Latest / The Trauma Therapist / The Great Unravelling. A life with DID with Holly and Dylan Crumpler
Transcript
- 0:00Trauma Thepist podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early and ad free right
- 0:04now. Become a Plus listener by going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma
- 0:09Theverist podcast and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Nevers Podcast, a
- 0:18show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those of experienced trauma. My name
- 0:23is Got macpherson, and my mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to
- 0:27inspire each of us to help those around us. All right, guys,
- 0:34you ready to go? All right, so here we go. So five,
- 0:38four, three, two and one are folks, Welcome back to the
- 0:42podcast. I am very excited to have my guests, Holly and Dylan Cumpler.
- 0:47Folks, welcome, Thank you, glad to be here. Thanks for
- 0:50having us so. Holly and Dylan our mother and son team of enthusiastic advocates
- 0:56working to reduce the stigma associated with associative identity disorder, given that the ID
- 1:02has historically been depicted in a very inaccurate, since sessionalized, and negative way
- 1:07in film and TV. Dylan envisioned and created his senior thesis film titled Pedals
- 1:12of a Rose at Chapman University, to realistically depict the day in the life
- 1:18of a woman with the ID. He co wrote the screenplay with his mother,
- 1:21Holly, who is diagnosed with the ID in twenty eighteen at the age
- 1:23of fifty one. Pedals Over a Rose have received international acclaim and Dylan and
- 1:30Holly have gone on to share the film at numerous mental health conferences and educational
- 1:34events. The film is being used by clinicians and training sessions, college courses,
- 1:38and therapeutic sessions. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, thank you
- 1:44guy. You welcome. So before we get go in here, share with
- 1:47the listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently. I'm originally from
- 1:53Saint Louis, Missouri, but now live in Raleigh, North Carolina, where
- 1:57i've been for the last forty six years. Okay, and Dylan, obviously
- 2:05you're from the same place. Yeah, I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina,
- 2:07and I'm still in Raleigh, North Carolina. I moved around, you know,
- 2:09the Chapman Universities in California, but I'm back back here due to all
- 2:15those strikes. And you know California is expensive. Yeah, yeah, awesome.
- 2:19So let's let's get it. How did all this start. I think
- 2:24that's a very interesting question to begin with, how did all this start?
- 2:30So just quick summary of my life story in a couple of minutes is I.
- 2:35I was a tax partner at Deloitte, where I worked for twenty five
- 2:38years until twenty twelve, when I became extremely ill physically and had to take
- 2:45a disability retirement from my career of twenty five years. And after several years
- 2:52of trying to figure out what was going on with my physical health and getting
- 2:54it a little bit more under control because I had chronic lyme disease, I
- 2:58had mold poisoning, all kinds of issues that basically put me in bed for
- 3:01like eighteen hours a day, and we had a hard time finding answers.
- 3:07But once we did and got things a little more stable with my health,
- 3:09I went into a period of time where I could focus a little bit more
- 3:14on what was going on in my head and was able to start doing some
- 3:20work on my childhood traumas that I had never really processed or dealt with while
- 3:23I was just busy working, working, working, And as I did that
- 3:29work, eventually I got to a point in the end of twenty seventeen beginning
- 3:34twenty eighteen where things got a little bit i'll just say disturbing. It was
- 3:39a very difficult time. We called it the Great Unraveling, and we didn't
- 3:44really know what was going on other than we were having a lot of very
- 3:49scary thoughts and nightmares and flashbacks and things related to our childhood, but also
- 3:54other things that didn't make sense to us, and we luckily made our way
- 3:58to a psychiatrist who was able to diagnose us with dissociative identity disorder in March
- 4:03of twenty eighteen at the D I notice you're using us and we were diagnosed,
- 4:09and yes, yeah, for people who have did, it's very common
- 4:13to alternate between I and we pronouns because we are a system of twenty six
- 4:17people living in our body. So when I say we, I'm not talking
- 4:23about Dylan and me sitting here. I'm talking about all the parts with our
- 4:28within our system. Okay, thank you for that clarification. So when you
- 4:32started experiencing those physical symptoms were did you find that they were later directly related
- 4:41to what was going on with everything? I don't think they're directly related.
