Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Guest: Vivian Conan

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Guest: Vivian Conan · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over: 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.
• 1:00
  Vivian Conan is a writer, librarian, and IT business analyst who lives in Manhattan. A native New Yorker, she grew up in Brooklyn and holds master's degrees from Brooklyn College and Pratt Institute. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Lilith, Narratively, and ducks.org. She received a 02/2007 fellowship in nonfiction literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a 02/2019 Simon Rockauer award from the American Jewish Press Association. Vivian sings with the Peace of Heart Choir, which performs free for communities in need and has mentored teenage writers as a volunteer with Girls Right Now.
• 1:45
  She is also the author of Losing the Atmosphere is a memoir of mental illness and healing. Growing up in a large Greek Jewish clan in post World War II Brooklyn, Vivian yearned for connection. In her teens, she began talking to faces in the mirror that were not her own. She felt unreal, separated from the rest of humanity by a plexiglass wall. By high school, Vivian knew something was wrong, but it was only after years of therapy, hospitalizations, and medications that she received the correct diagnosis.
• 2:23
  Welcome Vivian Conan, the author of Losing the A A Search for Help and the Therapist Who Understood. Available on Amazon from Greenpoint Press.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on. I love your podcast, so I'm I'm very honored to be here with you.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's so kind. If there's anything I ask that makes you uncomfortable or that you don't want to answer, can just say pass. That's okay.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Okay. I don't I don't think there's gonna be anything. I mean, you know, I'm pretty open right now. I just wrote a book, so I think anything you ask me is gonna be okay.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Okay. Do you have any questions for me before we get started?
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I I mean, I've listened to many of your your episodes, so I kind of know your format. But if you think there's anything I need to know, can let me tell me.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Alright, if you want to go ahead and introduce yourself just to let the audience orient themselves sort of to the sound of your voice, that's really helpful.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Okay. So it's really, really nice to be here. I've listened to your podcasts, in many episodes, and I love what you're doing. My name is Vivian Conan, and I am 78 years old. And I did not discover that I had what was then called multiple personality disorder until I was 46.
• 3:49
  It was not called dissociative identity disorder until some years after that. And, you know, not not much was known about it at the time and none of my therapists knew what was wrong with me. I'm the one who figured it out. And before that, I was in the hospital three times diagnosed as schizophrenics. But at the same time, I was living a life that was looked like a high a high achieving life.
• 4:22
  Like I was I was always good at work. I was good in school, and I had friends and and nobody knew why I could be so fine one minute and so not fine the next. So that was my journey coming to find out about DID.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: You said that you figured it out. How did you figure it out?
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I did figure it out, which is amazing. Like I knew that something was going my therapist at the time said to me, you're a puzzle because nothing bad is going on in your life now and you're always upset. And I felt all this inside stuff happening, and I said to her, you know, reincarnation was popular in the news then. And I said to her, well, maybe I'm reincarnated. Maybe I have the souls of other people in me, you know.
• 5:10
  And she said, oh, don't be silly. There's no such thing as reincarnation. You don't have anybody else in you, you know. And so around a day or two after that session, that was the time when if you wanted to watch a movie, you had to rent it from the video store. There were VCR tapes.
• 5:28
  There was no such thing as DVDs or downloadable movies. So I went to the VCR store to rent a movie to watch over the weekend, and I happened to pass Sybil, the story of the girl who had 16 personalities. And that I had actually read that book many many several years before, but it never connected with me. But somehow when I took out that movie and I watched the movie, as soon as I watched it, I kind of knew. And I for any one who's listening who doesn't know this this this Sybil about Sybil, it it it was a book that came out, and it was about her and her therapist and how she discovered that she had these 16 personalities.
• 6:20
  And it was an award winning movie with Sally Field playing Sybil. And so the next time I went in to see my therapist, I told her about the movie. And I said to her, do you think there could be other people in me? And she said, yes. And that was at that time the only other popular well known case was Three Faces of Eve.
• 6:47
  So it was just civil and Three Faces of Eve and was considered very very rare. And so at first it was okay then that that she was okay with it, but then she got very, very upset about it and she thought the way to help me get better was to force me to be one person because I, you know, I started I was talking to her before that in all different voices, but she didn't know where they were coming from. And I didn't know either. And all of a sudden, everything made sense to me. And while it was a very scary diagnosis to have at that time, I it was free, it freaked me out.
