Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Emails: Depersonalization / How Memory Works

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Emails: Depersonalization / How Memory Works · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over:
• 0:11
  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.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: We have some emails today. The first one comes from Kristen who says, thank you so much for the podcast. I've only just now found it, and it's already changed my life. You've given me language for experiences that I didn't understand were normal for what I had been through and given me compassion for myself while now I buckled down to do the hard work in therapy. This is everything.
• 1:38
  I cannot thank you enough. Oh, that's gonna make me cry. Thank you so much, Kristen. Welcome. Sharon says, I love, love, love the podcast.
• 1:52
  I so appreciate each one, and those on making lace have inspired me to do just that. Learn how to make lace in both uses of the term. I love that it involves both right and left hands, which feels good to my brain somehow. Oh my goodness. That's amazing.
• 2:09
  That's totally bilateral. It absolutely counts. Sharon says, I bet you've heard this before, but I'm really missing the attachment strategies episodes. I learned so much from them. Oh my goodness.
• 2:22
  They were so vulnerable, and it was so intense. And so I'm really sorry about that. I totally acknowledge that as a rupture. And also, they are back. And so you're definitely, able to go back and listen to those again if you're ready and need to.
• 2:40
  And, also, I know that's hard, so no shade if you can't. Sharon says, a bit about me. I have been diagnosed with CPTSD and depersonalization. I'm really struggling with that particular symptom after having made so much progress back to my cells and underlying trauma. I'm afraid of going backwards like the Flowers for Aldrinan character.
• 3:07
  I hope you have some guidance, research, inspiration, or good jokes that could help. Although I do not have DID, there are many, many aspects of it that describe me and speak to me. I can't thank you enough for providing me with a community who mirrors so much of what I experience with deep appreciation for your work. Thank you, Sharon. Oh, Sharon, that was really so kind.
• 3:33
  And I think you bring up a really good question. It's one we skip over a lot because dissociation. And, really, when I am expressing this on the podcast or talking about it on the podcast, usually, I'm not also naming it because I'm still in the experience of it. So you're right that it does not get named and talked about more explicitly, and I think this is a great time to do that. So So when we're talking about depersonalization, really what it has to do with is that ANP and EP, which is just language for parts, and I know it's problematic in lots of ways, but just for short code here, it is our daily living part, like the one who's fronting and functioning and doing all the things being separated from the feelings and senses of our experience, kind of in the same way where the somatic stuff comes up when we have EPs close to the front, but the ANP is like, What's happening?
• 4:45
  Why is our body doing this? Right? So that's kind of what's going on, but really it's just a dissociative experience that can feel like you're disconnected from your own body or emotions or even a sense of who you are. People often describe it like watching themselves from the outside, or it can feel like a dream or a movie. It definitely can be scary or even disorienting, extra confusing before you even know what's happening, like before you know the name for what's happening.
• 5:21
  But really, it's the brain's way of protecting you from overwhelm, like turning the volume down on big feelings or sensations when it feels like too much, but then you can hear the buzzing in the background. It's not quite loud enough to understand what's happening, so there's kind of a misattunement between your body or those different parts. If you're part of a system, depersonalization might happen when an alter or a part is near the front but not fully blended or when switching is trying to happen but gets interrupted. It can also be a freeze response. Even if you don't have a system or not part of a system, it can be a freeze response from the nervous system itself, kind of like the body's way of saying, woah, let's slow down or let's pause until we know we're safe.
• 6:15
  So what do we do about it? The biggest thing really is the basic answer we always get in therapy about grounding. So washing your hands with cold water or splashing cold water on your face, moving your body, walking, stretching, shaking, pressing your feet into the floor and feeling the weight of your body, or my therapist talks about stepping into the grass, walking in the grass, feeling the grass, using that sensory input. The grass is green. I hear the birds.
• 6:48
  The sun is warm. The grass is cold. Kind of talking myself through all of that. You can use sensory input, like listening to music or even just music with a strong beat. Like, can remember, I've never told about this story, but there's this one time we went to South by Southwest.
• 7:09
  Y'all, there were bats there, by the way, but anyway, like bucket list scratched. But it was before I got cochlear implants. And so the bands let me sit on the stage right next to the speakers, and it was epic. I will never forget it because it was like the music was going through my whole body, but it was this amazing, amazing experience. You can smell something.
