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Dante · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to System Speak, a podcast about Complex Trauma and Dissociation. It's our story, our learning, and the ideas we've been working with as they've unfolded over time. Earlier episodes give context for where we are now, and current episodes may engage more advanced material, harder content, or reference earlier conversations. A few things to remember as you listen. The podcast is education, reflection, and storytelling.
• 0:41
  It's not therapy, and listening doesn't create a relationship. Although I am a therapist, I am not in that role here, and nothing that I share is individualized clinical advice. Every system, every internal world, all of your own stories are all different and you take up your own shape. What we share about ours won't translate directly to yours. It isn't meant to.
• 1:06
  We're all different, and all of our stories matter. As always, take care of yourself during and after listening. We are so glad you're here.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I don't even know where to start this except shiny, happy therapy. It's it's hard. It's hard. So a couple of things. We were just talking and randomly out of my mouth, I did I wasn't having the thought.
• 1:53
  Like, I don't know how it came out of my mouth. I just had the question, what if I pray because I didn't have anyone else to talk to because I am alone? I have been so alone growing up.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: And
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: it's emotional. I'm sorry. And it's It's Trixie because like, I don't wanna deny Molly experiences either. And I do believe that I have a faith that means something to me. And I'm not talking about a religion or a church.
• 2:46
  I mean, inside of me based on my own experiences growing up that is important to me. And holding on to what that means to me and exploring what that means to me is important to me, but it also becomes extra hard when I hold space for shiny, happy things, trauma, which obviously is neither shiny nor happy. So I have been for the last year reading Leaving the Fold is taking me a year. I still have not finished it, but it's taking me a year to get through it. I have been reading this book about queer theology that broadens my understanding of some things in ways that have been really helpful.
• 3:39
  And also now together with Nathan, I watched shiny happy people, and I've talked about it with him. But then you and I watched shiny happy people. The English teacher has seen it four times, so she and I are talking about it. I talked to my friends from college, the two that were on the podcast, and one of them was like, I can't even and has not said anything else about it. And the other one is like, this was a real experience for us in college.
• 4:12
  This was my husband's experience growing up. I cannot watch it. It's too triggering. I can't go there yet, which all respect to that, but appreciating, again, just the witness that this is epic. And I know that like, by the time people hear this, they would have had to listen to religious trauma things for the last month or more.
• 4:37
  And I don't mean to keep going on about it, except it's huge for me in ways that are not just about religion, but also just abuse dynamics. And I feel like we saw that when we watched The Vowel. So now it brings up questions for me of how do I even know what is real? And I don't just mean dissociating, but also, how I know what I know, which is a little philosophical more than therapy, but also just tying pieces together. Like in the book and on the podcast before Nathan has said, sometimes like when I'm being really hard on myself or he's like, no, this is not who God is.
• 5:29
  That's a perversion of what God is or what faith is or what religion should be, but isn't at all because culture and all these other things, shiny, happy culture, right? So he has said several times, and I included that in the book, the memoir book, how he says, you're confusing God with Dante. Mhmm. It's so hard to talk about. So I have held on to that.
• 6:00
  And, obviously, he's referencing the story about the journey into the different layers of hell. And one thing that Nathan points out a lot is that the deepest layer of hell is actually about relational trauma, that it's the people you are supposed to be safest with harming you. And so when he said that, it made it a little more solid inside me when he pointed that out. I think that was just when he was here a couple weeks ago. He pointed that out and I was like, I don't even know what to do with that.
• 6:39
  But also maybe three or four or six months ago, I don't even know anymore because I have been here for a year. We've been together for a year here and it's like its own kind of anniversary, right? Like I left Oklahoma a whole year ago. And at some point, I don't remember what we were talking about, but I remember we were, like it's very visual to me, right? As a deaf person, I get it visually first.
• 7:11
  And we were sitting in our breakfast stool chairs at the breakfast bar and we were eating breakfast. And I said something just in passing. I didn't dwell on it or stay with it. But I said, what if Dante is real? And I meant inside me, not the book.
