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Showing Up · 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
  Okay, you guys. We have to talk about this stupid book and apology for my adjective, except also not. So I talked to you about how I got this book that after the codependent no more episodes, someone who was listening, a listener sent me this codependent book, and I had no idea it had the same title. It's an old book. Lots of you, especially those of you in recovery, already know about it.
• 1:27
  But guess what? News to me. So I'm still catching up. Now just to even explain what codependency is, I already talked about chapters one and two and three. I have to go back to the introduction, though, and share some of that because it has so much.
• 1:48
  This author, Melody Beattie, that's who I'm quoting, she says, I saw people who felt responsible for the entire world, but they refused to take responsibility for leading and living their own lives. You guys, this is so tricksy. There's so many layers to this. Part of it is that when we grow up with trauma and deprivation, we already have to care for ourselves so much that it is really, really hard to then ask ourselves to care for ourselves more. Does that make sense?
• 2:31
  This is why reparenting can also be super tricksy because, like, we've been doing it the whole time. Sometimes badly, sometimes reenactingly, sometimes not well enough because how are we supposed to know? There's that. And also, an example of taking responsibility for our own lives is, I don't know, going to therapy, or in my case, maybe actually talking in therapy would be great. So I'm working on it.
• 3:01
  Okay? I'm working on it. But this is an example. But that is part of why it's tricksy. The other thing is that it is really, really hard to focus on our own lives when there are abusers in our lives who may also be victim blaming or victim shaming.
• 3:27
  Society does this too all the time. And so I know that's a thing as well. I'm not saying that the bad things that happen in your life are your fault. I am not saying that having deprivation and the good that is missing in your life is your fault. I am saying that as adults with adult resources, we have capacity and resources to have choices in how we respond.
• 3:58
  Does that make sense? We don't have to stay for it. We don't have to, like, it does not have to be binary. There are ways to make lace about this. What do you need in your life?
• 4:15
  What boundaries do you need in your life? Where are you getting your needs met? Where else can you get your needs met? What do you want to keep in your life? What do you need to put a pin in it?
• 4:25
  What do you need to set down? What is not a thread that should even be in your lace at all? Like, it's okay to ask all of these questions. Does that make sense? She says, I saw people who constantly gave to others but didn't know how to receive.
• 4:44
  How often does that happen in a community, in our Zoom groups? How often does that happen as we learn to build healthy relationships and friendships where we've learned how to care for others in ways no one ever cared for us? And we can be really good at it because we have that traumatic hypervigilance. Right? So we can channel that right through fawning and be really good at being good at caring for everybody else.
• 5:15
  But how do we care for ourselves? And how do we let other people care for us? Does that make sense? She says, I saw people give until they were angry, exhausted, and emptied of everything. I saw some give until they gave up.
• 5:37
  Well, you guys, that's basically why I left Oklahoma. Like, okay. Our family needs resources. I'm going to take a job that's a little more risky. I'll go back to disaster work because it pays more.
• 5:49
  Our family needs support. We're not getting the support from anywhere else. I just am gonna have to come up with it. So I'll go do the hard thing. And, also, I don't think I am offering anything good to you all right now, so I'm going to step away and take a time out.
• 6:08
  Like, I'm laughing except also weeping. Like, it is so painful. Just on a good day of parenting, I'm trying to do all the things. She says, I worked with women who were experts at taking care of everyone around them, yet these women doubted their ability to take care of themselves. Yeah.
• 6:31
  I don't have anything to say about that. Like, sometimes I'm take I'm like, I'm taking care of myself the best I can, and then things happen where you get this feedback that's like, no. Actually, these disasters in your life are because you're not taking care of yourself enough. And I'm like, I literally can't do more. Like, I don't even have a choice.
• 6:52
  That's what it feels like. Right? And when we get stuck in that and make it binary and helpless, then that's when we're not taking responsibility for our own lives even when we can't change our circumstances. I understand. I understand.
• 7:08
  I understand that there are times we cannot change our circumstances. And, also, we always always get to choose how we respond to them. She says, most codependents were obsessed with other people. With great precision and detail, they could recite long lists of the other people's deeds and misdeeds, what he or she thought, felt, did, and said, and what he or she didn't think, feel, do, or say. And they wondered extensively why he or she did or didn't do all the things or any things.
• 7:49
  Yet, these codependents who had such great insight into others could not see themselves. They didn't know what they themselves were thinking or feeling. They didn't know what, if anything, they could do to solve their problems. She says, they were aching, complaining, and trying to control everyone and everything except themselves. And then she gets real with lived experience for a minute, and she says, I had been sober for a while.
