Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Unconquerable

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Unconquerable · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to 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.
• 1:01
  Okay. The best way I can explain this is that I got a message from someone in the community which led to a question for myself, which led to a question in therapy, which led to this. This is the best way I can explain it. But, basically, it had to do with some of the episodes that we've talked about this year and how when we're children, we can't get away from the situations that are harming us. So why, when we're adults, is it so hard to get away, or do we keep going back?
• 1:38
  Especially with interpersonal violence Or also addiction, why do we keep going back to what is harming us? Right? So again, the context and framework of trauma and deprivation, where the harm is happening, but also the good is missing. So we've talked about a lot of the things about the harm, but this topic particularly has to do with the good that's missing and us dissociating from the good that's missing and instead remembering the mirage of good that wasn't actually good because we were being harmed. This is called euphoric recall.
• 2:24
  So, like, for example, I tried to leave, like, two years ago, but I didn't move until this year because I kept getting sucked into this daydream of illusion, of mirage, of the potential for good or what felt good or what could be good. But it wasn't actually good. It was actually really distressing, and it was like the roller coaster of hell, right, or the Venn diagrams of hell. We talked about those things when we talked about attachment wounds. So sometimes it feels like, and this was in the message, and I had permission to quote it, that you never reach the destination because you're running to jump on a train that is always moving.
• 3:16
  And so you don't have time to stop and be like, I am tired of this. I cannot anymore. It is like, I have to try harder. I have to do better. I can try harder.
• 3:26
  I can do better. And especially when we have any sort of shiny, happy context where we've already been conditioned for that, it's even worse. So really, it's like the impact of coercive control and then also applies to addiction, which really is trauma related as well. And so that's what I wanna talk about today is euphoric recall. Because as long as we are doing that, we are not actually seeing ourselves or our lives accurately.
• 3:59
  And also, there's no shame in this or being cruel to ourselves or mean to ourselves or hard on ourselves about it because it's related to the experience of being in danger, which is how we learned to survive when we were young. So euphoric recall, if you just search it on the internet, it says that it is a cognitive bias where individuals remember past experiences, especially pleasurable ones, in an overly positive light, often overlooking the negative aspects. So it's a tendency to remember the past events with a focus on the positive experiences while minimizing or completely forgetting the negative aspects associated with it. The phenomenon is especially particularly noted in the context of addiction or domestic violence, sometimes both, where individuals romanticize their experiences, recalling only the pleasurable effects and ignoring the harmful consequences. Here's a piece that's really important to remember, that when we engage in euphoric recall, that increases our cravings for what we left behind or let go of because our memories are biased towards the pleasurable aspects, we want it, but it is a selective memory that is a distorted perception of reality, making it hard to recover and heal from that because we're not thinking about the harm that happened, the good that was missing, or the impact it had on us socially, relationally, professionally, all of these layers.
• 5:58
  This is rooted in neurobiology because the brain's reward pathways are impacted, particularly the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory formation and retrieval. So here's something to remember about dissociation. When we are dissociating or when we can't remember things because of dissociation, we're not actually forgetting anything. What we are forgetting is that we remember the trauma. We are forgetting that we remember it was traumatic.
• 6:33
  We don't actually forget what it was because that is in there somewhere. If it were gone, it would just be gone. It's not always gone. But what we forget is that it was traumatic, or what we forget is how hard it was, or what we forget is that it was not safe. So as part of that dissociation, it's like our brain covers up what is hard to look at and brings up what is good.
• 7:07
  So really, also, euphoric recall is part of associative learning, which is the opposite of dissociation, really, where the things we want, whether that is the good experiences of substances in the case of addiction or sex in the case of what some call sex addiction. That's a whole different thing. And I know there's some caveats and nuances and complexity about the language, but just referencing it. Or whether it is in domestic violence situations, interpersonal violence situations, which I think intersects with the other. But when we have the operant conditioning that links those experience with positive expectancies, which is like the daydreaming, then the associative learning with euphoric recall is that we are driven by the desire for pleasure and excitement, and that gets propelled by the euphoric effects of the use of whatever it is that alters memory perception.