• 7:34
  But that's all I like, it just came out and we just kept going, which is fine is where I was at. But now that we've done this work and we I haven't I don't think I've even done work. Maybe it counts what I've done so far as but I feel like nothing's untangled. All I have done is look at the pieces, like the puzzle in front of us all spread out. Right?
• 7:58
  I feel like I am able to look at the pieces, but they do not fit together yet. And it's very emotional very quickly because so much of my life was wrapped up in this. My whole childhood literally, my whole childhood literally in the same town as the Duggars until we moved to Iowa. Looking back and after seeing shiny, happy people, even that I understand differently. My mother, once before she died, she told Nathan, I had to move to Iowa just to get divorced.
• 8:42
  Like she could not get divorced in Arkansas in shiny happy culture. She had to get a thousand miles away just to be able to get divorced, basically. Well, and here's what's crazy. Huckabee, who the shiny happy people and the Duggars are all wrapped up in, but while I was in grad school and or after, I don't know timeline, but at some point when I was living there as an adult, the same years, like, my therapist had an affair with my partner. While I was living there, they passed a law, like a law in The United States Of America for covenant marriage that you cannot get divorced from.
• 9:30
  Specifically in Arkansas, Huckabee did that. So, like, I don't wanna talk about it more because I am at some time, some of the things that I know about either because of my work or because of my experiences, like on the vow, it's really scary to say these things out loud, and I don't wanna get myself in more danger than I have been before, but that is public. And he passed so Huckabee passed this law about covenant marriage and you cannot get divorced. Like, there are some caveats to that, but it's quite the process. It's not like you can just file for divorce and go through the court.
• 10:08
  Like, you have to do all this other stuff. And he and so to see even him and remember what life was like with him as governor to see that on shiny happy people. So like every area from my childhood, from my parents taking those classes to seeing them talk on shiny happy people about being locked in rooms, which is what happened to me in college. And I talked about that and I think it's in the book. Like this is where all of that was coming from.
• 10:41
  So like my whole world, even when I thought I changed churches, So like things kept happening, right? So when I was in high school, I was like, maybe it's this organization, like this particular denomination. So I changed and started going to the church where the English teacher went, which was the host of my high school, same camp. I had no idea that they were also doing the same teachings, even though it was a different denomination. They were not a church itself, they were training centers, right?
• 11:19
  And so literally from my birth all the way through college, that was my world was shiny, happy stuff. And one thing that I have words for that I have not understood before, I got words for from the vow actually, which is not about church culture. It was a philosophical cult, a self help group. What what just for people listening, what channel was the vow on HBO? So that's the Nixxiom cult, and it was on HBO, the vow.
• 11:58
  It's two seasons, some episodes. It's intense. It is not related to shiny, happy people except for the same cultic brainwashing death traps. Yeah. Like, I don't know what else to say.
• 12:13
  But one of the things they talk about explicitly in the vow that overlaps with shiny, happy people is the idea of penance and not just like repentance, which I think there's some validity to that when you make a mistake, like to be sorry for that and to have a conversation with a person and do what you can to make up for it. Like there are values. This is what I'm I'm sorry, I'm all over the place. This is what I'm learning about deconstructing my faith, that there are values that are good and healthy that I can keep and apply in good and healthy ways, even though there's also a lot I have to let go of. So in the vow, they talk about penance, which is like an abusive form of self discipline.
• 13:10
  So self discipline as a form of discipline. So honestly, in my faith history, that makes me think of is like going all the way back even to Catholics and like Augustine who did some funky stuff by the way, but like how hard he was on himself and then that becoming a whole religion or like a religion within a religion almost, right? So there's other examples of this, but it was absolutely part of the vow, and it was absolutely part of shiny happy people. And it's fascinating to me because this whole time, I have avoided as much as I could, although some guests did talk about it. I have avoided talking about cultic stuff mostly.
• 14:00
  I just want them to leave me alone, so I don't want to talk about any of this. But ultimately what has come, like where I've come to is that, oh, except that there's this whole cult experience in my life that doesn't have anything to do with Satan. It has to do with Christians. And so, like it's really, really, really hard where Nathan and I talk about the impact of this trauma even on him, because he didn't realize how his growing up faith tradition intersected with my religious trauma and that there were things reenacted without him being malicious at all. Right.
