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Undependence · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over: 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.
• 1:01
  Okay, guys. This morning, I was getting into my front closet to pull out the things for the next symposium, and I found a box we had not even unpacked. And it was from my office that my youngest moved her bedroom into when we moved all the house around again with all the people. You will not believe what I found. It is the Codependent No More book, and I can't believe it was just in my daughter's closet this whole year.
• 1:45
  I haven't looked at this since 2023. Well, I recorded episodes about it in 2023, I think, and talked about it with Nathan in 2023, those codependent no more episodes when we talked about it together. But then I never came back to the book like so many other things were happening, and this was painful. This book ultimately is what led me to Laura Brown's book about not the price for admission. But there was this gap in between where I was learning about attachment, including infanticidal attachment, which we're not talking about today.
• 2:29
  Don't worry. But I had all these side quests going, and so I never finished this book. And now I have found it stumbling onto it again. And I don't remember if I already shared this, like, when we first found it in my daughter's closet or now that I found it in the front closet. Like, it just keeps getting moved around in closets.
• 2:52
  It's not even on a bookshelf. Like, I literally had it hidden away. I can't, y'all. We need to look at the book. And so now it is finally out and on my table where I read every morning and in my little cozy space, and we have to look at it.
• 3:13
  And when I open it up to the chapter I left off, I may have already shared this. I can't remember y'all. When I open it up to the chapter I left off, it is, of course, detachment. Of course, it is. So part of this I may have already shared, I cannot remember if I was just thinking about sharing it or if I did already share it, but I'm going to talk about it and then some pieces that came after that were super helpful for me.
• 3:44
  So, again, we're not talking about detaching from a a person that we care about. We're talking about detaching from being overly involved with them. And that's why I think I maybe already shared some of this, because I remember talking about the difference of that, but I don't know if it aired. I'm y'all, I have been so sick, and I'm just now getting myself back online. So thank you for your patience.
• 4:17
  But when the author is talking about over involvement, she's talking about how it keeps us in a state of chaos because we're worrying about other people's lives instead of our own. And when we do that, we're actually detaching from ourselves instead of detaching from other people's lives. So it's healthier for us to attach to ourselves and our own lives instead of worrying about other people's, or what she calls an obsession, which feels like old language from I don't know. To me, it feels like old language. I think I said that already, but it feels like old language to me.
• 4:59
  But she defines it as obsessing with another human being or a problem is an awful thing to be caught up in. Have you seen someone who's obsessed with someone or something? That person can talk about nothing else, can think of nothing else. They are preoccupied. They say the same thing over and over, sometimes changing the words slightly, sometimes using the same words, and nothing you can say makes any difference.
• 5:29
  Even asking them to stop doesn't help. They probably couldn't if they wanted to. The problem isn't that they're not able to. The problem is that what they are obsessed with is controlling them. And then she talks about how that control isn't like, oh, I'm a bad person, and so I'm controlling people.
• 5:50
  It's more like it's controlling ourselves and trying to obsess about other people as a way of holding on to them. She says, maybe we're afraid to let go because when we let go in the past, terrible, hurtful things happened. And so when we're obsessing or controlling about others, our emotions are constantly in turmoil over what they said or didn't say, over what they did or didn't do, or what they will do next. Never mind the things we're doing aren't helping anyone. No matter the cost, we will hang on.
• 6:25
  We will grit our teeth, clutch the rope, and grab more tightly than ever. So that's why I wanted to come back to this when I got the book out again this morning was because that clutch the rope phrase, that's what I just opened up to. And I was like, oh, that's the other side of dropping the rope, which is the detachment and just letting go. Like the detachmenting in recovery language, they talk about dropping the rope. Like, it's not this tug of war, and we don't have to participate in that.
• 6:59
  We can instead focus on loving people well by letting them go when we are entangled with what's not healthy for us. Each person is responsible for themselves. Their problems aren't ours to solve, and worrying about them doesn't help. We can allow people to be who they are. We give them the freedom to be responsible for themselves and to grow, and we give ourselves that same freedom.
