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Inertia · 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
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. I have to tell you about something I noticed this week. It's absolutely about DID or just inertia. But I realized where I am, I want to stay.
• 1:12
  I don't just mean the new house, but I mean if we've been outside at the new house where we're working the land and cutting down trees and mowing acres and acres and working flower beds and vegetable gardens, hunting for food in the forest. I want to be there. I want to stay outside as long as the sun is up, and we don't clean up until after the sun's gone down. It's hot, hard work, but we love it. The whole family, even the husband, in ways we never knew we would.
• 1:51
  The fresh air, the big sky, the green trees, the animals. It's like we get to live camping. It's the greatest adventure we've ever had, and we have loved every second. Well, most seconds. But this week, it rained.
• 2:12
  We had storms left over from the hurricanes, and it rained and rained and rained for several days. And then by the end of it, when it was time for us to go back outside, it was like I didn't belong there anymore As if what was familiar and loved became unfamiliar. Like, was shy of it somehow. As if that tree with the split trunk waiting to be finished, taken down, was looking at me as if it knew I had just done the chainsawing only days before, but I couldn't remember it exactly. I mean, I know about it, but there's something about feeling it and knowing it and remembering that's different than just the knowing.
• 3:06
  And I finally realized that's what happens with people too. When it's been too long, I forget them. I don't mean to. I try not to. We use a journal for that.
• 3:19
  It helps. I take notes for my friends so that I can be a good one. But I'm not there yet, and it's really hard. My friend Peter, who's been on the podcast, I always write in my notebook, ask how his wife is doing because that seems like the good and kind thing or his kids or his family, and I almost always forget. What makes me think of him is when something comes up that we've shared, like something from a book or a particular interview I've done on the podcast.
• 3:59
  And that helps, but I don't know how to bridge the gaps on my own or initiate that all the time. So friends who have been good and kind but not responsive are slipping through the cracks in the pandemic. Or maybe it's truth that they were never really my friends to begin with, and it makes me question everything. Sometimes it's worse, like even when you're in therapy and how hard it is to hold on to your therapist between sessions, much less when there's any break or you've gone online because of the pandemic. It can be hard to hold on to that.
• 4:42
  And it all feels like it's going to slip away. And maybe normal people under normal circumstances know how to bridge that gap, know how to hold on, know how to reach out. But to me, that feels dangerous. Not just scary, but like actual danger. And this week, in reading a book to get ready for the next round of ISSTD classes that we're going to take, I found a quote that finally explains it, and I wanna share it with you.
• 5:23
  What I want to read is from treatment of complex trauma, a sequenced relationship based approach. And it's in chapter eight, which I wanna talk about more later, but first, I need to read this quote. It was so powerful for me. It's from a case study, and it says, her feeling of connection to others and being treated well by them always had resulted in her later being rejected and abandoned. She therefore had protectively learned not to trust anyone who was nice to her and was paradoxically disgusted with herself after positive interactions because she had allowed herself to be vulnerable to being hurt again, and in the process, kept her from getting what she longed for and needed.
• 6:25
  That's why somebody would chase a birthday party with a bottle of morphine. That's why it feels dangerous or like you need punished just when you're trying to connect with something and everything is good. That's why when friendships are real and things are moving forward and going well, you sabotage them or why the walls go up again when you've just worked so hard to bring them down because it was never safe before. And I think part of what happens isn't even just that it's a trigger. I mean, I think that that's true.
• 7:08
  It can be a trigger. But I think part of what happens is that when you start to feel that connection, you start to feel everything else too. There's no way to be an authentic and present friend and also be unaware and also be disassociated while you're learning to associate. So while it's true that connecting with good and safe people helps you to associate and helps you learn how to associate and brings exponential healing. That's also why it feels so dangerous and why it can be so hard, absolutely terrifying, even when nothing is wrong.
• 7:59
  It's not about you being ungrateful, and it's not about you not trying hard enough. You are trying so hard. You are already doing the work, but part of the work, especially once we're in phase two, is waking up and feeling what there is to feel and knowing what there is to know and seeing what there is to see. And that's hardest to do when there is a betrayal wound. I had actually never heard of betrayal trauma until this class for the ISSTD.
