Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Guest: Nichole Willden (Part 4 of 4)

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Guest: Nichole Willden (Part 4 of 4) · 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.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: What does that look like for you as a system to be saying some of the hard things we've talked about today about what is healthy and what is not and what is actually helpful and not and redefining even good and worthy?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, I think redefining good and actually coming around to the idea that there is maybe no such thing as good as it was taught to me. There's only what benefits me and what harms me and what benefits others and what harms others. I think that has been the kind of ongoing mission of my system is to help us be able to understand that and to reparent the child parts, who still believe they have to earn their worth and who still believe that that maybe they're sinning because they're not being used by God's priesthood the way that we were taught that we had to be.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: That's such a powerful piece, and I love that you included them. I think as I've talked about shiny happy, there have been so many people who really resonated with that or high demand religion, and so many people resonated that. But I've also gotten hate mail about, like, we thought you were a person of faith. How can you say that? I'm not saying I don't have faith.
• 2:58
  I'm saying I am grieving that it is not what I thought it was.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Right. Exactly the same.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: When we have parts of us that experience any of us, not just in cults or high demand religion or or any avas that had ritualized abuse. And yes, sometimes that is in the context of cults, but sometimes that's just in when we experience abuse that happened the same way over and over again. That's still ritualized, even if it's outside the context of any cult or religion.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: And when we have parts of us that have endured that, it is hard to hold space for what they think is normal, also bring healing to that, to them, and also let things be different when we thought that was our purpose.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: That's one of the things that I do address in my book is the the child parts in particular who feel like they are going to hell because, because I made a choice that separated them from their abusers. They that has taken a lot of healing because what we have to do is, is recognize that we have internally, we have different worldviews. And, and this is true of people who don't, who don't have dissociated parts. This is true for people of of all walks of life who who just would be maybe neurotypical. You still sometimes are fighting internally.
• 4:58
  Well, when I fight internally, that just happens in different voices and and at different ages and stages of development, and and it is it is a little it's it's challenging to help a child understand that what happened to them was not okay, And at the same time, honor the fact that they're grieving the loss of that thing. Because in my mind, I'm like, this is so harmful. We don't have to grieve this this thing, but it made somebody feel special. And so somebody's grieving the fact that they've lost this kind of specialness that they felt when they were being abused. It's it's been a really difficult process to navigate.
• 5:50
  And and yet, with, like, just diligently working toward it, I have have developed a relationship with every one of my parts, and we have a lot of respect for each other now. And so what used to be, like, you know, a lot of anger and a lot of resentment and a lot of misbehavior when they got an opportunity. Now now is not like that because we have this kind of mutual respect for each other.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: I think you've spoken so powerfully, not just about relating as a system internally, but also how that reenactment happens externally in that if we are I just I felt this so clearly while you were speaking, that when we have parts of us that were groomed and literally taught this is the bad thing that you're good if you do, so you have to do the bad thing to be good or to be safe. And then we become adults who have to do the good things because we're bad. Like it gets really confusing and so hard to untangle and get out of.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Yes. My therapist has, has often talked to me about, like, how everything that happens to us in our life is sort of like building a tapestry. And when we find things that have harmed us, we we have to pull out those threads one by one. You you don't you don't get to just be like, oh, I am exiting this high demand religion, and it is now no longer welcome in my life. That high demand religion is in is in so many pieces of me that here I am fifteen years out post high demand religion, and I will still have sudden thoughts come into my mind that I'm like, woah.
• 7:58
  Where did that come from church? It's just you just don't you don't just get to leave things behind because your body is holding on to all of that. And I have to deal with that. And every piece of me also has to deal with that.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: The reality of that just leaves me feeling nauseated. And also that same feeling of betrayal of how foolish I am to think that, like, those days where you just sort of pretend you don't have DID, like it's not actually a thing, or that I could live my life without my system or without my littles or that I don't need to do that work. And yet it's really influencing and impacting everything and tainting now time in a way that I can't reclaim if I don't do that work.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Right. And and it is exhausting pulling out the, like, individual strings when they come up and I find them is is exhausting. It's hard work. And DID comes with a lot of things. Dissociative disorders in general come with a lot of things that have been previously misunderstood, and misinterpreted, and certainly misrepresented, like like post traumatic stress, and complex post traumatic stress.
