Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / The English Teacher (Part One of Five)

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The English Teacher (Part One of Five) · 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.
• 1:01
  You are back already.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Hello.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: So you're actually helping again. Way to be supportive and participatory.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I do try.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: I think that new medicine is working. Woo hoo.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I took my stimulants in the afternoon today.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. Okay. So seriously, you are here. Well, first of all, we had to take a bit of a time out. We're a little shaken up because we had a big conversation today, and that's what we're gonna talk about.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Not you and me. You and me did not have a big conversation. You had a big conversation.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: You and I and us and we did not have a big conversation. Right. Someone else had a big conversation with us. So just for context, here's what happened.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Sorry. I'm trying to figure out what position I need to be in.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Honey, don't talk about positions on the podcast.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: It's a Kama Sutra podcast.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. It is not. That is my pillow. Nice. I
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: thought I was ready.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: This is not the kind of podcast I thought we were doing.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the boudoir. Boudoir with Emily and friends.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: No. Emily does not invite friends into her boudoir. I cannot even have a serious conversation with you.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Yet you keep trying.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: That's why we get along so well. Hashtag avoidance. Okay. Me tell you what happened today.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, please.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: There is a woman who is maybe the only person that I have known almost my whole life that is also still in my life. And you met her once, but I don't participate in friendships. And so
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: also we are learning that is not true just for the record
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: thanks coach anyway so just like everyone else who tries to be kind to me I don't actually respond to her I don't email her. I don't text her. I don't call her. I don't do any of the things you should do as a friend. But she has remained very kind and very present and checks in from time to time.
• 3:43
  And when she was coming through town once, she stopped to visit our family.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I don't think I knew her importance at that time.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, she is very important, and she's very confident in telling you. And I don't mean in a negative way. I mean in a she is awesome and funny and knows it and confident in that. She is the one we made yaya crowns back in the day. Yes.
• 4:14
  That was a long time ago. So let me explain briefly the Reader's Digest version of this story because you need to understand that. She was an English teacher at our junior high where our family went to junior high, and she was our brother's seventh grade English teacher, I think. We were not in her class, but our brother was. So she was aware of me before I was aware of her or that I remember being aware.
• 5:01
  Does that make sense so far? Yeah. So for me and my life moving around so much growing up and living so many places and going through what we went through, this is significant that there's any kind of longevity in any kind of relationship.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Is that in part because she was in a city you kept coming back to? Like, how
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: That is true that the mother brought us back to that town. That is true. So but that was that was the beginning of it. Does it make sense so far?
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Okay. So that was the beginning of it. Later later in high school, we transferred to a private school that was a church sponsored kind of school. Okay. I'm sorry that I'm so halting.
• 6:06
  Like, it's really that hard to talk about. I mean, she's a safe friend, a good friend. That's not what's hard. It's that she was a witness to so many things. That's what's hard.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: So in high school, we transferred to the private school and there we sort of became aware of each other again because she was not involved with the school, but she attended that church. And after we started that school, we also started attending that church as well, in part because that's about the time the mother really went full fledged with her suicide attempts. And so we couldn't get to the other church that was across town on our own. I didn't get my driver's license until I was 18 or 19 or something. I didn't have any help.
• 7:11
  There was no way to do it. Yeah. So the church, though, where the school was, we could walk to. It was a bit of a walk, but we could get there. And so we went there partly for church, partly because it's where the school was, so we could have some sort of illusion of friends and youth group there, and partly because we could get food there.
• 7:37
  But also at that church is where the youth minister was molesting girls in the youth group. And so that was her church and she was friends with the wife of that man.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Was it known that was happening?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Not at that well, we knew it. The kids at the school knew it. But it came out publicly, like in the papers. And I mean, it came out a little more publicly after I left, I think the year after I left. But besides him, there was also a teacher that was doing that, and he was fired my senior year.
• 8:26
  So there was a lot happening in that community. That community has a lot of problems anyway, But there is a lot happening in that community where our circles overlapped because of the church.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: But
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: then also to pay for tuition for the school, we had to work because our mother was not paying our tuition like she was supposed to and so we had to like we did the dishes after lunch and we helped teach the younger children to read which has now come in useful since we have so many children. And we did some odd jobs and different things to help with the youth or the children over at the church. But when we ran away from home, it was some of the families at that church that tried to foster us. This is part of why it was such a big conversation with her, because it was like putting pieces into a timeline in a way we could not do by ourselves. Pieces we already had.
