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Back to Therapy · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over:
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: 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 long time 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.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, guys. This is it. We are at the new therapist office, not like in there talking really loudly on a podcast, but I mean in the parking lot where we always hang out. So if you find us, we're the weirdo talking on the phone trying to podcast from the car. It is crazy.
• 1:23
  Here's what's really, really funny is we have spent all of this time driving four hours to therapy for all this time since we moved to Kansas City, And it turns out this place with this new therapist that we worked so hard to find and connect with and have decided that maybe it will work is actually just down the street from us. How classic is that? It's crazy. I mean well, let me explain. First of all, we're like a country girl.
• 2:00
  Like, we grew up in rural Oklahoma where, like, everything is just spread out. Okay? So, like, highways and curvy roads, and it's just cozy for a good drive. Like, it's beautiful, and we love it. And now we have to live in the city because of the kids, And everything is their fault and we're gonna blame them and resent them.
• 2:21
  Not really that's bad, you guys. We must not. Consciously and intentionally, we must not. So here's what's different is we have to be close to Children's Mercy for our youngest daughter because like her life depends on it, right? So we have to be in the city or at least with the ambulance service in the city or close enough.
• 2:43
  But they have an extension office with helicopter service, which she's on the helicopters all the time anyway. In one of the towns just outside, like, what do you call that? Does that count as a suburb? I don't know. Oh my goodness.
• 2:57
  We live in the suburbs. That's so bad. And we drive a van. Oh, you guys, you don't understand what has happened to our life. Okay.
• 3:13
  Folks, so so we live on the outskirts of the city, but close enough we can get her to the hospital. But we've managed to find when we moved here, not only a house big enough for our giant family but still cheap enough that we can afford it, mostly. That or food? Big families. It's hard, you guys.
• 3:43
  I know you know what I'm talking about. Okay. So we managed to find, like, as close to the country as we could get. And in fact, in the beginning, it felt a little more like country, but they've built up some around it since then because, you know, how everything gets spread out and taken over. If okay.
• 4:02
  So I don't have land. We sold our land. We built a house once. Have we ever told you about that? We built our own house and we had rental properties and we had to sell it all to pay for our daughter to stay alive.
• 4:12
  But that was the right thing because that's what parents do. You step up when you have kids and you take care of them. Right? Okay. It's not like we're worked up for therapy or anything.
• 4:23
  Oh my goodness. What I'm trying to say is we managed to find this tiny little neighborhood where the school is literally just around the corner so we can walk there. And the grocery store is like on the other corner, so if it weren't on a main street, could walk there. But we I was gonna say we drive there, but that's also not true. We have our groceries delivered because that's what you can do when you go to this city.
• 4:47
  It enforces, reinforces, enables something. Your agoraphobia. You don't actually have to leave the house. So we don't drive to the grocery store, but it's right there if we needed to. And then the pharmacy's on the opposite corner.
• 5:04
  So it's like this tiny little square of literally like, there's even a nature park where we can go on our walks and even take the kids sometimes. Not just the local parks, there's that too. There's Kansas City is known for its parks by the way. They build tons of child friendly spaces and developmentally. So there are like toddler specific parks and elementary school kids specific parks and teenager specific parks.
• 5:34
  It's really, really fascinating. But anyway, they're like actual nature areas as well that is right by our house. And so we can within like a two square mile radius live a safe and happy agoraphobic life. And here's what's funny. Don't laugh at me, but I didn't know this.
• 5:59
  Like, you know how Kansas City, if you know well, if you live in The United States, if you live outside The United States, I don't know if you know this, but if you live in The United States and you're intelligent, please people, come on, use your brains. What is wrong with you Americans? Step up and wake up. Okay. Different topic.
• 6:17
  Here's what I'm trying to say. If you know geography, then Kansas City is right on the border between Kansas and Missouri. In fact, it's half and half. So if you live here and you, like, follow the news online, they talk about KCK, which means Kansas City, Kansas, and KCMO, KCMO, Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo. Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo.
