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Transcript

Oh Ship · 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 longtime listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I have to tell you about my therapist. My therapist, you guys, I cannot even. I am telling you, I don't even know what to tell you. So everything's going fine. Enough that we did for the first time, like, spit out a whole timeline from this happened in April with the painting to the Mother's Day goodbye with Emma's top 10 in May to spending the summer trying to get our notebooks back to the fall retreats that we went to and the last time that we saw our therapist in October 2019.
• 1:54
  And then The Middle East of saying goodbye and the fires in California, having the birthday party experience, wondering what that was gonna be or if we ruined it or what happened or if it was okay or if this meant we actually had friends now and then the pandemic happening and then losing our friends. So in the two years of losing our therapist and our friends and grieving all of that over the last three years, it has been epic. I know everyone's tired of hearing about it, but the thing is we have to deal with it in therapy finally. And we have finally made it this far and finally gotten through this story enough that we can talk about it a little bit. We've done some eye movements, which has helped tone down the big feelings enough that we can process a little bit, which is great because I know the entire planet is tired of hearing about this.
• 2:53
  Okay? So I am too in my own head. Alright? And we're talking about this in therapy because our therapist is listening to the podcast. I know.
• 3:08
  I know. So we are going through the podcast in order, processing them as we go with our therapist. She's listening. We are listening, and then we talk about it. Sometimes that takes up a whole session or five.
• 3:26
  Sometimes it's just a quick check-in about it. It kinda depends on what it brings up. But we have made it all the way to sleeping Jesus. Oh my goodness. The sleeping Jesus.
• 3:43
  So those of you who have listened to the whole entire podcast, if you remember, we went to a retreat where our therapist used this story of Jesus sleeping on the boat in the storm and taught us a metaphor that we actually have really found helpful. In fact, we still use it because it's so helpful. But the metaphor became like an actual experience internally. Like, I don't know how to explain this, but it has to do with okay. So I actually do know how to explain this because someone because I asked somebody.
• 4:25
  Those of us who have DID are basically already in a trance most of the time. Not everybody, not all the time. You know what I mean, though. Like, that is what the dissociative experience is. Right?
• 4:42
  And so there can be this thing where in conversation, people who are therapists in conversation can sort of use that to communicate, not necessarily hypnotize, but communicate ways to help. So for an example, an example of this is when our previous therapist did a really good job trying to send John Mark on rescue missions, trying to get these parts out of dark and terrible places into better safe places, or trying to make the internal world a safer place by turning on the lights, for example. Like, it's really simple, but also it's very rich. It's very experiential, and it's not actually happening in real life. It is in my head, but it feels very real.
• 5:42
  Okay? So I'm not going into all of that. And if you wanna read more detail about some of those experiences, we share them in the book, if tears were prayers. But what I'm talking about today is that metaphor about the boat in the storm trying to get the other side became a very real experience internally. Because those were the questions.
• 6:06
  We seriously meditated on them, thought about them, reflected on them, like whatever language you wanna use. And then as things got harder and harder through the pandemic season and we were in quarantine and all of this was going on, it was like we were literally in the storm. And I'm not just talking about Oklahoma tornadoes. Okay? So it was super intense because we knew we had to get to the other side.
• 6:38
  That's part of the story. Right? They're trying to get to the other side of the lake. And in real life, trying to get to the other side of the lake at that time in the story was about politics. If they got to the other side of the lake, it was someone else's jurisdiction.
• 6:55
  Right? So it is implying safety because these other people are coming after them. So if they can get to the other side, then they will be safe. So the whole deal about getting in the boat to get to the other side is about safety. And so in 2019, we literally put ourselves on this journey that was also metaphorical, which gives us literal definition number one and literal definition number two.
• 7:24
  Because everything changed inside, and there was this epic transformation. I don't even know that transformation is the right word. Like, when the ugly little worm goes in the cocoon, it's like just in its slime juice. Right? Like, I don't think it's like, hey.
• 7:44
  Vacay. Like, it's not like, let's go on vacay, and let's just gonna rest, and we're gonna be on vacation, and it's cozy. This is not about warm blankets. This is about sitting in the awfulness of discomfort. Okay?
• 8:02
  And leaving our therapist, losing our friends, being in the pandemic, how intense of an experience that was. Like, I don't even need to rehash all of it. You know what I'm talking about. And so all of this was our storm, but we were trying to get to the other side of it. Now the reason things got dicey was basically because we thought our therapist would still be there on the other side.