- 4:46I think it's not uncommon for people who have suffered with childhood trauma to have
- 4:49significant chronic health issues and in particular impacts to their immune system, which is
- 4:55what my primary issues are surrounding. And there's still issues for me. I
- 4:59still have to manage my health very carefully. So, you know, figuring
- 5:02out what was happening with getting the diagnosis of d I D is not directly
- 5:06correlated. But you know, our body was crying out for help for a
- 5:14very long time, right. So in the bio it said that you were
- 5:20diagnosed in twenty eighteen at the age of fifty one. Correct, Were you
- 5:27experiencing symptoms prior to that, the physical symptoms of well, symptoms of the
- 5:34I D. Yeah. So, D I D the tricky thing because it's
- 5:40a very covert condition by its very nature. You know that the identities are
- 5:46created to encapsulate traumas that are not to be shared with the rest of the
- 5:53self, so that the other selves can go to school, go to work,
- 5:57you know, do your job and not have to think about the things
- 5:59that happened. So because of that, the it's it's very covert, and
- 6:04you know, people can go through their life like I did for fifty one
- 6:08years without people really knowing. Oh you know, I have these different identities.
- 6:13I used to just think that I was kind of moody or I'd have
- 6:17these different you know, mood states of and you know, I think my
- 6:20husband and Dylan could talk about his own experience, but never really you know,
- 6:25put that together because I didn't really know anything about the condition, and
- 6:30you know, just really thought I was just kind of moody or erratic and
- 6:34you know, stressed out from working a very very big career with two children
- 6:40and lots of you know, things going on in my life. So you
- 6:43know, I wasn't really slowing down enough ever to listen to what was going
- 6:47on in my head. And if I had, there was a lot going
- 6:50on. Because when you have d id the different parts in your system,
- 6:55you know, you can hear them talking. And I would hear parts talking
- 6:59in my head. But I just thought everyone did, you know, I
- 7:01thought that that was normal. Like if you stood in your closet to pick
- 7:05out a shirt, that you might hear one part of yourself saying I really
- 7:09want to wear that red shirt and another person saying no, no, no,
- 7:11I don't want to wear that. I want to wear the blue shirt.
- 7:13And literally like hearing those voices speaking in my head. I just thought
- 7:18it was myself thinking. So, you know, looking back, once I
- 7:23got my diagnosis, I could say, oh, yeah, that makes sense,
- 7:27that makes sense, But at the time I wasn't putting any of it
- 7:30together. Appreciate that. You know what I want to do. I'm gonna
- 7:33pause your moment and open my window. Hang on one second, okay,
- 7:40just all right, So Dylan, how did you come into the picture here?
- 7:48How did this become known to you? Yeah? So I had plenty
- 7:57of clues growing up that she had dagg and therapy gramp. I would I
- 8:01would literally say, it's almost like she's switching on me, which is of
- 8:05course the verb when she's switching from one part or an identity to another.
- 8:09So there were there were plenty of clues. But then once she got the
- 8:13diagnosis, she let me know that summer when I got home, and I
- 8:16just said, that explains a lot, because it did. It made perfect
- 8:20sense. I'm like, okay, so you know, yeah, you know,
- 8:26she has trauma and it impacted her this way, and these identities are
- 8:30a coping mechanism, and she doesn't necessarily know that she's you know, when
- 8:35she's in this spider flight state or when other identity is out and so all
- 8:39I mean, despite all the switching, I still see, you know,
- 8:43there was definitely you know, she was just trying to survive and be the
- 8:46best, most professional, amazing mom she could be simultaneously, you know,
- 8:50working those eighty hour work weeks, and you know, having all these different
- 8:54selves could be difficult to navigate because it's like, hey, am I am
- 8:58I? Am I talking to my work mom? Am I talking to like
- 9:01my empathetic mommy? Am I talking to you know, like somebody who's gonna
- 9:07bost someone around who's still sort of in work mode or in protection mode.
- 9:13So it was just sort of difficult to navigate. But then the film came
- 9:16about because I needed a I needed a senior thesis film. And I'm very
- 9:20much pro advocacy for mental health because I know that's not depicted well in in
- 9:26uh in media, and it's not talked about enough. So I needed to
- 9:31sing a thesis film. And I was like, Hey, I want to
- 9:33make a film about D I D and accurately portray it, because there's not
- 9:37a single feature length film or TV show out there that has accurately portrayed the
- 9:43I D. So I set out, you know, to work with with
- 9:46mom here Holly and make make that and so far from the perception, I
- 9:52succeed. Part Yeah, I say, you're not acted out the part all
- 9:56right, we're gonna we're gonna get there. But I appreciate you sharing that.