• 8:13
  Then we rely on the most vivid memories or knowledge about typical outcomes. The memory of this usage tends to be biased and selective, which leads to the euphoric recall, which leads to the cravings to return to the substance or the relationship that caused harm. So, again, we have to go through deconditioning because euphoric recall is absolutely a conditioning process. The conditioning process operates via stimulus reward, stimulus action, that learning mechanism where cues evoke a desire for the reward. It's programming, it's conditioning.
• 8:55
  So in the context of addiction or interpersonal violence, euphoric recall will bring up moments of physical pleasure, and the intense memory activates the same brain areas as the original experience. So it may even feel better. This is part of the conditioning. It may even feel better in memory than it did in the moment because the part that gets left out is the danger of the situation and the potential for hurt as was and the hurt that was being caused. So failing to recognize those negative realities, such as the chaos and drama of interpersonal violence, the instability of the relationship, or the worsening health or withdrawal from substances, this prompts the cycle of addiction making it harder to get away or harder to stop using.
• 9:59
  When we as long as we are still going back or as long as we are still using, it keeps the brain's pleasure center stimulated, and that produces excess chemicals that will again show up during euphoric recall, and so it starts reinforcing itself, conditioning you more and more to turn towards the relationship that's not safe or the substance that's causing you harm. Going through this for an extended period of time with those high chemical levels like dopamine and serotonin leads to the anhedonia. With that, the person can no longer gain pleasure from regular activities, which is why it can feel like you will die without that person or die without that substance or will not have any fun or be able to function without it. This is an intense experience. With the positive expectancy specifically, the brain minimizes the negative impacts of engaging in the behavior or use or relationship that's harming you, and you start to believe that it is actually changing your life for the better.
• 11:19
  Distortions in thinking makes the person believe that good outcomes are following these undesirable interactions, and they start to think that it's actually helping them succeed. So early in recovery, we may be facing problems for the first time instead of medicating or masking. So think about this with substances that's going to be not only masking pain and hurt and all the things from trauma and deprivation on the inside, but also reinforcing those natural things like cannabinoids that dissociation brings about naturally. In relationships, this masking looks more like fawning and compliance where the harder you try and the better you get at that, the more you think you're succeeding at the relationship, but that is actually attuning externally instead of attuning internally to yourself, and it is costing you yourself and sacrificing yourself. That's why we had to talk about all the Al Anon stuff for us, for our personal experience, because it is what led to safety.
• 12:36
  So euphoric recall and cravings are not the same thing, but it can tell you that cravings are coming or the root of what's going on at the cravings because you're either reasoning or romanticizing about what's going on. So here's where things get tricky. And I know this is sensitive topic, so if y'all just don't wanna go there, please skip to the next episode or just do something else. But I think it's really important that we talk about this. When someone is experiencing euphoric recall, they can have that mental imaging manifestation, but they can also have physical manifestations in the body, things like increased heart rate, inability to concentrate, blocking out negative consequences from past behaviors, obsessing over it, reaching out to them, depression, mood swings.
• 13:34
  These things, y'all, here is what is tricksy. Here is what is tricksy. When we have complex trauma, in part because of relational trauma when we were little, and those of us who also have childhood sexual abuse, so CSA, that means we have parts of us who were sexualized children. When we get into an interpersonal violence experience that is getting euphoric recall mixed with it, what is happening is that littles are getting exploited in now time to reenact those patterns of abuse from memory time. That's heavy.
• 14:33
  I know it's heavy. It's also very painful, nauseating, sickening, and also it is not because you are bad. This is a side effect of having been harmed when we were little. When we are in harm's way as children and we're growing up and again experience being in danger, we, even in now time, attempt to survive by the same ways we had to when we were sexualized children. And that may be everything from flirting to risky behaviors.