• 7:37
  We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We stop trying to change the things we can't, and we do what we can to solve a problem but stop fretting and stewing about it. So that brings us back into the present where life is happening instead of us trying to force it, and we can't actually control the outcomes of things. So we can relinquish regrets over the past and fears about the future we make the most out of each day. We accept reality as it is and believe in the rightness and appropriateness of each moment.
• 8:13
  We release our burdens and cares and give ourselves the freedom to enjoy life in spite of our unsolved problems. We trust that all is well in spite of the conflicts. So what she then, like, really gets into how detachment isn't about not caring. It's about learning to love and to love well. So instead of creating chaos in people and environments and in relationships, privately or publicly, we are not anxiously or compulsively thrashing about.
• 8:51
  We become able to make good decisions about how to love people and how to solve our problems and how to let things go. That is how we find serenity. We grieve our losses, then we find a way to live our lives, not in resignation or martyrdom, or even in despair, but with enthusiasm, peace, and a true sense of gratitude for that which was good. They took care of their actual I love this. It was really tricksy for me the first time, I think, when I read this because I don't want it to be toxic positivity weaponized against myself, or I don't want it to be churchy feeling or churchy sounding.
• 9:35
  And also, it's really important to see even through hard experiences, what was good and right about things, not because that excuses other people or their bad behavior. That's not okay. We don't have to do that. But I mean, because I trust myself. So even in my own growth and development or in all of the shifts I've ever had in the past, like, I was there for a reason.
• 10:02
  I I wanted to choose that for a reason. I was participating for a reason. And those reasons can still be good and right and meant something to me even when even when that continued to change or develop. So if I'm only obsessing about what were the hard things. So whether that's my childhood, whether that's therapy, whether that's ships.
• 10:35
  If I'm only obsessing about what's hard, I'm not actually learning not just from the situation, but also from myself. So the same thing, like, I was just sharing about the baby whales and feeling my body in conversation almost like a part. It feels different than that. I don't have language for it yet, but in conversation for sure and learning from that. So I was talking with Laura Brown this weekend, and we were talking about not feeling well.
• 11:08
  And one of the things that she said to me was we have to care for the body that we have right now, not the body that we had last week or six months ago or ten years ago, or that we want to have someday. It's not about that. It's about being present right now and giving ourselves what our body needs right now. And there might be some days that that is nourishment. It might be some days that that is a walk outside, and that might be other days that that's rest.
• 11:44
  And there might be other days where we need all of those things. But listening to what our body needs in the present or what our ships need in the present or what I need in the present within the context of my ships, that that is what is the healthy thing in being present. Otherwise, this book says in the next chapter that we react with fear and anxiety. Some of us react so much it is painful to be around people and torturous to be in large groups of people. We may have started reacting and responding urgently and compulsively in patterns that hurt us.
• 12:23
  Just feeling urgent and compulsive is enough to hurt us. We keep ourselves in a crisis state that way. And when we do this, or when we're obsessing about others, we are indirectly allowing others to tell us what to do. That means we have lost control. We are being controlled.
• 12:39
  We allow others determine when we will be happy, when we will be peaceful, when we will be upset, and what we will say, do, think, and feel. We forfeit our right to be peaceful at the whim of our environment. But she says that's reactionary. That's not actually experiencing ourselves or the present because we detach from ourselves. So what we need to do is attach internally in parallel with others, also being in tune with themselves.
• 13:14
  And then we get in a community kind of sense as mammals, we get a kind of connection that's healthy and safe, like the baby whales, the other whales that swam around that mom and helped lift the baby to the surface. She says we're reactionary as though everything is a crisis because we have lived with so many crises for so long. We react because we think things shouldn't be happening the way they are. We react because we don't feel good about ourselves. But we don't have to be so afraid of people.
• 13:52
  They are people just like us. We don't have to forfeit our peace. It doesn't actually help. We have the same facts and resources available to us when we're peaceful than when we're frantic and chaotic. We actually have more resources available because our minds and emotions are free to perform.
