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Geometry · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over: 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.
• 1:02
  I know it's been a hard year for everyone, and certainly on the podcast. I'm sorry that it's been so difficult and admire and appreciate the people who are still listening even when it wasn't as entertaining as it was going deep into the hard things with which we still wrestle. We've spent most of the last year with some specific feelings that have been difficult to look at in part because they were so built up and in part because we're really good at avoiding them. So it's been painful and unpleasant much of this year and not just because of the pandemic or politics, but also because of what I was doing to myself, and it's a hard thing to look honestly at things you don't want to see. I think that's part of why politics were so hard this year.
• 1:57
  People being oppressed and enduring microaggressions and direct aggressions and even physical threats or violence struggle because it's a hard thing to look people in the eye and realize that they're a danger to you, and to have a whole society built like that systemically. I can't imagine. I want to know, and I want to learn because of my children, because of my friends, because I wanna be a better human. But wanting to understand isn't the same as having to live that every day. And people who did not like the protests or who voted Republican or liked Trump even, most of them aren't even bad people.
• 2:44
  I know lots of really good people who really loved him, And I think why the election was so hard for everyone wasn't about teams or sides or parties. It was because it's a painful thing to look at your own privilege and how racism is a part of your life every day and you don't even realize it. The not realizing it part is dissociation at a community level. It's like how we live every day inside, except these are outside people walking around living in communities, much like our internal worlds for those of us who have DID. And if different groups of people can connect and decide together what is right and what is wrong or who is good or who is bad or create that other like David Archer talked about in the interview, then it's easier to excuse it and easier to not notice and harder to speak up.
• 3:49
  I'm not at all excusing that. Racism is absolutely not okay, and racism is absolutely harmful. Staying silent in the face of racism is harmful. Dismissing the experience of the election and what it meant to specific groups of people, all of whom are represented in my own children, is relational trauma. And we've talked about it so much, and everyone has lived through it, and I know everyone is tired of hearing about it.
• 4:26
  But that's exactly why we have to keep talking about it. Because that's when we dissociate. When it's too hard and too much and too overwhelming. Going through this experience of the election and seeing people's extreme responses on either side, some people voting for a bully because they were afraid, and other people voting against him as if their lives depended on it. And all of them having trauma, the chaos in recent weeks, got pretty close to home.
• 5:11
  After several weeks of cold wet days, we had what they call here an Indian summer, where the days warm up again, and it's gorgeous outside. And we camped all week. We started to just camp for the weekend, but the weather changed and stayed nice, and so we stayed outside for ten days. We didn't come in the house or worry about schoolwork or chores or responsibilities other than playing outside with the children, building campfires, and sleeping in our tents. Because of the pandemic and how serious we have to take quarantine for our daughter, We just stayed in the front yard.
• 6:01
  We didn't go somewhere to camp, but they were gorgeous days, and they filled our souls, and they healed our spirits after these hard months. It was like we really got a vacation, all of us, in the middle of everything else. But one night as we were sleeping during election week, some men in their big trucks with their Trump flags who appeared drunk, but I don't know. I didn't ask them. But they weren't driving well, and they were in the back of the truck in a dangerous way, screaming and shouting and shooting off guns.
• 6:39
  We lived down the road, but they were going down the dirt roads, crying out for civil war. It was scary and dangerous, and we had to get everyone back inside until it was over. The children were scared for several days to go outside, and we had to wait until things settled down again out here in the country. But this morning when I woke, it was quiet. It's the Monday after the election, and for the first time since we moved here, I didn't see any Trump flags when I went for my morning run.
• 7:18
  And after a scary weekend, my children finally went back outside to play. We talked to them about how there are lots of people who are good people that voted Republican and lots of people who are good people who voted Democrat. And we talked about how it was such a close call. They followed along with the maps as everyone else did in America or the world, and we'll see how things unfold. But watching my children live that experience and learn the difference between someone who's abusive and someone who just has a difference of opinion was a powerful experience for us and the children, the outside children.
• 8:06
  And talking about that in therapy helped me figure out some of the big pieces that we've been struggling with for the last year. I've known since the footprints episode that the big feelings were not actually about the therapist. And I've known since summer when we moved here and we changed circles, like the island we talked about on the podcast, which isn't a real island, but I don't know how else to explain it. But when we change circles or how some of you say change hosts, and I took over for a season, I knew that it wasn't just because they hurt so much and had so much pain to hold, but also because I was the one strong enough to endure it. I learned that in therapy.