• 14:47
  Like, he is still good and kind and all the Nathan things that people know him to me. And also there are some things that are not good for me that doesn't have to do with him. And so we talked about some of those things explicitly and have had more conversations privately since then. And it's obviously so sensitive and so hard. But for me, in me, it keeps coming back to Dante where there is this undercurrent of if I don't behave, which then becomes fawning.
• 15:25
  Right? Mhmm. If I don't behave, I will be punished. And what I understood this morning for the first time is that that punishment is coming from myself and a reenacting a religious trauma kind of way. So when Nathan says, you're confusing God with Dante, and I tell you, I think Dante is real.
• 15:59
  I think, I mean, that, like, I have a Dante. I don't know that Dante had a name until Nathan said that and was right. Like, oh, there's the name. We're going to call that one Dante. And Dante is the boss of penance.
• 16:23
  Dante is what makes it hard to stay connected with people without being punished. Dante is the one who starts the shame spirals. Dante is the one who puts me in danger. Dante is the one who knows I am already bad, so everything I try to do that's good will end up bad or causing harm. Does that make any sense?
• 16:50
  It's so slippery. One thing you and I have talked about a lot lately is how there's sort of these different expressions of dissociation. And this comes up when we talk in the community with people who have DID and people who have OSDD or other kinds of dissociation, that there's some dissociation that separates us from our memories. There is some dissociation that separates us from our feelings. And there is some dissociation.
• 17:22
  And I think we talked about this with the podcast, the fawning podcast we listened to, I think which they will hear next month. But there's some dissociation that whether you remember it or not, it separates you from remembering that what happened was traumatic, that what you went through was traumatic, even the relational trauma pieces. And that's part of why it's so hard to point to or to hold on to or to grasp or to talk about because it's so, even though like, oh, I'm not switching, switching, like it disappears from my head almost as fast as I can recognize it. So it's like I'm recognizing, look at these ways the religious trauma had an impact on me and I can tolerate knowing it had an impact on me. And I'm aware I need to take that to therapy.
• 18:24
  And also, like when I get to therapy, I'm like, I left the pieces at home. It's like I bring the empty puzzle box to therapy, but I left all the pieces and I can't pull out the pieces to say, look at this piece, look at this piece. Even now, I said, we were talking about all this before breakfast. And then I was like, I think I need to journal for therapy. And then we need to eat breakfast.
• 18:51
  And then when I'm settled again in my body, we can talk about it on the podcast. But now that we're talking about it, I'm like, what was it that was so important? Because it was really important. Not when you have a Dante. I have had a hard couple of weeks with all of the children here.
• 19:16
  Nathan came to visit to bring the last of the children's things from the Oklahoma house, which is now gone. We're done with it. So that is bittersweet. It's a relief financially, but also sad in the way of letting go of illusions. And then I broke my foot.
• 19:42
  In one shot, it was a twofer. Oh, so that was hard. But because I hurt my foot and I was starting the new job and had those two weeks of training and basically disappeared for the world, I couldn't go to community groups, which I had already missed because of moving because we moved into the bigger house here since more kids were gonna be here. So it has just been a lot moving two houses at once a thousand miles apart, starting a new job, breaking my foot, the children, the whole family being here, and then everybody leaving, and then being on my own, and then shiny happy people, and then the vow, and then that podcast episode by the people from the vow about fawning, which will be in the next episodes in the month. So it's just been a lot, and it kind of culminated into this week isolating and withdrawing because it just felt not not it wasn't that I felt, oh, this is overwhelming.
• 21:01
  I need some time and space to just catch up to myself. Because sometimes I feel that, and I think that's valid. This was it has been too many things, and all of these things are happening because of me, and I should pay penance for that. I should be punished for that. Except it's much more subtle than that.
• 21:33
  It's not in words. They aren't words that I hear in my head. It's just like truth that I know, except they're not true. But it's very confusing. And so I canceled therapy, and things got very dark very quickly.