• 9:35
  And so you're you're speaking to this, like, this is like nauseating, and it's hard. But also, also, you just you deserve it, you deserve to find the healing. Healing isn't this like pretty wrapped package, like, like I always believed. It's a mess. It's a mess of, of sitting with hard feelings that don't seem like they fit together.
• 10:03
  It's a mess of of experiencing a flashback and then being gentle with yourself and recognizing that you are worth fighting for. Because it's hard when no one ever fought for you to to fight for yourself. It's hard, and it's worth it.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: Something that you just said that resonated inside me about the conflicts, just between parts, but between those ideals and trying to believe or even encapsulate the concept that I am worth it or that I deserve it is one of those things so impacted by trauma and deprivation when, like, you deserve this was used in bad ways. Or, if I say to myself or my system, we're going to step away from high demand religion because it's not healthy for us right now. And then I also have a little part who's very shiny happy who's like, yes. You deserve to lose the presence of God. You deserve Yes.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Can relate. Yes. It's confusing because words like worth have been co opted by someone who was trying to control me. Words like deserve have been co opted by people who were trying to hurt me, and so me reclaiming those words has been a process.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: I think an example of that reclaiming for me would be even divorcing my husband simply because I'm gay. Like, he's good and kind and there's no drama there. I'm just gay. And part of me was like, this is the best self harm we have ever done. Like, we win self harm when he has been safe and stable and we're getting rid of him.
• 12:15
  That is like as if it was a battle that we won, that it was the most quiet, silent, passive self harm we could ever do, and no one can do anything about it because it's done. We isolated ourselves and we win the game of self harm. And also, he was so patient and kind, which is not his fireball when we're divorcing him, right? So we also had to look at codependency and all the things, but he was so patient and kind and really helped us reframe it as, no, this is about congruence. You have to be true to who you are.
• 12:53
  You have to include all of who you are. And that is part of healing, which is not so far at all.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: No. Oh, something that you said just really, like, spoke to me. This whole idea of, like, I win the game of self harm. Because I think we're taught that self care looks like easy things, like getting getting your nails painted or, you know, taking a bubble bath. When you divorcing your your husband was actually an act of self care of you being true to your deepest self, self care is not always is not always pretty.
• 13:40
  It's not always shiny. It's not always easy on and people who experience depression will understand that because self care looks like brushing your teeth when you absolutely know you don't have the emotional bandwidth to do that. Self care looks like taking a shower because you deserve to be clean, even though you don't feel like you deserve to be clean. Self care does not always look like what we've been taught, that it looks like it's not just making yourself a cup of tea. Right?
• 14:15
  It's like making yourself eat because you know your body deserves nutrients, even though your soul feels like it's dying.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: I love this so much. We have the same experience, like, inside out, like the opposite way of the same thing showing up where we had, by the time this airs, it would have been a year ago. But we had like these length of months where we had just hard, tearful conversations with our partner, like almost every day for months and months. And it was this super intense period. We were working on really specific things.
• 14:59
  And it was that same part of me is like, yes, go be in trouble some more. Like, let them come over and have another tearful heart conversation. Just get whipped right back onto your blanket, right? And also what it was, was not that at all. And it was even for that part learning to experience what the care was, was someone staying and showing up and having the hard conversations and us staying and showing up for the hard conversations for ourselves and how healing that was and having to reinterpret the very concept of harm and pain that some things are healing even though it hurts.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Yes. And that's difficult for people who were taught that that things that are uncomfortable are godly. There are lots of godly things that are uncomfortable. You do things that are uncomfortable or even painful or hard or that feel bad. You do them because that's the way to get closer to God or whatever it is.
• 16:11
  And then we go through this, like, healing process, and we're restructuring and reframing this idea for ourselves that no, like, we just we don't we don't deserve that. That's not fair to us to, like, continue to go through harm for anything. This isn't okay. You know, having to restructure that and then come all the way to the side where sitting in a hard conversation with my spouse is a challenge for me because sitting in hard things is not something that the host of a DID system does well. I'm I'm just gonna say.
