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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.
Welcome to the System Speak 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:So much has happened in the last couple of weeks. I don't even know where to start or how to talk about it. Even going to this culty conference last weekend felt safer because I was more connected, and that's a big deal, especially when we're trying to tend to that baseline of deprivation. We've also added new things to the community, like starting very carefully our peer support project and also opening very carefully a religious trauma group. Another fun thing that's happening that feels like I should say out loud, although I certainly don't wanna jinx it or knock on the wood, but I'm really connecting with my therapist.
Speaker 1:And by connecting with my therapist, I mean how things are starting to flow. So not just attaching, but talking about parts at least a little bit and in a healthier way than I've ever had in therapy before. I'm not sure how to explain it. I've spent so long teasing about the cage matches, but of course that was the energy I was bringing to therapy. And also that's what I'm getting out of therapy is mirroring attunement.
Speaker 1:My therapist is helping me see myself. So my therapist is not a substitute parent, which I think for me is safe and helpful because that's never gone well in the past. And also, as things have been hard over the last year, she's helped me see what is real and not real, which I got from Hunger Games. Right? After PETA has been taken and spent that time in the capital while they were doing to him whatever they were doing to him.
Speaker 1:And then he comes back and gets treatment and therapy and all the things that they don't really go into the movie. I've never read the books. But he keeps asking real or not real. And that's how I felt for a long time. Not just because of all the shifting relationships in my life or because of moving or trying new things, but also because of shiny happy, because of high demand religion cultiness.
Speaker 1:What is even real? What is not real? Am I real? How do I know? These have been very valid questions, very experiential questions that I have wrestled with for maybe two, three years now.
Speaker 1:Grieving things that I thought were real but found out they were not. Falling apart and being a hot mess when some things I wanted to be real, like daydreaming, couldn't stay real because it's not accurate. And in coming out of shiny, happy cultiness, how to find my own way of holding on to who I am,
Speaker 2:and also hope for what isn't yet but could be
Speaker 1:even accurately. So maybe not getting lost in daydreams of what are not real, but holding on to what is real enough. And also that takes safety.
Speaker 2:My therapist asked me today if she could call me. I've told her when it was me on emails or text,
Speaker 1:but I've not let her talk about it in session, Avoiding, pivoting, throwing out bigger truth bombs and messes for doorknob confessions, all the things that we could talk about instead of parts. Until finally today, it just felt okay, and it felt right. And we had been talking about how hard these last few years have been. And I've made jokes about Hunger Games before, how I skipped the violent bits so I could watch all three movies in, like, sixty three minutes. I'm teasing and exaggerating, but we really do skip through the rough parts, which is a lot of it.
Speaker 1:And also, it's a movie about trying to survive, and they're movies about dissociation. And the ways they depict that in some scenes are unlike anything else I've seen. And so I keep coming back to it as if it's a way of finding my own DID, the way a bookmark helps you find your page
Speaker 2:again in a paperback. And something my therapist has understood is that we needed a Katniss in our lives to be strong and navigate scary waters
Speaker 1:when we couldn't see who was in an alliance with us
Speaker 2:and who was trying to kill us,
Speaker 1:metaphorically or otherwise. That's what it's felt like. Are we safe or not? How do we know? Who is safe or not?
Speaker 2:How do we know?
Speaker 1:Trying to make friends.
Speaker 2:When you grew up alone is really hard.
Speaker 1:And complex trauma makes everything harder even when no one is doing anything wrong. So it's not just hard conversations and tolerating care and wrestling with carebusters. It's also who is spinning the clock and why won't it stop? I mean that from the hunger games movie, the spinning the clock. The one where there's 12 sections, people who know the movie know what I'm meaning.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. I'm unclear if you don't know the movies. You don't have to watch the movies. I don't mean that as recommendation.
Speaker 2:But I know that feeling of
Speaker 1:having someone else spin your clock and trying to figure out what's going on and how to stay safe when every hour has a different danger. Every day is like that for me. Just trying to navigate from getting up in the morning to going to sleep again at night. It's exhausting. Last year, as part of learning to have healthy relationships, we talked so much about codependency.
Speaker 1:I was really yucky. And also, development is messy and hard and full of falls before we ever get it right. Remember the whole thing about the toddler learning how to walk and how they toddler first. The way they try and then they fall and then they try and they fall. We don't shame the baby for falling.
Speaker 1:And the baby isn't full of disparagement and shame. They just get back up again and try again. Until now, we don't even think about walking, those of us who can.
Speaker 2:Until there's an injury like my broken foot, which still hurts
Speaker 1:a year and a half later
Speaker 2:if I walk too far or too long
Speaker 1:or slip getting out of the bathtub.
Speaker 2:Those are wounds that hurt and take a long time to heal, and then hurt again when they're reinjured in the same place.
