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Not the Price, Chapter 6 · 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 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
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you. Okay. We are continuing the torture of not the price for admission by Laura Brown, which, of course is not actually torture. The torture is paying the price of admission to be in relationships by doing all the things that cost you yourself.
• 1:20
  She says, Human beings truly exist only in relationship to one another, but the common emotional experience for survivors is of being alone in the world, deeply lonely, unable to call upon others for support. Often, this belief is accompanied by a complimentary one saying that the survivor's job in the world is to be of use to others, The price of relationship, connection, and love. Be of use and support to others and know that you won't and perhaps shouldn't get support when you need it. You accompany others. They don't accompany you.
• 2:08
  Oh my goodness, if I could sum up the last decade of my life, if not in childhood, right? This is the whole thing right here. And also why we talk about relationships needing to be reciprocal when we're only caring for others and only supporting others and only meeting the needs for others. That is not the same as even existing in the relationship. I always tell my clients, like, when and I think I've said it on the podcast, but when you take a picture of the relationship, you are one of the people that needs to be in the picture, metaphorically or literally.
• 2:55
  And if you are alone or not in that picture, that is not relationship. It's funny to even talk about this metaphor because do you know this morning, we were at an event as a whole family, Nathan and all the kids and me and a friend was there, and I was taking a picture of the kids. And my friend said, can I take a picture for you so that you can also be in the picture? And I think it's one of the first times anyone ever asked me that so that I could be included in the picture with my family. It was it was so meaningful to me.
• 3:36
  The other thing I think this paragraph ties back to, and I know it's been a while because this book is so painful, we really have paced it out, But earlier chapters talk about when other survivors of complex trauma are in relationship with you and over functioning in that way of doing that to you, of caring for you, caring for you, and caring for you, but not actually checking about what is meaningful to you so that they are spinning out working so hard but at all the wrong things. And then it's a double bind because they can't win because they're not actually communicating or hearing or receiving what you need. But if you confront them, then they still fail. So, like, there's no way to win that either. That is not the same, and that actually has to do with power imbalances and things like that too.
• 4:25
  Part of getting to know one another is what is meaningful to the other person and what are they needing. I feel like I have been in situations in the past where instead of talking to me about things or actually getting to know me, there was more like this intense stalking. I mean, that has happened literally, but almost an exponential version of the parasocial relationship where I'm just so intently watched, then they are guessing based on what they see me do or reach for or whatever, but not actually having the context of what does that actually mean to you? What do you actually need? Right?
• 5:07
  And so, like, this example, this outing this morning, my friend was like, I was worried about your family because this trip was like this activity was several hours, and I really wanted you to have water. And I was surprised y'all didn't ask for water. And I was like, well, I mean, there's eight of us, and so water is $18,000,000,000. So I'm not gonna ask for water because we can't afford the water. Or maybe the kids would be less hangry if ins even though we fed them a really good breakfast, instead of making them wait all the way till lunch, if on a big outing like that, we brought them snacks as well, which it was a new place, so I didn't know that that was an okay thing.
• 5:51
  But also, like, I did that when they were little, like, when their survival depends on that. But doing that for them now, I was like, well, I mean, we have enough money for food, so I can't pull out food for snacks if we what we have is for food. And they were like, oh, well, I could have brought this or cut like, so exploring why instead of just assuming, oh, they never want this or they only need that. Because sometimes our choices are dependent on context of what is actually available or what feels accessible or what is within our level of privilege or lack of privilege. Right?
• 6:31
  So just intently watching is not the same as relational. That is hunting. That is stalking. That is not the same as having communication. And it was just a fascinating comparison because they've had these extremes where in some relationships, like, no one noticed anything at all.
• 6:54
  In other relationships, it was like this intense stalking, hunting down of all the things, and then I am supposed to be responsible for that intensity that didn't actually have anything to do with me. And then that being, like, a teeter totter or seesaw or whatever these extreme ends of the continuum with the healthy fulcrum in the middle of just being talking about it. Let me ask you questions. Let's talk about this and that being so meaningful. Laura says, your caregiver may have been depleted in some way, emotionally or materially.
• 7:33
  So, again, the impact of trauma intergenerationally and then also that scarcity concept again, not only during your infancy, but throughout other times in your childhood. Depleted adults are not intentionally withholding care from children. They're usually barely keeping themselves afloat. Right? So that is like me with the snacks.
