Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Guest: Robert Oxnam

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Guest: Robert Oxnam · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the System Speak podcast. If you would like to support our efforts at sharing our story, fighting stigma about dissociative identity disorder, and educating the community and the world about trauma, please go to our website at www.systemspeak.org, and there is a button for donations where you can offer a one time donation to support the podcast or become an ongoing subscriber. We so appreciate the support, the positive feedback, and you sharing our podcast with others. We are all learning together. Thank you.
• 1:13
  Tonight, we have a special guest, Robert B. Oxnam, who is internationally recognized as an outstanding Asia Specialist and dynamic speaker. He often accompanies prominent Americans such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, former president George Bush, and Barbara Bush, as they seek in-depth firsthand knowledge of China. For more than a decade, he was president of the Asia Society, Society, which is headquartered in New York, across The United States, and throughout the Asia Pacific region. He is a renowned scholar who appeared frequently on television and traveled the world as a sought after expert.
• 1:51
  But what the millions of people who had seen him didn't know, what even those closest to him didn't know, was that Oxnam suffered from multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder. It was only after an intervention staged by family and friends in response to frequent blackouts and episodic rages assumed to be alcohol driven that he sought treatment with Doctor. Jeffrey Smith. It was during these sessions that the first of his 11 personalities emerged. And after years of treatment, he has integrated them into three, Robert, Wanda, and Bobby, who take turns narrating the remarkable unprecedented chronicle of his story in the book, A Fractured Mind, My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder.
• 2:37
  He and I have been emailing for several months and have had several attempts where we thought we were going to meet in person or talk on the phone or have an interview for the podcast, and things have come up over and over again. So it's been quite difficult to connect. And yet, I have appreciated his determination to continue connecting, to remain in contact, and to become a friend that I do appreciate, as he shares on the podcast tonight. And with the work that he's now doing with McLean Hospital and in other ways to educate the community, even the world about dissociative identity disorder. Welcome Robert Oxnam.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, there you are. Great. Well, we finally did it.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's been hard to connect. I'm so sorry.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Well, that's okay. It's been it's it's surely at least half my fault. So no problem. And this is going to be used as a podcast?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, sir.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So and you have a regular access to you have your own podcast, I take it?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, such an enterprising lady you are. Tell me how you got interested in DID.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I was diagnosed about a year ago, but I had previously been diagnosed as well, and I didn't know that.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: So you mean that the diagnosis was made by the doctor but not conveyed to you?
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Right. Well, I was apparently now I know. Now I understand. But I was apparently diagnosed in grad school And Uh-huh. So years and years ago.
• 4:32
  But then I was not aware of that myself, I guess. And I went on to get my to finish graduate school. I got my doctorate. I'm licensed as a counselor in two states, and I was doing that work until both of my parents died, and then everything kind of fell apart.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. Died, I mean, in close proximity to each other? I mean, that's terrible.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, my father died of cancer, and then my mother was killed by a drunk driver on the way home from the feast.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Oh. Oh, Emma.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: It just brought up a lot.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: That that's absolutely terrible. You've had a hard life.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Sometimes. Yeah. The I'm in a good place now, and I'm grateful. But the podcast was one way I could continue sort of the way I was learning and some of the work I was doing, but learned this myself as well.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Good for you. Good for you. So you're are you involved then now in dealing with others who have DID or and the podcast is part of that?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I don't treat other people with DID because I'm just not in a place to do that right now. But the podcast is the people who listen to it all either have DID or they treat DID.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh. Oh, well, that's I I didn't I didn't think you would you're you're a doctor dealing with I don't know what what practice you're you're in, but but that's a wonderful thing you're doing, and podcasts are so in now that you can have quite a following, I guess.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I'm grateful. There's about now 42 countries where there are people listening regularly and about 4,000 people a week.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: That's great. That's great. Well, I'm honored to be one chosen for that. And, actually, I've worked very close with McLean Hospital in in Boston, and there is they have a guy who did an interview with me and on a on a podcast. So I'm I've done it once before.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I I talked to them, and they almost scheduled with me for me to interview them about some of the program they're doing, but then they canceled at the last minute right before the conference in Florida. So I don't know if they were overwhelmed with schedules or they didn't like my podcast, but they changed their mind. But I was grateful you still wanted to be interviewed.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: No. I'm I'm happy to do it. You you think that they they took exception to what you were doing or what?