• 6:42
  My goodness. My brain. Who is seeing I know who's seeing that. Stop. Stop.
• 6:47
  Okay. So they talk about KCMO for Missouri. So, like, there's the Missouri side and there's the Kansas side, but it's all just one city that overlaps both and the river and all this. Right? So here's what I didn't know.
• 7:01
  Our cute little area where we can pretend we live in a small town and we don't actually live in Kansas City even though we do. What I didn't know is if you go more than a mile down the street, because we've lived here for two years and we never have, We've never driven that far. Guess what? If you go past the railroad tracks, they're just a mile from our house. You're actually in Missouri.
• 7:36
  I didn't know we were that close to the border. I didn't know we were right oh my goodness. So we I'm sorry, I'm just laughing. So here's the thing, I didn't know that you could just keep driving down that street and there was Missouri just like that out of nowhere, which is pretty much how Missouri happens. Go Missouri.
• 8:02
  But, here's the thing, this new counseling office is literally just down the street from us, like there's a corner because you have to turn into their driveway, and you know, our neighborhood you have to get out of. But, it's really just down the street. It's it's not even that far. It's just down the street, but because it's Kansas City, all 10 of those miles are like stoplights every block. So we're like let me look it on the map because I wanna get it right.
• 8:36
  Okay. It says eight miles. We're literally eight miles from home pretty much. But because of the stoplights, It takes forty five minutes to get there. So I thought, oh, we can go ten minutes, and it's fine.
• 8:56
  I mean, we only have to go, like, 10 miles. Right? So I can leave ten minutes away, and it's fine because I'm from Oklahoma, and that's how it works in Oklahoma. Not so much in Kansas City. Every stoplight was, like, ten minutes.
• 9:15
  But it's okay because I don't actually know how to tell time. I just leave when my phone tells me to. So I follow directions on my phone because Siri is smarter than I am. And here's what it turns out that you can find out. If you don't actually know if your appointment is at 08:00 or 09:00 or 10:00 or 11:00 and you're not sure if it's on the half hour or the actual hour and you're not sure if someone put it in wrong or if they just put it early so that you wouldn't be late because some people do that.
• 9:54
  And also you're not sure what time it actually is because your phone says something and your car says something and your watch says something else. You guys, I don't know how this whole time thing is supposed to get better Because we can't I don't know how we're supposed to make time work when it the machines can't even get it right. What are you supposed to believe? The car or your watch or the phone? I don't know.
• 10:25
  So what you do is you just get there super early, and then you message the therapist, and you're like, I'm here. Let me know when it's my turn, and I will come inside. Okay. Oh, seriously. So we have made it on time, and we're here, and we're gonna go in maybe.
• 10:48
  Maybe. But here's the other trick that we didn't know. To actually get to the new therapist's office, we go on the road, which I didn't even know we lived on, so now that's a whole new trigger, but we're dealing, we're dealing, we're dealing. Everything is okay in TIS. We live on the actual road that would literally take us to our father's house, like literally, and would now be the main road we would take to get to the brother's house even though there would be another road to take as well.
• 11:26
  And so that's kind of trippy and so we're dealing with that. But here's the thing. Like if we're really ready to do therapy, then we're just gonna take that as metaphor for life. Instead of freaking out about it, we're gonna take it as a metaphor because that's exactly what we're doing. We are ready to tackle these hard things, which means we can drive down the scary road, but also drive home again.
• 11:50
  So this is the same thing. We have to trust this new lady that she maybe knows what she's doing and can put up with us. Oh, sorry, new lady. And that she can help us deal with what we need to deal with, but also get out of it and back home again safely, right? That we can stay in the present, we can enjoy the present, we can keep our friends and the husband and even the therapist and the new lady and our colleagues that we're starting to have friends with.
• 12:19
  Colleagues, that sounds so fancy. I'm scared to death. I'm scared to death. You guys, you guys, do you know what's happened? We haven't even got to talk about this on the podcast yet.
