.
Speaker 2:Right. It's hard to prove the absence of something.
Speaker 1:Right? So then the other way that shows up is we have people with DID or OSDD or dissociative disorders where it's like, I don't know if my disorder or my experience is real or valid because I don't have this checklist of terrible things that happened. Because the terrible thing that happened was their checklist of missing good that they can't see because it's invisible.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And minimized. And minimized. Traditionally in the trauma research. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's the whole piece, my trauma wasn't that bad, that people get stuck into of. So many other people have heard it worse. I've heard all these awful stories of things that are so bad, so mine can't be real because it wasn't that bad. Right?
Speaker 1:Right. And it's do you remember who was it? What was that Catherine lady on the podcast that just talked for a whole hour? I don't remember.
Speaker 2:Catherine. Do you want me to find it?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm sorry. It's okay. Is it on the guest page? It should be.
Speaker 1:Kathleen Adams. Good memory. It came to me. I had to wait for the cue card.
Speaker 2:Well done.
Speaker 1:Do you remember when Kathleen Adams was on the podcast? She talked about how when survivors of relational trauma are not seen and heard, they have to start speaking in metaphors.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And that's when survivors get accused of lying because they're trying to make what is invisible visible. So they find ways to express in story what they are feeling and expressing and experiencing that is invisible so that there can be a way it's seen so that someone can tend to it. And when no one still tends to it, things escalate in other ways, whether it's the self harm of rejecting your own alters. Wait, what? Or lying or, denying like the misattunement with self like those things start to escalate because it's not being tended to.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it has to get louder and louder and louder to be more visible. When if people would just tend to what actually happened and what really didn't happen, that should have happened but did not, that's where we heal the wound.
Speaker 2:That's unpleasant. Do we need to stop? No, it's okay. It just means that healing is tending to things instead of getting better at not seeing them.
Speaker 1:Yes. So what, how that shows up is we have people who have dissociation, who try to work really hard to get better, as opposed to working less hard and receiving care.
Speaker 2:Just hypothetically. Hypothetically. Might happen somewhere.
Speaker 1:Okay. So back to John O'Neill. Uh-huh. He said, with DID,
Speaker 2:all Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:Oh, why is it like blurry on the page? It's so hard, right? Is altered states of consciousness and altered state all the time.
Speaker 2:Right. Every alter Is
Speaker 1:in a trance.
Speaker 2:Is in some level of trans all the time. Altered level of consciousness.
Speaker 1:Right. Which goes back to it's not about alter always meaning alternate personality, but alter state, altered state of consciousness.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He talked about why the phrase self states is good. I know there's lots of controversy about this and I have shared emails that shared that side very well. The things that were good about what he said is that even though self states is still an incomplete term and obviously still sounds very clinical, the reason it is good is that it actually validates the experience more because it supports the concept of multiplicity that it's more than one person in a body. It maintains the link to hypnosis and self hypnosis, meaning those trance states, the altered states of consciousness. It gives space for each one to have their own variety of altered states and it's independent of splitting or repression.
Speaker 1:It's about the existence and the experience of each of those states who themselves have different states.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What? Yep. I just like shirts.
Speaker 1:Right? So he talked about this call for the psychology community to readopt the term dissociative multiplicity to focus on the multiple aspect that having a concept of divisibility is not actually helpful because it undoes all of this progress and everything we've learned about it in the last one hundred, two hundred years. He also points out when they talk about Freud's recanting things that there is the layer about the seduction theory. Obviously, that's really unfortunate. That's such a minimized term, but I don't know what to say about he had this cultural pressure where people did not want to talk about or admit to incest.
Speaker 1:So he stopped treating incest.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:That's not okay. But also he shared, but also, and also John O'Neill said, and I didn't realize this part, I don't know how I missed it, I was delighted to discover it. He said that Freud also changed his path from studying multiplicity and dissociation because Freud basically sucked at hypnosis. Like he couldn't do it. He could not do hypnosis.
Speaker 1:So he couldn't keep studying it because he couldn't do it. He failed hypnosis.
Speaker 2:That's hilarious. I wonder what we printed. Don't know
Speaker 1:what's happening over there. Even the printer thought it was funny.
Speaker 2:The printer was laughing. So
Speaker 1:John O'Neill said there's a need to understand psychodynamics and why we cannot just do like CBT trauma informed or this things that we have to understand relational trauma. We have to understand psychodynamics because we cannot understand dissociation without that triad structure, the repression and horizontal splitting, splitting vertically object relations and attachment theory. To treat DID or dissociation we have to borrow from all of those just to explain it. And then he used that to, like, blow me away that said he said even technically when we're looking at that understanding of dissociation, that even just PTSD is DID.
Speaker 2:Which is mind blowing.
Speaker 1:Right? Right. This is why I say there's this controversy about, oh, I only have OSDD so it's not as good as DID or as valid as DID. It's not true. It's the same process.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like whatever you've gotten diagnosed with for yourself or for your insurance billing or for whatever reason a diagnosis may or may not be important to you, it's treated the same. Yeah. When you have the right therapist.