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: That's how it felt, but I honestly don't have enough information to know if that was perception or my concern or if that was accurate. But they had been talking to me. We had interviews set up, and then they changed their mind and don't reply to me anymore. So
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Who who were you talking to here?
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: They're PR people because I was gonna interview doctor Melissa Kaufman and then Sure. The woman that is also doing the marketing for the program they're doing.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: So it it wasn't it wasn't Melissa Kaufman No. That made the decision. Yeah. I I know the lady. Adriana.
• 8:02
  Right?
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Adriana was one that I was gonna talk with Adriana and Melissa together. Then they got an email from someone else that they changed their mind.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Alright. So, anyway, I do remain very closely connected to McLean Hospital and I've been driving in the direction of trying to have really nationwide public education about DID and what it is, what it isn't, and how it can be handled and all of that.
• 8:42
  So I think you know some of the numbers I guess, the number of people that the American Psychiatric Association has put out as to numbers of people who have it in The United States.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: What did they say now?
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: What they say now and it's a figure, you know, when I was first diagnosed back in the, oh gosh, when was this? It was in the early 1990s. The number that was given to me by my physician was one in ten thousand people. Turns out that the new estimate is that in The United States as a whole, some place between three and nine million people.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: So we're talking about and somebody then did a study of what would that look like if we had if we got all DIDs together and and we all occupied one state, it would be the size of Delaware. That's
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: so many people.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: I know it's it's huge, but you know the thing about it is that people have been misdiagnosed for years and years when in fact DID was the proper diagnosis, So that's part of it. And the other part of it is people who have had the difficulties that we've had, that is a series of traumatic episodes when we're young folks between, especially between the ages of three and six, that we tend to try to bury those memories rather than face up with them, and so lots of people have had it without knowing they had it and not even knowing it had a name, and that's still true in a lot of places.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: That's that's I just wanted to get a little background on on you, and I've got it now. So
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: you wanna go ahead and just introduce yourself a little bit.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Sure. My name is Robert Oxnam, and I'm currently 76 years old. And I was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder DID which used to be called multiple personality disorder and was seen as something extraordinarily scary, and we've now recognized that it's quite a large number of people in The United Quite States are likely to have it. It's caused as it was caused with me, with some terrible things that happened, traumatic things that happened to me when I was a child. And it was back in the era of World War II, which meant that families were separated and there was terrible fear of losing loved ones and all of that.
• 12:04
  So there was a lot tension in the air. And I think some of that got was led to traumatic things in terms of beatings, in terms of screaming, and in terms of threats. In my case, I was beaten regularly and I had to go out and actually cut the bushes that they would use to beat me. And I was locked up in an old icebox and I thought I was gonna die. I mean, was all that kind of horrible thing that should not happen to children.
• 12:48
  And over the years, I've done lots of things. I've been a China Scholar, doctorate from Yale University, and taught for several years about Chinese history, ran an organization called the China Council, which was part of a larger institution, which was the Asia Society, which still continues today. And it's for public education purposes, but it has allowed me to do things not just in The US but around the world. And so I have whenever I get into talking about things that relate to DID in other cultures, there are lots of people who really say gee, I know someone who seems to be like what you're describing. So my wife is from India, so we spent a lot of time there.
• 13:51
  I speak Chinese and so I've lived in China for a number. I think I've visited China Eighty Five times
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Which is a lot. But and in recent years, I have become very interested in public education on dissociative identity disorder. Public education meaning that the people of The United States ought to know that this is a it's an understandable reaction to horrible events. And it is once diagnosed and now there are a number of practitioners who are very good at that, then there is a long period of trying to understand what is going on in your own mind. How does dissociation work for you or work against you, and how dealing with others who have dissociative identity disorder, sometimes bringing them all together in conferences like the one that you went to and the one that I spoke at.
• 15:09
  I've done it for the last ten years, that this is a chance for people who have DID to talk to each other. There is possibilities of some films coming out that describe accurately what DID is. So my hope is that this very difficult psychiatric problem can be understood much more broadly around The United States, not just for the people who might have it, but also the people who might have caused it and the people who might be helpers, whether it's in your family or a broader connection among friends. But, that's sort of where it is today. I think we're well ahead of where we were thirty years ago, but there's a long way to go.