• 12:29
  Well, by the time you hear this, maybe you already know. I don't know. But we got an email that we won an award from the ISSTD, I am assuming for the podcast because I don't think we've contributed anything else to the world. So I don't know. But it means we have to go to San Francisco in March and accept this award, and they're going to take our picture.
• 12:54
  And I was like, okay. Let me just clarify. And I did clarify. That's how brave we were. I did clarify that we don't have to give any kind of thank you speech.
• 13:03
  And I just wanted to know upfront if that was happening or not because it's not happening. But taking our picture is also not happening. So I sent a message back and I was like, that's optional. Right? Like, I cannot consent to that.
• 13:16
  Can you not take my picture, please? Because we actually have issues with that. But we did have to submit a picture, which for us is a big deal. And I know that we're trying the experiment of having the System Speak Facebook page, and I so am excited wait. That was not English.
• 13:33
  You say it the other way in English. I am so excited. There we go. I'm so excited that people are liking the page and following it and having conversations there. It's really, really fantastic.
• 13:45
  The reason we don't post our pictures still there is not because we're afraid to take our picture. The therapist worked hard on that. Well, she worked hard on us too. But I mean we worked hard on that and we have been taking our picture with our friend and we're trying. But what we know is that if we post our picture on the system speak page, then because of facial recognition, stuff that Facebook uses, that it will recommend the page to other people who know us.
• 14:20
  And we're not ready to share that with everybody. We're ready with sharing it with you guys, but we still need to be careful of our online presence a little bit. Sharing our picture and starting to be a little more direct and careful with it, we are willing to do that, but I'm not but we're not really to just put it all out on Facebook because you it's Facebook, and it just like, on the one hand, it really helps us be connected. On the other hand, it's some really creepy technology. And so we're just being careful with that.
• 14:51
  But anyway, we had to submit a picture, we did that, that was a big deal for us, huge deal. But I'm not sure we're ready to go up in front of crowd and have our picture snapped with bright flashing bulbs. So I don't know how that's gonna happen or what's gonna happen there and it's terrifying. We have to go and these people like no DID. Like when we're talking about covert and overt, you guys, we have got to get, like, all the doctor e juice we can and just not be weird when we go.
• 15:25
  And because of that, everyone will know who we are. We can't even hide like we did at Healing Together because when we went to that conference, we were able to just lay low and go when we could try and hide when we couldn't try when it was too much. And this we will not be able to. We're gonna have to have our act together for that. I don't know if we're ready.
• 15:48
  I really don't wanna be the weird person there. I really don't want to be like, pitied or any attention. Like, I just wanna go and learn things and come home. Maybe if there's some good food at some point. I don't know.
• 16:09
  This is an awards dinner we have to go to, like, in work clothes. There's not gonna be any eating happening. I can tell you that. Because the only one who would eat still would be Jean Marc, and Jean Marc does not need to be accepting any warts. Oh, please do not be crazy.
• 16:31
  Those of you who pray or think good thoughts, I'm seriously asking you to remember us in March when we have to go to San Francisco because oh, it is not gonna be oh, it is not gonna be a falling apart drama show. It just cannot be. Okay. So that will be another podcast. We'll have to get ready for that.
• 16:55
  But this morning what we're trying to get ready for is therapy, jumping back into therapy. And that is terrifying. Terrifying. But I talked to the therapist about it. We collectively sent her a message because we had done some journaling that actually became a bit of a breakthrough, and I'm gonna share some of it with you.
• 17:16
  Not all of it is appropriate for the podcast, but I wanna share some of it because it was so huge for us and really helped us at least have the illusion of feeling prepared to do this today, and it's the only way we were able to get courage to come. So here goes. So this, I'm actually gonna just read from the notebook. We wrote this okay. Oh, you guys know.
• 17:43
  Do you know the podcast just a couple weeks ago where we completely lost it and we're a blubbering idiot? Oh my goodness. So embarrassing. Except it's real and that's how hard it is. Right?