• 15:16
  And I know even calling it risky behaviors sounds so clinical, so maladaptive, so shaming. I don't mean it that way. I'm just trying to ease in gently because this is hard stuff. It's also really tricksy because that can be influenced by culture either way. For example, in queer culture, queer culture is very flirty, but it doesn't mean people are just acting out.
• 15:45
  And people may be more open sexually, but that doesn't mean it's without consent. And then the other end of the extreme, we have shiny happy where everything about sex may be shut down, even within, like, a heterosexual fidelity kind of relationship where even certain kinds of sex are prescribed or limited or excluded or rejected or shamed or however you wanna say that. Right? So there's a whole continuum of intersectionality here, and I just wanna acknowledge that we're not speaking to everybody's experiences. We are talking about this question of how do I, in now time, tend to myself and my system, which includes tending to littles, which sometimes can be like everybody's out and open and playing and happy, and also that leaves a whole lot of sexualized littles very vulnerable for exploitation, for getting into harm's way, for being harmed, for being retraumatized.
• 16:57
  So it's important that we talk about it. I don't mean healing together specifically. I mean exposing our littles to the world where not everyone is going to keep them safe. Does that make sense? I have said for years on the podcast, it makes me really uncomfortable how out the littles are in that environment.
• 17:18
  I don't mean it's bad. I don't I am glad that healing together is a safe place. Let me be very clear. I am saying that for me and my system, I have had to wrestle with why that did not feel safe, and I think this is why it does not feel safe. There's also the intersection with parasocial relationships.
• 17:39
  Those of you who have online social media presences or presentations or different activities or ways where people don't actually know you but think they do or don't actually get to have conversations with you but they hear you all the time so you're part of their world, but they're not actually inside your world. One of the things that Chuck talked about on the podcast was that no one has the right to our internal world. Our internal world is not something we have to give away. That's not safe. It has already been invaded, and it is good and right and fair to protect it.
• 18:24
  So one person in the community mentioned it this way. If we think of it as like a radio station, old school, whether you've got the old school radio, and I can imagine this not just because of how old I am, but because Nathan has a whole musical about radios. So, right, the old radios with the dials or whether you're in the car and instead of on satellite, even if you're using satellite, like, going through the stations to tune in instead of just it's on what it is and it plays what it does. Right? If we are turning into a channel, that the channel is a dangerous situation.
• 19:10
  And what is brought into it as communication is sex, or but we are trying to save our lives, or if we're trying to tend to the good that was missing and trying to develop things like safe touch or trying to make friends, and so working on communication with them and how something is better than nothing, but we don't yet know how to change that channel to qualify what the something is, then that can get really messy. And the misattunement is because we're on different channels. To be in safe and healthy and consensual relationships, we have to be able to tune into our own body and our own systems so that we can consent and participate in ways that are safe in now time as adults so that we ourselves are tending to littles, And not that we have to be cruel to other people's littles when that comes up. I don't mean that. But relationally, like a sexual relationship is between adults, which means we have to tend to our own littles, and sexualized littles do not need further harm.
• 20:41
  And that takes being really honest with ourselves and looking at things like euphoric recall and what it is we're actually craving. Because if we are craving care, that could be craving a caregiver, but we don't know the difference between an adult person who cares about us and being a sexualized, traumatized child in need of a caregiver whose only relationship with care was people who were grooming them and harming them. So it feels like that need is being met, but the need was already violated, and we can change that baseline. Violation does not have to be our baseline. And also, sometimes it's terrifying to turn inward, not just because that means undissociating, but also because it can feel like leaving our ourselves alone.
• 21:46
  If we are letting go of substances that help us forget how lonely we feel, and if we are letting go of relationships that harm us so that we are left physically alone, then it can feel like reenactment of isolation, which can bring us to a very lonely place. But being healthy with our systems and recognizing I felt alone, I felt harmed, I felt violated, whatever the feelings and thoughts and stories we tell ourselves about memory time and tending to that is so much healthier than acting all that out in relationship or with substances in ways that are only mirage and not actually helping us. If we are still alone and unseen and unheard in context of relationship, that is still abuse. That is not relationship. If it is being imposed on us, what is happening or not happening, then that is still coercive control.
