Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Hidden Agenda

Transcript

Hidden Agenda · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the System Speak podcast, a podcast about dissociative identity disorder.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: 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
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: to the podcast. Thank you. If you can hear the rain on the car as I'm parked at the park today, it matches my mood. Finally, fall. Finally, cool again.
• 1:33
  And rain falling to put out the wildfires, and so I am grateful. There is also congruence with my own tears, as poetic as that continues to be, and gives me flashbacks. Not painful ones, more like awareness ones, of sitting in the van at the country house in the rain, during the pandemic, trying to talk about things like having moved again and Nathan leaving the China cabinet, the hawk that took the baby chicken, and the loss of my therapist. And me trying to stay alive. It's a whole mood that needs its own name, But the rain brings that feeling today, feels like my feelings today.
• 3:16
  I came here to cry because I didn't want to sit in the parking lot of my therapist and cry. Because what does she know? Nothing. Except, of course, she knows. And I know all the things that she dares to speak out loud.
• 3:50
  I thought I knew what we were going to talk about. Just this weekend was pride, and Jules and I had the best weekend we have had literally in years. And it was so good and so healing and so restorative. And we needed that time and that healing. We even recorded the episodes about it and why it mattered so much.
• 4:25
  And I thought that's what we were going to talk about in therapy, the restoration of all things as they say. But one of the things that I learned this weekend, which we will talk about more in January and February oh, it's coming big episodes that are painful, and I'm sorry, but I want you to know upfront that it's coming. But to keep it simple, one of the things I learned this weekend or realized this weekend is that fawning and codependency are valid strategies for trauma and deprivation. And that me being shiny, happy about not doing the things in a binary way as if fawning is always bad, and codependency serves no purpose. Means that I took away the only strategies I had without tending to the underlying wounds.
• 5:49
  So we can talk about that later, but it is painful, painful stuff. And so that's what my therapist wanted to circle back to today. She said she wanted to play a game with me. I said she can't say that because I'm not consenting to littles in therapy yet, almost not yet. And because that's what they say when they're grooming us, setting us up to hurt, to be hurt.
• 6:34
  Except what is different is that my therapist's office is safe enough. My therapist is safe enough, and she warned me it's going to hurt. Except we are tending to what already hurts, which isn't the same as causing it. It makes me think of the dentist, actually, who also tends to things in ways that hurt or already hurt. But in doing so, saves my teeth, prevents it from hurting worse, keeps me healthy and alive.
• 7:32
  So, basically, my therapist is a dentist for my heart, and I never liked dentist. That's how that transference is going. So the game that is not a game my therapist wanted to play was to ask me some questions. I'll put them in the show notes in case you also want to ask yourself. They were hard.
• 8:20
  It took me a long time to come up with any answers at all. And I pointed out to my therapist that generally speaking, I don't actually like talking about my childhood. So it feels like a trick to acknowledge that and then ask me reflective questions about my childhood. And, also, I want to heal. I want to get better.
• 9:07
  I don't want to dish out the same pain done to me, to myself, or anybody else. So here I am still in therapy twice a week. Still trying. Not because Jules said twice a week would be good for our relationship. Not fawning for a therapist who is not missus Lowe, but for me.
• 10:00
  I'm here for me. I came to play. The first question was give three or four positive characteristics of relationships that I had as a child from anybody, caregivers, grandparents, babysitters, teachers, foster parents, anybody. What was good? What was right?
• 10:52
  What meant something? What are those characteristics? I really struggled with this for a long time until my therapist clarified that anybody could count. It wasn't a trick to make my childhood toxic positivity. Just what was good that meant something.
• 11:30
  And then she asked permission to say something hard, promising that we didn't have to unpack anything. And she gave the example of missus Lowe. She said we can contain it. We don't have to unpack it. But what good characteristics do you remember?
• 11:55
  What made her feel safe enough or good enough. And I thought she was generous and attentive and kind. And then she said, What were the negative characteristics I experienced in relationships as a child? That was also hard and painful, and I got flashes of things that we had to work to contain. And there were several things I mentioned like violence.
