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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over:
Speaker 2:Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 3:The last few weeks have been intense. I very much enjoyed the time with the children being here for Thanksgiving, and I will miss them when they're in Oklahoma for the holidays at the end of the year. It was fun to have them all here last year for the holidays. This year will be different, but I have already sent their presence there and stayed present with while they were here. And I would much rather be present with them while I have access to them and while we're together than worrying about what hasn't happened yet or what will be hard later.
Speaker 3:It's a gift from therapy this year, I think, to be able to be present in a different way, even with myself. We saw wicked while they were here. I took them to the movies. It was poignant, I think, and even the children caught layers of how apt the timing was to watch a movie about a man targeting specific groups of people while making the world believe that a woman with power is bad. And relationships and friendships broken because one was not ready to leave what she had daydreamed, and the other devastated by the loss of her
Speaker 1:friend and her god. I mean, the wizard, who she had fully believed could help her, even the parts of her she didn't like,
Speaker 3:but who in the end only abused her to misuse her power. There was a lot of discussion for religious trauma after we saw
Speaker 1:wicked on the heels of watching heretic. It's been a lot. Like someone has pushed the double speed button in therapy all of
Speaker 3:a sudden, where we've been holding back and holding back and holding back, and now it's go, go, go. Things are happening. Pieces are shifting, and parts work is happening.
Speaker 1:Today, we started slowly, talking about it in metaphor with another movie, actually.
Speaker 3:Because in talking about how hard this year has been, I compared it to the scene in Star Wars when they're in the trash chute and the walls start closing in. I told my therapist that's how I felt, that I was drowning in filth and slime and being suffocated by walls closing in on me. And I had tried all the things to make it stop, and nothing was working. That's why I'm in therapy, staying in therapy, showing up for myself in therapy because I need help outside myself. Someone to push the button to make the wall stop.
Speaker 3:And my therapist is very good at pushing my buttons. She asked the question, a mapping question, of who was in the trash chute with me, referencing the other characters in the scene. And I know I'm there because I'm experiencing the hell of the last year.
Speaker 1:Or five or ten or a lifetime. And, also, there's the part of me who works,
Speaker 3:It tries to keep us functioning. Because working, even when I don't feel like it or my face hurts from surgery, because I have no PTO after using it all at the beginning of the year after the retreat. It's not as bad as being homeless
Speaker 1:or unhoused.
Speaker 3:I don't wanna unhouse myself, so part of me fights the shoot by staying active at work, pushing through even when it feels impossible, trying to show up for others who are trying to show up for themselves. Another part of me in the trash shoot with me, of course, are parenting parts, trying to navigate hard things well, trying to repair what I can, and trying to prioritize them in impossible circumstances. Where there are no real answers or clarity and so many very valid fears and concerns, not even counting the restraints and constraints of everyday life. I also called myself out, saying that if it were a dream with Jungian psychology, I would play all the parts. So in this story, I know there's also a part of me.
Speaker 3:Who's pulling myself under? Who's keeping me in the suffocating crisis situation with the walls closing in? Who thinks I deserve to be treated like trash,
Speaker 1:who is afraid the rest of us will heal and leave them behind in the pain.
Speaker 3:Was trying desperately to hold on to us despite the closing walls because they don't know about life
Speaker 1:outside the walls or life off the blanket.
Speaker 3:Parts of me trained to keep me on it, to make me stay even when it is right to run. In the context of Jungian analysis, I'm also the trash, or the trash is mine. The trash happened to me. Things happened to me. Trauma would be a room full of trash.
Speaker 3:Deprivation
Speaker 1:would be lacking a room of safety or
Speaker 3:a way out or lack of privilege to find the exit.
Speaker 1:I would also be the walls closing in on myself, making my life too small, too hard, not giving myself enough air or freedom,
Speaker 3:which makes sense when I was raised on a blanket. But it also means I am the one on the outside with access like r two d two to push the buttons
Speaker 1:or punch the code or turn the key to make the walls stop closing in.
Speaker 3:That's my responsibility because it's my life. It's work that no one else can do for me, not even my therapist. Therapist. It means saying no. It means consent only happens when it's enthusiastic.
Speaker 3:It means knowing that I'm a
Speaker 1:system and who it is inside and how they're interacting and what we are reenacting
Speaker 3:even just internally.
Speaker 1:It means looking at the players and the roles
Speaker 3:and how they're interacting and what's happening instead of just being confused about why the world pulls us this way and that way. It means finding my feet beneath me and standing up in my own right for my own rights, for my own healing. It means learning who I am
Speaker 1:in my own skin and living my own life
Speaker 3:and doing my own therapy work. One of my friends at the symposium this fall said at one point, focus on your own paper, teasing because I had said something too direct about their stuff that they had shared. And, also, it was an authentic boundary framed within the context of our relationship and healthy humor. But a quote I've not forgotten because I think in the moment I didn't even know where my own paper was. And that's what therapy has become the last six months.
Speaker 3:Remembering how to focus on my own paper, how to say and do and choose the things I need to say and do and choose for me. More and more so even as my children grow and depend on me less and less. Of
Speaker 1:course, they do still, especially for safety.
Speaker 3:That's why we did things like get their passports, for example. It's not something they can do by themselves. It's my responsibility to do that for them even if I don't know what happens next, even if they never need them. It is a season of uncertainty, and also a season of becoming more certain in myself, in noticing my own system,
Speaker 1:and thinking how everything is an opportunity for mapping, for learning about me,
Speaker 3:for listening more tenderly,
Speaker 1:more compassionately to myself?
Speaker 3:Who is trying to show up and I'm not seeing them? Who is trying to help and I'm not noticing? Who is drowning and I can't see? Who are the ones in the den of voices shouting and screaming for the walls to stop? And why am I doing that to them?
Speaker 3:Why am I doing that to me? When I was little, I didn't allow myself to be abused or deprived or neglected or harmed. I was a child, but I'm an adult now. Why would I allow it now when I've learned so much about how much it hurt? When I see so clearly that I need care.
Speaker 3:What does caring for me look like?
Speaker 1:What does that shift? What does that change?
Speaker 3:How do I do that in the context of the world swirling around me?
Speaker 1:In a world where who I am does not feel safe.
Speaker 3:How do I care well for others
Speaker 1:and my family and my relationships professionally without losing track of myself? How do I push the buttons to stop the walls and open the doors
Speaker 3:instead of pulling myself under? We're only being panicked and confused about why I'm in danger. What do I need
Speaker 1:to feel safe right now, today?
Speaker 3:And me as a system. What do we need from each other?
Speaker 1:To get ourselves to a green planet full of forests and food and safety and laughter and delight and dancing and all the things that are good instead of living in a trash chute thinking the walls are closing in. What does liberation look like for me?
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before. Not like this. Connection brings healing.