• 9:33
  She didn't give us pieces or any false pieces or things that aren't real. She just helped us put it into a timeline and that's part of what was significant because I don't know if we've ever been able to do that authentically or legitimately. I'm not sure what the right word is there. We've not been able to do it. So we ran away from home.
• 9:55
  Families at the church tried to foster us, but we were old enough that they just decided to emancipate us. And the judge said if we had a job and could stay in school and then had a place to live, that that would be okay. And the brother solved the problem by getting married super early. But we both left home. I had people from the church trying to help me get out of foster care because I was 17 and wanted to go to college.
• 10:26
  And so I was out of time to start over with a new foster family, and that's when the emancipation talk came up. And basically what they did at the church was there was this woman who said that she would let me live at her house if we would babysit her kids, which then also turned into cleaning her house, which then also turned into all kinds of drama. But this friend that called me today and is willing to be on the podcast, but I haven't decided yet if I want to share that because it's so much and we haven't even processed it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: But she's willing to share, which I appreciate, but she was best friends with that woman. So my senior year of high school and going into college, we were around each other a lot because she was best friends with the woman that I was a nanny for. Does that make sense?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Can I ask a tangential side question?
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: You're really good at them.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Is that the home where they kept pee in the fridge?
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: No. That was a different foster home.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Just checking.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Yes. My goodness. That was a wow. That came from nowhere.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Well, that's I was like, oh, wait. You know, I knew it was a family that you were sort of nannying for. And I thought, oh, I wonder if that's the same family. But
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: No. Relatively close time period, I think, but no different place. Oh, thank you for bringing that up.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: You're welcome.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: So that's when we became, like, directly interacting with each other was while I was living there. Okay.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: So part of what happened on the phone call today is that she told me all kinds of things that I did not know about that time period. So I'm going to save that for just a minute and finish telling you who she is before I come back to those pieces. But that's when we were around each other was why I was living with that family so that I could finish my senior year and get to college. And then for college, I had different scholarships, but everyone from this church had gone to the same church, seminary kind of college.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: And so basically what happened was that even though I had offers for other schools, because I did not have the resources to get there, I basically got just shipped off to this school where they had all gone, even though that wasn't even a place I wanted to be. Yeah. And now as a healthy adult, I think I can make my own choices and go to college where I want to go. But as a 17 year old homeless child, those were not options for
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: me. Yeah.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And the church, including this lady, held like a wedding shower or a baby shower, except it was for college. And they gave me clothes and shampoo and soap and towels and my foster care blanket that I still
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that you still have.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Wrap around all the time in, right? That's my snuggle blanket. That's where that came from. And basically, like, said, we'll always be here. We love you.
• 14:25
  We care about you. We wanna help you. We'll support you. Sent me to college, and then that was the end of it. That's the Reader's Digest version.
• 14:33
  Okay. Didn't get to come back. I never saw those people again. They they did not help me more. That woman didn't let me come back home.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: And it was all very confusing to me having trusted people for the first time and tried to follow their advice and then basically found myself in a strange situation, in a place I didn't want to be, in a culture I didn't know how to navigate, and having nowhere to go and no resources to go anywhere else.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: So
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: this was the same woman that I was nannying for. It's the same woman who talked to the college and told them that I had been abused and needed therapy, except she did it in the enrollment line. There wasn't like a private conversation with the school counselor. There was the dean of woman who was the counselor on campus, but she was not licensed. It was not a private conversation.
• 15:53
  It was right there in the enrollment line about how we have night terrors and about how somebody's been touching us. I I remember her saying something like that. And so, basically, what ended up happening is we had to see that dean of woman. The deal was if we saw that counselor I don't wanna call her a counselor because she wasn't licensed, it ended so terribly. It doesn't feel good.
• 16:19
  It was, my first experience of bad therapy.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: How did she get a job as a counselor not being a counselor?