• 16:50
  The host of a DID system is like, goodbye, the instant things get tricky. Right? Like, job is not to be uncomfortable. My job is to be comfortable and live life, And so I have parts for that. Like, we're in an uncomfortable conversation.
• 17:08
  See you. You know? And yet healing has come all the way back around to this idea that it's okay to be uncomfortable as long as this discomfort is bringing us actual benefit, actually what we deserve, not what we were told we deserved, but what we actually deserve when we're looking inward and we know what we want and we're aligning with our goals. Sometimes that means having an uncomfortable conversation. Sometimes that means me being honest about something that I would never have been honest about before, because that would have been dangerous for me, or that would have been vulnerable for me.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. I love that you said these things so explicitly. I had not thought of that in context, but absolutely feel that. I am good when I am uncomfortable. I think it's a core wound for me.
• 18:13
  If I have on too many clothes that don't fit right so that I am modest, then I am good. If I am hungry because I am fasting, that means I'm prayerful, I'm good. If I am, like, fill in the blank, all these different things of discomfort. And I think that pattern really caught my attention when I became a parent and we shifted from fostering to adopting the kids that could not go home. Like we never planned on adoption.
• 18:43
  They just were the kids that couldn't go home. And what are you gonna do? Except I do love these kids and I'm so glad that we're a family. And also when I began to parent them, I could not neurobiologically, physically in my body, I could not force them to stay on the blanket. What mattered to me because I did love them and I do love them, what matters to me is my relationship with them.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: But that brings up the very real questions of what the hell are we doing?
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Yes. I think I think a lot of cults attack our relationships. And I think a lot of high demand religions attack our relationships as well. And they don't do that explicitly. High demand religion certainly doesn't do it explicitly, you know, especially the high demand religion I was in was all about families, you know, but it was about a nuclear family that looks a very specific way.
• 19:47
  But when your when your doctrine is telling people that you can't accept your loved ones for who they are, you're teaching people to divide themselves over you. Right? So the church teaches that that it's not okay to act on your same sex attraction, that that's a sin. And a lot of people have destroyed their relationships with their families or with their family members who are gay or bisexual or transgender, they have completely eviscerated their relationship with someone because they were sinning. I lost a lot of people, a lot of friends when I actually admitted I was gay.
• 20:47
  I lost a lot of relationships, and I was not acting on my same sex attraction at all at that time. I lost a lot of people, and a lot of relationships were broken because of that. And I think the reality is high demand religions and cults have to attack our relationship with ourselves and our relationships with others so that they can be the relationship we come to. And as soon as you have a relationship that's so important to you that you would choose that relationship over the church, a lot of things start to fall in place, and a lot of questions start to come out. So here you're like, couldn't force them to stay on the blanket, right, because I loved them too much.
• 21:42
  Yeah. Well, I have a spouse that I love, and I would choose her over anything. And I didn't choose to leave the church because I didn't believe in it. But once I had a spouse, once I had a partner that I loved, then I was willing to look at anti literature. Even though I had been I hadn't attended church in ten years, it took me being in a relationship with someone before I was willing to start deconstructing the religion that I had been in and start looking at other information out there before it took that relationship before I was willing to dismantle the relationship I had with god.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: It's so hard. I think recognized I can't win this when I was told, like, you're going to be excommunicated if you don't stop saying the things. And my response literally was, there's nothing I have said that isn't on your website. I literally have been so careful to be respectful and to separate my experience of trauma and dissociation from the things you're doing and saying. And also this is a safety issue and it is a truth issue and it is an issue of me choosing myself.
• 23:27
  And if you're telling me that God already doesn't want me because of who I am, then I it's even more important that I am myself.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Yes. I think that's why I consider God to be one of my primary abusers, the God that was presented to me as a child, that is, because an abuser is someone who doesn't accept you for the way you are and is trying to change you, and an abuser will actively do things to try and change you. There are lots of people in the world that are not going to accept you who you are that are not abusers, But an abuser is someone who isn't accepting you for who you are and is actively seeking to change you, and they're going to do that through whatever force they have to do it. You know, sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's sexual, sometimes it's emotional, sometimes it's mental, sometimes it's a combination of all those things. And I feel like I was abused by the version of God that was taught to me for years and years because that God won't accept me for who I am.