• 7:56
  Like, if we're gonna need the apples as part of the meal to keep them full and make sure they have enough, then apples are not an extra that we can just have as a snack. Right? If a parent is depressed because of grief or medical problems or unable to function, that is not the same as care even if it's not malicious. She says otherwise good enough parents who are struggling with poverty, low wage, and long hour jobs, and the effects of systemic discrimination are often among these depleted caregivers. That's just painful, and it was so hard to read.
• 8:37
  She says children in depleted families learn early that expressing needs for emotional care and support from parents usually ends in disappointment. Now I overcompensated for this with my kids so that I can make sure I can meet every need, but then I have to be careful because I'm not setting boundaries. So then they don't like it when we do have to say no, or I start to have panic. Like, the biggest I've talked about this before. The biggest panic I have as a parent has to do with the holidays.
• 9:11
  So, like, at birthdays, making sure someone has something for their birthday and also our traditional meal that we do on birthdays and then also holidays like Christmas or something. Even if I only get the kids a book, new underwear, new socks, and new shoes, even if I don't get them anything else, like not pants or clothes or toys or jackets or anything like that. If I only get them that, that is still 24 presents. 24 things I have to buy. 24 things I have to come up with money for.
• 9:49
  And I don't mean that as a complaint. I mean, that is so epic when we are only talking about basic needs. It doesn't even count things that they might like or enjoy or want or like new pants or new shirts or we moved here where everybody needs a rain jacket and they don't have rain jackets. They have regular jackets. They have snow coats, But here, we just have rain for most of the year, and they need rain jackets.
• 10:18
  So what are we gonna do about that? I don't mean they're not tended to. I mean, it brings up new questions. Right? And it gives me panic because I don't want their needs to not be met.
• 10:28
  And I also don't want them to worry about it because I know what it's like to be the child of parents who can't do the things. This is really interesting because it came up in my recovery workbook for step four about finances. And in some ways, finances are very easy for me because I don't have them. And in other ways, it's harder. But, like, an example would be, I do not have any credit cards because my parents were new adults in the Reagan years, got all kinds of credit card problems.
• 11:06
  My father was hiding credit cards under my bed between my mattresses. It caused all kinds of problems. I can't even tell you. And so just the fear of being indebted to someone or something and having to worry about that for them is such a big deal. And we can't discern as children the difference between this is a crisis because we are causing the crisis because we need something, and they cannot or are incapable or could later.
• 11:45
  We don't have the nuance and complexity of all that as children. She says children have a hard time understanding that their caregivers would be there for them if they could. That requires a level of insight that most kids don't have. You won't be able to see and understand the difficult choices your depleted parents make until you're older. So what we do in response is develop these strategies for being hyperaware and independent and not needing anything and not needing anyone.
• 12:21
  How many times have we said on the podcast that we were in this situation or that or someone wrote in an email and they were like, why don't you just okay. I will make sure we do not ask. We never ask. Why would we ask? That is so against the social contract.
• 12:38
  And, also, part of writing new social contracts is learning how to ask. And what does that mean? And, really, underneath the scarcity is actually about being alone and feeling helpless because that's what our internal little ones, our babies are feeling. She says, the notion that we are alone in the world and that there is no inherent meaning can feel like a validation of one's experiences of emptiness and meaninglessness. This strategy of avoiding anything that might pull away the mask of invulnerability is frequently woven into narratives of masculinities.
• 13:26
  So whether it is the more masked part of us, so whether we are male or we're raised socialized as male or the masked part of the role that we had to play traditional kinds of roles in families, needing something or being able to talk about your feelings is not supported or developed or tended to, so there's not a way to have attunement. And feelings get coded as a luxury, vulnerability as a weakness, and humanness as a flaw. Even for females, being entirely for others and avoiding emotions and connections altogether by not allowing reciprocity. I cannot tell you how I've seen this shown up in relationships where part of the coercive control and the power being imposed, being punished when reciprocity was not allowed, when if someone is only dishing out in ways that control, whether that's financially or emotionally or mentally, but then not receiving from the other person and refusing to believe that you are loved or refusing to be cared for or refusing to be chosen, that's not reciprocity. Every person has something to give in relationships, and what we have to give might be different.