• 8:34
  We thought our friends would still be there on the other side. In fact, as we understood it, we thought those things were promised to us. So when that wasn't the case, it was like we were shipwrecked. Like, I'm laughing because it was so awful, not because it was actually funny, and I don't mean to mock myself or any parts, but it was a disaster. And it felt like we were drowning, except we weren't.
• 9:04
  We stay in the boat. We do all the things. We learn all the things. Like, part of the story is how do you rebuke the actual storm, not the people trying to help you. So, like, for example, in the story, Jesus rebukes the storm, not the disciples.
• 9:22
  Right? Like, that was her point in her talk. And so we're like, why are our friends doing this to us? Why is our therapist doing this to us? And it was awful and did not help friendships.
• 9:33
  And so we're learning this lesson, but all we are doing is feeling pain for the first time. And you guys, it was brutal relational pain, and nobody helped stop it, and nobody helped fix it, and nobody helped work through it. And so it was a rupture without a repair. So we are doing the best we can, but also at the same time, part of why it was so intense was because we were feeling it intentionally because that was our journey. That was our storm was to stay present and awake and aware.
• 10:14
  So this is why it became toxic for us to say, it's fine. Just let it go. Or it's fine. Just get over it. Or it's not that big of a deal.
• 10:24
  Because we were literally in the process of learning how to say, this is not okay, or this is how I feel. And we can't do those things if we are not also experiencing those things. Or if we are denying or dissociating from those experiences, then we cannot sit with them and acknowledge them. Right? So it got super tricksy.
• 10:50
  Like you could not say, I love everybody and I care about everybody, so I'm not picking sides. When issue was about pain not being acknowledged. It wasn't about sides. It was about we have to acknowledge this pain and without saying this pain hurts, these people are the ones hurting, then we're not addressing what's going on. And so it was this surreal experience where all the people that I cared about most and all of the community of the people who lived around me, all of a sudden were the ones who were dissociating, and I was the one who was awake and aware and paying attention.
• 11:37
  And you guys, it was like looking glass land. Like, everything was backwards. That was part of what was distressing because I'm the one who's used to dissociating. So, oh, you said this and it hurt me. I'm just gonna not notice it.
• 11:53
  You did this and it hurt me. I'm just going to not notice it. And so to sit with it and to say, no. This is actually hurting. And no.
• 12:04
  You promised it would be like this and it's not. Or whatever, whatever, whatever. Right? So all of those things were valid. I was learning how to stay present with it, but it was unpleasant.
• 12:17
  We shall minimize the use of the word unpleasant because it was way worse than unpleasant. Right? So we're talking about all of this with our therapist, how we got in the boat and how we tried to get to the other side, how the people were not there that we thought would be there on the other side, and how we had to learn to rebuke the storm or to call out the pain and the injury and the harm and the hurt and express our feelings instead of lashing out at everyone around us or the children or being irritable or like whatever. You can fill in all the blanks. Right?
• 13:01
  But we go through all of this, and we've been talking about it now for eight months. We've done eye movements, like, two months ago, and we've processed for two more months since then. Things are starting to feel better. Like, I'm sad. I miss these people in my life.
• 13:19
  I can't fix everything that happened, but also accepting that part of me had a point of why we had to leave. And, Like, I can't undo the entire planet's experience of trauma over the last three years, seven years. Like, I cannot fix all of that. But I can stay present with myself, talk to my therapist, and ride out the storm. And we shared this powerful experience we had when we finally went to her office for the first time and she had that piece of art on her wall.
• 14:00
  So that is like an anchor. I don't mean that in a method or tool kind of way because I'm not even sure what that means. So I know it's in that language, and I don't mean to be confusing. I mean an anchor like something to hold on to, something to be grounded by, something to look at and be like, okay. This is the past.
• 14:19
  But then also, I am impacted in the present. Right? Which is how when we're progressing in our healing, the difference between memory time and now time starts to become more nuanced. Right? Of this all happened three years ago, And I realized two years ago, it wasn't going to get better.
• 14:42
  And I realized one year ago that it wasn't going to be resolved. And I had to learn this last year how to just accept that it hurts, that it was tragic, that it was awful, that I made it messier because I don't have those kinds of skills, and that it was messy. Like, it just is. There's nothing I can do about that, but not in a helpless way, in a recognizing that all my parts that all of me has different perspectives of the valid points of it all. There were so many good things we learned through those experiences, and those experiences and those people can be good.
• 15:34
  There were also a lot of hard things, and it's okay and valid to say, these things hurt me, and I can just be aware of that and notice that and heal with it or in it or from it, however you wanna talk about it. But we're hashing this and rehashing this and going through this. And really it gets tricksy because all of these layers trigger layers from the past in other relationships. That's why it happened again. Right?