• 24:49
  And to be perfectly honest, I am tired of trying to be in relationships with people who don't accept me for who I am, and true self care and true self love is me accepting that I am going to be in a relationship with myself exactly as I am, and not when I'm at my best, but when I'm at my worst and every other way. I am going to stay in my relationship with myself, And as someone who's a multiple, that learning to stay in my relationship with myself was a challenge, because it was very easy for me to get overwhelmed and leave, and now I've got another part at the front who gets to deal with the aftermath of whatever emotions I was going through. Now I sit with myself in my discomfort because I deserve to be accepted for exactly who I am, and I found a partner who accepts me for exactly who I am. And what I can say is that when you start to accept yourself for exactly who you are, then the other people in the world who accept you for who you are will find you. You'll find each other.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: I feel this so deeply. Do you have any passages from your book that speak to this piece about sitting with yourself?
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, let's see. So my book is largely about me trying to come to terms with just with the idea that I have DID, and it jumps back and forth in time back to the past and then to the present, which in my current present was six years ago. But but I and and so a lot of the work that I'm doing, they sing this door inside my mind. I'm like, I keep coming to this door in my mind, and I'm afraid to go through. I'm afraid to go through this door, and it just it keeps happening over and over throughout the book that I reach this door, and I'm also being told from the other side of the door not to go in, not to go through.
• 27:07
  Right. Right. Right. And and then there's this moment where I decide I'm going to go through the door. So I'm just gonna I'm I'm just gonna I'm just gonna read that passage, if you don't mind.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: It's called library. Somehow, I know the way. When I open my eyes, I am surrounded by books. The smell is overpowering. Old books, new books, they are on shelves all around me, higher than my head, unorganized.
• 27:45
  They are stacked, shelved, heaped, and cluttered all around. I wander. I see books I recognize. Jane Austen's name on a gold foiled cover, Doctor Seuss, The Screwtape Letters, Corrie Ten Boom, The Giver, and many volumes of scripture, some with names I don't recognize right off, The Book of Brigham and The Rites of the Holy Josephic Priesthood. That one gives off an aura of danger, so I move away.
• 28:12
  I am in a labyrinth of books. Shelves give way to more shelves. Madeline was left on an end table. She looks happy there, I think. I'm amused at the depth of my imagination.
• 28:24
  This is such a brilliant illustration of my mind, and I'm inside. Nicole? The voice is surprised. I turn and find her eyes, blue like mine, hair in two pigtails. She's a little girl.
• 28:41
  She's me, I think. But then she says, I'm Evelyn, my grandmother's name. I wonder who chose it for her. Hi, I say. I know her hand.
• 28:53
  She used to cry a lot in my brain. She's quieter now. She's happy and safe. She's the one who comes out to play and hides toys in the back of my closet. She still feels she has to hide them because when I used to find them, I would give them away and be confused for days about how they got there in the first place.
• 29:13
  Are you lost? She asks with a giggle. It's easy to get lost. I realized with a shock. I don't know my own mind.
• 29:22
  Evelyn offers her my hand to me. You're safe in the library. Safe. It feels like a lie, like imagination. But when I look around me, I realize imagination is not a lie.
• 29:37
  Nothing is truer than this space that Evelyn and I imagined together. I take her hand. I'll show you. She says, with confidence and a childhood bliss I've never heard before. You're safe here.
• 29:51
  Safe feels unreal. But I was always safest in the library. This is about me coming to terms with my DID and coming to a realization that I was safe inside of my own self.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: I have never, ever, ever, ever considered the idea that inside is where I would be safest. That truly blows blows my brains,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: my mind. Being inside myself and and sitting just sitting with myself. And when I'm in my body, just being present in myself is where I'm safest. Myself is where I'm safest.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: Feel like that is a truth bomb that is gonna take me some time to unpack. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing with me.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I have not had this experience before of talking about my system in just this kind of open, vulnerable way. And talking about cults and high demand religion, I just, I feel just really honored that you wanted to hear a little bit about my perspective and my story.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: I am truly grateful for your vulnerability and courage to be here. Was there anything else you wanted to share or say? And can you also tell us the name of your book one more time?