• 7:30
  And at the same time, it gave me a lot of comfort because it explains so much of what was going on my whole life, including those three hospitalizations. And and I finally had a name for it. And I finally, I felt legitimate, like a legitimate person. There was like a name for what I had.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: That's incredible. I I have actually not seen Sybil yet because I'm too scared to watch it, but it sounds like that the book and the movie were very powerful for you. And what was that like to see yourself reflected in media telling your story as well as they could at the time in a safe way, in a way that resonated with you?
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Well, it was so affirming and the most affirming part was I was so attached to my therapist and I didn't understand at the time that it was a little, a six year old part of me that was so attached to her. And here I was going to work in business suits, you know, in corporate America, and I couldn't understand why I am so attached to her. And when I saw this movie and I saw how attached Sibyl was to her therapist, that made me feel so much better. Just the fact that I was feeling like like I was slimy and I was so ashamed of being so attached to my therapist. And I think that that was the most that that part helped me the most, just seeing that it was okay.
• 9:07
  I mean, my therapist didn't might not have thought it was okay to be so attached to her, but the movie definitely told me that I wasn't alone.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: There's something so sacred about having a good therapist and safe people in your life when it's been so long of not having that. And there's something very special about Littles and their connection with therapists or other safe people. And it is a very unnerving thing sometimes when you realize that's happening or so dysregulating. Like you said about, here I am, this functioning person, and I'm moving out in the world. What is that attachment about?
• 9:54
  And why is that a thing? And why does it feel uncomfortable? And I still, even now, these years later, struggle with that and what to suppress and what control and what to just let be and what to let heal. And I know I get in my own way sometimes, but it's so precarious, that feeling. My therapist told me just this week, actually, in session, we were talking about a time where I was grieving some people, some friends, and talking about how difficult that was and how embarrassing I was that it was that difficult.
• 10:39
  And she said, It's not that something is wrong with you. It's not that you can't do this or you're doing it wrong. It's that you had she called it what was her word? She said a connection injury.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. That's exactly a connection injury.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Yes. Right? It was sort of like that feeling like what you described where there was this lifting of this shame of this is an actual wound. Like, in my head, I can study all the material about attachment, and cognitively, can learn all the things about attunement and about shame and about relational trauma and how significant it is. But when she said that about it being a connection injury, it somehow framed it in a way I could finally go, oh, this isn't something I'm doing wrong.
• 11:37
  This is something that happened to me. And even though now I'm in my everyday life, this is why it's so hard. Because, like, it's exactly like what you said, and I'm actually really glad you talked about that. Because sometimes when we meet other people with DID, they are not well or they're in a place where they're struggling, and that's such a part of it sometimes, absolutely. But it's hard to remember when we're in those moments that there's so many of us out there that are actually healthy functioning people in lots of ways.
• 12:15
  And there's this cognitive dissonance or this discrepancy between my functioning part that's out here and doing this and these littles in therapy or these other parts that are struggling with these big pieces or whatever is going on. And to have a framework to say, you live you're not doing it wrong. It's not that something has gone wrong with you, it's that something happened to you. Like an injury is something we can talk about. An injury is something we can understand.
• 12:49
  It also offers hope because an injury is something that can heal.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And also when my therapist I don't have that same therapist anymore. I have a different one now, but he calls it attachment trauma. But connection injury is a much a much more visual you can really relate to that. But also when he call when he talks to me about attachment trauma, it does the same kind of thing.
• 13:17
  It gives a reason for why things happen. And the the thing about what when I first found realized that I had DID back when I was 46, at first, I I brought them I brought the movie into my sessions. And and for a couple of weeks, we watched it together, like but I could only watch about fifteen minutes of it with her before I just fell apart, and and I had to stop it. And finally, I said to her, she could finish it by herself, you know, because I couldn't watch it with her. But after that, I was a I I started discovering the parts of me I call my oldest parts.
• 14:03
  And when I was seeing her, I just like like, I let the words the the the little voices that the the little girl voice that I used to use with her before I knew, all of a sudden made sense. And so I let that happen. And at first, she she went along with it, and she was supportive. But then she got to a point where she she didn't understand MPD, DID. She felt that if I she wasn't sure I had it, but if I did, the way to make me get better was to force me to be one person and force me to be a grown up.