• 14:12
  We don't have to forfeit our power to think and feel for anyone or anything that is not required of us. Feelings are important, but they're only feelings. Thoughts are important, but they're only thoughts. The world doesn't hinge on any particular speech or action. I literally wrote in the space there in the margin.
• 14:36
  I literally wrote religious trauma as because that's what it feels like, where if we don't get it exactly right or do it this way, then it's only condemnation. Like, there's such a binary thing when we're making ourselves or other people good or bad without nuance and complexity, then it really is this experience of that limbic system response instead of the whole brain response. And what other people do to us or say about us are not actually reflections of our self worth. If someone who is important to you or even unimportant rejects you or your choices, you are still real, and you are still worth every bit as much as you would be if you had not been rejected. Feeling feelings that go with rejection talk about your thoughts, but don't forfeit your self esteem to another's disapproval or rejection of who you are or what you've done.
• 15:44
  Don't reject yourself. When she connected detaching from ourselves with self rejection. And then also this other book I'm reading that's talking about how that enacts self abandonment, we abandon ourselves the way we're worried others, like abandon our values, So then we're acting in ways not congruent with who we are because we're so worried about what other people are doing to us or saying about us or all these things going on. With these, reenactments that are happening, how that is then like, fulfilling the prophecy that we're going to be harmed again or abandoned again, except that we're doing it to ourselves. This is so, so painful.
• 16:33
  She says by practicing detachment, we can lessen our destructive reactions to the world around us. Separate yourself from things, leave things alone, and let people be who they are. She says, but you might protest. Why shouldn't I react? Why shouldn't I say something back?
• 16:51
  Why shouldn't I be upset? He or she deserves to bear the brunt of my turmoil. That may be, but you don't. We're talking here about your lack of peace, your lack of serenity, and your wasted moments. This is your life, and you need to live it.
• 17:08
  So she's saying that's how we know when we that's how we know we are, detaching from ourselves or something is coming between us and our values, as Chuck said, or like the other book says, with self rejection or self abandonment. We know that that is happening when we start losing our sense of peace and serenity. And in those moments, it's important to feel our feelings and, like, take space and time to get present with ourselves because we are responsible for helping ourselves maintain our own peace. We can slow down. We don't have to feel so frightened.
• 17:51
  We don't have to be so frantic. We can keep things in perspective, and it makes life easier. She says when we are worrying about other people instead of focusing on ourselves, then it's like we think we are writing a play and that we can do things and say things to make the story move along in a certain way. But that is really she calls it bucking reality. If we charge ahead insistently enough, we believe we can stop the flow of life, transform people, and change things to our liking, but we are fooling ourselves.
• 18:32
  We are trying to force things to happen. We do it because we're only trying to help. We do it because we know best how things should go and how people should behave. We do it because we're right and they're wrong. We control because we're afraid not to.
• 18:49
  We do it because we don't know what else to do. We do it to stop the pain. We control because we think we have to. We control because we don't think at all. We control because controlling is all we know.
• 19:02
  Ultimately, we control because that's always what's been done to us. Oh, and then she talks about some people do their she says do their dirty work undercover. Sometimes other people do these same controlling things but use other people to do it for them. Or she talks about polite society where they do the same things but under sweetness and niceties. But trying to control other people or obsessing about them or abandoning ourselves is all still part of thinking we're helpless instead of trusting our own capacities to care for ourselves and letting other people do that for themselves.
• 19:51
  But she says, control is an illusion. It doesn't work. We cannot control anyone else's behavior. We cannot and have no business trying to control anyone's emotions, mind, or choices. We cannot control the outcome of events.
• 20:09
  We cannot control life. Some of us can barely control ourselves. The only person it is your business to control is yourself. You only need to put emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical hand back in your own pockets and leave things and people alone. Let them be.
• 20:29
  Make any decisions you need to make to take care of yourself, but don't make them to control other people. Go back to starting to take care of yourself. For each of us, there comes a time to let go. You will know when the time has come. When you have done all that you can do, it is time to detach.
