Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Right to Run

Transcript

Right to Run · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the System Speak podcast, a podcast about dissociative identity disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to longtime listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
• 0:59
  Therapy the last couple of weeks has been intense. I think good, maybe really good, but intense. We've not done more eye movements yet, but we have continued processing the ones we already did, focusing on some specific stuff that has continued to play out this year, but is feeling better because we're talking about it. I think that continues to be the biggest piece of this whole year, which has been brutal. Maybe, seriously, the hardest year of my adult life other than the pandemic.
• 1:43
  But it's feeling safe enough in therapy and connected enough in therapy that things are moving, words are coming. As I said before, even the podcast feels like mine again. I feel like me again. So much so that it felt like it was time to go back where we started, to return to where we left off. The book, which maybe for people who know the podcast, is just a memoir.
• 2:20
  But for me, that book was my journaling from the first five years of therapy with my first therapist. And this is the first time I have felt ready to go back to that place, to go back to those memory times even while still trying to navigate now time. So we did, weeks ago, give her a copy of the memoir and talk with her through the poem and about the poem that starts it. Then we processed, again, what makes it hard to reengage in therapy. She mentioned something that came up through our eye movements last time and wanting to go back to it.
• 3:18
  And I was like, no. No. No. No. I cannot.
• 3:23
  And my hands were up in the air, like, pushing it away with my palms facing her, like stop. Except you know what she did. She did stop. And she said, okay. Thanks for telling me.
• 3:45
  That's what makes it safe enough. I mean, don't get me wrong. She still pushes me, and she pushes hard, but in good ways. She said, let's talk about why we need to stop and what that's about. And I said, I don't want to talk about it.
• 4:08
  And she said, let's talk about why we don't wanna talk about it. And I said, you're being sneaky, and I don't want to at all. Not yet. And she said, okay. And so we found a pivot place together and talked about something else that was important, not just avoidance.
• 4:32
  Sometimes, avoidance is pacing, and it's not bad. We also, for the first time seriously, I've been seeing her for a whole year, and this was the first time. We talked about DID, like, directly. As in I finally talked about mapping. I mean, just a tiny bit.
• 5:01
  I guess it's the second time because after Jules and I did the mapping episodes, I did take her that and we did talk about that just a little bit. But really, it wasn't even dipping my toes in. It was like just noticing there was water there. But this time, this time, I was up to my knees, at least. And we talked about doctor e and work and presenting and research and writing and time with clients, and how that's not always the same shirt, and that those are different shirts.
• 5:49
  And I maybe got waist deep when we talked about Emily and how she was sacrificed for Nathan and wanted to be with Nathan and wanted that fairy tale to heal. And how sacrificing her sacrificed part of me. And then maybe up to my shoulders when we talked about how that connected to Molly and how that's connected to Dante. And we talked a lot about all we've learned about unfawning in the last year and how hard that's been to learn and apply and what we're learning about codependency now. But I was full on swimming when we talked about littles.
• 7:05
  She didn't let me drown, and she helped me stay. But it is the first time in five years that I've talked about littles directly, even let them close to the surface other than John Mark coming out sideways, without getting into details because I'm still learning about privacy, and also to be careful for pacing and containing because I don't have therapy again for five days from today. So I don't wanna do too much by myself, honestly, or go too far or too deep where I can't get myself out of it again. But without giving any details that aren't public already. We talked about how one was for the father and one was for the mother.
• 8:27
  And we shared the insight, me and my therapist, that that in itself was not only binary, but also a double bind. There was no way, even with fawning, that I could win that, that I could ever get it right. And then swimming back up for air, how that also connects to Dante and to Molly, which left us as an adult in Emily trying to win at fairy tales, looking for safe enough, finding places to hide, and never daring to be ourselves. But another thing surprised me that I never ever thought about before Until therapy that day. If sexual abuse is a thing, and there are shirts for that, And physical abuse was a thing, and there are shirts for that.
• 10:01
  I realized for the first time, after these years of learning about and teaching about trauma and deprivation, with trauma as the bad things that happen, like sexual abuse and physical abuse, and deprivation as the good that's missing, Meaning, not having attunement or care or tending to or kindness or nurture or protection that keeps you safe from the bad things that happen. All the relational trauma things too. Right? If there are shirts for sexual abuse, and shirts for physical abuse, there are shirts for deprivation too. Maybe that seems obvious.