• 17:59
  Which is why we voted to go ahead and leave it in even though it's beyond vulnerable. Like, it's just it's so embarrassing. I don't know why they're even gonna let us in the conference. I think it's for functioning people. I don't know.
• 18:15
  Oh my goodness. How are we gonna do that? Okay. Focus. So this happened the day after that.
• 18:22
  And in fact, here's what's crazy about that. That day when we talked about how we reached out to our friends, we ended up messaging the therapist, we ended up messaging our friends, and we even contacted our friend Peter Barish, who is a therapist, he's not our therapist, but he gets DID, obviously he wrote treatment guidelines, except he'll say, I didn't write the treatment guidelines. I was helping on the committee. We know what you did. You're awesome, so you're gonna have to get over it, Peter.
• 18:50
  You're just cool. Anyway, anyway, I even messaged him because he has been a very good friend and one of my favorite things of 02/2019. You guys, 02/2019, years are just hard. We've had so many hard years in a row. I can't even tell you.
• 19:08
  But 2,019, even though it was really hard in lots of ways, it was also amazing in lots of ways. And the friends we came out of 2019 with is maybe the best of any year that we've ever had. Like, it's the first time that I'm like, I'm really glad we had this year because it was awesome. So Peter Barish is one of the awesome things of 2019 and we love and adore him. He's a good friend and very safe and very kind to us and we that we get to give him a shout out on the podcast, I guess.
• 19:42
  But anyway, the reason I'm telling you this is because we he's one of the people we messaged when we messaged our friends. And one of the things he said that was actually very encouraging, and I don't have permission to disclose this except I think it's okay, and I think he would be okay with it. So my apologies, Peter, for not asking first. But one of the things he told us is to remember that there are good days that come after hard days. And that's a paraphrase.
• 20:07
  Paraphrase but it really caught our attention because sometimes when you're doing memory work or memory time where you have a flashback or really triggered it's hard to find now time again because memory time is so real and now time is safe when you're actually safe. But sometimes now time isn't safe like when we were kidnapped in Africa with our daughter. That was a problem. Or those of you who still live in scary situations or don't have all of your needs met. That's really hard and you can't talk yourself into feeling like now time is safe when it's not yet.
• 20:46
  Which is why safety is so important and has to come first. And now time is safe also doesn't work when you don't know how to find your way out or don't have support to help you find your way out. So for us being like between monkey bars, between like swinging between the new therapist and the therapist and trying to get established but waiting for that first appointment even to get started, those were scary months. And so because we didn't know we cannot contact the therapist because we're not her problem anymore and she doesn't have to deal with us. We can't contact the new therapist because we're not her problem yet.
• 21:32
  And so it feels very scary to be on your own again and not knowing if you're strong enough to get through. Now that doesn't mean we have the excuse or permission to just give up because what we learned is that we are strong enough because we did get through it. Right? Even though it was hard and scary. And that's what Peter was reminding us of is that even on hard days, there are good days that come after.
• 22:00
  So sometimes when you're having a really really hard day, one of the things you can just hold on to is knowing that other days are going to be better and other days are going to be easier. And we see this even with our outside kids. Some of the hardest days we have with them are when they are wrestling with like some developmental task that is really really challenging them. But when they wrestle with it, there's like this breakthrough where everything settles into place or clicks into place and then all of a sudden they're like this older big kid that we've never seen before and getting to know them all over again. You guys, I think the same thing happens with us because if this is developmental trauma, meaning as you grew up, right?
• 22:44
  Then we're going to have similar experiences as we work through trauma and as we try to get help and as we work through hard things that developmentally as we're growing up so to speak, either figuratively or literally with some alters or just progressing through therapy or progressing in life. We're gonna have these moments where the darkest moments and the hardest moments are not actually there to break us, they're there to teach us and to help us get through to the other side where things are better because we already have muscles to deal with that. And so what Peter shared with me was really significant and I really appreciated that he did that. And that, along with our other friends who responded, helped us hold on and feel connected enough just to get through the night and make it to the next day. And you know what happened the next day?