• 20:48
  Deal with your feelings, face your fears, and gain control of yourself and your own responsibilities about your own life. Free others to be who they are. In so doing, you set your own self free. Then in the next chapter, she talks about how that is connected to feeling like a victim. And so we think we're controlling other people to prove that we're strong and powerful instead of a victim, but we're actually victimizing ourselves.
• 21:22
  Chapter, She says codependence are caretakers, rescuers. They rescue others instead of themselves. And in trying to control others, they end up persecuting them, and then they end up victimizing themselves. This is Cartman's drama triangle. What is really cool is that this chapter, lays out each of those pieces of the triangle really, really well.
• 21:49
  She says, We rescue any time we take responsibility for another human being, for that person's thoughts, feelings, decisions, behaviors, growth, well-being, problems, or destiny. Caretaking looks much friendlier than it is. It requires incompetency on the part of the person being taken care of. We only rescue victims because we believe they are not capable or responsible for themselves. This is actually dangerous because after we rescue, we inevitably move to the next corner of the triangle, which is persecution.
• 22:29
  We become resentful and angry at the person we think we have helped. When we don't get credit for our sacrifices they didn't even know about, we've done something we didn't want to do, We've done something that was not our responsibility to do, and we've ignored our own needs and wants, and we get angry about it. The person is not letting us fix their feelings, and something doesn't work right or feel right. And so we rip off our halos and pull out our pitchforks. In the meantime, the other person never wanted to plead incompetency, and they resent us for adding insult to injury by becoming angry with them after we pointed out their flaws.
• 23:17
  So when they confront us for our own behavior, then we head for our favorite spot, back to victim in the bottom. This is predictable and unavoidable result of rescue. Feelings of helplessness, hurt, sorrow, shame, and self pity abound. We have been used again. We have gone unappreciated again.
• 23:38
  We try so hard to help people and to be good to them, and no one but we're not being hailed as the hero. Many codependents at sometimes in their lives were true victims of someone else's abuse, neglect, abandonment, or alcoholism. But what we act out are those same dynamics to other people as we participate in our own victimization by perpetually rescuing others. Rescuing or caretaking is oh my goodness. Listen to this.
• 24:12
  Rescuing or caretaking is not an act of love. The drama triangle, the Cartman's triangle, is a hate triangle. It fosters and maintains self hate and hinders our feelings for other people. I have seen that where wanting to do the right thing or the good thing or the helpful thing and other people not finding it good or right or helpful, and then being frustrated by me intervening, and then me feeling wounded by that. And so them feeling angry about it because they were just con like responding to what I had been through.
• 24:57
  And then me being the bad guy even though I was just trying to help. And the same thing with others. I have been in other situations where people were trying so hard to rescue me that they were not giving me dignity or voice or choice as I learned at conference and then wounded that they weren't credit for saving me when that's not the way I needed saving. That goes back to crayons in Africa where people were bringing crayons, and we were watching them just melt because it was so hot and because the kids didn't have paper. Crayons were not what they needed even though it was generous of people to bring gifts for the children there.
• 25:41
  So this is really, really a big deal. It also reminds me of that window of tolerance, maybe because we're getting ready for symposium, but that window of tolerance with the rainbow where we are as dysregulated when we are fawning or overly calm or overly compliant as when we are acting out. It's still dysregulation. So whether someone is over rescuing or fawning or in the parasocial dynamic when they are doing things in exchange for whatever they're imagining, which is not the same as, like, getting to know me for real as a person, That's as dysregulated as, being mean or cruel or aggressive because they didn't get what they want. That's still transactional.
• 26:34
  It's not relational. She says, she talks about this. The parasocial, I think, just shines a light on it and makes this louder. But she says, I can usually spot a codependent within the first five minutes of meeting and talking. He or she will either offer me unrequested help, or the person will keep talking to me although he or she is obviously uncomfortable and wants to discontinue the conversation.
• 27:01
  The person begins the relationship by taking responsibility for me and not taking responsibility for themselves. Caretaking doesn't help. It causes problems. When we take care of people and do things we don't want to do, we ignore personal needs, wants, and feelings. We put ourselves aside.