• 22:57
  That is not relationship. So when we look at euphoric recall and what is happening, that list of stuff that happens in our brain and the feelings we might feel in our body with euphoric recall for relationships or substances, what happens is our brain can interpret that as being the same as falling in love or thinking we're in love. This is the piece that we've talked about before on the podcast as part of transference or countertransference in therapy, but it can happen relationally too. And I don't mean that it's transference in a minimizing way. I mean the process is getting transferred onto something that is just another mirage that is abusing us or harming us.
• 23:53
  So if we are chasing after, like that message that talked about the runaway train, if we are chasing after substances or sexual relationships that are objects of desire and it feels congruent because all of that is happening neurobiologically about the cravings because of euphoric recall, then what we are doing is pursuing relationships or addiction in ways that allow harm to continue because it would be a relief if it did. It is like a passive self harm that actually isn't passive at all. But we cannot heal ourself as long as we stay numb in that way. As long as we are agreeing, like with infanticidal attachment, as long as we are agreeing that this is how we should be treated, we will continue to be treated that way. We will continue to treat ourselves that way.
• 24:57
  But that is not healthy. That is not safety. That is not good for us. It is experiencing what others need from us instead of experiencing ourselves, and that harms ourselves. Those relationships with people or substances harms ourselves.
• 25:20
  We cannot pretend that this is not self harm, that we are not dissociating. We need to ask ourselves, how could we instead feel ourselves and want health for us? How do we do that work internally with our systems instead of acting it out externally? Because our memory time littles are not in need of romantic or sexual relationships. So when we have jumped to that to try to meet needs without listening to them, that is premature, and that allows them to be violated again.
• 26:12
  When we over focus on that part of our life, it's the same as over productivity in any other part of our life. It is flight from what hurts instead of tending to what hurts. What we need instead, and someone in the community gave this example, that it is more like the reunion in the color purple when they have been through all of this trauma, all of this deprivation, all of this sexual abuse, all of this physical abuse. They have been through so much and literally separated. But when the sisters come back together, it is intensely intimate, but not at all sexual.
• 26:56
  It is not incestuous. It is not romantic. And yet that is intimacy. And using that as an example with our systems inside, how do we restore ourselves and bring ourselves back together again where we can share that kind of intimacy internally without it being eroticized. Otherwise, memory time harm to memory time littles is holding our nervous system hostage.
• 27:34
  And that is why sometimes in now time, we feel so impossibly unrelated to our bodies, so disconnected from our bodies. The battle is not between us and our bodies or us and our systems. That warfare was the trauma already inflicted on us in memory time. So it feels like our body is uninhabitable. It feels like our system is inaccessible.
• 28:15
  And then that sets us up to experience neurologically that our body and our system are mutually exclusive, which is actually part of mapping that shows us where the wounds are. When we are safe externally and the world is stable enough around us, even when part of that is as an adult, how do I respond to what does not feel safe or what does not feel stable? I'm attuning inward to be safe enough internally and adult enough in response externally and to memory time so that in now time, work is adulting and my work is relational internally. That is what makes me available externally in all the kinds of ships. That is what gives us awareness of ourselves and our bodies and access to ourselves and our bodies.
• 29:24
  So sometimes we remember the good parts and forget the rest, not because we're naive, but because our nervous system is still trying to keep us alive. Euphoric recall is what happens when we remember moments of intensity, connection, or even comfort from a harmful relationship or situation while minimizing or dissociating from the pain and fear or danger that came with it. It's a kind of selective memory shaped by survival. And for systems, especially those with complex trauma or dissociative disorders, euphoric recall isn't just a cognitive distortion. It can be a part's entire worldview.
• 30:16
  We have talked so much about how we need safety, love, belonging, to have hope, to experience healing. When those needs are met inconsistently or within a context of being harmed or disempowered, parts may hold tightly to the rare good moments as if a way to make sense of the chaos. It's the whole thing of being fed crumbs. Right? That's euphoric recall too.