• 23:39
  Total breakthrough. It was huge for us and that's what I'm gonna read to you. So we wrote this the day after we did that falling apart podcast. I don't even know what we named it. But that last time we were big old crybaby in front of everybody, the next day we had a huge breakthrough because we stayed with it and we sat through it and we endured it.
• 24:04
  And it was like we woke up the next morning with just brilliance and insight and all these pieces clicking into place. And so for us it's huge because it's actually like we're recognizing this structure starting to form that even though we don't have it all fleshed out and even though we don't have all the pieces in place, it's like we have the picture on the box and it's like we know what the pieces are or like having an outline of what we need to work on even though we don't have the work finished, it's not like we're done but we know what's there which is huge progress and it counts. The therapist says it counts. She keeps telling me that because I don't know what counts because I'm not sure we're doing anything except then I can feel it and we have moments like this. So let me read to you what we said.
• 24:53
  Today is a better day. I am learning slowly that if I face the hard days, then I am much better the day after when I've gotten through a set of bad ones. But I have also learned I cannot do it alone. So when it was so very extra bad yesterday, I worked hard to find words to send you. And then we also talked about texting our friends.
• 25:14
  And I think that we even sent a poem to the new therapist, which maybe isn't kosher, but she didn't hate on us for it. So I didn't mean for that to be a test of compassion, but she certainly showed evidence of compassion. And it really helped us get through the next day. Like, we didn't need lots of attention. We just had needed a place to puke.
• 25:37
  Oh, we're like the drunk friend. Oh, okay. So just for the sake of honesty and trying, because we know it'll be hard to have words even when we get to therapy. Like I'm talking a mile a minute now not because I'm manic. There's just so much to get out while I have the chance.
• 25:57
  With six kids you don't always have forty five minutes to say anything you want. So when I have the chance, it's gonna come out all at once. But I can guarantee we're gonna get into therapy, and it's gonna be like crickets. Not on purpose. I don't know if that's dissociating or something else.
• 26:15
  Someone who's clinical listening can tell me what the word for that is. There's gonna be nothing coming out when we get there. No matter how hard we try, no matter we how much we want something to come out, we got nothing. Oh my goodness. Okay.
• 26:34
  So we wrote, so I breathe through the night and today is better because we reached out in the dark and found hands to hold until the sun came out again. I need to remember this. This morning we woke at four and knew it was better. Work was done by 09:30 and hours gone that we don't mind missing, but she leaves me to wake again and always quiet because of the snow and because my ears come off. Oh, that's funny she wrote that because, again, we sleep with our cochlear implants are off charging or changing the batteries.
• 27:07
  So we it's like a float pod or a pool or whatever they're called. It's like floating every night. It's amazing. You know, for nightmares and stuff. Okay.
• 27:26
  Okay. So she wrote, but waking up and knowing it was better, that I felt better, was because of an absence of something, someone, and I realized something, remembered it, figured it out, something big. You guys this really is so big. It was so huge for us all of this. That if Emily is me now, all of me collectively then Emily the wife, is not me.
• 27:52
  And if she is good and sweet but anxious also, that is not the same as me. And if it is not the same as me, then the terror one who brings the shadows is not her, which means she is they, two of them where I thought there was one. What? Okay, guys. Turn the page.
• 28:20
  So I know. Right? Okay. It's getting better. It gets better even.
• 28:25
  Shut the front door. Here we go. Oh, no. Wait. Therapy.
• 28:28
  We have to open the door. Okay. She wrote, so Emily is a collective, like parts of a machine, like calling a computer Windows or MacBook, like the cockpit of a plane or the dashboard of a car or a program platform. Not yet, not someone, but a structure being built so we can function, become sentient, become someone, someone we are not yet. A way to be in the world from inside our own.