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: She's married to the man who was the president of the school.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: And she had really big hair.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: That's always a bonus in the eighties and the nineties.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: It's the next best thing to certification.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: So what happened ultimately was they said I could stay in school as if I had a choice of where else to go if I saw her for counseling.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Yuck.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Right? But I didn't know that that was unusual at the time.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Of course not.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I didn't know it was a red flag. And she would give me like, journaling assignments, like prompts, I guess, writing prompts, kind of. And I would write them, and then she would write little notes in the margins or something, and I would respond to those. And that's kind of how therapy went for just a few weeks or so. And then all of a sudden, my parents showed up on campus and had other journals that I didn't know how they got and they had all the things that I had written to that counselor on campus.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: What?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And so my parents that I had not even seen in years were on campus with everything I had written about them. And basically at that point, still not knowing that I was an adult, like not understanding that I was an adult who had choices. Because I was only 17 or 18 and all of this unfolding and everyone like, I didn't know.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: No. You didn't.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: I didn't know anything. But they said then that basically I was crazy. And because I was crazy, I had to go see a specific therapist that was specialized in helping me. Now, I also know, I don't know, I'm aware, like I should know, but in a DID kind of way. Another part of me had had kind of a breakdown in psychology class, and the professor had also talked to the dean apart from all of this happening.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Okay. So that's a different story. I mean, same story, but a different piece of the story, but not relevant to what I'm telling you about today. And so we had to go to this therapist who was like, what is that? Two hours away?
• 19:10
  Three hours away? Don't know. It's a long But the psych professor, the one who had also talked to the dean, his wife drove us to therapy every week or else we couldn't stay in
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: school. Okay.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: And there was drama because the parents were supposed to pay for the gas and pay for the therapy. And, of course, none of that happened, which complicated things in other ways for me that's irrelevant to this story. That therapist saw me for a period of time, I can't even guess to tell you how many months or weeks, and basically then said the school was not safe for me, my family was not safe for me, and just moved me into her home. This is all I remember of it, kind of. Okay, so later, while I'm living at that therapist's home, woman who was also being seen by that therapist also starts hanging out at the house and spending nights at the house and going on camping trips and doing things together because she becomes like best friends with this therapist.
• 20:38
  So this is literally my introduction to therapy. And so then I become friends with her, this woman that called me this week, because really, through these different random encounters, she's one of the few people I've known almost my whole life.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, sixth or seventh grade all the way through young adulthood, right?
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: So then we become friends. Later, this woman gets a different therapist because she realizes she's still struggling even though she's friends with her therapist. And so she gets a different therapist who actually helps her get better and she gets well enough that she makes the decision to file an ethics complaint against that therapist.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, good for That
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: moved us in and was bringing her home.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't just because she moved me in, It was also because she talked about people's cases to her, and she shouldn't have known that.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: And so for these, there were other things too. At that time, she asked us if we wanted to join in on the complaint or filing with her, and their attorneys wanted to talk to us. But we declined at that time for several reasons. Number one, we still had no sense of reality or now time or we were very, very unwell. We had just been diagnosed with DID, Did not feel like we had any kind of credibility.
• 22:34
  We were still living there. How can we testify against her when we're living there? She did literally and truly keep us physically safe from bad people at that time.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: And so how was that anything worse than what we had done to her acting out as an adolescent from foster care, Right? So there were all these layers that we didn't know how to sort through, didn't know who to talk to about, didn't want to get anyone in trouble, didn't want to betray our friend, didn't know how to respond, and so we just stayed out of it. But we also left her house. Okay, so in the years since then, we have stayed in touch, but only because she has initiated and stayed present. I'm not good at emailing people or texting people or following up or being connected.
• 23:29
  That's very difficult. I don't know why it's so difficult. Through the podcast and interviews and research and study and all the things I've learned the last three years, we've learned a lot about attachment and why this is difficult and things like that. I don't know how you made the cut,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: but
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: you're still here. And she is there out on the peripheral, not being intrusive, but still just present. And every once in a while, how are you doing? How are you all doing? But she knew about DID.
• 24:05
  And so I thought it would be interesting, I thought it would be interesting to talk to her on the podcast about DID because she's known us for so long.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: So that's how this conversation came up. It took me three years, three years to get the courage to ask her to be on. And so today we tried to do an interview, but our Internet is terrible.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's true.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: We can't hold a connection. Like, we're having to use our bad rural cell phone coverage just to get our work done or anything, but I couldn't hear everything. There was so much freezing and stopping. And what did you say they're gonna do tomorrow to the Internet?