• 8:42
  Some of the readings talked about it, and there's an article called Betrayal Trauma traumatic amnesia as an adaptive response to childhood abuse. That explains the theory that when trauma includes a betrayal, meaning from a caregiver, that the way your brain processes that is having to separate from the trauma itself because you cannot separate from the caregiver. When we are children, we rely on our caregivers to stay alive, even if that means they're hurting us. And because we can't get away, then our brains separate from the trauma instead. The author says that in this theory of trauma, quote, that focuses on violation of the basic ethic or metaethic of human relationship, The degree to which a trauma involves a sense of having been fundamentally cheated or betrayed by another person may significantly influence the individual's cognitive encoding of the experience of trauma, the degree to which the event is easily accessible to awareness, and the psychological as well as behavioral responses.
• 10:14
  So the author talks about how it makes sense even in an evolutionary kind of context that our brains would learn to recognize betrayal, that we would be hyper vigilant to things that put us in danger. But when we're a child and cannot escape that danger because it is our very caregiver, the one who is supposed to keep us safe, the one who is supposed to nurture us, the one who is supposed to care when we cannot escape it, when we cannot escape them. Our brains understand our survival depends on remaining connected to them, which is also why we sometimes have those alters or other parts of us who feel very loyal to those parents or very loyal to those caregivers because they know our survival depends on it. That doesn't make them bad. That makes them right.
• 11:22
  But to deal with that, our brain has amnesia from how bad the trauma was and what the trauma was and splits that off, really stores it in a different place or with a different kind of memory, which is what we're learning about in class this semester. Because our survival depends on staying with the caregiver and because it's not really our fault that we can't get away. And so instead, what gets separated is the trauma itself. She says, quote, betrayal trauma theory posits that from a logical analysis of evolutionary pressures and cognitive architecture, we can expect that there will be information blockage under certain conditions, and that this information blockage will create various types of traumatic amnesia that can be understood in terms of cognitive mechanisms, end quote. So she's saying it's not even about false memories or recovered memories or even repression.
• 12:25
  It's literally a different mechanism. So what she talks about is that our brains and our bodies are designed to recognize danger so that we can get away from it. That is adaptive. But when we cannot get away from the danger, then we have to deal with it to be able to survive. And so what she does is give this neutral example of two people who go on a ski trip.
• 13:03
  One person goes with their friends and this girl falls and gets hurt on the ski trip but she has her friends with her. So she stays put, Like, say she breaks her leg. She stays put. She doesn't move. She does everything to protect that leg.
• 13:19
  And her friends go and get help and help her get off the mountain and get her to safety. She can lean on them. She doesn't put weight on that leg to protect it from getting any further damage. Right? That makes sense.
• 13:35
  That's how you would treat a broken leg when you had friends around you to help you. But then she gives the example of the person who went on the ski trip alone does not have friends with them and also falls and breaks their leg. That person doesn't just sit in the snow not walking on their foot to not cause further damage. That person has to get to help to stay alive. And so that person keeps walking on the broken leg or trying to limp on it or crawls or whatever they have to do to get to help because there's no one to go get help for them.
• 14:14
  And so she's saying that we do the same thing with our brains. Both examples, the leg was just as broken. And both examples, the leg hurt just as much. But with the other person who had no one to help them, they could dissociate from the pain of the broken leg in order to survive to get to help later. Whereas the first person felt the pain because they had help to deal with it right then.
• 14:48
  She also references in this article our friend Peter Barish who wrote about neglect as a kind of passive abuse, and I think that's something that we should come back to and talk about another time. But she says, quote, If a child processed the betrayal in a normal way, he or she would be motivated to stop interacting with the betrayer. Instead, he or she essentially needs to ignore the betrayal. If the betrayer is a primary caregiver, it is especially essential that the child does not stop behaving in such a way that will inspire attachment. For the child to withdraw from a caregiver on which he or she is dependent would further threaten the child's life both physically and mentally.
• 15:38
  The trauma of child abuse by its very nature requires that information about the abuse be blocked from mental mechanisms that control attachment and attachment behavior. So this is the problem with betrayal trauma, or relational trauma. It's that that caregiver is putting you in danger. But when you are a child or without resources, then it would put you in more danger to get away or you're unable to get away. And so because of that, for survival, you have to stay and you have to endure so much.