• 16:04
  And so conversations, I hope, like this will help people understand that there's a real reason that it happened, and there are real effects that go through the rest of your life, and that there are ways of dealing with it and controlling it, and there are people who can help in that. So that's become a real cause for me. That's in a nutshell. Oh yes, I also wrote a book called The Fractured Mind which was published in 02/2005 which did remarkably well and led to a lot of TV and radio conversations. And so that's got that got me really going on the whole notion that we got to take this disorder that probably afflicts millions of people in our own country and tens of millions around the world and understand it and be able to cope with it better because for the public at large, we'll know more about it.
• 17:10
  So that's the cause and that's my life in a nutshell.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. That's so much.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Well, I actually I'll tell you one thing about it, that people who have DID often are creative. And it's partly I think because we recognize we have several parts to ourselves, separate identities that emerge, And if not treated, that can be a real problem. If treated, you find out that you have access to all kinds of that most people don't recognize. And so therefore, I've been able to do all of those things that I was describing, but I've also turned to art as a lot of DIDs do, and some of them are very good artists. And I'm a sculptor working in in found wood, and I'm a photographer looking at glacial rocks, close-up shots, and I'm now a painter, and I've had exhibitions and all of that.
• 18:28
  But the exhibitions are just, you know, it's it's the icing on the cake. It's the process of recognizing that if you have these different identities, and you have a single cause that you're focusing on, in many ways, we're in better straits than most people are because they don't have the capacity really to reach in and recognize that there are different parts of us that you can bring together in this process. So in doing art, it's also psychic, the psychology of it is that of, I call it cohesive multiplicity. I'm sorry to give it a big long name like that, but you know people in the medical field like long names so I use it with multiplicity that is a way in which you draw together these energy sources inside of you, and can project it in art. So that's me in a nutshell.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. That's a big discussion right now in the DID community, actually, because there is there are so many who feel that some level of functional multiplicity or you're saying cohesive multiplicity should be, discussed more than it is and not so easily dismissed. Not that therapy has to stop when you reach this stage or that stage, but more about just treatment for DID takes so long, and our lives don't stop in the meantime.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Even after therapy, even if someone did do so much therapy, they finally could stop and they were okay, like, that means to whoever, that life is still happening. And and that spectrum of yourself is still there. And how that gets expressed and how that functions.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I I fully agree with that. I mean, the there are there are bad trips that one can take, and there's the good trips that one can take. The question is getting to getting to know that family of characters that one has inside, and getting internal conversations going. And then finding what you agree on and what you don't agree on.
• 20:56
  And it's it's like going to a party and meeting a bunch of people, and then the same party keeps going on and on and on in life. If not taken to proper medical auspices, it can remain chaotic for life. But if indeed one finds someone you can work with, or several people you can work with, you can actually think about this as your sort of inner family. And as an inner family, they can either be dangerous to each other or they can be helpful to each
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: other. Right.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: And the latter is preferred, and therefore, I mean, doing artwork is just one example. Having I actually think I have a richer life than do most we sometimes rather pompously call people who don't have DID singletons.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: And singletons ought to be jealous in some ways of those of us who are multiples because they have the same capacity inside them, but they don't know how to unlock it. And those of us who have DID know that there are internal conversations going on. And it could make for chaos, but it could also make for creativity, and that's my argument.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: I love that. And I think those were two things that I really especially loved about your book. One was that you shared your story of being so high functioning professionally all of this unfolded as far as your diagnosis because I that's I was not the president of the Asia Society. But I had a job, and I was functioning. And to deal with what felt like stigma or shame and all of those layers of everything sort of falling apart around me when I was so wrapped up, me specifically, my identity was so wrapped up with this professional side of my life that I didn't know how to deal with things moving forward after diagnosis.
• 23:23
  And your book really described well how you did it. I mean, the other thing about your book that I loved was there are several different biographies out there or stories out there where they share a lot about what happened when they were growing up and how they became DID and things like that, which is fine. But your book really talked about the process of diagnosis, and treatment, and life through therapy.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, that was my, and also the unique thing about the book is that all of us inside had a say in the writing of the book. And in fact, you actually get to meet the different identities and see where there's a conflict and see where there's cooperation and see where ways in which you can learn together. And that I as soon as I saw my way into that, I recognized that I could have done the artwork, know, sort of as a profession that is as much about psychology and healing as it is about making nice art that is appealing to people. And so that was one of the purposes of the book, the sort of thing. And you may remember that in the book that we were all captured in the castle, and we all had different places in the castle, and there were scary things that happened, and there were creative things that happened, but they were never on the same wavelength.
