Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / How It Works

Transcript

How It Works · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over:
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the System Speak 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.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Having come from the hard year after unfawning and realizing we took away the skills that we had for survival, but did not add healthy tools. And beginning to touch with my therapist after two years of connecting, and needing to talk about hard things in recovery, And finally being ready to talk about hard things with my therapist. I turn to books that have always been my friends since growing up with my mother as a librarian. And the community that we've worked so hard to build together as part of my recovery, specifically for a grief group that I attend. And meetings much like in the community, but specific to my recovery.
• 2:32
  From growing up in the chaos and dysfunction, not just from childhood trauma and deprivation, but also under the shadow of addiction and my family. These are hard things to talk about, expressing my experiences so directly instead of dissociated. But the book has given me language and a framework to help me start thinking about how to talk about those things, while also receiving the good tools and resources that I can add back in as part of practicing health and focusing on my own recovery. I never knew much about AA or Al Anon, and it wasn't ever something related to the focus of my private practice, even professionally. So it felt like problems other families have and issues other therapists help with.
• 4:07
  But a friend told me about the movie When Love is Not Enough with Winona Ryder. And it depicts the chaos and dysfunction of an alcoholic and the story of Bill who started AA. And there's this amazing scene where he is finally starting to get better and figuring out the things that are helping him as he helps others. And that's great that he begins to get better, but she is left with the chaos and confusion and big feelings in the aftermath of everything she endured while he was not well. And for spoilers, at the end of the movie, all the men are coming to meet with her husband in the living room.
• 5:17
  And she goes to walk outside and realizes all the wives are in their cars waiting on them. And that is her moment of not being alone in it anymore. And the wives come inside, and the wives begin to also meet. And of course, all of this is gendered and back in the day and all the things. And also, it shows really well how we also need support.
• 5:57
  And to me, it speaks to deprivation, not just the trauma of the hard things that happen, but also the good that is missing. And one of the hardest things for me all along has been, like with parenting, for example, I can do the opposite of trauma. I know not to hurt or harm my children. But the hardest piece is knowing how to nurture, how to love and be loved, how to build healthy relationships. And I don't know how to do the opposite of what was never there.
• 6:44
  It's just a hole. And I don't know how to fill it because it's missing. And if it's not something I know, then I don't know how to look for it to fill it in. And that's what was missing after unfawning. I could see what to stop doing, but I didn't know what to start doing.
• 7:16
  So I don't mean this book is magical, or has all the answers or even applies to everyone. And I'm not trying to promote anything or say or suggest or prescribe anything. I am just like with any of the other books I have read and shared on the podcast. I'm finding language and shared lived experience, and that means something to me. We shared with you about the share cast of Marco Polo.
• 8:03
  And with five teenagers plus one who think she is one and an adult child, we have stayed together as a family with the distance by using Marco Polo. And that is included sometimes making families sharing things like pieces of this book, helping the children engage in the process of also healing, not just from things with our lives, but also what happened to them before they came to us, which was absolutely influenced by alcohol and addiction. So things like Alateen and Al Anon have become an important part of our family in new ways as our children grow up into almost young adults. And transitioning those relationships with their biological families in healthy ways that support everyone's recovery. So sometimes I might share some of these things because it is part of what is happening in the life of our family.
• 9:23
  And the podcast has always done that. And just like anything else we've ever shared on the podcast, any guest we've ever brought on or any book we've ever talked about. It doesn't mean it's an endorsement. It means this is what we are reading, and this was our experience with that reading. This is what we thought and felt with that reading.
• 9:51
  So sometimes when we share the audio from these videos, it's just with that purpose, finding frameworks to look at hard things, sharing some pieces we're willing to be vulnerable with publicly, and always way more happening behind the scenes privately. Because privacy, it's always a balance and a dance. And I'm not going to share kids specific stuff any more than we ever have or any more than they have requested. But I can share my own pieces. Not to break my own anonymity, but in reference to things that are already public, because all of us need all the healing that we can get.
• 10:47
  And many of us feel alone trying to find that healing. Some people, critics, have said things like AA or Al Anon can be culty, and I get it. And especially in context of looking at culty things super specifically, in light of religious trauma and shiny happy and all the things. It's important that we do go into it with critical thinking. So one of the reasons some people say that things like AA or Al Anon or COLTY is because it's a group gathering and because it follows a format and because they read the same things.
• 11:55
  But those are framework things and structure things no different than a class or group meetings. Some people need a lot of support. Some people just need it once in a while. There's different ways and I can't speak to all of that. But that's just attachment.
• 12:21
  The other thing that can be criticized sometimes are what are called slogans, the idioms that they use to say really quick to intervene quickly. That's just CBT. And while I can see one side of the argument that things like slogans turn off critical thinking and make these automatic responses, I would also argue that that actually is critical thinking, because they're creating new pathways and new choices and an intentional disrupting, like an intentional thought rescripting. Because the programming that happens, the conditioning that happens with dysfunctional families is not critical thinking either. So if there's a tool to disrupt that process, so that I can be more present, less dissociated, more conscious, to choose a different path, to not just return and report, to be intentional and awake, then that is critical thinking because I'm practicing health and choosing my healing rather than staying in my dysfunction.
• 13:48
  I think all of us as humans make mistakes and struggle. And when we talk about things like attachment wounds or Venn diagrams of hell, It's painful and messy. But what I have read about this book is about how to stop obsessing about other people's mess, how to focus on my own paper, how to stay in my lane, and how to change the things that I can and let go of everything else. That's very empowering in situations that have previously felt disempowering. That's why it matters to me.
• 14:42
  The pieces I take from it are not gonna be the same pieces you take from it, and that's okay. Maybe some of it doesn't apply to you at all. That's okay. This is where I am doing relational work. Learning to pause things like hard conversations.
• 15:09
  Learning to pause enough externally to get more present and grounded internally and start connecting with my own system, which is what all of it is about. Yes, healing means connecting with others. And yes, connecting with others brings healing. But I also have to learn how to connect with myself internally in safe and healthy ways. Because I cannot show up in healthy ways in relationships if I'm not showing up for myself in healthy ways.
• 15:58
  Like, we need both. External relationships will not save us, but internal relationships alone will not connect us. I need health in all the places and all the spaces within me and around me. So this has become one of my new favorite books. Whether you ever go to any kind of meetings or not, it is a resource that I love, that has become a friend to me, that makes the Clarissa Wilde Woman book pragmatic and practical with my feet grounded under me and hope rekindled within me.
• 16:49
  And it feels good to be back in my own skin again, to be standing on my own feet again, to still be standing at all. It feels good. Again, finally. It feels good to be alive.
• 17:47
  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.