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: They're gonna point our dish at a different satellite.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: I don't even know what that means, but I know that we are missing the fiber optics of the city.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Boy, howdy.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. So I tried to record it for the podcast, but it was so wonky. I don't know if I can salvage it. I really don't. But she said we could try again this week after we get internet.
• 25:24
  So I don't know if she'll say the same things or if it will come out the same way, or if I can piece together the first interview or whether I want to share it or not. But, oh my goodness, she gave me so many pieces I didn't know. She told me that like, for example, that the lady I was living with when I was nannying for her so that I could finish my senior year, that she found my journal, like my diary, which I didn't even remember that I had, but that she found it and that it was so bizarre that she brought it to her friend, this lady that I talked to. And so this lady that I talked to back then, she read it and that because she has the training in English and writing and all of that, that she could tell there were so many voices. She said there were different handwritings in it and that she started piecing together from our interactions different parts of us all the way back then.
• 26:38
  And that she told the woman that she needed to get us help. And so what she meant by that was for her to help get us referred somewhere safe to get a good therapist.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: But what happened was this lady just started talking to everyone and told lots of people.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: And so that's why it was such a big drama at the school. And then they referred us to that therapist because it's who that church used.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the same group of people.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Yes. So even though it was at the college, like two hours or however many hours away, they used that same therapist because that's where the church was.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: And so that's why I had to go there. And then she remembers when that therapist told her about us, recognizing that we knew each other, so she tried to connect us and then invited her over to the house while we were there and told her that we had moved in. And, like, all these pieces that I didn't realize was going on, I don't know. I didn't get a chance to ask her because the Internet was so wonky. I don't remember if, I mean, I don't know if she remembers anything about my parents or not.
• 28:10
  But she talked about what it was like those years with DID and knowing us. She remembered different names. She remembered what they were like. She remembered and I didn't tell her any of this. She just and some of them And she remembered I don't know.
• 28:34
  And then she was with us through that whole timeline, like, until we met you. So, like, all of our running away, all of our acting out, all of our dating alcoholics, all of these things. It was just so many pieces and it was so overwhelming I almost couldn't function. Yeah. And so I came to tell you, I'm sorry that's such a long boring story.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: It is many things. Boring is not one of them.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: But what I came to tell you, like I just, I had to cry when we were finished talking. We weren't even finished talking. We got disconnected because of the internet. And I can't even get reconnected to talk to her. So we can try again, and I don't know if I can get something recorded for the podcast, but it felt so validating to have corroborated testimony, a witness of things she saw that we endured.
• 29:40
  And there were so many examples, but I don't wanna talk about them right now tonight before bed.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Knowing that it's not just created memories. It's not
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: There were things. Yes. Not just that I told her, but that she was there and witnessed Yeah. Things that happened at the school or things that happened in the church or things that she was there when it happened with the family, things that, like my journal before anyone else had ever diagnosed me with anything, all of those kinds of things. In some ways, that was, like, the biggest relief to have this corroborated story, the biggest relief to hear that and to receive that and to feel that of, no, things really have always been like this.
• 30:42
  I have always been like this.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: This is who I am. This is who we are. And it always has been. Like there was, I can't tell you, there are not words in English to tell you the relief that I felt and having that burden because so often either people don't believe you or that's too much to happen to one person. People tell us even just about our life since getting married.
• 31:15
  The parents dying and miscarriages and cancer and the foster kids and people are like, that's too much to happen to one people. And it's like, no wonder we're exhausted. But the same thing with my childhood or my growing up, to have someone say, no, I was there and this happened and this happened and this happened. There was something so validating and so real that it's like it slammed me back into my skin of, if that's real, then I'm real in a good and powerful way.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, if all of that is real and all of me is real, then all of that abuse is real too.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: And if all of us internally are that real and really have been around that long, then I am more unwell than I thought. Which maybe is not an accurate conclusion, but I'm talking about my feelings of all of the sin at this it was like simultaneous. I don't know how to describe it. Simultaneously, it was the most validating experience of my life and also the most shaming. Not because she was shaming me.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: I don't mean that. She was very respectful and she's very respectful, and she's very kind. Also very funny, but that's off the point.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: In what way did it feel shaming?