Speaker 2:Well, the techniques for treating it are the same, whether they use them or not.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:This needs to happen.
Speaker 1:He said that criteria B and criteria D alternating in PTSD is in itself dissociative. That's the difference between an AMP and an EP, which makes it DID.
Speaker 2:I don't like that. I mean, I don't like that, but professionally, of course, it makes sense, which is why it feels like I see dissociation in so many clients that come in with PTSD symptoms.
Speaker 1:Well, also said yesterday when we were at the park afterwards, you talked about how you were in supervision talking with one of your peoples. Mhmm. And that you guys talked about how did you say it? Do you remember? Well.
Speaker 1:About you don't see healthy people in therapy.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah. Like I, a theory, again, I could be really wrong, but that I think people with the healthy attachment, secure attachment from birth, or like that really have that unicorn thing, that they don't show up in therapy because when things go wrong in life, they have relationships to reach out to. They know how to regulate. They have all the things that you're supposed to get with a secure attachment. So it doesn't overwhelm their life.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's something really tragic that happens. But I think most of what we see is people with some form of insecure, avoidant, disorganized attachment.
Speaker 1:I wonder just as a union, if we actually already understand this in sort of the collective unconscious, because to me that feels like a layer, just a layer, but a layer of the stigma for some people who it's still hard to go to therapy because even if I'm going to therapy for this, the fact that I need help means something went wrong somewhere else. Yeah. And so you can't even walk into therapy without admitting both things.
Speaker 2:Which with dissociation, you can't see that what was trauma was trauma.
Speaker 1:No wonder it's hard to just show up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I like how you have like, what is this seven notes and seven pages of notes and I have one, but you're so much more thorough. I'm thorough. I'm better at understanding it all. I think I was zoned out for a lot of this.
Speaker 1:Was intense. It was Was there anything, I have this last question that someone asked in that session. Was there anything else from the session itself you wanted to talk about or go over before we do that one?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. I just wrote down at the end, when he was talking about the difference between the Freud and the approaches of just his dissociation of failure to integrate or a creative defensive action. I have to tell you, I like the creative defensive action. Freud's theory. Freud's theory much better than that it's a failure, a weakness.
Speaker 2:Which is Jenae's theory. Yeah. That's all I just
Speaker 1:It's so hard because that goes back to what I said earlier about what's good about structural dissociation is that it normalizes it by saying that, but it makes us all weak and fragmented to normalize. Right. Which maybe is why the plural community was like, that's ableist. I was like, okay, tell me why. But now I finally understand.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:What's your last thing?
Speaker 1:The last thing was Valerie Sinison, who I actually love and adore and appreciate for my SSD asked a good question about the auto hypnotic capacity being highest prior to age four or five and then it declines. Well, no, she asked the question about auto hypnotic capacity in children And John O'Neill said that it was highest prior to age four or five and then declines developmentally. And so he said that's why DID or other dissociative disorders develops prior to age five. But also it can be relational or deprivation. It does not require trauma.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like he just stuck it in one more time before they closed the session.
Speaker 2:I wonder if that's part of what makes it hard to hold onto is like the idea of trauma is something bad happening to overwhelm a system, like a nervous system, but deprivation is just nothing happening. Well, can answer that piece from my work that I
Speaker 1:do a psychological first aid and responding and my deployments and things. In those trainings, one of the things I teach people and I think we did it on the podcast, talked through it once on the podcast for people, but, like your brain reads anything as a stressor that it does not have capacity or resources to meet the demand of what's being asked of it and those resources can be internal like we go to college to be a therapist and we have supervision and we do all the things for licensure. They can also be external like everything from having a good therapist yourself to colleagues for peer consults to wearing cozy socks and having a nice chapstick. All of those things to your brain count as external resources. So as long as you have resources to meet the demand of what's being asked of you then that's resiliency.
Speaker 1:But when you don't have resources which is why like in EMDR and other things we talk about resourcing when you don't have resourcing that your brain reads that as deprivation, which is trauma. To your brain, there's no difference between trauma and deprivation. And well, that's not true. To your brain, deprivation is worse than trauma because trauma is a bad thing that happens and your brain can use resources to overcome it or get through it or endure it. But not having resources, you can't even do basic functions.
Speaker 2:Not
Speaker 1:without a trance state where I am going to do this basic function here. I'm going to do this basic function here. I'm going to like, you don't have access to your own
Speaker 2:life. Okay. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:Anything else about the John O'Neill?
Speaker 2:Thank you, John O'Neill. It was a good presentation.
Speaker 1:We're fans of John. John is our friend. Okay. Hold on. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:Your support really helps us feel less alone while we sort through all of this and learn together. Maybe it will help you in some ways too. You can connect with us on Patreon by going to our website at www.systemspeak.org. If there's anything we've learned, it's that connection brings healing. We look forward to connecting with you!