• 16:24
  And because of that, your brain turns off the pain of what you're going through because you can't leave it right now. Understanding this came in two layers for me. One was the past about when I was a child, and the other had to do with bad relationships as a young adult while I was still learning how to choose safe and good people because I didn't know how. But then I also realized that is what has made the last year so difficult. Because when we found the therapist and worked for these years with the therapist so intensely and so intently, that became our entire safe world.
• 17:16
  She is what made now time safe. And so what I've only just now realized almost a year since we had to leave her is that even though she did nothing wrong and even though we love and adore her, what it felt like when we left is that we did this. What it talks about our putting our survival at risk because we did not know that outside of her we could still be safe. And I think all of this pain and suffering that we have had for the last year in grieving her, that I thought was grieving her, was not actually about her. But it took me an entire year to figure it out.
• 18:10
  It was so distressing to us and so painful to us and so disruptive to us that we almost lost ourselves. The bricks that we put up and the walls that we put up to try to coordinate who we are as a united front because it was no longer safe to be ourselves was our fear that we had put ourselves in danger by leaving her. And the husband kept saying that this is the first time you have transitioned out of a relationship, and it wasn't a betrayal. And he kept saying that even on the podcast, he said that several times. And every time he said it, what I thought I heard him say was that she did nothing wrong and we did nothing wrong.
• 19:02
  And I understood that cognitively. But I only just now, a year later, realized in talking to our friend who's just been on the podcast, also realizing that we did not betray ourselves. I don't know why this was such a big thing and so difficult to work through and why it took so long, but we actually made the right decision for us. Period. It wasn't about her or taking care of her or protecting her.
• 19:34
  It wasn't about our friends. It wasn't even about our family. It was the right decision for us. And I think some of what our fear was or maybe even anger sometimes and the distress of it was not about her but about us from cutting ourselves off from the help that we finally received. But what I understand now is that that's not what was happening.
• 20:08
  We were actually doing what we needed to do that we knew was the right thing because it was the right thing. In looking at all of the variables and all of the reasons and all of the pros and cons, doing what we did a year ago by leaving the therapist as the therapist was the right thing because it was the right thing period. And I think part of me in a way that I did not understand, even when she made it very clear on the podcast, part of me was angry about putting that at risk even though that part of me would not necessarily engage in therapy anyway. But now time was so safe with her, with that therapist, that losing her felt like also losing NTIS. But that's not true because I'm not a child anymore.
• 21:12
  So whether there is a betrayal wound or not, I am an adult, and I can take care of myself in good and healthy ways. And for me right now, that means staying in therapy. But a year ago, it also meant letting go of that therapy. Because I'm not a little girl anymore, which she taught me three years ago, but I'm only just learning what it means. So the trigger was the leaving.
• 21:47
  In the past, leaving was dangerous. And so part of me thought that leaving was the scariest thing that we could have done, and that was hard. But another part of me thought leaving was the most protective thing that we could do for everyone, protecting everyone. And it turns out both of them were right, and it's okay to honor both things. It did hurt to leave.
• 22:18
  It was hard to leave, but it was also safe and protective and the right thing. And a big change feels terrifying. Letting go is hard, and the grief for what was is real. But also, it's not the end of the world. And also, now time is still safe.
• 22:47
  But the reason it's still safe is just because I'm me, and because I'm an adult, and because I know how to handle problems, and I can tolerate big feelings. And all of these things are true, not just trite affirmations. This article says that you can feel two things at once because of mental modules. So it says, as an example, quote, if you are hungry and come upon some food perched on a precipice, information processing modules that compute strategies for acquiring food may produce strong signals to move toward the food. But at the same time, information processing modules that compute strategies for locomoting and moving in a secure manner may produce strong signals to avoid the precipice.
• 23:46
  This situation has the potential for an approach avoidance dilemma, end quote. I think that's what happens to a lot of us when we feel different parts of ourselves needing different things or wanting different things or telling us different things or feeling different things. The conflict is that one is needing one thing and one is needing another thing. Just like with these modules, the way our brains work, one process may tell us to do one thing, but another process tells us to do another thing. And yet, the answer is actually in navigating both pieces of information.
