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Splinters and Stitches · 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.
• 0:58
  I had therapy today, and I took my artwork from the symposium. She tried to slow me down and actually process it, but there was so many things happening. I needed to just download all the files first. It's my language right now, that downloading. Like, we do at the symposium.
• 1:26
  Just downloading the information, holding it, containing it, tolerating it, and then spending the months and months and months, years processing. So I promised her we could circle back to the art. And I know that she will make sure that we do. But I wanted to be able to first say, this is what's in this picture. This is what's in this picture, and this is what's in this picture.
• 2:06
  I could spend a year of therapy on each picture. But today, for containment and functioning, I needed to just pass off all the information. I don't even actually need my therapist to retain it because I know it's in me. I just can't hold it by myself. All of the pictures are trees, so it's funny that they could all be so different.
• 2:48
  One was torn up construction paper bits showing the boundaries of a tree guarded by a gate, and the gate locked shut with warnings of why we don't tell things, why we can't say the things. I moved past that one pretty quick. Another one was acrylic, And that tree had a chunk chopped out of it with an ax. The ax was glowing yellow because it was shiny, happy. And the wound in the tree was obvious.
• 3:53
  I feel like religious trauma took something from me, maybe in ways similar to other abuses. But this one hurt my heart. This one hurt the part of my spirit that kept me alive. She asked me if I noticed something about the ax, and I knew where she was going, that there was no one holding it. But there must have been someone holding it to wield it, to swing it through the sky, to slam it into my side.
• 4:51
  It was not God who hurt me. It was the people who lied to me about God. It was the people who said they represented him and then didn't tell me the truth. We'll get there. We'll come back to it in therapy.
• 5:20
  But I can't do it today, I said. The next one was watercolor, And this one was just a stump of a tree, not even a whole tree. Because I feel like everyone wants a piece of me. Everyone is taking pieces of me, and I have nothing left. That's how I have felt for a while, for several years.
• 6:12
  There are blue drops of paint representing tears, Nourishing a little sapling in the middle of the trunk where therapy is bringing me back to life again, where I am trying to grow back to life again. I don't feel like a strong tree anymore. I had to be strong for a really, really long time. And I'm done. I'm done being strong like that.
• 6:57
  I'm done. I just can't anymore. But the grief of acknowledging that and the tears that I have cried have helped me turn back toward myself and begun to care for myself, to find me again, to nurture me too. And that's when I began to grow again, enough that there is evidence of it. I can see that I'm here.
• 7:39
  I can feel that I'm here. And, also, I painted a rainbow in the corner because I can't be here without my gayness. I cannot live life anymore as only part of me. The next picture of a tree was finger painting. One side of it was on fire, and I was crouched below, shielding myself from the heat and the stench of death and ashes falling like rain, curled up like in a fetal position, like part of me stuck in memory time.
• 8:49
  But the other part of the picture was now time where the tree is not on fire on the other side and where if I would only help those little ones from memory time come into now time? There is shade and safety and fruit and protection, there are clouds still in the sky, but not like in January, not like the first retreat where I was so very deeply sad. And, again, I could see that I am healing. This was so powerful to me. The last picture in crayon was a tree, healthy and strong in now time, with fresh green on the branches, with all that new growth showing up again even in my art.
• 10:17
  Some people honored littles in their pictures when we talked about memory time and now time, but I'm not quite there yet. I'm so close. I know that I'm so close. I can feel them so close. And I know my therapist is ready.
• 10:42
  I have felt for years like I was working my way across monkey bars, trying not to fall, bouncing from therapist to therapist, trying to find one who will work with me. And this one's ready to catch me when I fall, and I'm going to fall. I can feel it, but I won't land alone. And the landing won't be too hard. And she's braced for it, And I feel her readiness.
• 11:27
  I feel her steadiness. It makes me ready too, almost, Enough that I can honor them. Enough that I know that they are there. Enough that I know I need to talk about them. And so on my tree, I drew a yellow ribbon as a memorial or in honor of them, finding some way to acknowledge them.