• 28:55
  When we share this body like a TARDIS, because the kids are watching Doctor Who right now. Sorry we keep having Doctor Who references. When we share this body like a TARDIS that's bigger on the inside, we are just a time machine and Emily takes us places but we decide when we are. So also they're saying our biological name and I'm telling you our biological name because it's already getting doxed anyway. But again, the whole point of using pseudonym on the podcast was because we still have two abusers that are still alive and we would rather it just not be so searchable.
• 29:34
  So it's not that it's a secret. There's nothing secret or untrue about anything we shared. There are loops and confusions and timeline blurs because DID, but it's all there and it's all true and now they're sharing that our biological well, no, not even biological because we were adopted but our legal name is Emily. That feels good just to say out loud just so you know. But also that's part of our coming out process and we've already shared that with both the Blue Knot Foundation and the ISSTD and so it is public knowledge.
• 30:13
  So all the people who are trying to dox us, all they're doing is putting our name more and more online connected with the podcast which just makes it more and more searchable for our users to find. And they are computer IT people by the way who have the Google search alert or whatever set up so that when something is in our name then it shows up for them. So it's only a matter of time until they find it. So thanks guys for participating and helping us get caught. Wish granted.
• 30:45
  Hope you enjoy yourselves and your afterlife. No. That's a terrible thing. See? A little anger.
• 30:50
  We need some therapy. I don't know how to do it safely, but it's too important to stop. And we talked with the husband about it, and he said that if they have a problem with it, meaning our abusers, if they find out and have a problem with it, then nothing we have said has been untrue or accusatory and we have not shared details of any abuse. That's not what this podcast is about anyway. And so if they have a problem with the podcast then it's their problem.
• 31:23
  And so we're going with the same plan that the therapist taught us that it's not our secrets. So it's kind of a huge deal for us and a big step forward but terrifying and possibly legitimately risky to our family or to ourselves and so we continue to ask you all and the universe for respect and safety but we also just know that part of mortality is that not everyone makes good choices and some people hurt other people and that's really sad. But we know that often people act out like that and even targeting us because they're hurt and struggling and so that's their stuff and they can work through that on their own and we're just gonna stay out of it. So all of that to say that even though the actual award will say system speak on it because we asked them to put that on there we are accepting it according to our legal name and that the article the ISSTD is publishing about the podcast also includes our legal name so we are doing that because we want it to be our choice and not just stolen from us. That's true of anyone who's being outed or coming out in any kind of form whether that's LGBTQ friends or whether that is coming out plural it should be the person's process not something done to them or that experience violated or taken from someone.
• 32:55
  So just please respect the other plurals around you and other people with trauma. It's their story and it's their space and timing for what they want to share, when they want to share it. And safety really matters both internally and externally. And messing with that stuff is just really really a dangerous thing for people to do to other people and we don't need more cruelty in the world. If there were not cruelty in the world none of us would be struggling with the things that we are.
• 33:27
  What the world needs is kindness and support and love for each other and that's part of what we do want to focus the podcast on so moving on but just sharing that we are saying our legal name in this thing that we wrote but here's why it matters. Let me go back to what she wrote. So then if the Emily that I thought was one, the wife, is really two then who are they? Emma Lee. I figured it out.
• 33:57
  Emma before the podcast came from books and then something else referenced that the therapist knows about with the three of them like we talked about on the podcast before Emma Z, Emma T, and Emma C. Just one Emma now. So there were three. Those all have to do with adoptions by the way. I don't know if we've talked about that on the podcast and I don't want to talk about it today but that's where that comes from.
• 34:25
  We can talk about it another time maybe. But she wrote, I remembered the Emma story which I can tell another time and how the three became one like a trinity to be married in a church of temples and temples of good in white robes instead of black where nonmembers couldn't go, so the parents couldn't go to the wedding. And then I realized for the first time, that's why I converted to this church. So let me interrupt again for another aside. We've not said the name of the church.
• 34:54
  Most of you have figured it out, and that's fine. But the reason we don't say the name is because it's really triggering for other people. But for the same reasons we are. It's not necessarily churches that are bad, although organized abuse is bad. Okay.