Speaker 1:While I was in DC last weekend for that conference, there was an afternoon where I had some time, and I thought I could go to the National Mall or one of the museums.
Speaker 2:But then I couldn't
Speaker 1:because my foot hurt too much, and I was on my own and couldn't manage it by myself. So I was disappointed and sad and also chose the right thing to let myself rest and to let my foot heal. So even though I was sore and tired after the airport and flying home, I wasn't in crisis. Because even though it was hard, I took care of myself along the way, and I'm really proud of that. It's a big deal.
Speaker 1:And I think that's what some of the codependency stuff helped me with relationally, is giving me a new baseline of care. That it is not okay for me to be abused in any way, physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally. And also, it's not okay for me to do that to myself by sacrificing myself for others in ways that are out of balance with my own capacity or resources, internally or externally. And coming out of cultic culture, which is how I can talk about it now, To include all of it, shiny happy from childhood and high demand from adulthood, and that one on one abuser dynamic, it's not okay anymore. And I have to stand up for me because I'm an adult now, and I have resources and support and even friends.
Speaker 1:For years on the podcast, I have talked about being alone and not having friends and the struggles of friendship and that is real. There are times I have tried and it's not gone well. There are other times it's gone right and people have been patient. There are times friendships have shifted and grown. There are other times that I tried but got taken advantage of or manipulated.
Speaker 1:There are times I made my own mistakes. And also most of us with trauma and dissociation, we're just learning. We're just trying toddlers again. Right? So I needed some guidance.
Speaker 1:But even guidance doesn't help if you don't have a sense of self. And I feel like my therapist has done that really well in ways I never knew I needed. Not because she's telling me who I am. She doesn't. She won't.
Speaker 1:Even when I ask,
Speaker 2:She turns the question back at me. Who are you? Not just which shirt is here or who is here.
Speaker 1:But who are all of you? Who are you? How do you know? And she doesn't just mean philosophically. She wants examples.
Speaker 2:And that matters in healing not just because of dissociation, but
Speaker 1:also because I am more than the roles I played in childhood. If I stay in a victim role, then it means other people are either the bad guys hurting me or responsible for rescuing me. That's what they call Cartman's triangle or the drama triangle. We've talked about it on the podcast before. You can Google it.
Speaker 1:Except I'm not helpless, and I don't have to be in a victim role. I do have to acknowledge my wounds, and also I can be my own rescuer and use my resources and my therapy to tend to those wounds, to get out of harm's way and tend to those wounds. I don't have to be the bad guy, but like Katniss, I can be my own protector. I can keep myself safe, safe enough. That's why we get to reclaim NTIS with all the power that it is, Because I'm the one in control of it.
Speaker 1:So many things that I cannot control. But lots of things that I can.
Speaker 2:There's a pamphlet about codependency and talking about healthy detachment.
Speaker 1:I don't think that that has to be taken out of context and mean disconnected. I don't think it has to mean avoidant. Like if we're having a spectrum of health or if we are practicing health. I don't think that disconnected or avoidant is any more effective or healthy.
Speaker 2:Than approach or anxious or overly dependent. Right? But let me read this as a healthy example and a framework because it's changed our lives. This is a quote.
Speaker 1:Detachment allows us to let go of our obsession with another's behavior and begin to lead happier and more manageable lives. Lives with dignity and rights. Lives guided by a power greater than ourselves, end quote. But then it gives really specific examples that whether you're talking about a codependent relationship, or whether you're talking about patterns you're trying to heal, or whether you're talking about escaping culty organizations or religions. Any of those kinds of dynamics, even like the conference talked about one on one abuse with a traumatizing narcissist as having the same kind of conditioning or programming as with culty stuff, Whatever this situation is, here are examples that it was really helpful for me to read and see explicitly in words on a page in a visual that I could see.
Speaker 1:It says, we learn not to suffer because of the actions or reactions of other people, not to allow ourselves to be used or abused by others in the interest of someone else's recovery, not to do for others what they can do for themselves, not to manipulate situations, or I would add, be manipulated so that others say when we will eat, go to bed, get up, pay bills, not drink, or behave as we see fit. And then also about not creating a crisis and not preventing a crisis if that's the natural course of events. I think that means when it's not our fireball, we have to still let the comet land. These have been epic lessons, but I needed to see them that explicitly because when we have conditioning, whether it's from an abuser or an organization that is abusive, we have this conditioning and our responses are so automated. We don't notice.
Speaker 1:So when someone tells me when I can sleep or what to eat. I don't think anything of it. Because it's already my baseline. If someone hurts me and I'm the victim. I'm already used to being in that corner of the triangle.
