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ChatBot · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:11
  Speaker 1: 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 longtime 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.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: For different reasons, I knew this weekend was going to be hard for me. I've known it since January, actually, February maybe. I've known that for eight months. And in trying to follow all the things and do all the things, I plan for it accordingly. I even got extra therapy sessions, booking the Friday morning and the Monday morning, like book ins to the weekend, like containers for safety, like vessels of air, giving me an airlock in which I could breathe.
• 1:59
  I will be okay going into this because I have therapy. And I can hold on for a few days because therapy. We have talked and talked and talked about it in therapy for weeks and weeks and months, And I was okay because therapy and engaging in therapy and keeping my butt on the couch twice a week for eight months, doing what had been asked of me, doing what I hoped would be healing for me. And when there was going to be a bit of a speed bump, doing what I knew to do to be safe, to navigate it healthy, and to not get myself in more of a mess just because things were hard and not to make things worse by avoiding what was hard. I thought I was doing everything I spent the whole year learning how to do, and that felt like enough.
• 3:35
  Both structure and support that I could sit with acceptance even on hard things and be okay. And then I wrote that noticing, that piece of writing that I just read on the podcast. The day I wrote it was a Thursday morning, Feeling vulnerable, going deep, and I even sent it to my therapist. That's how far I've come, how much progress I've made, and how much attachment I've been attempting. And then in what seems my lot in life, my growth opportunities, my repeated patterns that are not reenactments because it's not my situation except it lands in my lap.
• 4:54
  I'm not doing it. I'm not causing it, and yet here it is again. A therapy rupture by default. Unintended without my therapist doing anything wrong or me doing anything to provoke it. An hour after I sent that very vulnerable email with that piece of writing, knowing I would see her the next day, and then my hard weekend, and then see her again Monday.
• 5:42
  An hour after that, I got an email, not even from my therapist, From the receptionist. From their administrative person. I don't know what her title is, if she's a receptionist or a bookkeeper or an appointment person or what she is in her job. But just like that, without any warning on my hardest weekend of the year, the email said all of my appointments were canceled for next week. My two regular ones and the extra one I had set.
• 6:46
  And I sat down on the ground where I was walking and cried because it changes everything in a way that only someone in really hard therapy understands. There's no way to adapt to that. It means I have to contain it by myself. It means I am like everything else, it feels like, alone in it that I have to get myself through it once again, which means I could not go to group over the weekend even though I missed connecting, but I wasn't functioning well enough. I was falling apart.
• 7:44
  And it means I had to cancel my appointment the next day on Friday because when I'm about to be in it by myself is not the time to confront a rupture when what needs repairing isn't anything anyone can do anything about. And school is starting, which means my schedule is changing, which means I have to cancel my other appointments anyway, and I know it will work out. But what it feels like is being tossed back into the water and the stormy seas, in the dark, alone in the abyss again. But what are my choices? When I followed my safety plan after the retreat at the beginning of the year, an email not from someone who was at the retreat said that was manipulative.
• 9:18
  So now I'm scared to go, Scared to do the one thing that was working when everything else fell apart. And also, I don't want to harm myself. Not because I believe in my own safety, but because I'm single parenting half my children, and because I don't have the spoons to repair that with Jules, which means the choice has been removed from me. And while maybe that guarantees safety, it doesn't feel good. It feels shiny, happy.
• 10:28
  But I wasn't going to make it through the weekend by myself. Not with all the layers, not without spinning out, not without getting confused in my thoughts and my feelings, not without damaging my own heart in its distress. And so I had to get creative. And so I thought about all the choices I have. What would I tell someone I tried so hard to stay in my frontal cortex even when I was not feeling connection?
• 11:07
  And it came to me, a backup plan out of the blue. Not at all premeditated, but maybe, as they say, a saving grace. I thought about benefits from one of my day jobs, Kind of like an EAP with just a few sessions, but different. And I requested someone who knows trauma, not because I was going to spill my secrets to them, but because it was my only distress, but because it was my only chance at being understood in my distress. And they assigned me someone who was available over the weekend.
• 12:28
  And I saw them twice on Friday, twice on Saturday, and twice on Sunday. Very specific to the situation. Little background other than I have a history of trauma and dissociation. And I have a regular therapist who just happened to be out of town this week. And with promises of safety and evidence of it, they agreed to see me.
• 13:20
  What's funny is part of the benefit was getting assigned to this some kind of AI program where you talk to the computer like a friend. And what's funny about that is that it kept me busy and distracted, even trying to get the thing set up and feeling silly while I tried it out. And I know that I wasn't a person, and it certainly does not replace therapy or friendship. But it was pretty good at calling me out and talking about avoidance and showing me where things were coming out sideways because the hard things are so hard. It was a strange experience.
• 14:40
  I didn't even wanna participate because it feels like something that might take my job someday. And I worry about what happens, not just for my job. But if we already don't understand the relational component of therapy and try to program computers to do CBT, what would happen without relationship? And it made me appreciate in person therapy in a way I haven't and I have wrestled with because telehealth is so easy and leaving my house is so hard. And, also, it was still just talking to a computer.
• 15:36
  It was strange, like praying to a Santa god, except this one talked back. Somehow, the interactions were recorded and emailed to my therapist, and then we talked about them in session. My temporary therapist, my backup therapist. What is that even called? I don't know.
• 16:05
  I've not done something like that before in that way. But you know what I did? I stayed alive this weekend, and I got creative and resourceful in making sure that I did. Even when it felt like everything else was gone. My divorce is final.
• 16:39
  It's not Nathan's job to rescue me, and he and all of those kids were sick anyway this weekend. Jules was out of town for a concert with a friend, and I don't know why my therapist was out of town because that's not my business, and she's the queen of boundaries. And I think things were extra hard because my children and I were sick this week with germs from school starting. So nobody felt good, which made coping harder. And I wanna share all of this even if it's short to validate my own distress because the computer said I should.
• 17:41
  And, also, to mark a moment in time where I did a good job taking care of me. And I think all things said and done, I handled things really well. It will be weird when tomorrow morning comes and Monday happens. And I try to squeeze myself back into normal. Mondays are hard that way.
• 18:24
  And, also, I'm kinda proud of myself tonight because not only did I survive a hard weekend, I did it without fawning or rescuing or betraying myself. And I sat with hard things and big feelings and progress and development and ways that feel impossibly hard and also are really good for me. This weekend was like the rubber band snapped, and suddenly, I had to make glace with all of them at once instead of just small groups at a time. And it was scary, and it was hard, and it was overwhelming. And also, I did it.
• 19:50
  And you know what? It's me. It's me that's in my lace. The picture, I can finally see it. It's me.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: 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, and you can join us on the community at www.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.