• 35:08
  But abuse can happen in any organization and we have a very strong faith and respect people who don't have faith for all kinds of reasons. But what's important to us from our experience and our faith journey, which has been very difficult for us to work through and work towards and work in, is that whatever version of God you have should not be blamed for things that people do. So whatever your version of God or church experience is or isn't like all respect to you and what your issues are and your preferences are, that's totally fine. But it's not okay to blame God for what people did. And so and in our system, which is our personal faith system, I don't mean the church we go to, there are all kinds of terrible things that people in church did.
• 36:07
  We grew up in a Baptist church actually, and that's where our abuse happened. But that doesn't make all Baptists bad. And it's not the Baptist church fault for what happened to us. In the same way that the church we go to now, it's not their fault that some people did really terrible things in the name of God or in the name of that church. And so we don't talk about it a lot because we know it's a super triggering topic and that for many reasons some people don't want to talk about it at all.
• 36:37
  But abuse in a religious context is absolutely one of the most violating experiences there is no matter what your current preferences are. And anyone who used oppression or bullying or actual abuse, those things are abuse by the way, but none of that is a God. And none of that teaches who God is. So it makes sense that so many people would have such strong feelings about a God they don't believe in when people have so poorly represented God. And it makes sense that God would be a difficult topic or difficult issue for so many people when so many people who are supposed to be representing God in some form or another have so badly hurt people.
• 37:34
  But here's the thing, that's not who God is. In the same way as memory time is not now time. And so those of you who have been brave enough to listen to this podcast that's all over the place, even if you don't have a faith right now or have chosen to just be agnostic because you don't know or actually atheist because you think there's not a God or you have some other faith system in the world and there's all kinds of faith systems. It's one of our favorite things about being a chaplain. We get to work with people of no faith.
• 38:08
  We get to work with people of who are Muslim and Hindu and all kinds of faith, native faiths, all kinds of faiths all over the world we've gotten to work with and it's amazing, amazing. I'm not just talking about Christianity or one kind of faith. Even if your faith was in youth leaders in civic organizations like Boy Scouts or whatever like at school. Like whatever it is, one thing we have to remember is that the monsters who did terrible things to people, whether that was physically or verbally or emotionally or even just parents. Hello.
• 38:49
  We all had parents at some point and whether they were good ones or whether they were ones who tried their best but made normal parent mistakes or whether they were terrible ones or whether they were just pure evil, which would indicate an opposite, which would indicate some version of God in the universe in some way. Like those things about misattunement or about shame or neglect. Even if it was emotional like you can't judge that that was not as hard or that that was not trauma just because it doesn't look like something in the news like what Ginny Haynes talked about in her court case. It doesn't have to compare. You can't compare.
• 39:29
  It's apples and oranges. You can't compare your process to someone else's content. That's why social media can be so dangerous. Just be you and in the truth of your experience, but also keeping it true to that experience. Meaning if it was my parents or my grandparents or my whoever in school or in church or whoever abused me, whoever my abusers are, they are the ones who did it.
• 39:58
  Not all teachers are bad. Not all youth ministers are bad. Not all preachers are bad. Not all rabbis are bad. Not all imams are bad.
• 40:06
  Not all therapists are bad. We've been seriously hurt by people who were in some of those categories but that doesn't make everyone else in that category bad. Right? That goes back to what we learned about with integration as part of development. So I'm not saying you have to believe the same thing we believe or the same way we believe.
• 40:29
  I'm not saying that I totally respect all the different preferences and the different truths that are out there and we can all learn from each other. Absolutely. But what I am saying is when we're talking about abuse, don't reject an entire category because one person in that category hurt you. Because that's not fair to you or the rest of the world or whatever spirituality is a part of you that's still wounded. And you when you reject it entirely then it's left there to fester, sociated just like any other part of ourselves whether it's a little or a protector or the one who went to school or the one who's crazy with friends.