• 9:02
  Because my therapist pointed out that me being out front doesn't actually stop the pain itself. She said if you were at the beach with one of the outside kids and a big wave was coming and you held them up because they didn't want to get wet, they might not get wet, but the water still comes. And when she said that, I looked down at my feet, and I saw them underwater. And so here's the thing. No matter who in your system does what or what role that they have, the pain is real, and you have to talk about it.
• 9:53
  I think that's what the protests were about, really, underneath it all, not even politics, but about people who are tired of hurting and tired of being hurt. I don't at all mean to say that I understand that experience or to speak to it with any wisdom because I'm still learning, but it was one of those times where the outside things taught me more about inside things. And the better and the braver I was about understanding inside things, the better and braver I could understand outside things. And one of the things this year that I learned was that we can't actually avoid the pain no matter who it is that's taking it or dealing with it or failing it. It's still there.
• 10:51
  You can switch or change host or put someone else out front, and it's still there. Somebody's got to feel it because it's part of being alive. And I know this year, maybe I was whiny, maybe I was depressed, maybe I had really big feelings that weren't always safe. But I think what is really important is that I learned to feel them. Because if we can't get away from them, it does no one any good to pretend it's not there.
• 11:30
  And I think all of the chaos this year and all of the pain that we endured this year could have felt like drama to my friends if they didn't know me better or feel me better or see me better or understand me better, if they were not better at staying present in the pain. Because that is what it was. That is what I needed. If you're stereotyping therapy, you think about it as a place you're supposed to go and tell all your secrets and lay things out on the table and talk about them. There's a lot more to it than that.
• 12:13
  And if we're gonna talk about them and feel things, I want them to know. I want them to be sure and understand. I needed my friends to reach out and hold my face in their hands and look me in the eye and say, I hear you. I see you. And, yes, it really was that bad.
• 12:44
  I'm not here to hurt anyone, not even myself. It's not what I want. But if you want me to get these big feelings out, then somebody on the outside's gotta help take them instead of dismissing them or telling me to shake it off or to breathe through it or to push through. I want someone to just stop with me already and sit right here where it is and hold my hand and say, yes. It really was that bad.
• 13:28
  And I think that's why it was not for me a season of positivity and why I talked about it being so toxic. So many times I talked about it. I know, and I'm sorry. I'm not trying to insult your faith tradition or your philosophical stance or your therapeutic techniques. But when I'm in a place of learning to feel what there is to feel, I don't need you to tell me to stop.
• 13:58
  I already know how to stop. I already know how to dissociate from it. I'm trying to do things the other way around. I'm trying to see what there is to see and feel what there is to feel and know what there is to know. So maybe it turns out the quarantine was exactly the right time for me, and the pandemic was exactly the right thing for me.
• 14:28
  Not that I want people to be sick from the pandemic, but maybe I needed quarantine time where I could pull my head out of the notebooks and stop writing about what's happening and what's happened and just stop and feel what it is to feel about what we've already seen and learned and written and read and talked about. And I can't know what I feel if I don't take my time to figure it out, can I? And I can't know what I think or who I am or what I want to do about things or what I want to say about things if I don't learn to look at it. And so it was an intense year because I had a lot to feel and a lot to look at and a lot to see and a lot to know and a lot to write down. So much to say out loud.
• 15:25
  And I'm sorry that sometimes it makes other people uncomfortable. I know it's hard listen to. That's why we have therapists. We need therapists to go to because they know how to handle it and how to hold it and what to do about it and how to just be in it so that we're not alone when that happens. Except I was, wasn't I?
• 15:54
  But I'm not now. And I have a therapist, and I have the husband, and I have friends, more than I even knew, in ways I don't understand, and I don't yet have the skills to know how to navigate it well or what to do. When I came back from my run this morning, I was walking up the hill, and my children saw me coming. They were excited, not because they saw me, but because they know it means it's time for breakfast. And they came running to me, screaming and shouting and waving their arms to hug me and to tell me good morning because the only way I can go is if I leave before they're awake.
• 16:48
  And there were tears in my eyes to see them coming running to me because I'm so glad they have that. And I'm so glad they feel that. But there's not a day that goes by that that doesn't terrify me because I don't take it lightly. And I want to do it right, and I want to do it well, and I don't even know if I know how. But I'm still here, trying.