Speaker 1:If someone tells me I'm bad, I know how to get back on my blanket. That's programming. That's conditioning. If I need to deny my own needs to rescue everyone else around me, I'm really good at that. I've done that since I was a child, but that's not healthy for me.
Speaker 1:And my friend reminded me that Laura Brown talks about how you can open the triangle to a square and add a fourth point about the complicit bystander. I think that when I am in the complicit bystander place with myself, it happens because of that conditioning again, where I'm not saying no, but I'm also not consenting because it's all just happening to me, because I'm expected to respond, because it's all happening around me, because I forget that I am a person too. So part of healing is also not being complicit to me being abusive or abused, to me being harmful or harmed. I cannot be a bystander to my own life. I maybe can't help reenactments because they're not conscious or intentional.
Speaker 1:And also, if I am showing up to do the work for myself in therapy, in groups, in reading books, in studying, in doing all the things, in practicing health,
Speaker 2:then I will notice reenactments. And when I do, I can tend to them.
Speaker 1:And sometimes before you can tend to things, you have to stop. You have to get to safety, get away from danger, or add the good if it's deprivation that's happening, and then tend to the wounds. Right? That's basic first aid. From one of my friends, I learned when you need to stop and be safe first before you can even tend to the wound, especially relationally because of complex trauma.
Speaker 1:They call it drop the rope. I don't know. Maybe people who listen already know all the things, but I didn't know all the things, and it's really funny as a, like, as a deaf person because they're very English and they don't translate well. So you have to really dig. And in fact, I used my chatbot to look up what drop the rope means.
Speaker 1:And my chatbot set this. Dropping the rope refers to letting go of the need to control someone else's behavior, usually related to love addiction or unhealthy patterns. It means releasing the emotional burden of trying to fix or manage others, recognizing that you can only control yourself. When we let go of controlling others, we free ourselves from the stress, anxiety, and frustration that comes with trying to manage someone else's behavior. Dropping the rope means focusing on our own growth, healing, and recovery rather than investing energy in changing someone who may not want to be changed and needs to do the work to change themselves.
Speaker 1:So I was given this beautiful visual of part of safety and stabilization, whether in therapy or relationally has to do with just pausing and noticing what is my stance? Like, am I leaning back? Am I holding too tightly onto someone else's rope? Am I going like, am I at risk for falling? Like, as someone who falls a lot anyway, because of vertigo and the broken foot that will not heal.
Speaker 1:Do I first need to get my feet readjusted just so that I'm not going to fall? Like, that's the first thing of practicing health. I just mean as a person who's trying not to fall over every single day. Right? First, I need to be sure my feet are under me, and I need to make sure my stance is balanced enough that I am going to be safe enough when I drop the rope.
Speaker 1:So I think this is something that happened with unfawning. We didn't know that first you need to add good things in because deprivation before you take more things away. Right? So if I'm at risk of falling, but using the codependency rope to keep my balance, like the first thing I need to do is get my own balance back because I'm an adult. I don't have to be a victim or the bad guy or a rescuer or a complicit bystander.
Speaker 1:I need to get my own healthy feet under me first. Who am I? And my therapist helps mirror that to me of, do you remember who you are? And I don't just mean parts. Like, where is that ego strength to just be who I am in the world around me?
Speaker 1:And then dropping the rope means when I let go of the rope, I'm already standing safely in my own space and who I am and just being true to that. It is my job to keep my own balance in the world, and then I can interact with other people in safe and healthy ways. If there's someone else at the end of my codependency rope, like it is their job to do the same for them. So they may fall over. This happened when I left Oklahoma, right?
Speaker 1:I was doing all the things. I was managing, like I was pulling the rope for everybody. So when I let go and left Oklahoma, they all fell down because they were all depending on me and I was doing all the things. So they lost their balance when I left. However, that fall, even though it's uncomfortable and it's hard and it's really uncomfortable to sit with discomfort, that is what healed them.
Speaker 1:They are so much better now. I am so much better now. We grew so much through that season because everyone now has their own balance instead of me managing that for everybody and being completely exhausted and used up. So it was really helpful for me to get those analogies and that language, even though also it is hard and messy like toddlers learning how to walk. And I am embarrassed because I am 47 years old.
Speaker 1:By the time you hear this, I will be 48 years old. Oh my goodness. And I'm an adult still falling over because vertigo and because of my ankle, already getting injured like an elderly person because my body balance is not its strong point. Because trauma and deprivation, relational balance is not my strong point. And also I am practicing health and I am learning and I am growing and that feels good.
Speaker 1:So the same thing even with the podcast when I share hard episodes about infanticidal attachment and then connecting that to cultiness as well. And that makes some people uncomfortable. That's okay. People who don't wanna listen don't have to listen. They can drop their rope.