• 16:03
  Reenactment. So it's not really just about the therapist. It's also about what happened in college. And that's not just about that. That's also what happened to me as a preschooler in a religious school as a child.
• 16:16
  And it's not just about that. It's also about what was happening at home. Right? Like, are layers and layers and layers of how this keeps getting reenacted, which is why I have to sit in the storm and deal with it. Okay.
• 16:31
  So I'm processing all of this with my therapist all of this time, and then we finally make it on the podcast to the episode about sleeping Jesus. And my therapist listens to it, and I listen to it. She asks some follow-up questions. I do some journaling. She asks more follow-up questions.
• 16:55
  We're talking about this in therapy. And then my therapist is looking at me like, you know, when you can see their wheels turning and you're like, oh, no. Something is about to happen. Something is about to be said. A truth bomb is about to be dropped.
• 17:14
  She has figured out something I have not figured out. And do you know what the woman says to me? The therapist the therapist I have now in the context of sleeping Jesus says to me, why didn't the ship just sink? What? What the what?
• 17:37
  Are you kidding me? Like, out of all of I've learned how to say that from unpretending. What the what or something. I don't know. Anyway, I cannot even like, are you serious?
• 17:54
  Out of all the layers and all the questions and all the pieces that we have to address with this, her response is, why didn't the ship sink? You guys, that's not on the list of questions. That's that's not one of the choices. What what am I supposed to do with that? I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with that.
• 18:23
  So, of course, I spend, like, a week avoiding answering this question, and I know this new therapist. Well, that's not true. I don't know her at all. But I'm getting familiar with the things that she is teaching me in her season to be in my life, which is the only way I can keep thinking about it because the experience of abandonment and attached cry was brutal, and I cannot even think about it. So for now, I contain that by being aware that she's just in my life for a season.
• 18:59
  I don't know if it's a short season or a long season, but I'm trying to be comfortable with that because the rest is uncomfortable. And I know where she's going. I also don't know that. I never know where she's going, but I know but okay. This is how much it has rattled me.
• 19:25
  I know I'm barely even coherent, but this is how much it has rattled me. Because what she has taught me from the beginning is that therapy is mine. And we keep going over this because what part of what happened before is that I had so much of my safety attached to my therapist specifically that when we lost that therapist, I was not safe anymore. Our internal experience fell apart because everything was built around being connected to her. So when we could not be connected to her, everything fell apart and we were in danger.
• 20:13
  That's what happened. So our therapist now has been very careful to build our safety in ways that rely on us. So for example, our marble jar with the evidence of what is keeping things safe or not, the nuances of memory time and now time, but also how memory time invades now time or the nuances of sometimes memory time hurts and now time just because memory time was so bad, because that was so hard. And then with the safety dial of what makes this safe enough, or how can I keep myself safe, or even though this is not safe, I have adult resources and an adult body who is able to respond to danger in ways that keep me safe? Not that we can avoid all pain because pain is part of being human.
• 21:18
  But even in my own humanity, I can navigate these waters, if you will, in my boat, which is how I got to the answer of the question. Because I thought the ship did sink. I thought it shipwrecked, and it did sink because I thought therapy was my boat. And in some ways, it is. I am likely, highly likely to be a person who just needs therapy forever.
• 21:54
  Maybe not always three times a week forever, maybe not two hour sessions forever, and maybe not the same therapist forever, but I'm going to need some support. I will be healthier and a little bit more stable, let's just be honest, if I have that support. And so that's something I can just accept in a way of practicing meeting my own needs. But as soon as I do that, even then I see it's not therapy that's my boat. I am my own boat.
• 22:37
  Like the union and the dreams. Right? Like, I am the boat. This body is the boat. This body contains all the parts.
• 22:50
  All the parts are me even in this metaphor. And so why didn't I sink? I very nearly did. I very nearly did, but I didn't because I'm here now. So why didn't the ship sink?
• 23:20
  And I'm thinking about this. And I know it's about more than just deciding to live or deciding to die. Even when we finally talked about the suicide attempt, I was surprised that she wasn't just angry and she wasn't just hating on me or firing me because that had happened during that difficult time. But she said, how can I hate you for being human? She said, when we are at our most desperate crisis moments, our higher level and long term goal oriented thinking goes out the window.
• 24:12
  It becomes all about the animal drive to reduce or stop harm. And if harm can't be stopped from one end, we will stop it on the other. It isn't conscious or even a behavioral choice. It's biology. And I cried, of course.