- 10:03I want to back up here for a second and kind of address how
- 10:09the I D is portrayed and has been portrayed. There's a moment in the
- 10:13film where I think it's after he's right after the encounter with the two people
- 10:22and they're kind of out of the bedroom, and she explains to him like
- 10:26what it is, and it's like in one sentence that is so clear,
- 10:31you know, I was like, wow, this is like but let's how
- 10:37do you define how do you how would you define the I D. Holly.
- 10:41Let me ask you that. Well, you start with you have to
- 10:46define dissociation first of all. And actually I have on this great shirt.
- 10:48I've got some doctor Jamie Merritche Merch going on. Dissociation is not a dirty
- 10:54word, okay, And dissociation itself just means from the root word is means
- 11:01to sever, so to leave the present moment and go somewhere else. That's
- 11:03essentially what happens when you dissociate, and dissociation itself is a very common phenomena.
- 11:09All of us dissociate at different times in our lives. You know,
- 11:13if you're from the simplest thing everyone can understand is highway hypnosis. You're driving
- 11:16down the road. Next thing you know, you are home, and you
- 11:18have no idea what happened between you know, when you left and when you
- 11:22got there, because you dissociated. That's what happened. And there's a continuum
- 11:26of dissociation from what I just described all the way down to the far end
- 11:31of dissociation associative identity disorder, and with dissociative identity disorder, you know,
- 11:37what I talked about earlier is when a small child is experiencing a very traumatic
- 11:43incident, the brain has this amazing ability to dissociate from that moment and basically
- 11:54get away from it. Sever from that moment, and what happens with the
- 11:58dissociative identity disorder is an actual identity is formed to hold that memory. And
- 12:05that way, like I said, you know, Holly was able to go
- 12:09to school the next day after she had been sexually abused by her grandfather and
- 12:15not have to think about that because those memories were being held by another part
- 12:20of her brain, another identity. And that's what's so interesting about dissociative identity
- 12:24disorder is there are actual I said earlier, I have twenty six people living
- 12:28in my body. That's really They really are like separate people, separate self
- 12:33states. They have separate genders and sexual orientations and preferences. I talked about
- 12:39the colors of the shirts earlier. Just like any other person. They're very
- 12:43separate and distinct. They like certain music and so that's you know, social
- 12:50identity disorder is a condition where the individual's brain has been separated into these different
- 12:56identities to hold different traumatic memory so that all of that doesn't have to be
- 13:03held by one person because it would be too overwhelming. And oftentimes an element
- 13:09of the dissociative identity disorder is there's elements of amnesia. And that can look
- 13:13a lot of different ways. There's different types of amnesia. We could talk
- 13:18about that quite a bit, so you know, that's why, for example,
- 13:22the amnesia is what allows you to not know about it, right,
- 13:26I don't know about this thing that happened to me, and having these different
- 13:31parts. They're there, but you don't necessarily know they're there, even though
- 13:37they might be fronting and coming out and different ones are present. You're just
- 13:41you know, unaware that all of that's happening, because that's how the condition
- 13:45works. So I don't know that that was a very succinct explanation. It's
- 13:48a very complex condition, but one that is in a phenomenal coping mechanism that
- 13:54the brain has appreciate that. So, Dylan, I want to go back
- 14:01when you when you're when you found out your mom was diagnosed with the ID
- 14:07the idea you said, oh, it explained a lot, but beyond that,
- 14:13how did you respond? What was your response to that? Our response
- 14:18was, thank god, we finally know what's going on here. Yeah,
- 14:22really, I was thrilled that we actually knew what was what was happening,
- 14:26because you know, there was a lot of you know, suicidality going on
- 14:31and a lot of you know, bizarre behavior, like like we had to
- 14:35hide the knives in the house, not for our safety but for her safety,
- 14:39because there was one part who I'm going to who holds all this shame
- 14:43and anger and anger toward you know, the self, because thinking when you're
- 14:46abused, you know as a child. It's like my parents or my my
- 14:50guardian or whoever is in charge of me, they wouldn't do this to me.