• 8:22
  I was beginning to understand myself, but I didn't understand codependency. I tried but couldn't until years later when I became so caught up in the chaos of a few alcoholics that I stopped living my own life. I stopped thinking, I stopped feeling positive emotions, and I was left with rage, bitterness, hatred, fear, depression, helplessness, despair, and guilt. At times, I wanted to stop living. I had no energy.
• 8:54
  I spent most of my time worrying about people and trying to figure out how to control them. I couldn't say no. I felt terribly victimized. I lost myself. No one was caring for me or what I needed.
• 9:09
  My family was in shambles. I didn't know how it happened. I didn't even know what had happened. I felt like I was going crazy, and I thought shaking a finger at all the people around me, it is their fault. They did this to me.
• 9:25
  And then this is interesting because it's something we've talked about on the podcast before about how things get complicated when we don't ask for help, which is what we're used to from deprivation. Right? But she says, nobody knew how badly I felt. My problems were my secret. I wasn't going around making big messes and expecting someone to clean up after me.
• 9:50
  In fact, next to everyone else, I looked good. I was so responsible and so dependable. I was overly functioning. Sometimes I wasn't even sure I even had a problem. I just knew I felt miserable, but I didn't understand why my life was not working.
• 10:08
  Isn't that wild? Like, I feel like okay. You know how with trauma, we go into flight, fight, and freeze. Right? And so the whole thing with the polyvagal nerve lays down on our organs.
• 10:23
  And then when we have chronic trauma, that polyvagal nerve is like, hey. I'm just gonna hang out down here. Save us all some time because we know it's gonna be bad, so let me just stay here. I feel like that happens with deprivation too in a different way where it's like I am so used to not getting care that the bar is set so low, I don't even notice when other people are not treating me right, or when other people are not meeting my needs, or when relationships are not reciprocal. That's different than being in a friendship or like our Zoom groups where we're all learning together, but we're showing up and we're trying.
• 11:06
  So, yes, it's messy, but here we are. This is something different than that. This is when there is active trauma and deprivation happening and people are not participating. Because then we are left alone in it, and that in itself is additional trauma. Does that make sense?
• 11:29
  Oh, it makes me nauseous. She said, I saw people who had gotten so absorbed in other people's problems that they didn't have time to identify or solve their own. These were people who had cared so deeply and often destructively about other people that they had forgotten how to care about themselves. You guys foster care did that to me. Like, I don't mean it's the children's fault or and, like, any of the children, not just the ones we adopted.
• 11:58
  I don't mean that at all. Right? We were in the role of caregiver. It is our job to care for them, period. Let me be very clear about that.
• 12:07
  But what I mean is, like, the whole system involved with that, like, outside agencies and DHS and all the people saying, we need this. We need this. We need this. And so, like, how can you say no because it's a child? Except we did say no a lot, but, oh my goodness.
• 12:23
  87 children in five years, that is too much. That was traumatic for all of us. Why do we do that? Like, how like, what happened that that was the expectation? There's so much there and that's a whole different story.
• 12:35
  I can't even get into all that right now. But this is when that happened to me, that I cared so deeply and so passionately and was so focused on that, I did not care for myself. So to heal that, I have to do things differently. So for example, my eyes have been so bad for the last, like, three weeks. I have not gone to groups.
• 13:02
  I could have. I wanted to be there, but I let go of the shouldas because my eye hurt, period. And I did not need more screen time even if connection brings healing. And usually, it's a good thing. Right?
• 13:17
  So I wanna be there. I wanna participate. I miss my friends. But you know what? Right now my eyeball hurts, and I have to take care of the eyeballs.
• 13:27
  Like, eyeballs is such a weird word. But anyway, I really, really have to learn how to care for myself. And so doing that sometimes is messy and and, like, I talked about that on the podcast. When I left Oklahoma, the family fell apart because I had been doing everything. Right?
• 13:46
  So it was messy learning for it was messy while everyone was learning to do their part and the things that they could do for themselves, not in a neglected and deprived way, but in a growing up and maturing and developmentally appropriate way. And the same thing happens with, or just or we've also talked about the neutral example in the Zoom groups of how we can be more attuned when our cameras are on and we're present with each other. And also sometimes my eye hurts and I just can't have the extra light, and so I actually block the whole thing. Or maybe you're eating or maybe you need to do something or maybe you're just really scared and not ready or maybe it's a big emo date. Like, you don't have to say why.