• 14:41
  And there were other times before I figured it out that I would crouch on the floor behind a chair in her office, and she would get very angry at me, and she would say, come out of there. Self respecting people. Don't stay on the floor like that. And so she, after I realized what was going on, she was even more, judgmental about that kind of behavior because she felt she wasn't helping me by encouraging me to under to acknowledge my parts. So eventually, it was a very bad breakup that we had.
• 15:21
  It was terrible, actually. It took me like four years to get over it. The next therapist I had, I really loved, but all I did was, you know, moan and grieve about the therapist I lost. And then the next therapist I had was wonderful, but she did not have DID experience. But Frank Putnam's book came out at that time, Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder, which it was still called at the time.
• 15:50
  So I bought two copies. I bought one for me and one for my therapist. And we read it together, and we both wrote a letter to Frank Putnam explaining what my symptoms were and what my structure was and asking him if he thought this could be true. Could I have what was still then called multiple personality disorder? He he answered the letter.
• 16:14
  He didn't answer that question, but I think his my therapist said his answer was implied because he gave her the name of a therapist who run ran the MPD study group, like that she could go and talk to other therapists, And he gave me the, contact for many voices, which was a publication by and for people with dissociative disorders that a print publication that came out every two every two months. And so I subscribed to that. And once I've subscribed to it and I was reading all these things that these people wrote, I felt like a dog that sees another dog in a sea of humans and all of a sudden there's someone else like me. And so over the years, I wrote articles for them and my therapist did go to the study group and I did go to the psychiatrist who ran the study group who confirmed that I had TID. And so that was an and I saw that therapist for four years, but then she really didn't have enough experience.
• 17:28
  And by that time, I was in a support group in New York that met I live in New York City. So it met in person every month. And through this support group, I met the therapist that I have now, who I've been seeing for a very long time, like more than twenty years. And he is very, very skilled at dissociative identity disorder. But he he eventually realized that I had an attachment disorder.
• 18:03
  That's what it was called. And I mean, it's nicer to call it a connection injury, that unless he worked on the attachment thing, and he could not the work on the DID wasn't gonna go anywhere. And so what I had since I was five years old, something that I called the atmosphere, And it was like a fantasy world. And in the atmosphere were any grown up that was ever kind to me, like a teacher or a camp counselor, even a bus driver. And then those were like real people who I knew in real life, but they didn't know that they were also an atmosphere person.
• 18:46
  So I had two versions of them. And then there were also these imaginary doctors and nurses because when I was that young, five years old, I I always thought that doctors and nurses would help you when something hurt when you were sick. So to me, those were benign kind grown ups. So I had a whole set of doctors and nurses in the atmosphere also. And these atmosphere people were not in bodies, like they were loose molecules that floated in the air all around me, and they knew everything that I thought and that I felt.
• 19:23
  And they they didn't have to do anything to make my life better. All they had to do was know. They had to that because nobody ever acknowledged that anything was hard for me. And so I needed some kind of grown up to to know what was going on with me. And so I had the atmosphere.
• 19:44
  And that was adaptive when I was in a in a bad situation. But when I grew up and moved out and had had a fairly good life, it was maladaptive. It it it was preventing me from having relationships with real people because I was much, much more emotionally dependent on these atmosphere people than I was on real people. And every time I got a new therapist, that therapist automatically became part of the atmosphere. So the therapist that I had when I discovered that I had MPD, DID, She I had a very hard time talking to her in person, but I was so close to her atmosphere version.
• 20:33
  And and I thought so when I saw her in person, some little girl part of me thought she understood everything I was thinking and feeling without my having to say a word. So she was very angry when I wouldn't talk, and I didn't think I had to talk because I thought she knew all this. And so the therapist that I have now, he understood understood that the atmosphere was a much bigger problem for me than the DID. And that and he had a really interesting he didn't tell me this at the time. He only told me this years later.
• 21:09
  But I had he he understood that I had two versions of him. And I had an atmosphere version of him that was not in a body, and then what I called a version of him who was in a skin container, like he walked around the world. And the skin container version could sometimes do things that hurt me. Like, he would say he was gonna call Tuesday evening, and he forgot to call. Devastated.
