Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Acceptance

Transcript

Acceptance · 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
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: to the podcast. Thank you. I don't even know what to say about therapy. It's been really hard. Not too much.
• 1:24
  Not too fast, but hard. I'm trying to stay in it. I'm trying to talk about the things, but the pull to avoidance is strong. And every time she tries to take me deep, I feel myself swimming back up to the surface to talk about something the children did. Or current events or anything except for what I need to talk about.
• 2:21
  When I asked her what I need to talk about this week, this month, this summer, this year. I said acceptance. I need to see things clearly as they are. It's really, really important to me, and I need to accept them as they are because I can't even respond or know what I think or need in that context if I don't first have an accurate picture of what's going on. And when she asked me what I wanted to accept, I gave her the whole list of everything.
• 3:45
  The separation of our family, not just because of me and Nathan, but the children growing up and doing their own things and going where they want and need to do, which is healthy and good and right and developmentally appropriate. It's not bad or malicious. It's just different. They don't need me anymore the same. I cannot be codependent even with the children.
• 4:22
  What they want from me is money and food and conversation. And that's all right now. And that's okay. I just need help accepting it. I talked to her about needing to accept the disillusionment, the undaydreaming, the grief from religious trauma.
• 5:00
  And the promises I was given if I did all the things and how I can't do all the things anymore. That was never going to be a game I could win. And I decided I was not okay giving myself away. Based on false promises, which is not the same as my own faith and experience of things I know to be true. So we talked about that, how important it is for me to know what is real.
• 6:34
  How I don't want or need to be protected from people's thoughts and feelings, and how part of undissociating for me is waking up and staying present in discomfort and distress. Not to ignore it or to deny it, but because it informs me. And if I am only comfortable and if I am only asleep, I don't learn the things I need to learn. I don't know the things I need to know. So therapy is hard right now.
• 7:36
  Trying to stay awake and see all the things. She asked about Jules because she always does. And I'm not going to talk about Jules' private things, especially when Jules is not here. But the biggest thing for me, these three years and accepting things with Jules is letting three nights be three nights and acknowledging that when she leaves, it is distressing. And I don't like it, and other parts of me don't like it.
• 8:33
  And it's scary. But it's also Trixie because we want our relationship to be healthy, which means not fawning, not trying to earn her presence, not trying to win her over more. That's not the same as wooing or the same as expression or the same as enjoying time together. And that her leaving on the off days is not the same as her abandoning me. And I have needed help with that.
• 9:35
  And because of privacy and because she had not shared that she was here part of the week, it had felt like something I cannot talk about. And because I am so glad for any time with her, it felt like something I could not complain about. That's what started on daydreaming a year ago because it would be toxic for me to pretend it's only good and not also hard. And she and I talk about it all the time, and we check-in with each other, and she and she gives all the beautiful reassurances. But for me, the leaving is scary, and there was no space in my brain to process it.
• 10:51
  What we are doing is certainly not shiny happy, that it's not U Haul lesbian either. There's not a binary of all good or all bad or all in or all out. And it was like the math of it would not compute in my brain. And I told my therapist that's what is making acceptance so hard. I know that I care for Jules and that Jules cares for me.
• 11:42
  I know that when she's leaving, I will see her again. I know what attached cry is, and I know about anxious attachment and avoidant attachment. And in some ways, it's really helpful because I'm not good at attachment, at staying. And the days off are for me too. Time to focus on the children.
• 12:26
  Time to rest and gather my thoughts. Time to find my own way. Time to not be codependent. But it has felt like whiplash all alone and not at all, and a roller coaster that comes with that and all the big feelings and trying to balance passion and restraint. It has been hard for me, and I have not known how to talk about it.
• 13:20
  But acceptance seems like a starting place. Acceptance seems what I want. Acceptance feels like knowing the facts, but also trusting. Acceptance feels like trying and staying. Acceptance feels like slipping into it as it already exists like a warm bath.
• 14:02
  My therapist is Trixie, wanting me to find my feelings, but also hold on to facts. And sometimes it's hard to find the starting place. When I think about acceptance and my struggle with it, where every day I think, what am I doing? What have I done? And this is too hard, and this is exactly right.
• 14:41
  And making lace out of all of it these three years. So when I struggle with acceptance, my feelings are I'm embarrassed. I'm a grown adult. Having baby fits, wanting to cling to someone who's leaving, even though I know they'll be back, even though she shows in a hundred ways how much she cares. I'm also frustrated, maybe even angry, not with Jules, but at myself, beginning what I was getting into.
• 15:54
  What is wrong with me is my question at the root of the struggle. I accept my therapist, always poignant, said, what is wrong with you? It's trauma and deprivation. So maybe we need to circle back to that. I said, that feels too hard and not very fun.
• 16:35
  And my therapist said, if we don't wanna have fun, let's talk about the facts. So we went over the facts again. Jules will come on the nights she has scheduled. Jules will leave, but also will come back. Now I get to see her at the office too.
• 17:13
  And, also, it's not just about parenting because I had a month without children, and there were not extra days. And, also, we got our trip, which was on our days, but was easier than traveling with children. We talked about that, how vacations with children are never really vacations. They are just parenting somewhere else. And my therapist said, Jules is a woman with a big heart.
• 18:15
  She loves her clients. She loves her friends, and she loves her family. And she loves you too. That's what my therapist said to me. She said, Jules loves you the way she loves all of them.