• 24:44
  When it feels like to me the storm of all storms is others proving to me how bad I am and me working so hard to prove how hard I'm trying. I don't disagree with them that I was bad or that this was wrong or this was wrong. I have those voices, those younger parts that say, I am a filthy little girl. I am a bad, bad girl. I have family that says, still, you are bad.
• 25:27
  Those voices could not be any louder in me. And for her to respond to those tenderly reached a part of me that I'm not sure has been to therapy before. I know there are sometimes poems because writing or art or sometimes drawing can sometimes be easier to find than words. And it's hard to bring those parts to therapy when those are the parts who know we shouldn't exist at all. So how can we be at therapy if we don't exist?
• 26:28
  When not existing, the only piece of fawning that's left. So why didn't the ship sink? It's biology, she says. My brain knew how to keep me alive. To stay alive, I had to leave that therapist.
• 26:59
  To stay alive, I had to let go of my friends who were not mine. To stay alive, we had to endure a pandemic, quarantine, single parenting. And to stay alive, we had to go back to therapy. So what am I on the shores of now? I don't know, but it's something new.
• 27:43
  I told her I don't think that we can go back to things ever being as they were, ever being the same as I was before. I get glimpses of those parts. I hear voices. I hear them sometimes. I see evidence of them sometimes, but I am not them.
• 28:17
  And I don't know that they'll be back very often. She says they're there and that when it's safe, we'll have access to them again. But we don't while it's not. And she says because new trauma was relational, it will take time and evidence and lots of marbles to feel safe again. We just did an interview with someone for the podcast about embodying our emotions.
• 29:06
  And I asked, how do you learn how to do that when opening up to that feels dangerous because the emotions are already so big? And he gave examples and ideas. And the framework of how that works was helpful to me because I know if we don't deal with these things, that it all comes out sideways like Ghostbusters slime. It's going to come out somewhere, but that's not what I want, and it's not who I want to be. And I know that living in fear is not good for me.
• 29:59
  So in trying to reclaim my agency, in trying to face my fears and trying to feel all of the things without avoiding them. I can't just keep running. So that's part of why the ship didn't sink, because I stayed on the boat. I wanted to go back. I wanted to go back to my previous therapist.
• 30:34
  I wanted I tried to earn the love of my friends. If fawning would fix it. If fawning could fix it, we would be home by now. But other people are not the problem. I am the problem, And my fears are only chasing me because I'm running from them.
• 31:11
  It reminds me in the Wolf's Book of the skeleton woman story where there is a man who is out fishing, and what his hook catches is a skeleton. And while in union psychology, that skeleton means something else than whatever fears you might be thinking. The fisherman still does what any of us would do if we fished up a skeleton. He starts rowing home and trying to run from him. But with his fishing pole still in his boat, the skeleton bounces along behind him, terrifying him even more.
• 31:56
  And when he runs ashore with his fishing pole in hand and the skeleton still on the hook, then she's bouncing along on the land behind him to follow him home. We can't really avoid what we're running from, especially when we've already hooked it, when we've already seen what there is to see and know what there is to know. Bones won't rattle if we stop running, if we sit in the quiet and just let them be and learn to sing the song that was already ours. And if it's my song to sing, then I need to sing it. If they're my words to say, then I need to say them.
• 33:16
  So I'm thinking about it. Why the ship didn't sink? Whether the ship is me or my family or the world around me in crisis, It turns out there's a whole list of things, a whole list of reasons why the ship didn't sink. The ship didn't sink because I kept on living one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time, one minute at a time. The ship didn't sink because even though I may have lost friends, they still taught me how to build a tribe.
• 34:18
  And so I built my own. They still taught me about community. And even if theirs was not mine, I learned how to find my own. The ship didn't sink because a friend brought our family food, Because we grew our own. Because I made our own.
• 34:56
  The ship didn't sink because the chickens. So unexpectedly a gift of love and friendship and cuddles and eggs. And smiles. We loved those chickens. The ship didn't sink because the husband who really did have to leave us to care for his parents, and so it felt like we were also abandoned one more time in one more way, made sure that he didn't.
• 35:50
  And he kept on texting, and he kept on calling, And he emailed us every night a story of his day. He did not let go of us or give up on us. The ship didn't sink because we inside tracked our days through nine bullet journals, one day of quarantine at a time, using crayons and markers and pens and paints, to put down words and pictures, to make sure that we ate, to make sure that we walked, to help us get our work done, care for the children, and play outside. The ship didn't sink because we walked at the lake, because we camped in our front yard while we lived on acres, borrowed for a season, Borrowed for a sabbatical we didn't know we were on. The ship didn't sink because we got up every day and got dressed to face the children, to feed the children, to teach the children because they matter most.