• 27:22
  Sometimes we get so busy taking care of people that we put our entire lives on hold. Many caretakers are harried and overcommitted. They enjoy none of their activities. Caretakers look so responsible, but we aren't. We don't assume responsibility for our highest responsibility, which is ourselves.
• 27:41
  We consistently give more than we receive, then feel abused and neglected because of it. We wonder why when we anticipate the needs of others. We wonder why when we anticipate the needs of others, no one is noticing our needs. And then we become seriously depressed as a result of not getting our needs met. But we feel safer when we're giving.
• 28:09
  We feel guilty and uncomfortable when someone gives to us or when we do something to meet our own needs. The worst aspect of caretaking is we become and stay victims. This leads to self destructive behaviors through this victim role as victims. And then when we're in the Cartman's triangle, the only way out of victim role is to become the perpetrator. So then we act out or, or externalize that injustice that we have caused ourselves by being mean to the people we were trying to help instead of receiving care for them.
• 28:49
  She says we rescue because we don't feel good about ourselves. And although the feelings are transient and artificial, caretaking provides us with a temporary hit of good feelings, self worth, and power. When we don't feel good about ourselves, we feel compelled to do a particular thing to prove how good we are. We rescue because we don't feel good about other people either, and then we prove how bad they are to try to hold on to our goodness. Caretaking breeds anger.
• 29:19
  Caretakers become unsatisfied, frustrated, and confused. The people we help either are or become helpless, angry victims. Caretakers become victims. So because we're because we are not being cared for, we get angry, And then we project that anger onto the same people we were helping or people who are trying to care for us because we don't know how to receive it. So again, like, that's what we were talking about with rage with the therapist about anger being used to push people away instead of receiving care or as part of differentiation between this is me and this is you, which can be a healthy developmental process.
• 30:11
  But when it comes through Cartman's triangle or reenactment instead of developmentally, then it's acted out and hurts our relationships instead of helping them. So then in the next chapter, she talks about undependence, which she says comes from Penelope Rushinoff, about the desirable balance where we acknowledge and meet our own natural needs for people and for love, but we do not become overly or harmfully dependent on them. And we don't get into Cartman's triangle so that we are not victimizing or victimized. If we are in a relationship that's good, we may be too insecure to detach and start taking care of ourselves. So she talks about how one of the most dangerous times in relationships is when someone is in Cartman's triangle, and the other person is having the boundaries to not get into Cartman's triangle, and we feel too insecure to detach and take care of ourselves.
• 31:27
  So instead of rescuing our own babies, then we smother other people's babies or weaponize our own needs against other people. She says relationships based on emotional insecurity and need rather than on love become self destructive. They don't work. Too much need drives people away and smothers love. It scares people away, and our real needs don't get met.
• 32:00
  So we're not talking about people, oh, I need too much, or I feel like I'm taking up too much space or too much in those ways. We're talking about doing that for others instead of ourselves. So she says, our real needs become greater and so does our despair. We center our lives around the other person, trying to protect our source of security and happiness. We forfeit our lives to do this, and we become angry at this person.
• 32:30
  We ultimately become angry and resentful of what we are dependent on because we have given our personal power and rights to that person. So then instead of taking self responsibility, we're still blaming the other person because that's the obsession is that we're so focused on them, that we are so hyper focused on someone that whether we are feeling good or whether we are feeling bad, it is their fault, as opposed to taking responsibility for regulating ourselves and caring for ourselves so that when we feel good, we know we're feeling well because we're caring well for ourselves. And when we feel bad, we can tend to the things that need tending. So Cartman's triangle is not the same thing as love. She ties this back into memory time, and it's really good stuff.
• 33:25
  But I think I'm going to leave it here now because for me, those pieces are more connected to grief, which I know it all overlaps, but I can talk about that in a different episode. There are layers of finishing things with our parents and finding ways to offer closure to ourselves, whether they are still alive or not, that can be a really important part of transitioning from memory time to now time or being able to tell the difference. So we'll come back to that. But the point is that we have to stop looking for happiness in other people. Our source of happiness and well-being is not inside others.