- 14:54You know, we look up to them, they're they're a good person.
- 14:56So I must have done something bad. And so that's a lot of
- 15:00this shame comes from. And so in figuring this out, it's like amazing.
- 15:05Now she can get help with the trauma, in working with these parts
- 15:09so that she's you know, not wanting to kill herself or anything. Yeah.
- 15:13And when the topic of the film came up, Dylan, how did
- 15:18you approach your mom about that? Well? I was fortunate that it was
- 15:24during the pandemic, so I was already I was already home, and I've
- 15:26been struggling with ideas to come up with about for a senior thesis topic because
- 15:31I didn't want to just make some you know, just some some film about
- 15:35you know anything. I wanted I want my films to matter. I wanted
- 15:37to do were you are you? Were you a filmmaker? A filmmaker?
- 15:41Yeah? I mean when you before this film, were you like a filmmaker?
- 15:46Yeah? I've been making I was eight years old. Oh okay,
- 15:48okay, and he was in he was in film a film school at Chapman
- 15:52University, studying film production at Okay. Yeah, So so I was at
- 15:56home and I was basically was like, I hate this an important topic.
- 16:00It's never been portrayed accurately, and people to know about this thing instead of
- 16:04associating you with you know, Alphad Hedgecock's Psycho or you know Might Shallman's Split,
- 16:11you know, these these murderers. And and at first Holly was like,
- 16:17no, she it was too personal, it was too difficult of a
- 16:21topic. But I it was only I'd only been diagnosed for two years at
- 16:23that point, so it's still pretty fresh. Yeah, it was still pretty
- 16:26fresh, but I don't know. We talked about it, and maybe she
- 16:29slept on it or another identity came about. Was like, hey, actually
- 16:32I'd like this idea. Yeah. No, I mean when I heard what
- 16:36Dylan was, you know, his vision for what he wanted to achieve,
- 16:40I said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea, because it's really
- 16:42just so irresponsible what Hollywood has done in terms of this stigmatization and this portrayal
- 16:47of the ide And I knew that Dylan had the potential to make something that
- 16:52you know, could be an accurate depiction and that that could hopefully one day
- 16:55be helpful to people. So what what was the goal of the film?
- 17:03The goal was, Hey, I got fifteen minutes. How can I explain
- 17:06what d ID actually is, what causes it, what it looks like,
- 17:10and how people go about living a normal life with it and recovering from not
- 17:15the d ID, but from recovering from the trauma, because that's what they're
- 17:18recovering from, because it's it's a protective mechanism and a coping mechanism. And
- 17:22even though the guidelines trying to make, you know, go toward final fusion
- 17:26and integration, where you quote unquote remove the identities, most people don't really
- 17:32want that. It's it's the people who are, so to speak, singletons,
- 17:40are trying to help people cure the ID right now. I got to
- 17:45use my words carefully, but it's it's sort of like it can be very
- 17:49destructive if somebody is just like, hey, only talk to the quote unquote
- 17:53host. Don't let them dissociate. You have to talk only with the adult
- 17:59part. You're very rigid in your response to how to heal trauma, because
- 18:03that's really what's going on. It's it's you're healing trauma. And if a
- 18:07part who has trauma needs to talk about something, then by saying I'm not
- 18:11going to listen to you four year old who you know experienced this abuse,
- 18:15you're shutting them down. So so I wanted to show show that there is
- 18:19hope. And the ending of the film, you know, it shows her
- 18:23talking to her parts and thanking them. That's something that Holly actually does every
- 18:27night before bed, that's her part of her routine, just to show,
- 18:33yeah, this is how you know, working toward quoe unuote functional multiplicity.
- 18:36And yeah, let me just preface by saying, I'm not an expert in
- 18:41d I D at all, So forgive me an advance if I stumble with
- 18:47my understanding and and and and my questions. Holly, after your your diagnosis,
- 18:56what, first of all, how did you find somewhat to understand what
- 19:02the heck was going on? Yeah, this is a major problem because unfortunately,
- 19:10you know, therapists are not trained in school about dissociative identity disorder.