• 41:10
  Right? So I'm just saying that you have to respect all of you who you are including that part that is your mind or your spirit or however you wanna define it as separate but including and part of that your body and physical presence. Okay. But going back to what she wrote, let me read this part again. And I thought that's I joined this church, to get away, to be safe in those walls, to be protected from the parents, in a place of rituals, to divorce me from the devil, and seal me to God, to save my own soul eternally.
• 41:46
  You guys, this is so huge. I can't tell you how big it is. Some of you will understand what I'm saying and how significant this is and the layers of truth that there are. Like the truth bombs we just dropped on ourselves are so, so big. And so they kept writing.
• 42:02
  So Emma is the wife called Emily, good so that the spell isn't broken, quiet so that they don't find us, white as the snow outside because nothing else would wash off the blood. And then it gets into some intense stuff I'm going to skip. But then realizing Emma and Lee, Emma Lee, Emma trying to leave Lee behind, a child of the devil hunted in Taylor's circles where she has as many inside as we do. As black as Emma is white, Taylor's circle. So then I asked, who is Lee?
• 42:37
  Always there, but not someone new, but hidden from view. Who is it that brings the shadows? What secrets of terror places is he keeping at bay? Oh, it's a he. Keeping, keeping, keeping, keeper, keeper of secrets, that Lee.
• 42:53
  Keeper of words, keeper of shame, keeper of pain. Keeper of the cockpit, that Lee, trying to fly this machine, trying to keep doors locked and drawers closed and everything filed away. So that's the horror of this nightmare that we collectively are both, the good and the shame, the Emma and the Lee, and all of us are locked in here together like the hunger games with the world watching, listening, laughing, looking away. But that was memory time. So a world in a world has to learn.
• 43:24
  NTIS means help comes, hope comes for all of us, but only when an alliance is made with you, the husband, with Jamie, maybe our friends, the family therapist, the new therapist, even colleagues. The ISSTD wants to take our picture, you know. They don't know the rules, and Cassie doesn't do conferences. And all of you are parachutes, rescue teams, safety straps. Love.
• 43:56
  So what I learned today was that NTIS means we are not alone anymore. Help has finally come. But also, we still have to fight our way out and build our own Emily. That's on us. But you promised you would be there calling from the other side.
• 44:15
  Even when we have so many boats in such a scary storm with waves so cold they sting and shadows come to battle. You will say Emily, and we will stand tall and strong, all of us warriors together. So this is big, you guys. It's really, really big. The pieces we just said out loud are things we've never said out loud before.
• 44:36
  The details of them are things we'll never talk about on the podcast because it's not the time or the place or appropriate because of the way they'll trigger people. But for us to declare this is who we are and to put those pieces into place and to realize that everyone falls into categories so to speak under that even though we differentiate ourselves it's progress it's a huge step. And so for the first time, we're going into therapy, not starting from scratch. We maybe have to start with a new relationship and trust someone new. And that's terrifying because all of us who have been in therapy and especially those of us who have had bad experiences in therapy know how badly things can go when it's not done well or they're not safe.
• 45:25
  And so it's terrifying. But we also won't get better if we don't trust someone. And we also won't get better if we don't try at all. And so sometimes maybe part of trust is just accepting accepting the choice to put it out there and accepting the choice to choose to try. And in some ways that's even harder because when it's our choice then we feel responsible when it goes wrong.
• 45:56
  But that's not true either Because therapists have the choice to do it well and the therapists have the choice to do it right and to have compassion and wisdom and love. We've just been reading Susan Peace Bennett's book again. To have wisdom and love and attachment and to do it well means them doing their part and us doing our part like a covenant in a good way, a contract that's safe and helpful for everybody. That's what working together means. And so maybe if nothing else at all practicing that on the outside with a new therapist helps us do it on the inside ourselves.
• 46:35
  So here we go. We're going in. We're gonna try. I don't know what we'll say or what we'll do or if we'll get it right or if anything will come out at all. I don't know if she'll like us or keep us.
• 46:47
  I don't know how long it will take, but just for today, an hour, we can try.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.