• 17:22
  And it made me cry because the feeling on their faces, I don't know if I've ever felt. For a moment, it was like I could see what attachment looks like. And I let them come, and I let them hug me, and I let them squeal and shout and paw all over me, but then I turn it into a game of tickling and chasing, partly because it delights them, and partly because inside, I can't handle it, and I don't know what to do with it, and it overwhelms me. Because this is the other thing I've learned this year, that I can't stay dissociated and also be connected. And I think that's really what the birthday party was about.
• 18:17
  It was the most connected I've ever felt in my life, the most seen and heard and present with. But it was so much, and it was so close, and I didn't know what to do with it. And it's taken me a year to recover from it. And I've got to figure it out because next year there'll be another one, won't there? Thank God for quarantine.
• 18:45
  And because of quarantine, I've had the time and the space to think all the way through it and around every side of it. Not just overthinking, but legitimate, deep, serious work about what it is and what it feels like and how to know if it's true or not or real or not. And some days I've almost lost my mind trying to figure it out because the feelings that come with it are not things I know where to process. I don't know where to file them. I don't know what it means.
• 19:21
  And so it reads like danger even when it's not. And that's the part we talked about in therapy this week, about how it's not and how you know and how you can tell. We talked about patterns and parallels from my past that make some of these issues so triggering, And we've got a lot more talking about it to do, but seeing it on paper literally with lines connecting how this and this is just like that and that, or how this and this is different from that and that, It helps me see what it is I'm dealing with, which is different from the last year of feeling lost in the struggle of it, but not knowing what it is I was wrestling with. That's why you need therapy and safe people in your life. When you have no dimensions, and it's only you, and there's nothing else around because you've got the walls so high up, it turns out you are the island.
• 20:43
  Just a dot in the sea, And there's nothing else to know or to feel because you're not connected to anything. But when you get a therapist, it turns your dot into a line. You've got one dimension, which means there's a starting place and somewhere you can go that's not where you've always been. And when you add a friend to that, your world starts to take shape because you've got two dimensions. And when friends become chosen family, then you can see what the shapes are.
• 21:34
  But those shapes are still only flat because it's only two dimensions. But if you dare to let them inside and make your world a three-dimensional place, then you can see what the shapes are and what they mean. Do you see it? Or am I the only one who does math in therapy? Because it's really all just geometry.
• 22:06
  So to make it simple, if you had a piece of paper and you just made a dot, just a little tiny circle, not even a circle, just a dot. That's no dimension. It's just a dot. But if you turn the dot into a line by connecting it with something else, in this case, your therapist, then that's one dimension. It's got length, and that's why in therapy, you can come and go in a way you can't go in other places in life.
• 22:44
  There's more back and forth that you can do than you could by yourself. And if on your piece of paper, you turned your line into a square or a circle or any shape that you wanted, but it's still flat on the paper. You've got length and width. That's what it's like when you start to make friends. When you see the world outside of therapy and start to make more connections with other dots.
• 23:23
  It doesn't matter if your shape is a circle or a square or a star or an oval or anything. It takes connecting with others to turn it into a shape. And what trauma tries to do is to try to keep you on your dot. Because when you're a dot, that's all you can see. It takes going to another, going to therapy to see that there are lines, and it takes connection to others to make your shape.
• 23:58
  Because if you don't experience it, you can't know what's happening, can you? If you were standing on the dot, all you could see is that dimension, only no dimension. You wouldn't know there's a whole shape there. You, right now, in the middle of your trauma, you don't understand there's a whole world out there. That's how you make a shape, but it's still all flat.
• 24:29
  You can call on a higher power. You can call on your own power. But if you want a three-dimensional world, you've got to stand up. You've got to have courage. You've got to use your voice in some way to give your world a shape.
• 24:58
  Because a shape on paper is only an outline. But a shape that exists, that dares to live and breathe and move, But a shape that dares to exist off the paper Like when you dare to live and breathe and move and have your being is a bigger world than just a dot. But this is also why talking about it doesn't just make it better. Because as long as you stay on the dot, that's all you can see. If you put a three-dimensional shape and squeezed it into a no dimensional world, all you could see was another dot.
• 26:07
  If you are on a one dimensional plane with just a line and tried to squeeze in a three-dimensional world, all you would see was the line. If you were in a two dimensional plane living as a shape flat on paper like a child's drawing and someone squeezed in a three-dimensional shape and you tried to squeeze a three-dimensional shape into that dimension, you would still only see the two dimensions you lived on. So if it were a circle getting squeezed in, you would see a small line and then a bigger line and then a bigger line and then a small line and a small line as it moved through. Only the shape of it, not the whole context, not the sphere. But if you want to make a whole shape, you've got to connect with each other inside, and you've got to connect with safe people outside.