• 34:08
  It's inside us, learning to center ourselves in ourselves. She calls it courageous vulnerability, which she says comes from Colette Dowling, and that it means we feel scared but do it anyway. She says, we can feel our feelings, talk about our fears, accept ourselves and our present conditions, and then get started on the journey toward undependence. We can do it. We don't have to feel strong all the time to be undependent and taking care of ourselves.
• 34:43
  We can and probably will have feelings of fear, weakness, and even hopelessness. That is normal and even healthy. Real power comes from feeling our feelings, not from ignoring them or weaponizing them. Real strength comes from not pretending to be strong all the time, but from acknowledging our weaknesses and vulnerabilities when we feel this way. And then what is super helpful at the end of this chapter is she talks about the difference between what is actually love and what is Cartman's triangle or that addiction dynamic, even if there's not an active alcoholic or addict in there, but the dysfunction of trauma and deprivation that happens intergenerationally, whether someone is in active addiction at the moment or not, the difference between those dynamics that are trauma and memory time and reenactments and what is actually love.
• 35:45
  And this meant so much to me, and I marked it with washi tape so I can find it quickly and easily because it was all things healing for me to see this on the page. So with coercive control or the addictive systems, there's dependency based on security and comfort using intensity instead of intimacy. Right? Using intensity of need and infatuation as proof of love, meaning we're also requiring someone else to be intense instead of letting them be. There's a total involvement with limited social life, neglecting friends or interests, or in coercive control, preventing contact with friends or interests, preoccupation with others' behavior dependent on others' approval for identity or self worth, with coercive control, like that obsession of what are they doing or the surveillance or interference with functioning instead of letting them be.
• 36:50
  And then also jealousy, possessiveness, fear, competition, protecting the supply, meaning not sharing the person because you are addicted to them, and you don't want them used up by other people because you need them for yourself. One partner's need suspended for the others, like self deprivation, trying to survive, or if you notice that you're having to fawn and comply, that is not relationship. That is coercive control. And reassurance through repeated ritualized activity, including weaponizing ruptures just so that you can get the care of repair, which is not the same as healthy rupture and repair. And being unable to endure or tolerate separations or conflict or that increasing your clinging and with withdrawals, even losing appetite or being lethargic or disoriented or feeling in agony when you're away from the other person or the other person does something without you.
• 37:52
  So, like, not even, being able to support them in growth and development or seek your own growth and development because you're so enmeshed in the other person keeping you alive. But with love in ships that are loving, whether that's romantic or friendship or work like any kind of healthy ship. There's room to grow, room to expand, a desire for the other to grow. There are separate interests, other friends, other meaningful relationships. There's the encouragement of each other's expanding and we're secure in our own worth.
• 38:35
  There's trust and openness that is not punitive or conditional, mutual integrity preserved, willingness to risk and be real, and room for expiration of feelings in and out of the relationship with an ability to enjoy time being alone. And here's what else she does. When there are breakups and it was coercive control or unhealthy, then there is this when there is a breakup with an unsafe or unhealthy relationship, then there's the worthlessness from from having been told how bad you are for so long. There may be a violent ending, or there's hate. It may become public trying to inflict on others manipulation to try to get them back.
• 39:31
  Like, all the bad things would stop if you would just come back. The denial of this fantasy and the overestimation of the other's commitment that really lead to seeking solutions still outside the self, so replacing this with other alliances or other acting out instead of just letting the person go. But when it is a safe and healthy relationship and there's a breakup, then you're able to accept the breakup without feeling a loss of inadequacy, without feeling any problems with your self worth, and you want your best for your partner and you can even become friends. And so being able to see what was unsafe before is still unsafe after. What was safe before is still safe after, even when it changes.
• 40:20
  So that's part of what makes it love even when there's a breakup is there's a safety and consent of being able to say no. It is not a compliance being demanded. There's actual consent and freedom in that. That is far as I've gotten to chapter 10, which says live your own life. So I'm very excited to learn about that next.
• 41:14
  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 and healing brings hope.