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Because I it felt like this shattering of an illusion that I worked so hard to put myself together, and I worked so hard to prove myself, and it was that transparent all along.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: You've worked so hard to prove yourself, meaning to prove that you did not have DID, that you were really just the one identity and
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Or to cover it up or to not be crazy. And I don't mean that disrespectfully for mental health, like that's such a derogatory term, but I'm talking about how it feels inside and worked so hard to prove that I was functioning, that I was well. And even if no one is trying to shame you and even if everyone's being so careful and respectful, to get an honest look at how sick you are is really a hard thing to face. And maybe I can do all the right things with it, like use it as motivation to stay in therapy now or use it to be more wise about what I share with whom or who I choose as friends or whatever, all the lessons you learn from those things. But it shatters a layer of denial that you can't put back together.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: For what it's worth, I've I have been amazed to hear you recount this this phone call and and sort of recapping your story because in the past when we've talked about hard things from your childhood I've seen like the protective cloud come over your eyes and it's like you can't remember a sentence that I just barely said or you seem really sleepy or, it's like you can see the protective barriers coming up.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: From the outside? Yeah. Weird.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: But, but as you're talking about it now I can see you're being careful but I don't see any of that fog, and it feels like what I sort of imagine that I see in in you as you're doing this is that it seems like you don't feel as strong of a need to put up those walls that you feel safer both on the outside with me with other people and also on the inside with yourself and the other people in there. And I think that's wonderful.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Like progress?
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. So I am not a person with DID. I don't have the same perspective and experience. I am a person like every person who experiences trauma in different ways. Spending time with you and thinking about DID has made me understand myself more and better and thinking about how I think we've even talked about this on the podcast before about how there are times that that I'm very childish and times that I'm very mature and times that I love to play with the kids and times that I hate to play with the kids and times that I like there's so many parts of me just like there are so many parts of you and all of those parts have developed in reaction and sort of in the chemistry of life experience And so when I see DID I don't actually see it as an illness anymore.
• 36:55
  To me it feels like a protective system that has helped you survive through a lot of terrible things. Like that doesn't seem sick, that seems amazing.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: An interview I just did, the lady said it's a capacity. That was Joanna Silberg.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've talked I think we've talked about this too on the podcast, but I feel like we have we have the same volume of life experience. But my life experience is stored in a fish tank and yours is stored in a card catalog. And it keeps everything in its place and it keeps all the information protected where it should be. And it's not that one is better or worse yours is harder for some information to interact with other information but that's not a flaw that's on purpose for safety. And now that you are out of those dangerous situations it's like slowly the walls of your card catalog are becoming more transparent or more porous that they're not going away they shouldn't go away they're part of who you are But it's like all the different parts of you are learning to interact and trust each other more and appreciate each other more.
• 38:47
  I think that's wonderful.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: I think it's interesting that you're pointing out progress because what I felt with that conversation was the opposite of progress.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: What I felt was the permanency of brokenness, the depth of brokenness, the years of brokenness. Eighth grade was a long time ago. Yeah. And to think that since eighth grade, before that, obviously, but in this case since eighth grade, that we have been fighting for our right to exist, fighting for our capacity to survive, fighting for our right to function, to provide for ourselves, to have the things that we need, to love and to be loved and that we keep thinking if we do enough, then we'll be loved. If we're good enough, then we'll be loved.
• 40:05
  If we do it this way, we'll be loved. If we do it that way, we'll be loved. And just seeing it over and over again. And she talked about the patterns, like even with therapists. Our very first therapist was the one at the college that gave all of our notebooks to the parents.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: And after the DID diagnosis came she sent out like a chart about like a map almost like a map of characters or something like this chart to all of the faculty.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: And so that was our first experience in therapy. Our second experience in therapy was moving in with the therapist. Our third experience of therapy were the ones that where it was a couple and then they got divorced and so then we didn't have a therapist.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: They should have gone to marriage counseling.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Right. And then the next one was the one that had an affair with the woman we were living with.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: And then, like, these were our patterns. She's like, how were you supposed to learn and how were you supposed to get safe when these were the people who you were trying and learning how to trust?
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: It's not just the therapist either. It's consistently there's been a pattern of people who were in authority or your parental figures in various kinds who again and again and again betrayed you or broke your trust or intentionally sabotaged you or unintentionally sabotaged like again and again. It is an extraordinary pattern.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: But I think like other survivors have said and feel like I'm the common denominator in that. And so even if it's not, it feels like it's my fault or that I should somehow stop it or get out of it or prevent it from happening. Even losing the therapist from Oklahoma last fall.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Every day, every day in my head is this one thing. If I had not done that, we would still have her. It's my fault because of this one thing, this one moment, I'd made a mistake and lost everything. And because of that, I lost friends and I lost the therapist. And I've been through, like, half a dozen more therapists since trying to get a therapist and all these things.