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, of course. I my book is called obscured passages, a memoir and verse of child trafficking and the resilience of the human mind. And it's available where books are sold online. And I also am a novelist, and I wrote a I wrote a series of books about a girl in a in a cult that's a non religious cult. And it's really about it's really about about the process of, like, of the people you love being your abusers, and how difficult that is to navigate.
• 32:26
  And the series follows her from when she's a teenager all the way up to her being an adult. And so it's called The Guild, and the first book is called Obedience, The Guild Book One. And it's I mean, I wrote that series as a vehicle for healing. And so there's a lot of pain throughout the book just because it is there's a lot of indoctrination that's happening. And then by the end of the series, we're in the healing portion, where she's trying to transform her life and her world.
• 33:02
  So anyway, and there are there are two of those books out, and the third one is coming out in January or February of twenty twenty five. So books that can be found, again, in all the places, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, all the places where books can be sold online.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. You may have to come back on the podcast again to talk about those other things because you just dropped that at the end like like a drive by, like, we're not gonna notice. You just said this about being groomed by people we love and then being danger, and I'm like, Wait, what just happened here at the end? That was epic, what you just said.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I would be honored to come back if you want me to come back another time.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you so much. I can be found at Nicole M Wilden. So if you just, I think I sent you that actually.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: So I'll put it in the show notes.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: K. Perfect.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: That was both amazing and painful and nauseating and awesome all at the same time.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Seriously. Oh, your experience is just so similar to mine in so many ways. And to find out that you come from kind of the shiny happy world, which I resonated with so strongly when I watched the show. I was like, oh, I mean, yeah, if they slap a different label on it, but we ended up in the same place.
• 34:38
  Like, this is, like, so harmful. So to find out that you came from that to LDS church is just I mean, it makes complete sense to me that that would happen. Ugh. Anyway, I just want to be your best friend.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: It's a lot. Right? Yes. I know this. I know especially because you don't know the podcast.
• 35:03
  So, like, who are you saying what to and that's not even safe? And I'm like, I don't know. There was a cult, so it could go either way. It could be amazing or really creepy. I don't know what's happening.
• 35:13
  But the way that we both showed up today and shared, I am so, so grateful, truly. I really, really am. I mean that very heartfeltly. Heartfeltly, is that English? I don't even know.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I accept it.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, and thank you, our partner, for sharing time. And, I so appreciate this. I can't even say, and we'll absolutely have more conversations if you would like to.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Okay. If you ever want to do a podcast where you're talking about being in relationships with people who have DID, you should bring my wife on the show because she doesn't want to, but you should because being in a relationship with someone being in a relationship with someone with DID is like a whole new thing, and more people should be talking about it.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: It's an epic thing. I yes.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: It's just really different. Like, yeah. I know. I'm like, how have I not already been listening to this podcast? Because it sounds like yeah.
• 36:18
  It sounds like exactly what I would want to listen to. So
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. Well, let me say explicitly in case you listen now, definitely start at the beginning. It will make more sense. And also last year, we went through a bit of a panic and took it all down. And so it is slowly going back up Okay.
• 36:39
  As we go through it, like what feels safe and not, because there were like 2,000 episodes. It's been going for ten years. Like this fall is ten years. And so it has been a long time. So sometimes I don't know what platform you use.
• 36:55
  It will feel a little out of order or chaotic. That's why I'm really sorry. But if you put it by, like, publish date, then it should be okay.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Okay. Will do that.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: I'm glad to meet you anyway. Thank you so, so much, truly. And I'll put your information in the show notes. And again, it's already booked all the way through March or April. I can't remember, but that is excellent time for that to come up.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's perfect. Anytime is fine. I was just curious.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Bye.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: Bye.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: 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.