• 25:05
  And the escape from that castle to a meadow away from it, and some conjoining of these different identities once we were on this very nice meadow made for the possibility of cooperation and learning from each other. And that to me was turned out to be the most fascinating thing I've I've I've done in my life is to find out what was going on inside my head and to try to turn us into at least friends, if not a team, and eventually by the way, shrinks love long multi syllabic words, so say cohesive multiplicity, people love it. But but it really has it really it really has an effect, and it's not just, you know, it's not just in art. I'm a failed musician. I never I always wanted to play the guitar.
• 26:11
  I I I bought several guitars, and it turns out that there are impediments that just don't let me do that. But I've become friends with music people around the world. And I find every summer, there is a retreat for extraordinarily talented rising conductors, classical music conductors up in Maine. And the guy who runs it read my book and called me one day and told me that I'd written one of the best books ever on what it means to be a conductor. I said, you got the wrong book, the wrong name.
• 26:56
  He said, no, I don't. I got you. He said if if he's this is a wonderful statement he made. He said, you know, if if the conductor is incapable of encompassing all of the different instruments, all of the different performers, all in a concert, He said, then you you should go immediately back to the to the booth where you bought the tickets and tear yours up because it's gonna be a lousy concert. He said, but you've got to get them into, and he said, what do you call it?
• 27:35
  I said, cohesive multiplicity. He said, that that is what classical music is about. And so I mean, I never thought I would, and so I've even gone up there, and every year they they make me conduct part of a symphony. And I'm never very good at it, but but I'm I'm better than I thought I could be.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: But the thing about it is they go away, and they're thinking as these are young conductors, relatively young between 20 and 35, something like that. And they're extraordinarily extraordinary musicians, just wonderful. But the way in which we teach music in in this part of the world is is drills and going at it and, you know, hard work and and and just straight that's just kind of a straight line. Well, learning it, yes, it's partly that. You've gotta learn technique, and you've gotta learn how to read notes and write notes and and all of that.
• 28:40
  But the key aspect to it is to grow as time goes on, and find other parts inside of you that make that make for better music for you and as a conductor, anywhere from you know 20 to 80 people out there together playing in cohesion. And so that it's a kick because I never thought that I would be around great musicians because I was a failed musician, but I have something I can talk to them about and they find useful.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: It's such an incredible analogy and a visual. It's so helpful to me. I I was just working. I I went to school, and I worked, and that's all I did. And I never questioned why I didn't remember this part of my life or why I didn't remember that part of my life or what happened when I wasn't doing homework or working or school.
• 29:42
  And the diagnosis was very unsettling to me, and it's very difficult for me to want to open up to that and to want to learn about the others inside or what they're doing or why they're doing that much less understand or have empathy even, you know? And your book was such a portrait of those dynamics and why it matters and helped me to have more compassion for myself. And when I started doing the podcast, initially, I thought we could talk about what DID is and interview people, and I could learn about it almost like homework in school, like I did anything else. But what's happened are other episodes I didn't know about or others inside doing their own episodes or making friends with other people who have DID but are share things in common with people I never would have met otherwise. And listening to the podcast myself, I have learned more about our system and about each other and the others inside than I ever would have learned on my own.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: That's a great story too. I mean, that's the thing that we ought to recognize is you're gonna have DID all your life. You're not, you know, it's not something you get rid of, but it is something that if you look to the creative side, as I described earlier and you just described, there is a whole new world out there, and the options that you know, that you can follow. Did you ever think, you know, twenty years ago that you would be on the air with podcasts? Probably not.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Absolutely And
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: so now it takes you into a zone which itself is challenging, but the part of it you put your own energy into it, and you find out that you have inside alters who are helpful to all of that, and then every once in a while, you know, I I I get really angry or something and and sort of blow up. But then recovering from that, almost always I find that that thinking about why did I do that, and then thinking about hearing other inputs in my own brain saying, we can't do it that way, we gotta do it a different way. So then that's completely different personality helping to do cohesive multiplicity inside. So it's not just me that does it. It's, you know, one or two or three of those who remain as part of my system.
• 32:39
  And you find out too is I have a lot more creativity in me and in this lifetime. And you can become a sort of beacon for people who are struggling. And when I talk to musicians, it's almost like you wouldn't know that I'm a terrible musician, but I'm a pretty good person to talk to about what they're missing in in when they do music. So people have asked me to listen to this, you know. These are famous violinists and stuff, and willing to take critical criticism or at least advice from someone who has something that they would like inside of them.