• 21:52
  But because I had seen the vowel, I thought, okay. Having a choice to say no to spending time with you or spending time with my therapist or doing these other things means that I do have a choice, which means it's not the same as before, but I am feeling like before, which means this is emotional flashback, not reality, which means I do need connection because connection brings healing. And I emailed my therapist and asked her if I could cancel my cancel because I'm not okay. And my therapist basically said, not only can you have your appointment back next week, I will also see you this afternoon. Mhmm.
• 22:46
  So I had an extra therapy session about not being okay and recognizing that I somehow have this part that we're now calling Dante, which I've referenced before. I think I even talked about on the podcast just generally. But but recognizing that I have this part of me that somehow is act I don't know if these are the right words, but it's the best I can come up with that is, like, behaviorally acting out shame in a punitive way, where shame is not just a thought, where shame is not just a feeling, but it becomes a behavior I do to myself. A hair shirt. So it again goes back to ancient Christianity where they could wear as a sign of penance or repentance or humility before God or other leaders.
• 24:10
  A hair shirt like something they wore under their clothes that actually scratched up their skin. Google it. See what it says on Google. We always go safer in our heads when we Google it. Whatever.
• 24:26
  Because it's cognitive again. Right? So we come up for air. Except that with shame, we are punishing ourselves for being who we are. It's really icky.
• 24:38
  And this intersection of religious trauma with sexuality also has layers and layers of shame that I can't even describe and honestly don't currently feel safe talking about on the podcast. So when I lost that, I lost confidence in knowing if what I was sharing was helpful. And all of that happened at the same time as me coming to light for I wish I didn't even have that phrase, right? Everything feels triggering now. But becoming aware of religious trauma and sexuality trauma and starting to work through those issues.
• 25:31
  And I think it's part of why I struggled so much with seasons and had to work so intentionally to get through that because I just got the negative until more emails came later. I think also me unfawning. So practicing standing up to mean things, like the one Peter helped me read in a Mickey Mouse voice, really offended the people that wrote in like that person. It really hurt their feelings. I didn't mean to hurt their feelings.
• 26:10
  I really meant to use it as a model of practice of how to deal with hate mail. And then I stood up for the piano song. Right? And it felt so good and liberating, probably not to that person. And so maybe it was too much and now people are afraid to write in.
• 26:28
  Like, I don't know. So then it becomes tricksy. And so the reason I'm using this as an example because they're listening to the podcast, they know the podcast. So what happens with Dante, for example, is, well, good emails aren't coming anymore, which means you're bad, which means the podcast is bad. And I can have enough ovaries, I don't know, gumption, intuition, therapy progress, whatever, hold on to, that's not entirely true.
• 27:04
  So I'm not going to just delete the podcast because I'm not finished with what I have to say. I will stop the podcast. The podcast will eventually be finished, but it will be finished because I've said all there is to say for me and or because politics make it impossible to say what I need to say, whichever happens first. I hope for a healthy ending. And we talked about how I would even like to end it with a little bit of the book or some Wolf's book or both.
• 27:38
  I don't know what order, but that seems like it would bring it full circle because the book ends with the podcast beginning. So I thought about that. But anyway, the reason this comes up now is because it's an example with Dante where I can hold on, I've done enough therapy, I can hold on to seeing the gray or holding both. So I know like, don't be binary about it. The whole podcast isn't bad.
• 28:05
  I don't know. And so then I try to think, well, that's just out there and it's been years. Like the very it's been almost a decade from the beginning. That's helpful and protective of them. And so then comes in my penance where the fawning is the penance.
• 28:21
  I will get better at being good and then I can be loved again, or then I can be approved again, or then I can exist again. Yeah. It has been a hard thing to do the podcast while I was not in therapy. Mhmm. I did not mean for it to become a personal journal of my life instead of therapy for DID.
• 28:51
  But I also think it's a reality that lots of us struggle to keep, to find, to work with a therapist who can actually help us. Well, and part of it was trying to prepare for therapy. And as I got to know people in the community, part of it too was that these become people I love, people I consider friends and care about. And so as part of that, I wanna be more transparent. This is all of who I am.
• 29:23
  Not in a bad boundaries way, but because of developed relationships. So then it gets tricksy because safety is still an issue, right? Like if I close my eyes and I totally can, I can close my eyes and I can see people's faces on Zoom? And I feel so safe with these people that I could almost say anything, which is lovely except that there are also really scary people out there who mean to do me harm. And the more information and access I give of myself, the less safe I am in real life, which is unfortunate.