• 21:38
  But the atmosphere version would never let me down. So he tried to make himself as much like an atmosphere person as possible. So I would come to think of his in person skin container version the way I did as like the atmosphere, and I would come to depend on his in person version as much as or more than I depended on his atmosphere version. And that took like a that took years to do, but it did work. And after that, I began to see that other people were reliable also, real world people.
• 22:17
  And little by little, the atmosphere faded and I started connecting more with real people. And after that happened, the DID was able to we I mean, it's still I mean, I wouldn't say every everything is totally gone, but the DID is not a is not a major issue for me anymore. Sometimes when I'm under stress, it'll come back a little. And sometimes when I'm under stress, the atmosphere will even come back a little, but it never lasts more than like a day and it's always in support of something. So attachment is almost a bigger topic for me than the dissociation, although they go hand in hand.
• 23:04
  Because of the dissociation, dissociation, I was able to still have parts that didn't know about the atmosphere and was able to go out to work and go on dates with men. Although I never got married, I never had children. I didn't everything was always on the surface with me because if you went back if you went in too deep, I had all these young parts, and then I had the atmosphere. So basically, in a very large nutshell, that is my story.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I am so glad that you are sharing. I'm so grateful that you are sharing. There are so many people who were misdiagnosed or or not diagnosed or undiagnosed and were with therapists who did not understand what was happening. There are so many people who have been through abuse or violations with therapists or for other reasons had difficult breakups with a therapist and the trauma of that is so real and complicates those connection injuries that to find someone else who understands what that is like in a small way is part of what brings healing to that connection injury because there is someone in skin who understands and that's a powerful powerful thing. That's a powerful gift you're giving to the world.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Wow. I I know it it was a powerful gift that he gave to me, you know, and and what what's happened also as a result of my coming to rely more on his in person version is that he could make the same mistakes that he made before, like like forgetting to turn the ringer off his phone or not doing something he said he would. And whereas before, it would take me like two weeks of of of I I used to have two sessions a week, so like four sessions to get over it. Now I get over it in ten minutes. I say, you know what?
• 25:14
  He's basically a really good person. He's one of the best people in my world, but he's not perfect. And it's okay because he's human. And so it makes my relationship with him so much less fraught.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: That's amazing! There's so much healing for you and grace for him and compassion for yourself in all of that. I love it so much. One of the reasons I'm excited to talk to you today is because you have your story in a book. You have written a book.
• 25:43
  Tell us about the decision to go ahead and share your story so publicly in a book.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Well, that was that was actually major. First of all, the book took me twenty five years to write. And not only am I not the same writer I was twenty five years ago, so I sort of had to go back and smooth it out. But I'm not at the same stage in my healing that I was twenty five years ago. And what when when I first started writing it, I had no intention of writing a book.
• 26:16
  I was 50 years old. And I had just discovered about the MTD when I was 46. And it was so hard to live a regular life when so much was going on in me. And all I wanted to write was a magazine article saying that it was hard to go to work and go to the supermarket and have friends when you have NPD. And I wasn't gonna write it about myself.
• 26:43
  It was gonna be generic. And so I took a writing workshop, and I it was called the personal essay. And I was so nervous to bring my draft into this writing workshop because I had never come out of the closet in public before. And the first time that I waited in the class was ten weeks, and I waited four weeks to bring this in essay in. Like, I sort of wasted four weeks of the class.
• 27:15
  And when I finally did, we had to read the essays out loud. So I read, like, the first half page, and then there were 15 people in the class, and their eyes were all on me, and I couldn't take it. I just stopped reading. My voice was literally shaking. My hands were shaking holding the paper, and I finally said, never mind.
• 27:37
  I can't read this. And I put it down, and the teacher, she's so wonderful, she just said, wow, that is so this is so interesting. Do you mind if I finish reading it for you? So I I I was so glad she said that. I shoved my I I I shoved my paper down the table, and she was sitting at the other end.
• 27:59
  And so all the eyes in the class of the class, they turned to face her. They weren't looking at me anymore. And I heard her reading my essay, and I saw the look of interest on these people's faces. And that was really very that was the first time I realized that it might not be so bad to come out in public. And when I finished, the class asked me questions, and I realized they weren't asking me questions to make fun of me or to they weren't voyeuristic.
• 28:34
  They were just interested. They said, oh, this part is so interesting. Could you tell us more about this? And they said, why don't you write a book and don't don't write it generically? Why don't you write it about yourself?