• 27:26
  Otherwise, you just stay an island. If you want your world to be a sphere or a cube or whatever shape that's three-dimensional that you want to live in, it takes moving outside yourself. It takes helping others in some way. It takes becoming more than what you were yesterday. It takes looking outside the trauma.
• 28:01
  It's only one dot on the line of your life. So I know when people like myself or maybe your therapist or maybe someone trying to help you, I know when they tell you that's not what life is like, that there's a bigger world out there. I know you can't see it when you're just on the island, when all you are is a dot, Because there's no dimension to that when you're in the trauma. But this is why connecting with others heals us. It's math.
• 28:37
  You've got to do something different. You've got to dare to go somewhere else. You've got to leave that place of pain. Not to abandon it, but to let it know it's not alone. To let you know you are not alone.
• 28:56
  Sometimes things don't feel safe. Maybe because of something happening in your life or because of things like politics or because of a specific memory or something that comes up in therapy. And it gets blurry and hard to find out where you are or when you are. That's because of math, because when you're not safe, you go back to the dot. And when you're only a dot, you can't see the line or the shape or the whole world.
• 29:30
  But when you've got all three dimensions, the dots are still there. It's what makes up everything. All of you are still there. When people talk about the fourth dimension, they often think of time. And in the fourth dimension, it's not just memory time or now time.
• 29:55
  But, like, everything is happening at once. And sometimes we feel that when we, who live in now time, get stuck in memory time or when memory time seems to invade now time, and it's so terrifying. But if we can hold on to ourselves and all those layers of dimensions And remember that the fourth dimension isn't only time, but also has space to it in a way that we don't yet understand. Because math, then we understand why it feels like it's all happening at once. And I know that's hard to talk about, but I think it matters because what we think is happening is that it's happening again or that it's happening back then.
• 30:48
  But I don't think that's true. I think it's just still happening all at the same time. And at first, that seems terrifying and horrifying until you remember that right now, all that you know, you had back then too. So we keep learning, and we keep growing, and we keep progressing, and we know more than we did yesterday. But when the past comes to visit, we get to keep now time with us.
• 31:21
  That's what turns us inside out like a Tesseract cube. And so as terrifying as it may be to have to face memory time or to go back there and help, get others out. When we do and when we try and we go back in time to fight, we take now time with us. And we're not little girl anymore. And, yes, it's awful and terrible, and it doesn't undo that or minimize that or dismiss that.
• 31:58
  But, also, it gives us power to deal with it and to tackle it and to care for ourselves in ways that no one has before and to listen to what we need and find what comfort we can give and grieve what there is to grieve. And no one can do that for us as powerfully as we can do it for ourselves. That's math, And that's why we talked about geometry in therapy. Because there's a difference in grieving what never was and grieving what really was, but that we can tend to. And if we were the ones there in memory time, when memory time was now time so long ago, then now, when we take now time back to memory time, no one else knows better than we do what we need.
• 33:01
  Maybe math is not your favorite. Therapy is not my favorite. But if we want to be well and we want to be whole, whatever that means to us, whether that's experiencing everything all at once, or whether that's giving everyone a voice and the healing that they need even when there's lots of us. Whatever we choose and whatever we need, we can't do it by ourselves. We can't do it alone.
• 33:38
  We need each other. That's what they say. And it's scary because if I want to believe and I don't think I would believe them if it weren't for math. Because it turns out, geometry is all about friendship. And it scares me, and it overwhelms me because I can see that I don't understand, and because it's always meant danger in the past.
• 34:09
  But when I feel that, I remember that it's just a dot. It's just trauma talking, and I've not lived in the real world, have I? So maybe if I want to protect myself and maybe if I want to keep safe and maybe if I want to keep everybody else safe, then the best thing I can do is to go out there into the world so that we can see what there is to see and know what there is to know and feel what there is to feel. If for no other reason than to see clearly, to see everything. Maybe I don't want to let everyone off the island.
• 34:56
  Maybe we don't feel safe right now letting everybody out. But that makes sense because we're in a whole new dimension, and we don't understand yet what we're seeing. We don't know how it's going to go or what it will feel like, but we're starting to be able to make connections, drawing lines between things so that we can see more clearly, like understanding why a breakthrough moment of attachment comes with such scary feelings about danger so that the proportions are the same. That as good as someone else tries to make things feel, things feel just as bad after they leave or when the moment's over or when the birthday has passed. Because my window of tolerance is so small, and what we know now about trying to feel the good and tolerate the good, not just avoid the bad.