• 14:33
  There are times it's better and easier for you not to. And so that is caring for yourself. It this learning to care for ourselves, this is why I was like, this is like fawning 10 o or whatever we're on now, where learning to care for ourselves is part of caring well for others. Like, it all connects. We're not actually isolated from each other.
• 15:04
  She says, the codependents felt responsible for so much because the people around them felt responsible for so little. They were just taking up the slack. I saw hurting, confused people who needed comfort, understanding, and information. So for example, I did for years, I did laundry for 10 to 15 people every week. Okay?
• 15:37
  I'm just trying to keep the example simple here. That's fine. When all the children are preschoolers, they're not in charge of their laundry when they're in preschool. Right? So that's developmentally appropriate.
• 15:51
  But as they got older and could match socks or fold underwear or put pajamas in the drawer, And then later when they get older and they can hang up clothes or they can later they can start the dryer or get the clothes out of the dryer. Later they can sort clothes or get clothes started in the washer. And now the kids can do their own laundry, so I no longer need to do 15 people's laundry because I don't have that many people I'm responsible for, and also they can do their own laundry. Does that make sense? So there's a difference between I'm caring for you because I'm the caregiver, and it's appropriate because you're a preschooler, and doing everything for everybody in your life all the time when there are people who have other resources and capacities where they can do some things on their own.
• 16:49
  So what does that look like? I don't know because that's your lace, not my fireball. But it brings up questions. Right? And then she has this whole section.
• 17:02
  I'm not gonna read all of it, but this fascinating section where she talks about how alcoholics know that they have a problem, or even before they admit their problem, there's evidence of it. Right? And other people with other problems that, like, it gets messy once functioning is impaired. Yeah? So she talks about how that is, but because those of us with trauma and deprivation, those are my words, not hers, but because we have trauma and deprivation or those of us who had parentification where we had to be the little adults in the house or when we have this codependency where we're taking care of everybody no matter what, then because we look so functioning, it gets really hard to say there is a problem.
• 17:53
  I would add to that that because part of that involves fawning, then to admit we have a problem actually feels dangerous to us, whether we realize it or not. And if we wanna dig deeper than that, then part of why we can't admit we have a problem is because admitting we have a problem involves admitting we have needs to begin with. She says, I felt like I was holding the family together by myself, sometimes by the skin of my teeth. I was sick of shouldering the burden and feeling responsible for the success or failure of the relationship. I've been responsible for everything and everyone.
• 18:46
  There's nothing wrong with me. For so long, I had tolerated so much. I was no longer willing or able to tolerate anything. I was always on the defensive, and I felt like I was somehow fighting for my life. I felt like I had lost.
• 19:07
  I always felt like I lost. No one ever even listened to me. No one took me seriously. And because of that, I did not take me seriously. She says, this is so powerful.
• 19:21
  Let me just quote it. She says, quote, after supper, I stood there and washed the dishes while my husband watched television. As usual, I work and you play. I worry and you relax. I care and you don't.
• 19:38
  You feel good. I hurt. Damn you. End quote. Oh, that just makes my heart hurt.
• 19:46
  She says, I had shut off my need to give and receive love. I had frozen the part of me that felt and cared. I had to in order to survive. I had expected so much of this marriage. I had so many dreams for us.
• 20:02
  None of them had come true. I had been tricked. I was betrayed. My home and family, the place and people who should have been warm and nurturing, a comfort, a haven of love, had become a trap, and I couldn't find my way out. Maybe, I kept telling myself, it will get better.
• 20:23
  But I had no hope that things would get better. I didn't even know what was wrong. I had no purpose except to care for other people, and I wasn't doing a good job of that. God seemed to have abandoned me. I felt guilty all the time and wondered if I was going crazy.
• 20:42
  Something dreadful, something that I couldn't explain had happened to me. It had snuck up on me and ruined my life. It no longer mattered whose fault it was. I had lost control. Oh my goodness.
• 20:56
  That quote is from chapter one of the book, and she puts at the end of the chapter these points. She says, she wasn't crazy. She was codependent. And two, once they have been affected, like, once the codependency sets in, it takes on a life of its own until you set boundaries and learn to care for yourself. And three, if you want to get rid of it, you have to do something to make it go away.
• 21:26
  It doesn't matter whose fault it is. Your codependency becomes your problem. Solving your problems is your responsibility. I read that, and I was like, wait. Are we talking about fireballs here?