- 19:14I'm not a therapist, but I know a lot of them, and you
- 19:18know that most people will share with me that they get virtually no training about
- 19:22the condition in school, or they might get thirty minutes one day, and
- 19:26so therapists, you know, there's a they're not trained. And then where
- 19:32do they get information if they're not trained, Well, they might watch a
- 19:34movie or two where we're portrayed as very violent, criminal people scary. So
- 19:40there's all of these misunderstandings about the condition, and then they're perpetuated within the
- 19:45clinical community because there are these ideas like, oh, the idea is rare,
- 19:49you'll never see it. Okay, that is untrue. At least one
- 19:53point five percent of the population lives with the ID that's more than people than
- 19:57have schizophrenia. It more than people that have bolimia. It's a higher percentage
- 20:03than either of those conditions, which most people know about, therapists know about
- 20:06understand But the idea, it's like, oh, it's this big mystery.
- 20:08It's it's not if people actually, you know, take the time to learn,
- 20:12but they're they're not taught it in school. But for whatever reason,
- 20:17those the misinformation just continues to be perpetuated within the clinical community. So the
- 20:22you know, it's rare, you'll never see it in your office. Oh,
- 20:26because what they're looking for is civil They're looking for these dramatic switches.
- 20:30Well, I explained earlier, it's a covert condition. So no one's going
- 20:36to show up in your office with a different outfit every day as a different
- 20:38part. That's you know, that's that's not how it works. So the
- 20:42question is how did I find someone? Well, most people take a good
- 20:47eight to ten years to find a person to diagnose them with d id you
- 20:52know I've been in and out of the mental health system since I was my
- 20:56earliest you know, therapy was in college, and no one ever picked up
- 21:02on what I think looking back are some pretty good signs. Now, once
- 21:06I got though to that point of the great unraveling where things were really out
- 21:10of control. They were out of control because the different parts of us that
- 21:15had stayed silent for so long finally wanted to talk about it. They wanted
- 21:21to they wanted to be heard, they wanted to start expressing all these things,
- 21:26and they were ready to process those traumas that we had pushed down for
- 21:32so so long. And so that's why things were happening. That's what explains
- 21:36the suicidality, you know, and everything that was happening, and so at
- 21:40that time. You know, we went to a psychiatrist because well, we
- 21:45actually were on this search. We were going to a lot of different places.
- 21:48We went to see the neurologists because at first I thought, because I
- 21:52had had all this mold poisoning, I thought, okay, I just have,
- 21:56you know, a problem with my brain, and we need to go
- 21:57to the neurologists. Which at the time, my brain was so wacky.
- 22:02I was calling the neurologists the zendermologist, and I was I was speaking in
- 22:07all these badly words all the time, which is because I was like everything
- 22:11was short circuited and I was having in trouble speaking properly. Everything was just
- 22:17it was really that's why I call it the Great Unraveling. So when I
- 22:21went to see the first psychiatrist, after we got through you know, into
- 22:23the neurologists, He's like, no, this is a psychiatric problem. We
- 22:27were seeing different people, and you know, the first psychiatrist had no idea,
- 22:30the second one really had no idea, and by the third one,
- 22:34in just like four months, luckily, I made my way into the office
- 22:40of a psychiatrist who had experienced treating people with the ID. Where was this
- 22:45in North Carolina. Okay, the Raley Triangle Research area was until recently,
- 22:51the highest concentration of PhDs in the country. I think we're second or third.
- 22:55We're second or third now, Yeah, but okay is Raleigh, Durham,
- 22:56Chapel Hill. So my psychiatrist is a Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
- 23:00just down the road. And she had experience treating people with d ID and
- 23:07so she's a psychia psychiatrist, but she also does psychotherapy and she has been
- 23:11my therapist ever since for the last six years. She diagnosed me in March
- 23:15of twenty eighteen. So she pretty quickly could see what was going on.