• 36:10
  It's a lot to try and learn, and we have to go slowly. And some people think they understand, But from where I'm at, on the dot of an island, that whole world that's a sphere in the three-dimensional world just looks like a dot to me in the world of no dimension. And so when they tell me it's a sphere, but all I can see is the tiny dot of the bottom of it, It feels like they're lying, and that's part of what feels dangerous because it's hard for my brain to remember that they can see what I can't see. And when they try to convince me of it, it sounds like they're dismissing me or mocking me or irritated with me that I can't get it right. But I'm not there yet, and I can't see it, And that's not what it looks like from where I am.
• 37:18
  I've spent my year demanding my voice to be heard and making sure that everybody knows how dark the dot is from where I'm looking. And today, my therapist said that's okay. That's my truth, and it's okay to defend it. And it's important to make sure other people understand. She said that's healthy, being able to say that when this happens, here's how I feel.
• 37:58
  Or when you did this, this is how it felt to me. Or to be able to tell someone out loud, I understand you're trying to do this, but this is what it does to me and how I feel about it. All of that's good, she said. But also, she said, it doesn't make the other person wrong. That's why therapy got political, not because it was about parties or voting, but because my entirely accurate perspective was still different from someone else's entirely accurate perspective.
• 38:44
  But both were true. And anything that feels like that, she said, may trigger other things too because of how things get linked together, like they said in that ENDR class, about memories being linked. So being stuck in the middle now feels like being stuck in the middle when my parents were getting divorced. Feeling now like not being able to speak up feels like being silenced when we were little. Not being allowed to feel bad or scared or anxious feels now like it did when we were little, when no one listened or believed us.
• 39:36
  And even those pieces about leaving the therapist were linked in the past, which now I understand. Because the therapist we had when we were 17 who said she wanted to help us and took us home. I heard in a conference recently, a trauma conference That was actually a thing in the nineties, reparenting or something like that. And she likely thought she was doing the right thing clinically besides personally. But when I left, I never heard from her again.
• 40:16
  And I thought all this time she didn't care, and none of it was real. So I was confused when I heard from her later after I sent a letter to ask a question. I'm confused because good people know her as a good person. So why did it feel bad? And leaving therapy last year, I think we thought we would be abandoned another twenty, and then quarantine happened.
• 40:52
  And so it felt like that was true. But my feelings were from memory time, not now time, like a flashback without pictures, like not seeing the three-dimensional shape. And then talking to the English teacher mattered because she sued her after we left. So she wasn't allowed to talk to us anyway. And it turns out all of that had nothing to do with me, but it felt like it.
• 41:28
  Because then, when that was now time, memory time before that was from when we were little. I'm going to be adopted, and they promised, and the house burned down, And then they were gone. And we were alone and in danger. So what we felt last spring wasn't about the therapist or even about the therapist before her. It turns out, the feelings we had this spring that we worked so hard to acknowledge and hold and feel and honor this whole year, even though it was so hard and unpleasant.
• 42:19
  It turns out that was two dots back, all the way to when we were little. Big got triggered through a trigger for another trigger, and we couldn't see what was what or where things belonged because all we could see was the dot, and all we knew was danger. No one could talk us out of that or walk us through it or argue those feelings away because none of it was cognitive. All of it was affective feelings, memories from almost before I had words. So now we're going to have to go back to the island and talk about that, which it turns out is what we've been acting out this whole year.
• 43:11
  Because when we were once afraid of fire, which we talked about on the podcast last year, now we know why. But it took a year of locking everyone away safely, not to isolate them, but to protect them. And a summer and it took a summer full of campfires of daring to look at the flames, of literally lighting the matches, of dreaming about the smoke, of smelling it even on rainy days before we could see all the pieces. And it took coming full circle and seeing that our friends are still there a year later to remember that we're not alone and maybe to dare to live in the world again I'm scared, to be honest, and I lack the skills to do it smoothly or well But I've learned to be myself boldly and not ashamed of the mess that comes with it. So maybe that counts for something.
• 44:31
  And finding ways in a pandemic and political chaos to stay connected to safe people and the ways we can that might be what saves our life. I hate it when therapists are right. 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.systemsspeak.com.
• 45:39
  We'll see you there.