• 7:36
  That can help too, like peppermint or citrus or lavender, wrapping yourself in a weighted blanket or soft fabric or something that feels safe. I think really another important part is actually talking out loud to yourself or your system, like, this is my body. You can even put your hand on your chest for that vagal hold. This is my body. I'm safe right now.
• 8:04
  Using the names of your parts or yourself to anchor who is present, naming what you can see or touch or hear, all that sensory stuff we were just talking about. Some people like to have frozen grapes to to to taste something sensory and sweet and cold. What else? Like journaling or drawing, asking who's feeling far away or who's scared, letting them know or even giving them permission or an invitation to be with you, writing down what you're noticing. I think that so much of trauma was what we didn't want to happen and so much of deprivation was what we wanted to happen that we never got, that anytime we're having, quote, quote, symptoms, it's really important to respond to them, to our bodies, to our systems, because we have already in the past been dismissed or not heard or not seen.
• 9:10
  And so when we have symptoms of any kind, they will get bigger and louder and bigger and louder until we pay attention. And so talking or getting grounded or responding to your body or doing whatever to express that you are responding to what you're experiencing will help exponentially more than just walking through some kind of therapy checklist that's about doing the things. It's it's less about doing the things and more about responding to yourself. Does that make sense? Regardless, what's important to remember is that depersonalization is not dangerous.
• 9:55
  It can feel unsettling. You're not wrong. But it's just our systems doing what they know how to do to help us survive. We're not broken. We're adapting, and that means we're really strong, actually.
• 10:11
  So just giving ourselves credit for that. The next question comes from David. David says, how does memory work, especially when it comes to trauma and parts? Wow. Okay.
• 10:29
  So that's actually a really big and complicated question, but let me break it down a little bit using a metaphor, if that's okay. In the community, a couple of summers ago, we watched Inside Out together. Part of why we did that is so that we could use with support each other through that metaphor because it has that girl Riley with all the characters, the different feelings, joy, anger, sadness, like little people in her head. Now I know our folks inside are not actually little people in our head. I don't mean that.
• 11:09
  And I know that's just a cartoon, but it's such a beautiful metaphor for expressing about parts when we're talking about it in this context. Part of why is because when Riley experienced something, there would be this glowing orb like a big marble or bowling ball or something that, like, rolled down this track and then would get sent up and filed away where it belonged on the shelves. So, really, it's a metaphor for how memory works in our brains because the part of our brain that does that, that rolls the ball down the track and files it away is the hippocampus. So the hippocampus takes care of things, making sure that memory gets bound together. That's how kinda how we say it.
• 12:13
  Everything about this is hippocampus. So when something happens to us, anything at all, our senses take in that experience. What we see, what we hear, what we touch, what we smell, what we feel, that sensory input gets all bound together is how we say it in science, bound together in the brain into what we would call a single moment or a actual, like, a memory. Right? That's what it is.
• 12:40
  So, like, if we are outside watching the puppy play, then we might just like when we're talking about getting grounded, we might see the green grass and feel the breeze in the air or hear the yapping of the puppy, and we feel our happy thoughts, we see the sunshine, the warmth on our skin, all of these sensory experiences get bound together in one of those memory balls or that core memory that rolls down the track, that glowing orb. But we call that autobiographical memory. So the shelves where all the balls get stored are like time stamps of our timeline, dates and events. Here's what happened. Here is the story we have experienced that we know about ourselves.
• 13:30
  Does that make sense so far? So that is the hippocampus that does all of that for us. Obviously, I'm oversimplifying, but it's more important to me that it's clear and concise for this question. So here is how trauma interrupts things. When we have trauma or deprivation and our brains recognize that as danger, the smoke detector that goes off is the amygdala.
• 14:06
  Danger. Danger. Danger. Danger. The part of our brain that alerts us to danger that goes off like a warning is the amygdala.
• 14:15
  Okay? Tiny in the middle of your brain, about the size of a thumbnail, that's the amygdala. When the amygdala starts blaring its alarm signal like the smoke detector for danger in your brain, warning your body of danger, one of the first things that happens is the hippocampus goes offline. So it's kind of like when your alarm goes off late and you have to hurry and get ready for work, so there's clothes on the floor and dishes in the sink and everything's a mess. You don't have time to take care of those things.
• 14:54
  You just have to go. Right? When the amygdala is going off, the hippocampus goes offline because in that moment, the smoke detector is blaring. It's not about let's make everything pretty on the shelves. It's about we have to get out of here because we're in danger.