• 11:01
  Maybe you already knew that. But I didn't. Not for myself. I hadn't connected that at all. I just stumbled right into it, the realization, the awareness, the association that that was John Mark for neglect, for deprivation.
• 11:36
  That's what he's represented this whole time. That's what his needs have been this whole time. Safety, care, attention. A relationship, a friendship, a caregiver, someone safe at all. So I have known for ten years that so and so was for sexual abuse or so and so took the physical abuse.
• 12:14
  But I only just now realized that it was John Mark carrying the neglect and deprivation. And if that were not hard enough, my therapist got curious because that's what they do. I'm so curious about I'm so curious if What if we were curious about? I know those lines because we do them at work. But this time it was my turn.
• 13:01
  And together, we got curious about why John Mark was a boy. Maybe it came up because we've just done the trans meeting in the community to support those friends. But for us, John Mark is not that kind of identity. For us, it was about trauma and deprivation. For us, it was about things like maybe it would stop if I were a boy.
• 13:47
  Or things like maybe maybe it wouldn't hurt if I were a boy. Or things like maybe it won't bother me if I'm strong enough or resourceful enough or funny enough. And so then my therapist did one of her ninja moves that I never ever appreciate. And she dug in deep and said, did it work? Once you had John Mark, did it work?
• 14:50
  Did it stop? Now to be clear, I don't plan on talking about any of this with my therapist. Why would I talk about the hard things in therapy? That's where avoidance comes in. Right?
• 15:12
  Except it all happened so fast, and it all happened in such a way where we were talking about parts, not stuff. And so somehow it was working, and somehow I could tolerate it. And, really, it was only a matter of seconds simply in passing. But no. No.
• 15:31
  It didn't work. No. It didn't stop. I had already said I didn't wanna talk about the hard stuff, so my therapist didn't ask. She was respectful and kind.
• 15:57
  She didn't make me define what the it was, and it didn't stop. Together, we understood all of it. Any of it. None of it. None of it stopped.
• 16:13
  So then what? She said. We ran, I said. I hid, I said. In dog houses, in trees, under porches, at the neighbors.
• 16:38
  Trying not to panic, trying not to run out of the room in the moment, holding on to the couch for dear life, feeling the cushions under me. Digging in with my hands as if that could keep me present. Feeling the peppermint in my mouth that she had passed over to me, that she now keeps on the table next to the couch. Not just for you, she says. For anybody who might want a peppermint in therapy, she says.
• 17:22
  So it doesn't count as care. It doesn't count as too much. Because just anybody might want a peppermint. But here's some close to you where you sit during therapy, just in case. And in that moment, I was glad I had one.
• 17:50
  I was glad that peppermint make you breathe in cold air that helped me stay stay aware, stay awake, stay present. She asked one time in a different session, maybe a month or two or three ago, Why were you hiding? What were you hiding from? And I passed that day. I didn't answer.
• 18:26
  And I passed again this day and still didn't answer. But do you know what my therapist said? My therapist said, you know, she was right. That startled me back to the present. It was a pivot I wasn't expecting.
• 19:03
  Who was right? Right about what? She said, the one who ran, she was right to run. I didn't move a muscle. I didn't even blink my eyes.
• 19:31
  But hot tears, hot tears spilled down my cheeks. She was right to run. I was right to run. We don't have to stay and be hurt. It's not okay for people to hurt us.
• 20:06
  We were right to run. This is profound to me. All of that from my childhood comes back to that. Leaving home at 17 and being homeless since and struggling for housing, struggling for school, struggling to feed myself and my family, It all comes back to that. And in that moment, when she said those words, she was right to run.
• 20:45
  Something happened in me. I got a piece of myself back. I was no longer wrong. She was right to run. I was no longer bad.
• 21:10
  She was right to run. I was no longer the black sheep, the weirdo, the failure. She was right to run. I was not wrong. It is okay for me to say no.
• 21:40
  It is okay for me to leave when I don't feel safe. When something is wrong, I am right to notice. I am not crazy. I am not bad. I am not wrong.
• 22:05
  She was right to run. And I wept that day for her and for me and for this year that has been hell. For religious trauma, for getting myself out of unsafe and unhealthy relationships and places and homes. She was right to run. Hey there, little girl, that I have been so confused by and so afraid of.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: You were right to run. You are doing it exactly right. Keep telling me the truth. Keep helping me see. Help us find our way.
• 23:30
  You were right to run.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.