- 23:19Let me ask you what did she do that allowed her to see this what
- 23:26was going on? Or what did she do? What did she ask,
- 23:27what did she not do, et cetera. So she, first of all,
- 23:32she did a number of screen used a number of screening tools pretty early
- 23:37on around you know, trauma and association, and you know, she could
- 23:42see from some of the things there that kind of confirmed what she was seeing
- 23:47as I was presenting, because I was presenting, you know in a way
- 23:52that was, like I said, the great unraveling, and so I would
- 23:56be I would speak with different voices, tones of voices, some might not
- 24:04realize those were different parts. She could see that those were different parts just
- 24:08by the level of different kind of the difference of how I would speak and
- 24:14talk about things. So you know, she she was able to see that
- 24:19those were parts. And again, someone else might not see that they were
- 24:22parts because they were expecting the different part to be in a different outfit,
- 24:27you know, because honestly that's what the media portrays. So you know,
- 24:32she could she could see that. You know, I was talking about my
- 24:36severe childhood trauma. Okay, so the idea I didn't say this earlier when
- 24:40I defined it for you, but it's generally happens with people who've had severe
- 24:45and recurring childhood trauma, generally before the age of six. So you know,
- 24:52I was talking about my childhood trauma. So that's you know, that
- 24:55was a that's a clue if you've got severe and recurring childhood trauma, you
- 25:00know, someone could have the idea if they're presenting with the different things that
- 25:03I had going on. So you know, I'm not a therapist. You
- 25:06know, I don't know if you asked her, you know, what,
- 25:08what did you see at the beginning that really clued you in. She'd probably
- 25:11be able to answer that better than me. Well, no, I and
- 25:15that's fine, But I'm just curious about your own experience because we have a
- 25:19lot of therapists and coaches who are listening to this who will benefit from what
- 25:25you have to say, and of course what that therapists might have to say.
- 25:29So Dalan back to you. You know, one of the questions I
- 25:33had was, Okay, you want to make a film about d id that
- 25:37doesn't necessarily mean you had to make a film about your mother or your mother's
- 25:41experience, right? Why was that important? Well, I mean, if
- 25:48this is a very misunderstood topic, and I have a great resource right here
- 25:52because we co wrote the script. We co wrote the script together. And
- 25:56again, I like, it wouldn't make any sense for me just to go
- 25:59reading about something that somebody else has and then go try to make up my
- 26:03own assumptions of what it is when I can make you know, there's a
- 26:07great quote. I don't know who's said it or if it's just you know,
- 26:08a general quote for people with the IDA, but like our stories have
- 26:11been told by those who have not lived them. Well, Melissa Parker said
- 26:17that as a quote in Jamie Marritch's Association Made Simple book, which for therapists
- 26:22listening. If you want a really good resource, I love that book,
- 26:26An Association Made Simple by Jamie marriage. It's really good at laying it out
- 26:29there because it's she interviewed a number of people, quite a number of people
- 26:36who have the ID and pulled together all of their experiences to use to explain
- 26:40it. And so it's you know, it's written from the voices of the
- 26:44people who live it, and people's experiences with d ID can vary quite a
- 26:48bit. Every system is different and unique and how we experience it. So
- 26:52I think that's what's powerful about that book is it has the perspectives of quite
- 26:56a few different people who have the condition. Just as an aside, how
- 27:03did you get in touch or meet Jamie? So, I think that's how
- 27:07we got in touch. It is y yeah, yes, yeah, so
- 27:10doctor Jamie Marritch. We met originally at the an Infinite Minds Healing Together conference
- 27:17and we met them in I can't I was twenty nineteen or twenty. I
- 27:21think twenty twenty is the first time we went to the conference and we met
- 27:23them there and we you know, started following them in their work, and
- 27:30then in twenty twenty at the or maybe twenty twenty one at the conference.
- 27:36Yeah, I was twenty twenty one. At the conference, I told Jamie
- 27:38that my son was making this film because we wrote it, started writing in
- 27:42twenty twenty, but you shot it in twenty twenty two. And twenty twenty
- 27:45one. I told her that, you know, my son was working on
- 27:48this film. And I had actually gone to another screening that she had hosted
- 27:52online of another mental health film, and so I said, hey, you
- 27:53know, when this comes together, might you consider hosting a screening? And
- 28:00she was delighted to she thought, oh, that sounds wonderful. So that's
- 28:03kind of how we got to know Jamie Merritt. And for anyone who is
- 28:06not familiar, the Healing Together Conference is an amazing experience. By the time
- 28:11this airs, it's probably going to be too late because it's February sixteenth or
- 28:15eighteenth of twenty twenty four, but it'll be around next year. It's been
- 28:19going on for many years. It was founded by Jamie Pollock and it's a
- 28:23conference where people who have did their supporters and clinicians who treat people with D
- 28:30id all come together. It's in Orlando this year, which it has been
- 28:34for a number of years, and it's also a hybrid conference, and there's
- 28:37probably four hundred or so people in Orlando, plus people from last year.