• 28:46
  Well, that was that was the first time that idea ever got put in my head, but it wound up that I did finish writing the article. I did put myself more in the article. And through my writing teacher, it got published in New York Magazine. But because I was still working in corporate America, I used a pseudonym. I didn't use my regular name.
• 29:13
  And it New York Magazine is like a very big magazine. And I was so afraid that my mother would see it in a doctor's office, like on a, you know, when you go to the doctor's office or the dentist, they have all these magazines. So it even though it was with a pseudonym, if she read it, she would recognize it. And so I was that was my second big coming out of the closet, but most people didn't know it was me because it was a pseudonym. And I asked my therapist at the he's the same therapist that I have now.
• 29:48
  I asked him if he would call my mother and tell her that this article was in New York Magazine and that I really didn't wanna talk to her about the article, but I just wanted her to know it was there in case she saw it by accident. So he did call her. She told him to tell me it was okay. But the next what she did is she went right out and bought New York Magazine, and she read it. And she wrote me a letter, and she said, I know you don't wanna talk about it, and I'm not going to.
• 30:21
  I just want you to know that I read it and I'm very I'm very sorry that you had such a hard time and I'm proud of you for being such a good writer. And that was so healing from my mother to say that. So she was like, I had come out of the closet to my mother who who was paying all my therapy bills when I was a kid and who used to come visit me in the hospital when they called me schizophrenic, and I had a really up and down relationship with her. And actually, I dedicate the book to her because she told me when when she was in in her eighties and we had a a very nice rapprochement, and she said to me, it's love at second sight. And so we had a really good last fifteen years of her life, and so I dedicate the book to her.
• 31:14
  But so after that, I wrote the book, and I had a book contract because of the New York Magazine article. But the the book and and I only wanted the book to come out under a pseudonym, but they gave me nine months to write it. And I'm a slow writer, and I wasn't done in nine months. And they gave me a six month extension. They gave me another six month extension.
• 31:41
  Finally, they said this is gonna be a good book, but we can't wait. And they revoked my contract, which in in hindsight is the best thing that could have happened because I did not know about the attachment component then. And my book is is my book is called losing the atmosphere. And the fact of the attachment component is so integral to my book. But even after I wrote it, and I I tried to sell this book for three years and nobody wanted to buy it until I finally found Greenpoint Press, which gave it a very nice home.
• 32:19
  But while I was trying to sell it, I was also very worried about I have a very large extended family who I love. Like I'm my grandparents were Greek and Turkish Jews. They came through Ellis Island, and so I had lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. And so little by little, I I said to my brother and my sister-in-law and my nephews and my cousins, I offered anyone to read the book. This was even before I found a publisher.
• 32:50
  And because I didn't I wanted to make I wanted to sort of come out to them and see what their reactions were. I was really afraid. I gave it to my brother first, and he he just he he said it was fine with him. And I got much more positive reactions from people than I thought I would. And it made it easier for me to be with my family because even though I love all my cousins, I always had this big elephant that I was keeping secret from them.
• 33:23
  And all of a sudden now, they read the book and they said, wow, we never knew you were having such a hard time. We wish we knew or this or that. And that was also very affirming. So my family was the hardest for me to come out to, and I did that over the past few years by giving them drafts of the book to write. So now it's just coming out to the public, and work is a hard thing for me.
• 33:51
  I don't I it would be very uncomfortable. I I still work part time as a librarian, but because of COVID, I hadn't been going into work. And now that the library reopened and everyone all the other staff members are back, I have not gone back because they drive to work and I take public transportation. And I'm 78, and I I'm still not comfortable taking public transportation. So in a way, this hiatus from work is saving me the embarrassment of of going to work with it.
• 34:24
  So that's how coming out of the closet has been for me, I guess. You know, being on podcasts, though, and radio interviews is a different kind of coming out of the closet. And, in a way, because I can't see the audience, it's a little easier. But on the other hand, it's it it does feel different. It's not something that bothers me a lot, but it's something I have to get used to.
• 34:52
  I I I'm still not used to it.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: I think it is so brave. I have been doing the podcast for three years, and I'm still not used to it either. And it has been a terrifying thing to share bits of our stories or the process anyway along the way. And only just now are we starting to share some more specific things of our story. And not because we want to share too many details on the podcast, but because we're just progressing and healing, and that's a natural part of the process.