• 43:09
  And that's different from I was acting out and these are natural consequences or I was acting out and these are logical consequences or I was acting out and this is just my mess to clean up. This is not even when I was being naughty. So there's something deeper and harder about it being that pervasive and that much about it's me. That's where there's shame because if it's something I was doing I could at least fix that.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: But when it's me there's nothing I can do about that.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean two things I would say one is it's never just one thing right if there's if you're in a relationship with somebody and there's one thing that you've done and they fall apart, it's not just one thing. If there's a member of your church who after one thing goes wrong they leave the church, it's not just one thing. That's just the tip of the iceberg and there's a lot going on underneath. Meaning you don't know their life story.
• 44:39
  Everyone has everyone has layers of things they're struggling with and we only get to see little glimpses and I don't think you can blame that on yourself.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: But I think what's terrifying is that if it's not something I can fix, if it's not a pattern I can stop, then it means that it's still happening. Which means NTIS isn't even a thing. Do you see how it undermines everything? In feelings, maybe not logically, maybe not for people who are healthy and have internal resources or a different view of the world because they have had nurture and know how to seek nurture. But the feeling of it is that this just pulled the rug out from everything.
• 45:35
  Like, just changed because nothing of what I thought was real was real. Which really is just going back to dissociation. And in my head, I understand that there's a pull to dissociate because it was such a painful conversation, even though it was accurate and good and right and even tender. She was being very careful with me. She was not triggering me or provoking me or trying to make things hard.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Can I share a thought that comes from sort of my own faith perspective even though I know that's gonna be different from a lot of your listeners?
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they can skip it if they don't want to listen.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Skip it? I feel like when we have a recurring pattern in our life that it suggests that there is something we are learning, kind of in the way that the kids when they do their workbooks, if they have not actually learned what a subject noun is, they will repeat that pace again and again until they have learned what a subject noun is. There are things in my life, like there are patterns, almost archetypes in my life of events that have happened again and again and again. And I feel like not not in a punitive way, I don't think that's how God operates, but I feel like he gives us opportunities to keep learning until we have made whatever the progress is that we need to make. Does that make sense?
• 47:31
  I don't think that looking at your life and seeing a pattern of being betrayed by those you trusted, I don't think that that is any sign of your failure. I think it is a window into understanding something that you are working on learning.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: That people are not safe and that now time is not safe and that I am damaged goods and broken and it's not going to get better. The ode of despair.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's it though. Although I certainly understand where those thoughts come from. I think Like this is just me thinking about your situation, not actually answering how you would answer this, but when I look at a repeated situation of being betrayed, part of what comes to mind is the challenge of learning how to trust in your own worth even when others are not supporting you. Like knowing that you are precious and unique and extraordinarily capable and of infinite worth even if the people who should be helping you and guiding you and loving you are failing to do so.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: So you mean accepting that I'm not going to have a mother, I'm not going to have a father, no one is going to rescue me, I am not going to get help, I am not going to be accepted. But also at the same time in my own right believing that I am acceptable as I am on my own even when there's not anyone doing that work of accepting. Like learning how to do that so well that I don't need an other for it, to provide it, believing it, like, almost like an act of faith. But
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: There is an act of faith to it. But also, there are people like me, like your friends, who do love you and accept you, right?
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: See, this is another place where the struggle comes in because what you're saying is very valid. And the people I'm trying to be friends with or like this woman that I hardly ever talk to and yet is a faithful friend since eighth grade.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: And she is retired now and still remembers me to check. Like, who does that? That's a lot of love.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: It's pretty special, yeah.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: Right? That's sacred. Our conversation was divine. Like, was powerful.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Our conversation was. And so for me to express the raw depth of nastiness that gets drudged up in me sounds super disrespectful to all of the people who have tried so hard and super dismissive of all of the people who have tried so hard. And that's not what I mean either.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: But it's a reflection of all the the muck that gets stirred up. But just a little bit ago, gave a list of all of the things you were fighting for, of the things you were struggling to do, of to love and be loved and to be Oh, you had such good words that I can't pull them up right now. Accepted. Accepted, to be capable. Like, you are currently doing all of those things.