• 21:40
  And that's when I knew I was gonna have to take this book to therapy because, oh my goodness. Fireballs all over the place. But then in the next chapter, she writes this, and I don't think I read this part already. She says, although the preceding examples have been dramatic, codependency doesn't necessarily have to be so intense, and it doesn't always involve experiences with deeply troubled people or chemical dependency. Quote, if my husband is happy and I feel responsible for that, then I am happy.
• 22:14
  If he's upset, I feel responsible for that too. I'm anxious, uncomfortable, and upset until he feels better. I try to make him feel better. I feel guilty if I can't, and he gets angry with me for trying. And it's not only with him that I behave that that codependently.
• 22:33
  It's with everyone, my parents, my children, guests in my home. Somehow, I just seem to lose myself and other people. I get enmeshed in them. I would like to know what to do about this codependency thing before it gets any worse. I would like to learn how to relax and start enjoying myself and other people.
• 22:55
  But she says, this is why we have to be responsible for our own lives Because when you look at the intersection of trauma and deprivation with codependency, because it has not been safe to have thoughts and feelings or express yourself or make your own choices in the past because of how everyone else overreacted or did not respond. Right? Remember last time I talked about this book, I think in chapter three, she talks about codependents are overreacting or underreacting, but also they do not act. They do not change. They do not heal those things.
• 23:44
  That social contract stays the same. Unless you are the one who acts and you are the one who writes a new social contract, only you can do that as an adult with adult support and resources. But we don't because we're scared people will overreact. So because there has not been space for us to exist or have our thoughts and feelings, we feel like we should not have our thoughts and feelings. So we just let everybody else have their thing, or we feel like we'll get in trouble if we do, or no one will tend to it anyways, so why bother?
• 24:34
  All of those things are memory time feelings. Do you hear what I'm saying? They are memory time interactions. They are not now time interactions. They are not healthy interactions.
• 24:46
  Interactions. They are not healthy interactions. I learned this just the other day. When you look at that picture with you and your friend or that picture with you and your partner or whatever, you are one of the people in the photo. You matter.
• 25:03
  You're a part of the relationship, and it cannot be real as long as you do not actually exist or have permission to take up space or have your thoughts and feelings as part of the reciprocity in the relationship. So it cannot be healthy until we learn to do those things. As a person new to learning to do those things, it is messy. I am telling you guys, unfawning ruined my life. And also, making lace, my life is so much better and so much more congruent with who I am and who I have always been.
• 25:44
  And that is progress. That is healing even if also it's messy. I have had to learn. Like, I could not even say no to people until I learned who I was and who they were, until I learned what I wanted and what they wanted, until I learned what I liked and what I didn't like. So you can't respond until you know we have to exist first and learn to take up space in the world and learn to have our thoughts and feelings and learn to express them and learn what we like and don't like and prefer and don't and want and don't and share that with the people who say they care about us.
• 26:33
  And they may also be learning. That's okay. We have room for humanity in this lace that we're making together. And, also, if they're trying and it's healthy, then they're responsive to those things. If they're not, then it's still your lace that you're making.
• 26:57
  So caring for yourself and doing what it takes to be responsible for you and your life and what your life looks like, it's not anybody else's fault. It's not anybody else's problem. It's not anyone else's fireball. That is your fireball. My life is my fireball.
• 27:21
  What do I want in my life and what do I not? What do I want that to look like? What are the things I can do to make that happen? Again, with the nuance and complexities of all relationships take both people, so you can't do the things that the other person isn't showing up. As well as the very real reality that there are sometimes things or moments or parts of our lives we can't do anything about in the moment.
• 27:50
  But we can choose how we respond to them or what to do with them, And almost always, there's something we can do about it even if it's a small thing. So I don't mean any of this judging or shaming. I really don't. It feels like it when it comes back to us because when we are trained from trauma and deprivation that we are responsible for the whole world, whether that is its functioning or the mood in the room, then it's hard to not take looking at that directly, it's hard to not take that personally because we think it's our job, but it's not. That's not why you exist.
• 28:36
  You exist because you're you. You exist because you matter. You exist because your presence on this planet matters. Like, you already matter. You don't have to earn your presence on this planet.
• 28:55
  You don't have to earn your worth or your value. You already have it. And maybe that's just my own religious trauma coming through that that's really important to notice, to say explicitly, but I want to, and I need to, and I'm practicing even for me. Hey, me. You don't get everything right, and you have a whole lot more learning and growing to do.
• 29:25
  And, also, I'm awfully glad you're still here, and you are already okay enough, Safe enough. Good enough.
• 29:52
  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.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.