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Back Online · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to System Speak, a podcast about Complex Trauma and Dissociation. It's our story, our learning, and the ideas we've been working with as they've unfolded over time. Earlier episodes give context for where we are now, and current episodes may engage more advanced material, harder content, or reference earlier conversations. A few things to remember as you listen. The podcast is education, reflection, and storytelling.
• 0:41
  It's not therapy, and listening doesn't create a relationship. Although I am a therapist, I am not in that role here, and nothing that I share is individualized clinical advice. Every system, every internal world, all of your own stories are all different and you take up your own shape. What we share about ours won't translate directly to yours. It isn't meant to.
• 1:06
  We're all different, and all of our stories matter. As always, take care of yourself during and after listening. We are so glad you're here.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: We have had an intense start to the summer, starting with Nathan's surgery while doing pre ops and paperwork for hospitalization stuff for half the kids. It's been a lot, like a lot, a lot. As in, I've missed work, had to reschedule so many things, and even missed groups and canceled book study for the month. I mean, I know that everybody's health is the most important thing. And also what was different was that I cared for myself too instead of just piling on on top of everything else.
• 2:07
  I don't know why including myself in care continues to be one of the hardest pieces of all. I mean, I do understand why, but there's a gap between understanding and experiencing and another gap between experiencing and applying. I've missed therapy too because of so many appointments, And you know a lot is going on if I have to cancel book study group because that maybe is my favorite thing, at least for some of us. And also, even with all that going on, some things are easier naturally. The children are older developmentally.
• 3:00
  Half of them are turning into adults and are more occupied with their own jobs and their own friends. Even Even if when they wanna talk to me is when my body really wants to sleep at night. But I love those late night conversations, and it's amazing to listen to them talk about their days and what's going on with them differently than they've ever been able to before. And the younger ones now being old enough for enrichment activities and different things during the summer, So they're not even home during the day. And me going to the city for my job means our summer schedule is different than it ever has been.
• 3:51
  There's something in structure of it that feels supportive this year in a way that's different than what we've had before. I see the same thing externally in the community too. As the community has matured over the last year, significantly this year, and also with the voting of different group times and the shifting of the schedule and the adding of new groups somehow seems to help hold the structure. So all of that together got me thinking about how does that ply internally. And there are some ways that are easier for me to see.
• 4:35
  Like, I do better and feel better and function better if I get to go to sleep when I'm tired at night. Some of y'all are night owls. That's okay. That's cool. It is okay for us to be different.
• 4:53
  I am a girl who can just crash, and I am out so fast. And, also, I wake up when I'm done sleeping. So most days, I don't need to even use an alarm. I have one that shakes my pillow to wake me up. I have that if I need it.
• 5:10
  But most days, I don't need to use it because I'm able to go to sleep on time. So that adds structure to my day. And those early mornings before the kids wake up or before I need to drive to the city, that built in structure for time for myself, whatever that looks like, that might be a longer workout or that might be more time to stretch if my body is hurting because of autoimmune stuff or if I'm having a pain flare up. It might mean time to work on the podcast before work. It might mean time to read something I'm interested in or to catch up on the news or to read what research has come out.
• 5:59
  Like, what the needs are vary. Some days, it means getting to work early so that I could paint before session or set up watercolors to paint during the day or something. And so the needs, like, the actual needs may vary, not just across my system or depending on the day or depending on what's going on internally, but also just pragmatically building in my experience of my days that part of my structure includes literally even assessing what I need. There are some days that even though I'm not tired, what I need is to just stay in bed longer. That's okay too.
• 6:43
  Like, could be anything, but I don't know if I'm not having the actual time to check-in with myself. So, like, over these years, we've learned so much from check-in groups, but I'm the group I need to be checking in with myself. And so paying attention to what's going on internally, what is surfacing, even if I don't know who or when or where it's coming from, just noticing what is the need or what is the concern or what do I need to let go of or what do I need to pay attention to? What is... What are others...
• 7:23
  Like, what are we thinking about? Or I wanna say pondering, but that feels like a church word. Like, what's going on inside up in here? When I can do that, then getting to my office and looking at, like, what are my tasks to do for the day, having that kind of structure in the agenda of the day is easier for me to focus on and walk through when I've already tended to the other things for all the people who do not wanna be at work. It makes it easier for me to focus while I'm at work.
• 8:00
  The other thing that is easier just from, like, pragmatic perspective is making sure that I'm getting nutrition, that I'm getting nutrients. So for example, in the morning, I am a breakfast person probably because I go to bed so early. And so I'm not... Unless it's like cheese and crackers night, I'm not up late snacking. Right?