• 51:54
  Like, not even in little ways, in big ways. So even though the memory time still clouds things and memory time is full of painful memories and painful feelings, in now time, you're kind of living the life you wanted, the life that you were fighting to have. Like, you're really amazing. And I'm sorry it feels so lonely and hard on the inside. I can relate in the sense that as I struggle with depression, there's certainly times that I feel alone and worthless even though I know that you love me and I'm not alone.
• 52:50
  So I recognize how my internal experience, my internal emotional experience can even be different than my internal mental experience. But I also am able to recognize those things coming in from the outside. You are absolutely worthwhile. You are worthy. You are capable.
• 53:12
  You are loved. You are loving. You were kind, Doug, on it.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: I thought this is while she was talking and I heard my because sound and the Internet was not working. Right? And so I thought, this is exactly what we're talking about. Like, it's so symbolic. It's the meta narrative, the meta experience of the exact thing we're talking about.
• 53:41
  You are offering me words of hope and encouragement and validation and a witness of my own experiences, and I can't even hear you.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: Also, the other thing that was really hard about it was that. Like, the more present and grounded I was because validation was so high, the more shocking it was and the more pained I was at recognizing the depth of how bad things were before. Like, she remembered things or knew about things I didn't even know about because of what she saw or witnessed, and it was just even worse than what I realized or worse than I thought. Like, I've made enough progress to be able to say, for example, the youth minister was touching the girls and youth group. I can say that.
• 54:49
  Yeah. I can say the teacher was fired for sexually acting out at school with the girls or at his home after school. But the details of her saying, oh, yes. I heard this, and I saw this, and this happened, and making it more real so that it was really about what happened to me and not just a report that I'm giving that is dissociated from the reality of the experience. Like, to be present in the pain of what happened was so much bigger than what I thought and more overwhelming than I thought.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Well that's, I mean that's what dissociation is, It's a safety measure to save you from that pain, right? It's literally there to protect you from those awful things so that only part of you has to face it. So now when you are safer, as you're starting to look through those barriers, Yeah. It makes sense that it's shocking. It makes sense that it's horrifying, but you're also still the same person you were before the phone call.
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: Am I? Yeah. Because it feels different and it's one thing to fight for like a capital s self. Mhmm. And feel like I am capable of and choosing to be present in my everyday life because I want to live it.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: And it's another thing to say, oh, because I am present and because I am aware, now I'm feeling this and this and this that connect back to those things that happened. It's hard. Like, that's not fun. I want to go back to dissociating. I don't like it.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that makes sense. You can dissociate if you want to.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's not even like I can pick out which shoes. It's like, oh, wow, everything's getting fuzzy. I thought we were past that.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: Or, what about and just trying to hold on literally to reality while facing reality of how sick I was because of reality.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's a mind blower. It's like the movie inception tucked into one little moment.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know what inception is.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: The movie where they go into people's dreams, but then they had to go into people's dreams from there and people's dreams from there.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. That's my life every day. That's exactly what it like, don't know how to tell what is real or not real. Except I do. Because I'm the one going into the dreams, except they're my dreams.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: I am real and I love you.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: Still?
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: And our children are real and they are obnoxious sometimes. Really obnoxious.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: Thanks for doing those appointments today so that I could do that phone call.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe if we have the Internet, if I can get it recorded well enough that you can listen to it. Will you listen to it whether it's on the podcast or not?
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I would love that.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't tell her about the podcast yet. Yeah. Not because it's a secret, and I need to because she is obviously my friend who is still showing up since eighth grade. But because I literally, physically, my capacity was I could only deal with one piece at a time, and these pieces were so big, I didn't get there. Yeah.
• 58:50
  But I think the biggest thing was they're so often with DID that you feel like I'm just making all this
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: up. I feel like one thing that popped into my mind as we were talking is the idea of privilege that, as a person who is not dissociative in that way, that it's easy for me to just say, well, you're doing fine because on the outside, you are doing fine. Like, you're doing really well. And, like, it's it's a form of privilege for me not to have to worry about what all is going on on the inside. But I was thinking I was thinking about how I am not particularly gifted at identifying who is out at any given moment, right?