Speaker 1:I am not gonna be injured by someone else dropping their rope. And also. It is part of what happened to me in my own faith transition was because I was all in so out of balance because I was so in and so holding tightly and trying to manage all the things by the culty rope that I thought if I do all the things, I will hold on and they can hold on to me. In fact, you know what that makes me think of? There's actually a painting.
Speaker 1:I wish I knew who it was by, but I don't. But where like the hand is reaching up and like what's supposed to be, I don't know, heavenly father or Jesus, I don't know. But like God reaching down and grasping. Right? So I thought that that's what like that is what my faith meant to me.
Speaker 1:Is finally there would be a rescuer, which means I don't have to be the bad guy because atonement, and I don't have to be stuck in the victim. Someone is going to reach down and rescue me. And that is why my faith was so strong and I was so dependent on that
Speaker 2:rope. But what happened to me
Speaker 1:is basically the church is like, it doesn't matter how many things you do. We don't reach out our hand to rescue the gay people. That hurts even to say out loud. I know those are not their words. That is not a quote.
Speaker 1:But that is the I'm daydreaming of what happened. So that puts me into the bad guy position again. Right?
Speaker 2:So my choices then are either to stay in the bad guy position or to be the victim, like, to be excommunicated or wait to be,
Speaker 1:like lose myself in the process or to fawn and be the complicit bystander betraying myself or using rescue intentionally to get myself out of this situation. So then what starts happening when I start thinking about these different layers is then I start seeing it as its own mapping experience of internally, how is that playing out? Who in me just thinks they're bad? But then who in me is declaring us to be the bad guy? Right?
Speaker 1:So then I think of some littles, some really specific littles. I got one for the mother, one for the father. I've said that before publicly. I think of them as, like, in the victim role. Right?
Speaker 1:Which puts Dante in the bad guy role who is, like, gonna prove how bad we are. So then who is the rescuer trying to make everything okay? Externally, I think that was him in some ways trying to solve all the problems for all the children of the world. And then maybe Molly in some ways for faith and for fawning. And then ultimately placed in a super awkward position by a therapist saying that they were in charge of the little ones because they were caring even though she had nothing to do with parenting externally and nothing but shiny happy to bring internally.
Speaker 1:And wow, I just said that out loud and understood it for the first time ever. So then Molly also got transitioned by someone else to be the bad guy of that's what she brought inside was shiny happy. So then we had reenactments of memory time abuse being played out internally. Woah, my mind is blown right now. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:I'm seeing that so clearly. And then the complicit bystander is what? Allowing the divorce to unfold because there's no way for us to make it work anyway, because we can't ask him to leave the church. We can't let go of our faith and also are not welcome in the church. So there's that double bind.
Speaker 1:So then allowing ourselves a healthier relationship, but that's only accessible part time. Oh my goodness. There's so many layers I'm seeing so clearly from this all of a sudden. It's so powerful to me. But this is the kind of stuff we have been doing in therapy and talking about in therapy even as our therapist is letting us avoid things less and less.
Speaker 1:And by that, I mean, not controlling us or controlling this session, but bringing it back and bringing it back and bringing it back full circle to parts. And these things I'm learning externally, being able to internalize them in healthy ways, almost as support and structure. To hold space for the things that I'm learning and being able to apply them internally. Oh my goodness, do you know what just happened inside me? Was I had this vision of the fire, which is a flashback that is an intrusive thought, an intrusive flashback.
Speaker 1:I don't know the right words. Super intrusive, a very visual flashback that happens from time to time, very connected to shame, very connected to being punished. Sometimes it is so strong I can smell smoke. Always indicates loss and the destruction of my world as I know it. It happens a shocking amount of times in my life because I have not been able to maintain safety.
Speaker 1:I am practicing safety, practicing health, practicing stability. I'm trying so hard, you guys. But do you know for the first time that image just came to mind, except as I was saying structure and framework. It was like it was overlaid with the image from when I was building my house back in the day, and we got the framing up for the house. Oh my goodness, I just have chills.
Speaker 1:Like we got the framing up for the house. And it was like all of a sudden, I just realized that internally, this whole circle of landscape that I thought was just ashes and destruction, There's framing there. I see framing in place, and I see sunflowers off to the side. Like, growing wild, even though there's not a space for a garden yet. You guys, I have to go paint this.
Speaker 1:That was so powerful what just came to mind. Oh my goodness. I'm so excited this happened in a way I could share with you safely, literally as it was happening. You guys, this is what I'm learning is all this external community stuff we've been practicing. It has to happen on the inside too.
Speaker 1:Not just externally, but internally. This is my life that I'm fighting for. This is my life that I'm creating. I have to have community inside of me.
Speaker 2:Y'all, I have to go build a house inside.
Speaker 1:This is epic. 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.