• 35:32
  So while Right. While I don't think that we'll ever use the podcast just to lay out, here are all the details of everything that was terrible, it is a part of the process to be able to talk about it differently and to practice putting it together into a narrative. We have also been writing well, we have already written a memoir. We already have a book that we wrote a memoir about our family because our children are adopted from foster care. So we already wrote that book but we have been writing for the last two years working on, well three years if you count that writing of it in therapy but working on a book about our story.
• 36:17
  We still don't know, I still don't know if that's something we'll actually release to the public. But when I heard about your book and you all contacted me, I was just intrigued because I think that takes so much courage. And there's something about sharing your story in an honest and safe and good way that is so, so powerful for your own healing and for the healing of others. And there's something about being able to say your story out loud even when it's sharing the process or even when it's reflecting on what you've been through. But it's been a long time really.
• 36:56
  If you look at the, like, the the literature of memoirs, it's really been a long time since we've had new books about DID with someone's story that is well done and more recent. And for you to do this and share your story, I just think is phenomenal and takes so much courage, and I'm so so grateful for you and your hard work on this.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. And you know, I what the book is actually very personal. And if I was not in I I really want to give a shout out to writing workshops because if I hadn't been in writing workshops that I took the same workshop for twenty five years, the the there's there's a ten week term, and then I re up and I re up. And the the the some people drop out after three three terms and the new bunch of people come. So I have I'm the longest running one there.
• 37:58
  But with every single group of people in the workshop, every time I brought in a chapter, even if it wasn't well written, they they would help me write it better, but they were all very engrossed in my story. And they treated me as a writer, not as someone who had a mental illness. And they that was so healing because here I am bringing in a chapter about how a six year old is in a the dialogue in a session with a therapist with a six year old. And yet, they're talking to me as a writer, but they're so interested in my story. And so I never, I it's the first time that in writing workshops that I saw that people who are not therapists can, and people who are not DID themselves could be interested.
• 38:53
  And so that gave me a lot that that really helped me, especially because they didn't, it wasn't a support group for, for DID, it was a support group for writers. So I was my my main role there, what my main persona there was writer, not person with DID. But I will also say for the writing the teacher that I had who, his name is Charles. I had him for most of the twenty five years. In the beginning when I went, sometimes I would get triggered in the class, and I would have to run out during the class.
• 39:31
  And I always needed to take the seat nearest to the door. That's the only place that I felt safe. And he he got he understood that. And he never said anything to the rest of the class. But if anyone sat in that seat by mistake, he would always ask them to get up and so I could have that seat.
• 39:50
  He never told the class why. And I am so grateful for him for doing that. So I did have a lot of support along the way. And I want to say something else about writing a memoir, how it's different from writing a journal. Because in a journal, I spill out my guts, like, if I'm angry or in a journal, my journal is in all different handwritings.
• 40:16
  It's in child's handwriting. It's in grown up handwriting. It's in backwards handwriting. It's upside down handwriting. It's got scribble all over it.
• 40:25
  And even when I'm writing regular words, it it's like, it could be angry. It could be the it doesn't have to make sense to anybody but me, although I used to bring them into my therapist. But you can't write a book like that. You can't expect someone to take this hodgepodge and go on your journey with you. You have to always be aware that there's a reader on the other side that you of of what you're writing, and that reader needs to be taken by the hand and led through your story.
• 40:58
  And what the people in the writing workshop would say is like, can you unpack this a little? Like, you say that you were upset and you walked out. Well, why were you upset? Like, what and they're not asking to probe. They're asking for me to add more to my story in this place because it it didn't make sense.
• 41:18
  And then other places, they say, well, it would be nice if you could put a little dialogue there. What do you mean she yelled at you? What words did she say to you? And so they helped me to shape my story and make it better, which you don't do when you're writing a journal. So in essence, writing a memoir is you're not making the story up or changing it, but you're shaping it, you're making art out of it so someone else can look at it and read it and understand understand it.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I think that's so special, and that's exactly true. And for me, it's been one of the most integrative experiences. If we're gonna use that big scary word, integrative experiences was writing our story in that way, not just the journaling to get it out, but processing it. And what did that look like? And what did that feel like?