• 8:31
  And so I am really hungry by the time we get to breakfast. And, also, if my autoimmune stuff is flaring up, then food moves slowly through me. So if I eat a breakfast and a lunch, then sometimes it's harder for me to get dinner in. Like, I will to be healthier. I will to try, but I will not eat.
• 8:53
  I'm a more of a morning person. So I will eat a bigger breakfast and a bigger lunch than I will at dinner. And so by the time we circle back around to breakfast, I'm really hungry. So that's just, like, the rhythm of my body, but that means I need to be intentional about breakfast. And so, like, my body is happier if I get a protein and some fruit.
• 9:19
  Whether I also have some kind of brain, those can be preferences or decisions or habits or whatever. But what my body needs is a protein and a fruit in the morning, and I feel better all through my morning until lunchtime. Lunchtime, it is really important that I don't skip lunch, which means during the weekend or the night before or something, need to make sure I have my lunch packed for work and that I either have some leftovers or a salad made or something that I can take with me so that I don't just skip it by default or skip it because of spoons or skip it because it was not intentional. So for me, breakfast and lunch has to be really intentional, and the thinking of it and the preparing of it starts the day before. I...
• 10:13
  Like, it's that much work for me or takes that much intentionality. But then I do much better the rest of the day, not just finishing my workday, but also transitioning from work back into parenting after work and getting all the way through that, all the way into the evening, all the way through those late night discussions until I can collapse into my bed and just sleep exhausted until the next morning. Right? So for me, I think those are the things that provide the scaffolding or the structure to include myself in care enough that I can even be physically present with myself to do more internal work that has to do with memory time or parts work or whatever is happening in now time. So I've noticed this.
• 11:11
  Even though this maybe sounds super simple, I've noticed all of this because we've had so much happen this year and so much hard in this year. Lots of good too. And the things that I have gained from this year, I wouldn't trade for anything. Even though they were muscles and lessons I've learned through the hard, I wouldn't trade it for anything. And so...
• 11:37
  But what I've learned is that I can't even get access to inside without those things being in place. And for all kinds of reasons over the last decade, from the intensity of some of my jobs, from the intensity of some of the medical crises our family has faced, from the struggles of everything from big families to poverty to anything else that's been hard, we... I have learned that if I am not getting good sleep, if I am not getting nutrition in my meals, like not eating, but actual nutrition in the meals. If my body itself is not getting what it needs, then it makes it much more difficult to accurately access my system at all rather than either being confused or disoriented by my system or forgetting there is a system or much less being able to collaborate or cooperate with my system or... And then even...
• 13:09
  That's true even more so for actually doing any kind of memory time work or parts time work. In in my experience, that's what I have found. So learning from the outside what I need on the inside is part of what is helping me get reoriented to myself and reoriented to my own system in ways I have to be really intentional about. So for some of y'all, it's really easy, and that is amazing. You've clearly done so much work.
• 13:46
  For me, I'm in the place of I can't just close my eyes and access my system if I am not also sleeping and eating and moving and connecting with others. And, also, here's where it's tricksy. And, also, I cannot do those things instead of accessing my system. I have to do those things including my system. So here's where it starts to get blendy is that when I'm already including myself in all of those pieces of structure or paying attention to them.
• 14:33
  So, like, I'm trying to think of a super simple pragmatic example. If I'm gonna get fruit with breakfast, if I'm standing there and I have options, sometimes there are not options, sometimes there are no fruits. But right... Like, right now, do you want apples from the apple tree? Do you want plum cocks from the plum cod tree?
• 14:54
  Do you want bananas here on the counter? We also have kiwi. We also have oranges, and we can also see what's in the fridge. I think there were some cherries. Like, who...
• 15:07
  I understand the body needs fruit, but is there anyone inside who has particular strong opinions about which fruit? And I know, at least for me, sometimes then I want to avoid that conflict, I don't wanna even check-in. Because what if there's needs or wants for three different fruits? Like, okay. So I can take two cherries and half a banana and share an apple with a kiddo.
• 15:37
  Like, it takes more work, and I've still got outside people around me who will gladly eat any food I offer to share. But I just mean that as an example of if I'm already including them, then really by the time I do get to time with my journal or time with myself or time with my therapist and I am ready to access some of those parts of me or memory time more intentionally, it is actually already accessible because I have already been need needing. Does that make sense? So I'm learning that the structure of care itself then also becomes the process of care. In the same way that neglecting to include myself in care becomes part of the process of deprivation, of neglecting myself or not including my system or parts of me so that then I am neglected because I was already not including myself.