- 28:42I think they had sixteen different countries. So it's an amazing educational opportunity and
- 28:47community building opportunity for people who have d id awesome. Awesome. So,
- 28:53Dylan, the success of the film, congratulations. I mean, how did
- 29:02you when you when you finished it, what did you do with it?
- 29:04What? And what? What was? How did you want to get it
- 29:07out there? I kind of in the back of my head knew that Holly
- 29:12was going to send it to, you know, to people like Jamie Merritt
- 29:15and other clinicians that she was tight with already are close with, and and
- 29:23so yeah, I just sort of I'm like, she'll do something with it.
- 29:26But otherwise we went on a brief film festival run. But due to
- 29:30how you know, misunderstood already is people you know, looking at film festivals
- 29:34and or don't necessarily know what to look for those like, oh that's interesting,
- 29:41Okay. So my primary thing was not you know, to go get
- 29:44big a bunch of film festival awards because I'm like, this is pretty much
- 29:47understood already. But you know, I got no a few festivals, and
- 29:48it was great for my experience as a filmmaker, but overall, it was
- 29:52it was getting into the Healing Together conference and presenting the film there that really
- 29:56sort of started around the world. I did. But the first time I
- 30:02saw it, I mean when I watched the film. Dylan and I wrote
- 30:06the screenplay together, but I wasn't involved at all in the filming, so
- 30:11you know, he brought it to life on the screen, and when I
- 30:15saw it for the first time, I was completely blown away. I was
- 30:18like, this exceeds my wildest imagination and expectations of what this could be to
- 30:22be able to depict the condition. And so when I saw it, I
- 30:27was like, Dylan, we have to do something with this movie. It
- 30:30has to be seen because it's going to be very impactful for people who have
- 30:33d id to see themselves reflected back. They've never seen it completely in a
- 30:40way that is so validating, and that's the number one comment we get from
- 30:41people who see the film. I have never felt so seen and validated watching
- 30:47this film. Wow. So as we kind of wind down here, Holly,
- 30:52and I understand treatment is different for different systems. What is your treatment?
- 31:00So my treatment has been a variety of therapeutic modalities. I would say
- 31:07the probably most important one that has been impactful for me has been EMDR.
- 31:11We've done a ton of EMDR to you know, each of the different parts
- 31:17have their trauma and they each had to go through a process of working through
- 31:22those traumas and EMDR was critical. So was art therapy. We did a
- 31:26tremendous amount of art therapy at home collage. We'd tell our stories through collage.
- 31:33We did a lot of play therapy. We spent a lot of time
- 31:37because the different parts, a lot of them are children parts, they're young,
- 31:41and they would sit on the floor with their stuffed animals and they would
- 31:44talk about things and you know, act out the story of what happened and
- 31:48retell the story and talk about what happened in therapy. Lots of play therapy,
- 31:52lots of time and nature walking and talking out loud, letting the parts
- 31:57talk out loud and process what it haden. So a lot of different modalities,
- 32:01and you know, also see talk therapy with our with our therapist as
- 32:06well. So It's been a really a healthy process for us in terms of
- 32:10just the different modalities. And you know, now we've gotten to a point
- 32:14where I would say we are things are fairly stable. We still are in
- 32:19therapy. We still you know, have things that might trigger different parts and
- 32:22things that come up, but overall, I would say we're living with what
- 32:25I would call functional multiplicity. And that is what I think is the goal
- 32:30of many, many people who have d i D is to be able to
- 32:34live in a functional way with all of the different parts in the system.
- 32:37And finally, Uh, for you, Holly, what do you want?
- 32:43What do you feel it's important for therapists out there to know? I think
- 32:47it's important for therapists to know that there's nothing to be afraid of in working
- 32:53with people who have d I D. You know, the movies would lead
- 32:57you to believe otherwise, they would lead you to believe that were violent,
- 33:00that were difficult, But we are, we are hurting, we are people
- 33:05who have been abused as children, and we're we're not to be feared.
- 33:10You know, be curious, don't be afraid, seek out information about the
- 33:15condition. There's a lot of really good trainings that are out there. Take
- 33:20the time to get to know the condition, because you will you were seeing
- 33:23it in your office all the time, and you might be missing it because
- 33:29again, it's at least one point five percent that's with d I D.