• 42:08
  And what did that sound like? And making it a cohesive story. Right. Right. And sharing the the the experience of it.
• 42:19
  Not just here's what happened or here's what I'm feeling right now because of that happening, but putting those things together was one of the most powerful and healing and integrative experiences that we've had. And in the podcast, we experienced the same thing like what you shared with your class. I felt so vulnerable in sharing anything. And before the podcast, I always sort of felt like a fraud a little bit in that people would say, oh, you're a good person or, oh, thank you for this doctor whoever. And all the while, I'm thinking in my head, but I can't really be what you think I am because I have DID or because I have trauma or because I have attachment problems.
• 43:03
  But since the podcast, I feel so human because I'm able to share all of who I am in however it gets expressed because there is no limitation of I'm holding anything back. There's no trying to wallop and hide who I am because it's all there. And being able to say that upfront that this is who I am, including this piece, somehow even though I'm talking about the trauma piece more directly or the DID piece more directly or the attachment piece more directly, it actually becomes not about those things at all.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's what I love about your podcast because you show all the sides of you, you show the confident side of you, and you show some sometimes your voice changes, and I know that you've switched. And I I can hear different inflections. And you you kid around and you get silly, but then you get serious. And then I love when you talk about your children and when your husband comes on. I mean, you you are a a totally rounded person.
• 44:13
  And it's it's not just the healed just the competent part of you or just the falling apart part part of you. And I appreciate that very, very, very much about your podcast.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I think there's just something powerful in sharing our stories. Where can people get your book?
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: Well, right now it's on Amazon. The paperback is on Amazon. And my name is Vivian Vivian Conan, v I v I a n c o n a n. And you can also go to VivianConan.com and click on Amazon. And the Kindle or the Nook, whatever the ebook is called, will be out in October, which it just turned October.
• 44:57
  And then what's really exciting to me, the audiobook will be out in November. And the audiobook is being narrated. I listen to a lot of audiobooks because I'm a librarian, and I just do that. And I I chose the the narrator that I liked from all the audiobooks I listened to. And I I happened to choose someone who was so famous for doing audiobooks that I never thought she would do my book.
• 45:24
  But she asked me to send it to her, and she said she would. So I am so happy that she's doing it. But right now, her name is Cassandra Campbell. So I got the audiobook proofs. I'm supposed to listen to them to see if there's any mistakes.
• 45:41
  Like, I listen to them with the text in front of me. It is so strange to hear someone else's voice read my session, my conversation with my therapist in my session. And like I have a little girl part named Wendy. She's six years old and she's very saucy and sophisticated for a six year old, but she has bad grammar. And it is so strange for me to hear this actress narrator read what she says and then answer back the dialogue in my therapist's voice, which she she doesn't know what my therapist sound like.
• 46:17
  She just is saying what a therapist, generic therapist would sound like, but it's amazing to me. It's like sitting outside. It's it's really like dissociation. Like, you're sitting outside your life and watching someone else listening to someone else perform your life. But I'm very excited about the audiobook.
• 46:35
  So when it comes out, it'll be in November. That should be on Amazon and my website too.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: That's super fun. When we did the audiobook for our memoir about our family, that was also the most intense part. And I don't think if we hadn't have done the audiobook for our memoir for the family, I don't think there ever would have been a podcast because I've learned so much through that process and so much through having to learn to be comfortable with that. We we read that. I read that myself.
• 47:08
  And so having to go through that whole process and the proofs and the edits and how to do all of that, I never would have been able to do podcast if we had not done that book. So I get that that's an intense thing and a surreal experience hearing it all read back to you.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: And I just wanna say I'm so glad you did that audiobook because I'm so glad you have this podcast. Podcast.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. I am so grateful. You've been so kind and I'm actually truly truly glad that we have met and I will email you again after this. But thank you for coming on the podcast to talk to us about the book.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: You're very very welcome and keep doing what you're doing. You're so wonderful. Thank you so much for letting me on. I'm very honored to be among, you know, your interviewees because every single one of them is so interesting. So thank you.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: That's so kind. Thank you. I really am. Aside from the podcast, I really am so grateful to have met you. It's not often that you find someone who understands DID and trauma history and attachment problems and writing.
• 48:11
  I'm actually super excited.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I hope you enjoy the book.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Have a good day.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: You too. Bye bye, Emma.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Bye. 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.