• 18:49
  Loving you doesn't mean she loves them any less. Loving them doesn't mean she loves you any less. But she loves you the way she loves them because that's how Jules loves. Those are some of the facts. And when she said it, I knew it was true, I knew it was right, and I want to hold onto it like acceptance.
• 19:21
  Except it's like grains of sand slipping between my fingers. And the harder I squeeze, the more it goes away. And so I try to relax and just hold the sand in my hands and feel all the feelings and see the picture in the lace But, oh, there are so many feelings, and it's all so scary. So making lays out of all the facts and trying to weave in feelings like ribbons. The structure of the days Jules' comes provides stability, consistency, congruent with her words so that her behaviors and her words always match.
• 21:15
  All of these things build safety. So why? My therapist said. Is it so hard to trust it? Because, I said, before I could stop it, Because it feels like foster care.
• 21:45
  The coming and the going, the having to move houses, the not being chosen. And my
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: therapist interrupted.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: And all of those false promises again. We want you. We will keep you. We will adopt you. And then getting sent back or bounced around or no one showing up at all and being left alone to fend for myself.
• 22:38
  I know this is memory time. Jules is not doing that to me. But memory time is scary, and I don't wanna hang out there. I don't wanna talk about these things. It's too hard.
• 23:05
  I accept my therapist, passes me a peppermint, tells me I'm doing alright. She does a mini pivot saying we can come up for air again by talking about my thoughts. It's like eye movements except my body. It's like being rocked back and forth between my left brain and my right brain, like a ping pong ball bouncing back and forth and back and forth. So we go back to thoughts, and she says, with all the moving around and people not showing up and getting sent back, multiple adoptions, not feeling chosen.
• 24:23
  What was the thought? She said. That you came to believe about yourself? And I think weeks ago, this would have baffled me, but Jules and I have just gone to see Inside Out too last week. And so the image comes to me how the memories roll down the track, and some are put in that sea of consciousness.
• 25:03
  And those threads are born and grown and reach up to become the sense of self. And I think how many of me are there? I'm trying to find the one belief about myself from being not chosen suddenly feels like trying to find the right string on a harp I cannot play, which then flashes me back to my father dying in the hospital when I was not allowed in the room, and all I could do was send the harpist in as a final act of mercy and love, the only gift I have to give. And I get lost in there somewhere, but my therapist calls me back, and I don't even tell her that's the ball of memory I was looking into. And I let it float away.
• 26:28
  And I come back to my sense of self because maybe it connects to that moment too. Those final rejections from my father. My therapist says, when you are not chosen, what do you believe about yourself? And I feel hot tears welling up in my eyes, and I try to blink them away. And I feel very, very little, but I try to stay present because I'm not giving her that, because we cannot go there.
• 27:28
  I'm not ready. But it means to stay present, I have to say the words. I'm not wanted. She doesn't stop. She keeps going.
• 27:54
  When you're not wanted, what do you believe about yourself? Why are you not wanted? And I feel so far away, like I am a picture on the wall watching what's happening in the room. And I hear myself say, I am not wanted because I am bad. And in split seconds, not even a whole second, but what feels like years to me, I see everything that happened at the retreat, everything that happened since the retreat, everything that happened last year, all flashes through my eyes.
• 28:42
  The whole ten years with the children, everything at college, everything growing up, like, for just a split second, it was all happening at once. And all of it was my fault. And I could see the striking of a match, and I could smell the sulfur of a flame and the flicker in the dark night under the stars and the way it bounced on the ground. And the tears began to pour out of my eyes. None of those words came out of my mouth.
• 29:52
  And she said, I don't think you have a problem with acceptance. I think you have a problem with feeling responsible for how other people have treated you and a problem with trauma, a problem with deprivation. A problem with how you think about yourself and talk to yourself and treat yourself because of how other people have talked to you and treated you. And tears were just pouring down my face, but I could not acknowledge them, even to wipe them away. I watched the clock for the minutes to pass so that I could leave.
• 31:02
  That was done. I could feel it. The need to run. She was right to run, and she needed to run-in that moment. And my therapist could feel it too and knew it.
• 31:32
  And she didn't make me stay. But she said, before you go, I want you to know that we can help with that. We can do eye movements with that. We can talk about those things. Because I care, she said.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: And I thought, how dare you? How dare you even try to care about me? Are you not listening to any of this? I have told you what happened with my other therapist. I don't know how to do this, how to get back into things, how to trust you, how to trust Jules, how to believe anyone is going to care about me, How to let them how to care about myself.
• 32:59
  How dare you. Except what came out of my mouth in words was just thank you. Please help me. And then I had to run, and I couldn't feel myself running. And it's so disorienting when I move because I don't even know where to run to.
• 33:46
  It took me three hours to find my way home. I'm so scared because therapy is working because she is helping because she said she cares, because that's where things always go wrong. What else can go wrong? I don't even wanna ask. When is it my turn for something to go right?
• 34:41
  What if this is right? What if this is healthy? My kids growing up and creating their own worlds, finding a house where I feel safer, having a good therapist that cares, Jules who also cares? What if this is what's right? Why does that scare me so much?
• 35:54
  What if this is right? What if this is good? What if it's all working? What if I have hope?
• 36:22
  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.systemspeed.com. We'll see you there.