• 24:32
  We can't leave anyone out. We can't neglect any part. We have to listen to everybody and weigh what it all means together. That's the only way forward. So at the end of the article, it lays it all out again that first of all, it's not our survival advantage to go back to those who have betrayed us for further interaction.
• 24:59
  So when we're children, our brains know it's not safe for us to be there, but we also can't get away. That's why we dissociate from what the danger is only so that we can endure staying. But that's also why once we're adults and can take care of ourselves and move ourselves into safe situations, we can't go back. We have to stop going back to our perpetrators. When we are betrayed or when someone is not safe or responsive or nurturing for us, it's okay to stop trying to get their attention.
• 25:44
  It's okay to stop going back. It's okay to let them go. That part of you trying to protect you from that is trying to keep you safe, and they're right. But it's not a generalized thing when there are safe people, when there are people who initiate and care and respond in safe and healthy ways. Those people are worth connecting to and with, and you've got to do that work.
• 26:22
  Be brave. Keep trying. Second, if the person who has betrayed us is someone we need to continue interacting with despite the betrayal, then it is not to our advantage to respond to the betrayal in a normal way. So this goes back to what happened with the two people on the mountain skiing. The normal thing would be to not move and to get help without having to move your leg so that it wouldn't hurt because it hurts so much.
• 26:59
  But when your life depends on getting out yourself, you have to ignore the pain of getting out to survive. And those of us who had to grow up surviving had to ignore the pain, had to dissociate in order to survive so that we could get out safely. But now that we are out, and once we are safe, we need to find a good therapist and do the work of healing, and that includes looking at the pain that really has been there all along. Number three, different parts of the brain work in different ways and store different parts of the memory. So it's not even about covering up or pushing down or ignoring.
• 27:55
  It's not this old school repression. It's this failure to associate because it's too painful to connect them if we're going to survive. But my friends, we have already survived, and it's time to do that work of associating. That's number four. Not associating when we're still trying to survive, that's what they call adaptive.
• 28:28
  But once we have survived, it's maladaptive to stay disassociated, meaning looking at the pain and the hard things we've got to do the work to associate to be healthy. I'm not talking about plurality or culture. I'm talking about trauma. We have to connect, this smell goes with this memory, and this is what happened, and this is how I felt about it, and this is what I wanna look at now. That's associating, putting those pieces together.
• 29:04
  Because if we don't, that's number five. All of that not associated memory and different kinds of memories, which we'll talk about later another time. It's just unprocessed information and leaving disassociated or unprocessed information in our brains, that's what causes flashbacks. And remember, flashbacks aren't just memories or smells or body memories. Sometimes they're feelings too.
• 29:41
  You can have a flashback that is only emotion and have no idea why you're experiencing those big feelings or what they're connected to because it is disassociated. But the article says talking about it, whether that's on a podcast or in therapy or with a friend, having attunement and experiencing someone who can help you through it and be present with you in it and support you as you do that very hard work internally, that changes how the brain processes, and it changes how these trauma pieces are stored, how they are associated. And having someone to connect with as you do the work, it brings some of the healing from where the betrayal never should have happened in the first place, which is why our relationships with therapists or safe friends can be so strong and so powerful and so healing. So far, being more in phase two of therapy has mostly been unpleasant. I've not liked it much.
• 31:00
  It's ugly, dirty, mucky work, like pulling weeds in the rain. But you know what? When your tears are like a storm and the ground is wet and soaked with them, the weeds come up more easily. And then on the other side of things, when the sun comes out, the garden of roses that are left are really beautiful. They still have thorns.
• 31:37
  You can't always get too close, and you still have to be careful when you try to pick them. But to stand back and look at the timeline and say, this is mine. I know my own story. I can tell you what happened and how I felt about it because this is me. This is who I am.
• 32:02
  This is what I went through and who I became because of it and despite it. And this is my story that I want to share, that I want to tell because they're not my secrets, and I don't have to hold it inside anymore and because it's not my whole world anymore. My world now is my own family that I've created on my own, where we are safe and have enough. And even in a pandemic, I was able to protect them and get what they needed and keep them safe and make choices that were the best for our family specifically. And I've done it well, And I'm proud of it.
• 33:06
  I'm proud of surviving.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: 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.