• 30:04
  And then you add on top of that, people who are still working on their own trauma, people who are in different places than me. So like, that's what happened with seasons. There were people who were more advanced in their own coming out and in their own sexuality therapy that didn't like that we were starting at the beginning because they thought that we were putting that as a measuring stick. But for us, and especially for Nathan, it was that this is the first step. This is a conversation.
• 30:40
  For people who have different politics or faith traditions than me, when that starts to get in the way of, well, you said this or you don't like this, my faith is still very important to me, but I want any part of me, including my faith to be healthy. And it's not healthy if I can't ask questions. So I'm not trying to offend someone. I'm trying to ask questions so that even that part of me can be reclaimed. But when I get hate mail, it's not just about having tougher skin.
• 31:14
  It's about that feeds Dante. See? I told you you are bad. See? I told you people don't like this.
• 31:20
  See? I told you people hate you. See? I told you you were evil. Mhmm.
• 31:25
  See? I told you. Like, it be it's really, really difficult, and people say terrible things. Terrible things. And then when you add to that actual dangers, like when we first got doxxed or when being targeted in different ways or actual threats made.
• 31:49
  Even the police are like, how worth it is this to you? And it's tricksy because then it becomes a battle between fawning and Dante. How much is actual altruism of I want to help people? How much of that is fawning? And how much of that is you're gonna get what you deserve because you open your mouth and never should have talked in the first place.
• 32:14
  You earned this. This is your consequence for speaking out and speaking up. When what the truth is and because you're here and we're talking about this, I can hold onto for a minute. What the truth is, is that this is the only way for me to make meaning out of what happened to me. This is what I have to give.
• 32:40
  Well, and I know, I know that it has saved lives, not because I'm a hotshot, but because people heard another voice in the dark. And sometimes that's all it takes. And that makes it worth it to me. But there are times that the risk and cost are very high. And there are times that it is hard for me to distinguish between just natural consequences of not everyone is gonna like me and that's okay.
• 33:13
  And you should never have said anything about this, much less tried to untangle it. So the more you talk, the more you deserve to be punished. So now I deserve to be punished for a decade of speaking, and that's hard to face and really frightening. That is what I was saying yesterday after therapy. You gave me a ride to therapy.
• 33:38
  Thank you so much. Because of my broken foot. And after therapy, we went for ice cream, which I think is genius, by the way, and it was really good ice cream. But while I was there, I said, I don't know if I'm going to survive this. Like, I already know it is likely I will not survive this.
• 34:06
  I do not mean that in a way of not having any like, don't have an intent or plan or want to harm myself. I have an awareness of what I am up against. And it is hard for me to see how much of that is the outside world. Like in the vow, they talk about how much danger they were in trying to escape. I feel that every day and how much is internal because of Dante and is just trauma reenacting inside.
• 34:42
  And that's really hard. I don't know if any of that makes sense. It's not what I thought we were gonna say. I'm sorry. I feel like it's part of why we need each other, whether meaning us or in the community or our therapists, because sometimes we need an other just to help us see clearly.
• 35:16
  Not just to witness our truth or to reflect back feelings we don't know how to express, but also just to help us see clearly because it's so much to untangle. Why was I so alone that all I could do was pray? And I don't even mean whether God is real or not real. I have my own faith understanding of this. But I mean that someone that was invisible that I can't even reach out and touch safely, that could not comfort me physically.
• 36:07
  That was all I had. So how does that play into disorganized attachment where I know I feel better when I have therapy and yet also I'm like, oh, that's going to hurt. Let me just cancel those appointments. What is that? I mean, I know what it is.
• 36:36
  It's disorganized attachment. But that's it, and that's why now. Because I'm now happier than I have ever been. I am healthier than I have ever been. Even Nathan and the kids are happier and healthier than they have ever been despite all of the changes of the last year, but that's why it's big now.
• 36:58
  It goes back to the same, the very same simple abuse dynamic of that other shoe to drop.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: and healing brings hope.