• 30:50
  It's not just a memory issue. It's a relational survival strategy, and it makes perfect sense even when it pulls us toward people or places we know aren't safe. We're not broken for longing or craving these things or people. The part of us that misses the abuser, that's a part who remembers what it was to be seen or soothed, maybe for the first time, even if that was grooming. The part that wants to go back to church even after spiritual abuse, that's a part who remembers awe and connection, maybe even God.
• 31:33
  Inside our systems, different parts might hold conflicting truths. One part remembers the terror. Another remembers the moment they felt loved. Another realizes how that was manipulated, where one situation created the other, and none of it was real. Euphoric recall can cause internal conflict, but it's also a bridge that can transform us because what we needed was real, and it's okay to still long for that and to seek it out and to give it to ourselves.
• 32:14
  Healing means learning to hold both the hurt and the hope. The recognition of seeing clearly and accurately, and the healing that can grow from it. It means helping all of us feel safe enough to grieve what was never really safe or real to begin with, and to notice when we are experiencing euphoric recall. Sometimes we do that in therapy, or in journaling, or in the community, or in our art. We pause and ask, who is remembering this?
• 32:53
  It's a mapping opportunity. Who is remembering this? What were they needing? How can we meet that need right now without going back, without putting ourselves into harm's way? Maybe that's the work, not erasing the memories, but accessing them, not shaming the parts that long for what hurt us, but listening to them, letting them speak, letting them feel, letting them learn slowly, gently that safety doesn't have to come at the cost of the self.
• 33:41
  In fact, it cannot. Safety never costs us ourselves. Being ourselves is our freedom, no matter what is going on in the world around us, that we can honor, that we can survive and still choose to be ourselves, however internally, we have within us. Because we have already survived, we have within us a quiet, fierce strength, the parts of us that kept going even when we didn't know how. Me still standing here on this side of everything, having crossed the shores alone and been shoved under to drown and crawled on mocking shores, having saved my own life.
• 34:46
  Still here podcasting, still here writing, still here in the community, still being me, more me than ever. That is healing. That is perseverance. That is seeing clearly what has hurt and not going back into that water to drown. That is being the captain of my own ship.
• 35:26
  We have settled on a therapist after trying out the several after moving here, and our therapist is so good at understanding these layers and seeing them clearly in all these different areas of my life. And I'm so grateful because I could not do it on my own. It is why I need therapy. And she says that when we have euphoric recall or when we are missing where we came from that was not good for us, or the substance that was not good for us, or whatever it is that was not good for us when we crave it, or feel guilty for not going after it, or guilty for leaving what was unsafe when we're kind of confused about what was good. She says that false guilt comes from needing to be smaller.
• 36:22
  And the fear of being without it, that withdraw feeling, is the terror of freedom. The pull, she says, is what is still trying to drag us back in, drag us back under, trying to still affect us, but it is irrelevant. The fear is not telling me to go back or to try harder or to get better at it, or if I were good enough, it would work. The fear is telling me it was not safe to be there at all. My therapist says, Not only do I have my own ship, but I am the captain of it.
• 37:13
  And do you know what she did in this amazing moment that made me weep? She quoted From Memory, Invictus by William Ernest Henley. And I found it in a book actually that I have, and I had read it before. I have several of his volumes. I think they're back from the eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties.
• 37:41
  I have several of these volumes. Well, I did before in Oklahoma. Leaving Oklahoma cost me my books, which is another story and not something I have talked about. And so maybe part of not remembering this poem that I did know, I know that I knew it, had to do with not feeling the pain of the grief of the loss of the books. But my therapist, as if affirming I had chosen wisely for the right therapist for me, quoted this, and I'm gonna read it to you now.
• 38:28
  Out of the night that covers me, black is the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced or cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade. And yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid.
• 39:08
  It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. 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.
• 42:41
  Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in community together. The link for the community is in the show notes. We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also 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.
• 43:11
  Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too. That's what peer support is all about. Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.