• 13:34
  But in narrowing it down to actual characteristics, we landed on mean, manipulative, and unstable. The next question was, what did I need most as a child from my caregivers but didn't get. That's when things shifted from hard to nauseous. But what came to the surface was safety, care, and love. And then worse and harder.
• 15:14
  She said, when I was a child, what negative feelings did I experience over and over and over again? And an image came to mind of being on the farm, and a sheep rejecting the lamb, pushing it away, knocking it back. A horse will do it and also kick. A cow will do it and also kick. It doesn't happen often, always, frequently, and, also, it's painful to see when it does happen.
• 16:27
  And it makes it really hard for that little lamb to stay alive. It would have to be bottle fed. And limbs or calves don't always make it in those situations. But when she asked how I felt as a child, that's the image that came to mind, and it hurt me to sit with that. And I thought also of the weeping camel video from that training we went to on attachment and how at the time I had identified with the mama camel and the distress of rejecting your child.
• 17:36
  Because in that case, the birth almost killed the camel. It was a traumatic birth, and the camel was hurting and scared. And how I don't want to parent like that just because of hurting and being scared. But in my therapist's office today, it was like shifting perspectives to know what it was like to be the calf, nudged away, their head shaking you off and kicking space between you. And facing the feeling of, if you don't want me, I'm not going to survive.
• 18:43
  Not because of codependency as an adult, but as a child, a mammal child that needs caregivers to survive. So my answer to number four about negative feelings I experienced over and over again as a child was rejected and alone and unwanted. And then as if that were not painful enough, my therapist did a very mean thing or helpful depending on your perspective. She took my memory time answers and applied them to now time. To show me how reenactment works and what it looks like with attachment wounds and mother hunger and all the things too difficult to even grasp as a concept.
• 20:46
  So number one, the positive characteristics of my relationships as a child. And now time becomes All my life, I've been searching for someone who is generous, attentive, and kind. And number two, the negative characteristics of my relationships when I was a child. And now time becomes as an adult and my friendships and relationships and partners. I am activated and troubled when people are mean, manipulative, or unstable.
• 21:57
  And what I needed most as a child from my caregiver and didn't get, and now time becomes, I just wish my partner would give me safety, care, and love. The fourth question, about my negative feelings over and over again as a child. And now time becomes when my needs are not met by my partner. I feel rejected, alone, and unwanted. And if all of that were not painful enough, We tied all of that back to being a skittish cat or donkey kicks.
• 23:38
  That when I feel hurt and alone or unwanted or unsafe, Then I do that nudging away, that kicking away, that cold and dismissive pushing away, which my therapist tried to tell me was protective. And that instead of shaming myself for doing the things, to maybe ask myself why I needed to do the things. If we are responding with trauma responses, What is the trauma we are responding to? And then she had the audacity to go back to the third question about what I needed most as a child And how in now time that becomes what I want from my partner? She said it's not my partner's job to give it to me.
• 25:14
  It's my job to give it to me. Safety, care, and love. I thanked her for the fun game and told her I was so glad that I showed up at therapy today. And I walked out of her office without any more goodbye than that and out into the rain and to my car and to the park where I sat and cried for over an hour because this little exercise hurt so deeply. And, also, she's not wrong.
• 26:26
  And as uncomfortable and vulnerable as it makes me to share it, I think it's important for a lot of us to hear it, to feel it. It feels that kind of important because our friendships and our communities, even greater beyond the system speak community, I mean, all of us, need to be offering ourselves safety, care, and love, and support each other and be present with each other while we tend to ourselves. Those things we didn't get, those things we were deprived of, those things we have been without. It is our job to give it to ourselves. This is what Brave Spaces is all about.
• 27:42
  My care for me does not have to look like your care for you, but both of us are in need of care. All of us are in need of care from ourselves and each other in good and healthy ways. And maybe if I say it out loud to you, I can practice doing it for me. 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.
• 28:41
  Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.