• 12:10
  It's a starting place, I think. And so we talked about trees today, and I gave her pieces, tiny pieces. She said they're like splinters, which we thought of before. Pulling the splinters and handing them over, acknowledging the places where it hurts. But this is the first time anyone said to me, even these pieces are still your tree.
• 13:06
  I'm just gonna hold them until we can put them back together again. Like a tree painted by Monet, except instead of dots and drops of paint, just splinters. Splinters from my story, splinters from my body, splinters from my tree, creating something that tells me about me. My therapist is kind enough to frame it as if I'm telling her, but I know she's helping me tell me, and that matters. We talked about trauma and deprivation and how trauma hurts, but deprivation leaves a hole.
• 14:34
  With trauma, I can do the opposite, like not hurt my children. But with deprivation, when it's good that's missing, it's hard to know how to fill that in. It's part of what we've been learning about these last few months about attachment wounds because the reenactments show up in relationships since the wounds are relational. So even though it feels like it's now time, trauma, drama, the wounds are actually in memory time. And finally, understanding this gives me capacity to hold so much more than I ever could before.
• 15:51
  Because people who care but still hurt me, or when I care and hurt someone and we don't mean to and it's not malicious, It's so hard to understand when we have been hurt, and it was malicious, or limited capacity in that hurt in memory time. My therapist said that's why we talk about fireballs with codependency because that's trauma. Being burned by someone else's fireball is trauma. But deprivation is like the crater it leaves behind, like a comet that's crashed from the sky and left this hole, such a deep hole in me, a chunk out of my tree. A massive abyss in the ground.
• 17:05
  It's terrifying and scary and feels impossible to fill. And, also, maybe it's just like a wound, like an injury that needs stitches. And my therapist keeps talking to me about stitches. That anytime I show up for myself, it's like a stitch in that attachment wound. Anytime I care for me, it's a stitch in that attachment wound.
• 17:47
  Anytime I show up in relationship that is healthy even though it's hard, that's a stitch in the attachment wounds. And that it is connection and showing up in healthy ways, adulting ways, boundaries ways, supportive ways that all of these are stitches in the wound. So that's what I'm practicing again, intentionally trying is how to show up for myself and what that means. Two days ago, it meant I went to an art class by myself. Yesterday, it meant I went to art group in the community, Mandala Monday.
• 19:02
  Today, it meant I went to group for check ins and shared that the symposium this time ended well as far as I know, and I'm so relieved and grateful. I also talked in group about connecting with my therapist and feeling attached and feeling close to being able to start talking about the things, but that it's still hard, and I don't understand why. Because I know my therapist is safe enough. If it were only on her qualifications, we would be good to go. But the group reminded me it's not about that.
• 19:52
  It's those attachment wounds, and I'm scared. And, also, it's about having lost a good therapist and then struggling for so long to find another one I could keep. So how long do I get to keep this one before I know she's staying? And then that same sucker punch again from original wounds, core trauma. That really it's about memory time, foster care and adoption.
• 20:42
  And I hear that little voice say, are you going to keep me? And I don't think I can talk to my therapist about memory time things until I hear her say yes. But it is, of course, far too dangerous to ever ask that question. And so my cage match is really a stalemate. While we're waiting on each other, she can't answer what I haven't asked.
• 21:32
  And I can't ask without the answer. And I know that she's just my therapist and not a caregiver or a foster parent or anything else. And, also, I know what it's like to lose a parent suddenly and unexpectedly, that no one can promise anything even if they mean well. So I also don't ask the question because I know she can't really answer it. And so it would hurt more if she tried to.
• 22:31
  So instead of burying the hatchet or the ax to my own tree, it just hangs there in the air on my paper because I don't know who's holding it, who's responsible, who tried to hack at my soul. Maybe that's why I need therapy to tend to those memory time layers. Because in now time, I'm the one responsible for bearing my weapons of war. I'm the one responsible for tending to my tree. Littles in memory time, and me.
• 23:49
  Thank you for listening.