• 33:30
  And we all have that possibility. My sense is that everybody has a capacity for multiplicity, one reason or another. But most people on the planet don't have that created by something horrible that happened in early in their life. And so you don't have to go through that horror story in order to understand that you can use all of these different faculties in fresh ways. And that's what really keeps sometimes musicians, they're pretty interesting folks.
• 34:13
  They can be absolutely fabulous, but the best ones are like Yo Yo Ma. Yo Yo Ma constantly is reinventing himself, constantly is doing new works, constantly is is I I was fortunate enough to get to know him, not really well, but well enough that we talked, and he wrote me a letter, and he liked the book too. So but that's the kind of imagination, you know, that he started playing the cello when he was four years old, and he had a rather tough time with his father who was kind of old school teacher. And he obviously got a lot out of that, but he obviously also said, I'm gonna go beyond this. I'm gonna do this in a different way.
• 35:05
  And he's one of the most he's not only a great, great musician, but he is also thinking globally. So he sets up things around the world where playing classical music and relating to audiences is opens up their hearts too. You you can't help but find out a lot of things just by listening to Yo Yo Ma's cello, any cello PC plays. So and that's just one example, but we all have that, and he took the in fact, he wrote me in the letter that he wrote me after he read the book. He said, you know, we I ought to come by, he said, sometime you and I will go to lunch together.
• 35:56
  And he said, but he said, you know, you've you've got 11 personalities. I I don't have enough money to pay for the dinner, so he has a you know, and so you have to learn that, you know, laughing in fact is a very important part. Finding things that make you smile, that make you laugh, that you that's a time in which other parts of very serious people or people who have been hurt one way or another, it it allows you to actually meet different parts of yourself and recognize that those are the brighter side of life and they deserve to have more airtime than just finding out something because there's a problem or an issue or whatever. It needs to be a way of living. And so I think we as DIDs who struggle through all of this have some things where we really ought to smile about, that life, I'm not a belief in the afterlife, I'm a believer in the afterlife, but I don't know what happens after you die.
• 37:07
  But I do know that what happens when you live is that lots and lots of people I know, many that I know very well, just are are have sort of lose the energy that that it takes to find other parts of yourself as time goes on. And that's a pity. We all ought to learn.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I think that that's a beautiful part of DID, discovering those pieces that it's not just all bad. That, yes, there are these memories that we need to work through or or or respond to, but there's also those just amazing pieces that you didn't even know were a part of yourself. When we were starting the podcast, one of the things that we talked about with our husband was we need some sort of opening song because a podcast always has a little something to do for an opening for the show. And so we're thinking, how are we going to get How do we pay a licensing fee? And we're just trying to figure out all of those things.
• 38:10
  And he was like, someone's already recorded it on the piano. And I was like, we we can't play piano. What are you talking about? He's like, no, someone already recorded it. And it is.
• 38:19
  It's a it's a little thing recorded on the piano. And I was like, who did that? I didn't even know I could play piano. And he said, well, I don't I don't I don't know exactly, but I know it's not the same one who plays the cello. And I was like, what?
• 38:34
  I thought that was your cello. He's like, nope. That's your cello.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: So so you've been the you've been down the same road. That's great.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Yes. And painting too. I we have we have two two that are painters, very different styles.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: And and some kind of combinations of that. But but it's it's an amazing thing to find. I comforting even maybe to find some of those good pieces or aspects of DID that are not just, oh, trauma memories. Here we go again. But there are good things too.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Absolutely. The in fact, I my own experience with all of this is because we have ups and downs in all of our lives if you have DID, and but when the dark things happen, I find that there's almost a smile in that, something that really goes wrong, I mean, in the outer world or in the inner world can be opening another door, and you find out that exploring that other door is far better than sitting around and fretting and swearing and all of that. Some of us have, you have to get that off your chest, but underneath there's all kinds of things. It's sort of it's almost like you have a what do they call it, a first aid kit that you can go in and try another one of the little pill charts it's got in there, pop it in your mouth and you're you turn something that that hurts into something that says, wow, I can do that, I can think of that.
• 40:28
  I I in fact, if you have someone around, and that's that's a really important part of DID, it's far easier to cope with DID if you have an understanding person nearby. I am enormously gifted by the fact that my wife, who's from India, and herself was president of the Asia Society, but is an expert on Asian art and travels all around the world. In fact, I'm jealous of her because she's people want her to speak and be on this board and da da da. She does that. The only thing I get at, but she gets to can you believe this?