- 33:32I'm not even talking about osd D and other dissociative disorders. So there's a
- 33:37large percentage of people that are coming into your practice that have these conditions,
- 33:43and I would just, you know, really ask that you take the time
- 33:45to get educated on them and watch watch our film. It's a good start.
- 33:51Well, I'll certainly have that linked up here. Yah, Dylan,
- 33:52how about for you? What's next for you? Right now? I'm working
- 33:57on a longer version of the film as well as a documentary on how d
- 34:01I D has been misrepresented slash represented. It's only been misrepresented, So if
- 34:06I talked about how it's been represented, it's all misrepresentation in film and television.
- 34:12So I've watched like sixty movies so far about d I D and all
- 34:17of them are Unfortunately. I'll end it being like, well, I'm glad
- 34:22we're finally at the credits. But the only other thing I would say is
- 34:25as far as the EMDR comment, just since there are therapists listening to this
- 34:30EMDR with d ID just no, I'm of course not trying an EMDR,
- 34:36but from the therapist i've talked to, doing some regular standard d E M
- 34:40d R with the ID is not necessarily recommended. Just don't don't jump straight
- 34:45into the trauma immediately. I would say, if you're wanting to learn more,
- 34:51try to take some training about EMDR and d ID because just jumping straight
- 34:55into that deep trauma memory instead of saying working from the top down into it
- 35:01can be dysregulating. From my interviews, I just wanted to share that since
- 35:06she said em DR it is incredibly helpful and important, but I just wanted
- 35:09to share that E M d R with d I D d D doesn't need
- 35:13a little modification. Awesome. Appreciate you saying that. So we'll have the
- 35:19uh the the movie linked up here at the show notes page at the traumath
- 35:23heaperspodcast dot com. In addition to that, was the best way for people
- 35:28to learn about what you're doing in order to get in contact with you.
- 35:31Yeah, so you can go to our website, Dylan's website Dylancrumpler dot com
- 35:37and that's in the show notes as well, you can follow us on social
- 35:42media. We have both Instagram and Facebook accounts and those are in the show
- 35:45notes as well. But Pedals of a Route Pedals of a Rose underscore the
- 35:50movie for both Instagram and Facebook is where you can follow what we're doing and
- 35:53see what's happening with the longer film. With the documentary, you want to
- 35:55comment on writing in yes, so we're adding a submissions page. It should
- 36:00be on the website at the time this ERRS or basically any any clinician who
- 36:04has you know, has an experience working with the idea and clients of d
- 36:07I D if they want to share their stories about how the media has misrepresented
- 36:13d idea and how that has negatively harmed their practice and being able to treat
- 36:17d id I, we would love to hear it, because so far,
- 36:21from the sixty movies I've watched, I can't find a single accurate representation,
- 36:24and they're all are portrayed as violent in some way, and it's like,
- 36:29guys, please stop it. This is the ultimate victim blaming right here,
- 36:32for and for people who are listening that may have d I D. You
- 36:36know, we'd love to hear your stories of how you've been impacted by the
- 36:39misrepresentation and also your ideas for what you'd want to see in the longer version
- 36:44of Pedals of a Rose that we're making. And you know, I know
- 36:46this is primarily therapists that are listening, but there's a lot of therapists who
- 36:50have d I D. They're just not necessarily comfortable sharing that publicly because unfortunately
- 36:58there's even more stigma within the clinician community, which hopefully that's going to change
- 37:01over time, as there's quite a few clinicians who are trying to be vocal.
- 37:07Jamie Marritch is one of them about talking about the importance of lived experience
- 37:12for clinicians, and I, you know, I support that completely. So
- 37:15I would hope that more and more clinicians would be able to come out and
- 37:20with their experience and normalize it because there's there's nothing to be ashamed about having
- 37:24d I D. And you can be a completely functional you know, I
- 37:28was a tax partner Deloitte. I was living with d I D my whole
- 37:30life, and you can be a very functional therapist with d I D as
- 37:36well, and that's not something that people should have to hide. Yeah,
- 37:39well, beautifully said I appreciate you both being here, super inspiring. You're
- 37:44welcome back anytime. Love to keep up to date on the next movies and
- 37:52so forth, so whenever you want to come back, you're welcome. Thank
- 37:55you so much, great, thank you, ch all right, take care,
- 37:59hey care baybye. In many Common