• 16:53
  So I don't wanna be complicit in that. I don't wanna participate in that. I want to include all of me all of the time. And the more that I do, whether it's blendy or not, whether it comes through glimpses or not, including them in care gives me more access to myself, my system, and my whole brain, where I want all of me to be as as present and participatory in whatever ways are healthy and appropriate in any given moment or activity. So for example, I may have folks who, there are parts of me that would not want to be at the office all day and also learning to cooperate so that we can get, I don't know, like paperwork done, for example, means that when we're not at the office, that time is actually free rather than not being at the office, but my head still being in that project or still working on paperwork or having to bring my computer home and having to do something.
• 18:06
  Right? But if we're there and can focus and we can acknowledge the need to not be overworking or over functioning, then let's collaborate on that. Help me focus while we're there. Make work more fun. We can get it done.
• 18:23
  And then when we're off, we're really off. Or there may be, when we talk about sexualized littles or teens, they do not need to be further harmed in any kind of ship, Right? And so rather than just trying to defend myself or protect myself by excluding them from any of my ships, or rather than being afraid of them and so not entering into any kind of ships and then isolating myself, which is more deprivation. Instead of that, acknowledging them and recognizing that they are not the problem. The problem is what happened in memory time.
• 19:13
  And so being able to enter into ships with them where they are able to receive care because connection brings healing and healing brings hope. And also part of that hope comes from those parts of me not being harmed. I can protect myself in ships and they know that now. I can differentiate myself enough that I can hold onto myself and my values within a ship so that there is not doing to me. And so they are healed.
• 20:06
  And them not continuing to be harmed is ultimately the best rescue of all. Or if there are parts of me that want to create instead of working and also can add expression to my work or share and like broaden what I'm able to do because we're using expressive things and being able to incorporate art or music or stories into the work, then I have more joy in my work and they still get expressive needs met. Like there's so many different ways to navigate what cooperation or collaboration or inclusion can look like. And also, it always makes my quality of life better. I've never had an experience where I thought, oh, that would have been better if I had included less of me.
• 21:21
  Now, there have been times where, oh, I can look in hindsight and learn that I needed this here or that there, or boundaries here or about this there, or was not, I was not safe and needed to protect myself differently there, or that being able to assess in hindsight about different ships so that I learn to not just choose healthier ships now, but be a healthier ship, right? Like learn and grow so that it's better in the present and the future. But always that's better because of including more of myself. It's when I am not listening to myself or not including myself or dismissing parts of me that I start to get into choppy waters. So maybe that was the long way around, but what I have been learning this year has been about the conversation with my body.
• 22:26
  I think that episode... I think I pulled that episode. I think you didn't get to hear about it. But learning to listen to my body as part of the conversation with myself and my system. And when I can do that, I have more access and more accurate understanding of my own experience so that then I have more awareness of an access to myself and my system so that I can include more of me, have access to more of my whole brain, meaning left brain and right brain, the warning system, the polyvagal ladder, what's left of our understanding of that, and the frontal cortex.
• 23:14
  And and through all of that, I can start untangling like a pile of necklaces that are all knotted and stuck together, and you have to pull here and pull here just gently and slowly to get the whole pile untangled. That's what we have to do with these different network modes in our brain where the wires get crossed between like CSA and attachment or safety and fawning, and these kinds of things where our brain learned trauma responses as everyday norms or mixed our messages because of trauma responses and developmental experiences and having to go back and untangle that so that those things are not paired together so that we can improve our quality of life and have safer, healthier experiences in life and in our ships. So for me, that starts with my body being online. If I want my system online and if it feels like my system has gone offline, then it means to me that either I am not caring for my body, so I'm not in my body, so I can't hear the messages from my system, or that I have already not been listening to my system, so they feel further away.
• 24:55
  Other times when I don't listen to them, they get louder. But always, I can listen better with my body online. It's like the difference... I mean, I know this doesn't apply to everyone, but for me, in my experience, it's the the difference between not having my ears on, having captions on, having my ears on and captions, and having my ears on and captions and an interpreter. Like, it just gives you so much more access and awareness to what's going on and make such a difference in quality of life with so much less fatigue from having to swim upstream, just to have the same access from everybody else.
• 25:47
  Like there are times I will want to show up in any kind of different ship as truly myself and as expressive and responsive as I am naturally inclined to be, which I think is a strong point. But if I am not caring for myself and I am entirely depleted, there's literally nothing to give. So then that is the authenticity that comes out is like, I got nothing. I got nothing. And I don't want to be in that place in my ships.
• 26:19
  And I don't want to be in that place with parenting. And I don't want to be like that at work. And if I don't even want to be like that for myself, because then I can't find words, then I can't paint, I can't write. Like for me to be, well, that's a good example, the writing, because we can only write or they say, whoever they are, they say we can only write like what we've ingested. It's like a digestive process.