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: So I'm not very helpful in communicating that.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: And that's okay because I just see you as a person and I don't know if that feels insulting to some of you who have such strong identities, but I just see you. It's easy for me not even to give much thought to DID because even though there are times that you have different skill sets or you need different things or whatever, you're you. I love all of you. I love all of you individually, but I just see you as parts of you. And those terrible, terrible things that happen, yeah, they're real.
• 1:00:53
  That makes sense to me. But those things are not you. You are you. Those are things that happen to you. You are not your trauma.
• 1:01:07
  You were the person that trauma happened to, and you dealt with it in the most extraordinary and kind of beautiful way by becoming more than almost anybody could be. You're amazing.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: You're very kind.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm just in love.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. I think that I thought if I got myself together enough, it would somehow make all of those things go away. But when she talked
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: It made them more real.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Well, for the record, I am okay with that because I like all of you. I like all of you. I love all of you. I'm sorry that means that the hard things from your childhood are true, but I don't think there's anything about you that you need to be ashamed of.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: There's a big movement in the communities online to be all out and proud. They call it mad pride, like mental healthness, be proud, like that kind of mad. Mad pride or plural pride specifically for DID and they are using like GLBT and disability rights to kind of give language to different complaints and different strengths and different demands and different requests and different things as a culture and wanting to have this plural identity. And what they said at the positivity conference was, I think it was the Chris's who I did that group with a while ago. I guess it was years now, a year.
• 1:03:34
  It feels like decades ago. But, they said that it matters because if you have a disorder that can get better and go away and parts or this or that or something I don't wanna misquote them, but that your plurality will always be part of your identity or something like that.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: And I have fought it and I have fought it and I have fought it because I don't want to be identified by my illness.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: And I don't want to be limited in my healing, and I don't want to stop in my progress or something. But also at the same time, this moment on this phone call was a time where I realized, like, just for a split flash, like, as fast as you could snap, this is who I am. This is who I've always been. We have always been here. We have always been this way.
• 1:04:54
  And I don't know how to make it go away. I don't know how to fix it. And for that one split of a moment, finally, I understood what they've been talking about with the plural pride.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: Except at the same time, because of our children and because of our circumstances and some different things, I can't just go tell everybody all of me.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: It's not appropriate for me to let littles go hang out at your parents' house. It's not like, that's not how it works safely. Yeah. And with everything that's happened in the last year, I feel my walls up more than my walls down.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: I
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: don't want people to know who they're talking to or that there's more than one of us or that we're here. I don't even on the podcast. You don't even know because you're so respectful and you just listen if I send something to you. I don't know how you do that, but you're thanks for not reading my journals and mailing them out to the world.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: I do what I can.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: But even on the podcast, like, I don't want to let anybody out. I want everything to sound the same. Try to make sure that my voice is the same. I don't want to talk about anything personal anymore. And I know this is just a phase the same as in treatment, but it's like that getting pulled away from me, all the walls went back up, and I don't know how to get them back down.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: Fascinating.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: And I've been in this place and then this phone call today, and she's basically like, accept your walls are transparent. And so how to be have pride but also make progress. How to face how big it is that this is who we have always been, but also seek healing, how to recognize how terrible things have been but still believe in people, how to let go of waiting to be rescued and waiting to be loved and waiting to be mothered or fathered or nurtured or parented or cared for or noticed and still connect and love and receive the goodness that so much of the world is surrounding me. Even in our home right now, again, a symbol that we are out here in the country surrounded by a good safe distance from anyone else. Yeah.
• 1:08:11
  But also full of green and blue skies and the trees and animals and all of these things that are healing. We were sitting on the porch tonight and saw a hummingbird. The hummingbird danced with us tonight.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: You know, all these things. I don't know how to do it. I don't know if I can do it. I feel like you're talking about my progress, but I feel right now more vulnerable than I have ever been.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: Good for you. Yeah. Impossible. I don't think you have to achieve anything. I think you're already okay.
• 1:08:51
  And if you make more progress in some fashion, I have no idea what that looks like. Awesome. If you just continue being you as you are, awesome. You don't have to earn anything. You're okay.
• 1:09:10
  You're doing great.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: I'm not talking to you anymore.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Well, it's been a great podcast, folks.
• 1:09:38
  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, and you can join us on the community at www.systemsspeak.com. We'll see you there.