• 38:07
  Because showing me that lesson mattered most. That children are to be tended to and cared for and celebrated and supported and enjoyed and appreciated and honored and held sacred that matters most. The ship didn't sink because I sat on the swing next to the fountain of fish and watched the lily pads grow and felt their kisses on my fingers when I fed them and watched their eggs hatch and their babies grow. The ship didn't sink because a goat showed up on our doorstep. And gave us a new diversion to play with, to laugh with, to dance with, even to climb trees with.
• 39:55
  Our ship didn't sink because we faced the cameras and got on Zoom and made new friends who understand, who hear us, who see us, who care. I don't know why the ship didn't sink. I don't know how we got through that season. I don't know how we made space for the embarrassment and shame of having made fools of ourselves, of having hoped for connection, of having thought we were included. For having dared to believe that we would be okay.
• 41:04
  And then worse, having the audacity to say that we matter too, that we are worth protecting, that we are worth keeping safe, that we are worth standing in spaces where we are welcomed and sharing space with faces who are happy to see us, who are willing to know us, who are daring to stay. The pandemic and quarantine, letting go of our previous therapist, finding another therapist, unlearning what a friend is and what a friend is not, and how to be one or not and when were hard lessons of these last few years. But the things that we learned are what buoyed us up, how to feel our feelings, how to tolerate them, and that I want to do something about it. Here where we live, the whole world has returned to normal. As if the last two years never even happened.
• 43:41
  But I am scarred by them, and I will not forget. But also, I think it was for a good. It was for the better. It was for good. I think it was good.
• 44:12
  Like an island we visited once that we can never go back to. But that stays in my mind, like a mile marker, A bookend. Not just a bookend, but a turning the page. Maybe with a paper cut, but a turning the page nonetheless. And now trees are green in a way I never saw before.
• 45:13
  And birds sing in a way I never heard before. And if I imagine the boat, this ship reaching shore, reaching shore after a storm, a two year, three year storm. I can imagine my children, for example, And the chaos of them clamoring to get off the boat. How excited they would be for land. How excited they would be to have arrived.
• 46:22
  I saw this when they returned to public school. With the busyness of teenage lives that we never had before. And while I am also grateful we have all arrived safely, The boat became my friend. The storm became my friend. Maybe I became my friend.
• 47:19
  So things are changing, and things are deep. And I don't know what it all means yet. It didn't sink because of fireflies in the night and the rainbow wings of dragonflies in the morning Because of the brightness of the sun and the blueness of the sky and the cool of the rain and the greenness of the trees. And so my therapist said, if the ship didn't sink, what was the ship that brought you, that carried you from your previous therapist through those hard days to the other side here now. I thought at first, like I said before, that it was therapy.
• 48:55
  And I told her I can't stay alive without therapy. And she said, but you can. You did. You proved it. You went through two years of hell, and here you are in front of me, still here.
• 49:21
  You've already done it. You've already reached the other side. So what was it that got you here? And so I thought maybe it was dissociation carrying me across the storm in a sea of numb And then my therapist said, but this time, you weren't numb. You were feeling everything, and you felt it all big, and you learned to tolerate it.
• 50:16
  It wasn't dissociation. What was the ship? And finally, I realized the ship was me. It was me who got me this far. It was us who's brought us through everything.
• 50:47
  It was me who did the work without a ship at all to just keep swimming even when I couldn't see the shore until I reached the other side. It was me who took the classes. It was me who went to conferences and watched webinars and studied books. It was me who cut up pictures and made collages and wrote poems. It was me who did journals and tracked my days.
• 51:37
  It was me who cared for children, who fed the animals, who played outside. It was me who made space for parts of me to be all of me. It was me who learned to cry and to stay, to be angry, and to be safe, to be happy with people who care for me, to be safe in a world that isn't always. It was me who didn't settle until I found a therapist. It was me who was planted in a poor spot of ground, being nourished this long time, and me who pulled out my own roots when I outgrew my pot.
• 53:16
  Me who turned toward the sun even when that meant leaving the shade. It was me. It was me who did that, who got me through, who made it to the other side. I did that thing. I did it.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in Community Together. The link for the community is in the show notes.
• 55:04
  We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who care for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too. Being human together.
• 55:32
  So, Sometimes, we'll see you there.