• 15:17
  Does that make sense? And so, basically, there's because the body and the brain are so focused on survival, which is that neuroception. Right? Recognizing and responding to danger faster than we can even think about it. Then, basically, the things we experience in trauma cannot get bound together into one of those glowing orbs, and the part of our brain that rolls it down the track and files it away on the shelves is turned off.
• 15:55
  So none of that can happen. So, basically, when something traumatic happens, especially if it's overwhelming or confusing or even relational trauma to your brain that's still trauma, your brain can't store the memory the usual way. It can't pull those pieces together to make autobiographical memory where you can know this is the time stamp of this date, this event, this experience, and everything involved in that experience. It's not even put together, much less filed away where it goes. Right?
• 16:30
  So it's like our bodies are not safe enough to take the time to put the memory together into the orb and then to roll it down the track and file it away. So instead, the pieces, because it did not get put together packed into that glowing orb, the pieces of the memory just get thrown wherever they can go, like the messy house in the morning. Right? So our left brains can tell time. They can retrieve those core memories from the shelves, and they can use the information in them because it's all bound together neatly and shiny and glowing.
• 17:15
  Our brain our left brains can use that information to predict danger in the future. So that left brain can tell time, the past, what's happening right now, what I wanna be careful about next time. But in our right brain, there's the messy house where everything is just thrown about, and so it feels like and is experienced as if everything is happening right now. Because the pieces of the memory are not bound together, and the memory itself is not filed away on the metaphorical shelves. So, also, because the pieces of the memories are not packed together into one of the glowing orbs to roll down the track, sometimes we can't find the pieces.
• 18:05
  What are the other pieces that go with this? So when that happens in patterns because we're children and growing and developing and our brains have to keep doing that and just throwing things where they can because there's no time for our hippocampus to actually file away things properly, then what happens is parts start to form from those patterns because our brains don't really have context. Right? There's not actual little people in our heads like in Inside Out, but it feels like it because there are these patterns of let's throw this here and let's throw that there. We gotta get out the door to be on time, except we're in danger.
• 18:44
  And so these patterns of, okay. When this happens, it gets thrown over here. And when this happens, it gets thrown over there. Parts start to form from those patterns. And when that trauma happens again and again, our system keeps having to store these overwhelming moments outside of the regular memory system.
• 19:04
  So it's really an adaption where some parts of us may take on the job of holding those memories while others may protect us from them. And over time, repetition of this protective response and that having to maintain attachment to our caregivers, even if they're not actually caring or even if they're actually causing harm, we still have to maintain that attachment for survival. So over time, parts of us that hold a memory or an emotion or a job, altogether, parts because they're helping us survive. So just like in Inside Out, where the core memories shape Riley's personality, in real life, traumatic or intense experiences can shape us too, or even shape parts. So it because because instead of those glowing balls getting stored neatly on the shelves, trauma gets the amygdala's screaming its alarm, the hippocampus turns off, and so the pieces of memory with trauma get scattered or even hidden, and it takes safety and connection and time to slowly find all the pieces and get them put back together again.
• 20:31
  I don't mean parts. I mean the pieces of a memory, like the memory and the feeling and the emotion and the sensory input and the thoughts about it and the meaning we make out of it. That is all what gets packed into that glowing orb that rolls down the track, but we can't do that until we're safe. So once we are safe, it's like coming home at the end of the day and like, oh, my messy house, it's time to clean up. So we gather all the dirty clothes and put them in the hamper, and we get all the dishes and take them to the kitchen or load the dishwasher, take out the trash, leak whatever all the things.
• 21:09
  The same thing. Once we get to safety, even if that's not until adulthood, then our brain is like, oh, this is great. The hippocampus is back online, and our hippocampus is like, woah. I'm behind. I have some work to do.
• 21:25
  And it starts working overtime trying to catch all of that up, putting things back together where they go and getting things filed away. But what we experience are flashbacks, this piece or this piece. So it might be an auditory flashback or a visual flashback or an emotional flashback or even a relational flashback. Our brain is actually trying to heal. And it's so interesting because when we experience a flashback, it can be terrifying.
• 21:59
  When really what's happening is our bodies are trying to heal and our brain is trying to set us free from the mess of everything that's happened to us or the mess of everything that didn't happen for us. You're not broken. Your system is amazing. Your brain is brilliant. You have done exactly what you needed to do to stay safe.
• 22:25
  And sometimes remembering that helps us begin to heal gently, slowly, kindly, one memory at a time. I hope that makes sense, David. Thank you for asking. 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.