• 26:55
  What we put into ourselves is what comes out. So I can't do a podcast about therapy if I'm not getting to go to therapy, right? That's some of why the episodes cut up to real time because so much was happening in real life in real time that there was not time or capacity to do any processing, much less than also there'd be time to reflect Because so much was happening and then happening and then happening. Like I couldn't keep up with it, right? I can't write beautifully without time and space to create the phrases and the words.
• 27:38
  And I cannot do that if I am not consuming, ingesting, being able to read things that are also beautiful. I just finished my friend from college. I think you'll hear on the podcast soon. We've talked some a year ago. She's like, your life is so hard right now.
• 28:03
  And I think you would love the language, like the turn of phrase or however you say that. The the language and the beauty of words, like the words were not just poetry. The words were like paintings, but not in a descriptive way. I don't know how to explain it. It was just gorgeous writing.
• 28:22
  And she said, you will love this, and let's get you some good into your system. And I have spent the last year reading it because so much was going on. It was literally not a season where I could just sit down and read a book. Until recently, I've gotten that back. Right?
• 28:39
  So I finally got to read this book and finish it. It was called 10,000 Doors of January. It was a gorgeous book. A gorgeous book. But being able to...
• 28:51
  I don't like consume doesn't feel good and ingest doesn't feel good. But the swimming in words, the reflecting in words, the finding of words, even that comes in connection. And so listening to books, reading books, studying books, just the process by which we create. I had not painted in so long and also had so much built up in me, but it wasn't until I took that train trip. I don't even know if you've heard about that yet either.
• 29:27
  It wasn't until we took the train trip through the forest and the mountains and just soaked in all the beauty of it before finally colors came back to my fingers and being able to paint again and reclaiming that. And it felt so good and was so freeing, but we can't pour out what we don't get to pour in. Does that make sense? So I think the same thing happens with connections or groups or like there needs to be not just reciprocity, but pockets of safe places where you're just cared for well to be able to keep giving care. And I think it's important sharing that because without the support and encouragement and the way y'all have showed up for me this year, I don't know how I would have gotten through it, much less come through on this side of feeling better and more myself than I have felt in years and years and years.
• 30:39
  And with that comes the reflection of how did I get so far from myself, including like the whole last decade and a half. What happened? How did this happen? And like, I can keep working on that in therapy, but what matters is that coming back to myself, coming back to my values and learning to hold myself together as myself through all of the hard and the good, which is different than sacrificing myself to avoid the hard or being emptied of myself because there's no good. That's so distressing either way.
• 31:26
  But to be cared for well and to be able to care for others well is such a secure ship kind of experience. And then the more experience we get with that, the more we're able to apply it in other settings. So then even when things are hard, it's still secure, which is different than the Venn diagram of hell, which is different than the drama triangle, which is different than reenactment. And so healing becomes as exponential as the disasters of reenactment used to snowball. It's so healing and so refreshing.
• 32:13
  And that in itself adds to care because then instead of being behind in now time of, oh, this happened and this happened and this happened, I'm actually getting to process things or talk about things or sit with myself differently. And that is part of the recentering so that instead of in my limbic system being focused on all the danger and all the hard, I can come back to the frontal cortex, back to myself, back to my own experiences, and back to just being congruent with myself, which is what literally saved my life this year. There's nothing I can do about any of this besides be myself. And also moving through complicated situations with adolescents becoming young adults with my co parent getting diagnosed and having surgery. We're still waiting on results, but he's made it through surgery.
• 33:11
  And the facing of medical trauma with my youngest as they prepare for the next round of surgeries. Like all of these things are all safer and less threatening because I am already myself instead of having to do these things a certain way in order to to be acknowledged as a self. Like, I do not have to earn myself through the hard situations in life. I just have to show up as myself. Does that make sense?
• 33:48
  So it's not like all the hard goes away. It's more like I'm just already here. So whether life is easy or hard or good or bad or anything that is less binary or more non dual, Whatever life is happening, those are just the circumstances. And who I am is already just me. All of me, here we are, but already present.
• 34:18
  And so I'm bringing myself to my experiences rather than having to go through experiences to find myself. Does that make sense? So that's the closest I have to words right now, like this morning. But I wanted to hold on to them and I wanted to share them in case it's helpful. And I'll keep writing about the things and I'll keep sharing some essays that seem...
• 34:46
  I'm getting lots of emails about those, so I'm glad that's being helpful. But I think it was important for me first to sit with... It has to be my own in person experience, not just online, not just a distance. It needs to be my own in person experience with myself for me to stay oriented to myself. That is part of the structure of care that I give to myself.
• 35:20
  So that even this morning when I'm trying to find words and learning how to express them, I can already feel them because I can already feel me. And I think that is my starting place rather than thinking if I do all the things, then my me ness will be granted to me. I'm already here, and I'm already me. Unfinished, unshiny, but already me in process. Already here.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and healing brings hope.