• 41:14
  She's she's on a board in India where they insist that that everybody on the board that comes from abroad has to fly on Emirates first class. Can you believe that?
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. You
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: know, so you know what happens, you know, all that I get out of it is she she's much smaller than I am, but she always gets a large size Emirates, has a little Emirates symbol on it, pajamas. So I have more pajamas from Emirates aircraft from her flying around, but she anyway, she is just full of energy. She's extraordinary person. But in all of it, if she wasn't there, I probably wouldn't have been there. I mean, were a couple of suicide attempts in my life, I'm not proud of that, but it's a fact.
• 42:08
  A lot of suicidal thought goes on in the minds of those who are in early stages of treatment DID. And each time she has a way of handling it. And then she, you know, she travels around and we now try to take some of these journeys together. And she has got a lot of money left over because of the aircraft. If you fly a lot, you get a lot of a lot of capacities to take somebody else along.
• 42:47
  So anyway, so we often go on trips together and you know, life is joyful. But she coming from India, is one of the other places on earth where multiplicity is understood because the gods have lots of arms. There are lots of different gods that are that are they're being worshipped. Indians are sort of way ahead of us. They think in multiple terms rather than singleton terms, and, you know, I think that's that's been great.
• 43:19
  So that the bottom line in all of this is having friends and ideally someone who is with you most of the time, who is completely understanding, makes it much easier journey than it would be if you're on a all by yourself.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: That's amazing that that's part of what you shared today because that's exactly where we are in sort of our learning and therapy right now, that we need our therapist in an appropriate kind of needing way of having that help and having the husband and even learning how to make friends and trust people and figure out who is safe and we need to say when we need help and things like that. And so that's pretty powerful that you just shared about that. Thank you.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: I think, I mean, the other aspect of it is if it's a partner, and you have that connection that really works. I mean, there are lots of marriages that fall apart. I had one that fell apart, but this one is where it's just it's wondrous. And the thing about it is that she not only is she there when when I need it, I don't even have to say it. She just she recognizes it and when a problem is occurring, but she's she's supportive of all kinds of things that I'm doing, and she is sort of a she was an art curator in at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and all of that.
• 45:01
  So she whenever I'm doing something in artwork, she has suggestions that are just spot on. So one can learn from all of this that if you have the right sorts friendships or family connections, that you will you can if the other person really understands what the idea is about. You can find a wonderful world out there, or at least ways of getting through the big humps in the world without taking your own life or causing such hell that people don't want to be around you. So I think there's a real smiling that one ought to have to do, but there's also a recognition that you're dealing with a very difficult disorder, and that it's not all step by step in a direction that makes you smile, but there are going to be ups and downs. But in the course of all of that, if you can find a cluster of people who understand, it makes all the difference in the world.
• 46:18
  And I frankly think that we ought to be in a society in which doing what you're doing, podcasts are great for doing this, any kind of media projection of accurate information about DID. Destigmatizing DID I think, is a very, very important part of all of this. So I think we're, you know, we're on the right path. There's a lot of it's changed a lot in the thirty years since my diagnosis, but we've got a long way to go.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for talking to me today.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Well, it's my pleasure. You ask good questions, and we have a disorder in common, so we know how to get on the same wavelength, I hope.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: I'm so grateful. I really appreciate your time.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: I appreciate talking with you. I I'm sorry it took so long to actually get this to happen, but finally, we we we made make we made it work. You were by the way, you were at Orlando. Right?
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Yes. I was. And we were supposed to connect there as well, and your plane was late.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I that was the the wasn't that amazing? I mean, I they they took three hours before I was gonna go. They canceled the flight, and I couldn't get on one till the next day.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, we lost chance there. But we we had it tonight. So it's a it's a pleasure talking to you, and congratulations on the work you're doing.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate the things that you shared. They were really spot on, both for the podcast and for what I myself needed to hear tonight.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Excellent. Well, I'm glad I can help, and talking to you helps me. So it broadens the group that that will understand DID. And through the podcast work, I'm sure that that'll help a lot.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Hey, good to talk. You take care of yourself.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us with System Speak, a podcast about dissociative identity disorder. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Google Play, and iTunes, or follow along on our website, www.systemspeak.org. Thanks for listening.