• 14:59
  I have less financial privilege than other people might have. Other people might have less than me, but I have this knowledge, and I have this experience, or as they say in Al Anon, experience, strength, and hope. I have those things to offer in the context of my own lived experience from life, and you will have those things to offer from your experiences of life. But if we do not learn how to receive, we will push people away and block out relationships because we're not allowing ourselves to be vulnerable enough for reciprocity to even be possible. This is the price of being someone who's of use, who's handy and helpful.
• 15:47
  If this is your narrative of the price you have to pay, you believe that you must buy your way into having relationships by ensuring that the other person is getting good value for having deigned to relate to you. This isn't anything like healthy reciprocity. In relationships where there is mutuality and reciprocity between the parties, people invest in an exchange of care and support that may be imbalanced at times. Right? Like, we we maybe don't have the flu at the same time.
• 16:18
  That can also happen. But there might be times when you're sick and other times I'm sick or days you're having a good day and I'm having a bad day, days I'm having a good day and you're having a bad day. We are going to need each other in different ways at different times. It is, however, marked by the inherent assumption that each party is free to ask for and is eligible to receive support when needed. So your partner or your work or your friends or whatever this ship is does not get credit for supporting you if that support has strings attached or is conditional.
• 17:02
  Because then you are not free to ask for, and it may not even happen if you do ask. And if you ask and it happens, there's still a price to pay. That's not the same as reciprocity or as support or as love or as care. That is control. That is coercive control.
• 17:27
  The problem with an equation in which the price of admission is to need nothing is that human beings are not able to, no matter how capable we are, to meet all of our own needs. A belief that the price of admission to relationships is silencing your needs has the corollary that having your needs, whether they are met or not, is a problem. You further assume that the only way to proceed is to take care of others. Notice that you are not defining the needs of people you're trying to relate to as the problems since you've constructed the relationship on the model that you'll meet their needs. You need them to have needs that you can meet.
• 18:08
  The okay. I wanna say something about this. This is what keeps us in interpersonal violence relationships. When it gets set up through coercive control and you actually make someone sicker or make someone struggle more in poverty because you need them to need you because it's the only way you can have your needs met. That is exploitation.
• 18:33
  That is abuse. And in that case, you're still not getting your actual needs met, and neither are they. So it's still not care. You may in fact be someone who is highly skilled at exquisitely meeting the needs of others and may end up having a number of relationships in which your entire function is meeting the other person's needs in some way. It's easy for you as a professional to seem calm, regulated, and emotionally present with people relationships where no one expects you to be transparent or vulnerable.
• 19:07
  You kind of meet your needs for human connection of some sort when you're a professional helper. The price you pay is that you are never completely known because the structure of the relationship is that you're focused on your patients or clients. Your apparently intuitive ability to understand their needs is in part because their needs are yours. You know what you're missing, so you know what they want too. You can even vicariously experience being someone who gets his or her needs met by meeting those of your clients or by supporting them and become people who are able to ask for what they want and not pay prices This is so dangerous.
• 19:48
  This is so dangerous. This creates bad therapy, and this creates more trauma. She says everyone is endangered when a helping professional avoids directly meeting his or her basic human needs for love, care, and nurturance. The pattern of paying the price by having no relationship rather than having needs or only relationships when you're of use is toxic. This is abuse, you guys.
• 20:18
  It creates a pattern of coercive control, and it is dangerous. If your caregiver was not simply depleted but rather was actively punitive in response to your normative dependency needs, meaning what's appropriate developmentally just growing up. Right? So, like, a four year old or a three year old needs me to tie their shoes. It's just a developmentally appropriate need.
• 20:43
  It doesn't mean they're bad. It doesn't mean they'll never learn how to tie their shoes. It's just the season where it's my job as the parent to do it. This dynamic can be even more malignant and shame inducing. If your caregiver got angry or endangered you when you expressed your needs, if you were shamed or humiliated simply for having developmentally appropriate needs, you were left feeling when you're in danger when you express a need in a relationship today.
• 21:13
  Okay. This goes back to why complex trauma because of relational trauma, because of deprivation, has such a great and deep impact on us neurologically is worse even than physical or sexual abuse. We know those are bad. We are not minimizing that. And also, if you did not have a safe caregiver that was emotionally attuned to you, could mirror what your needs were, could respond to them if your emotional needs were not noticed, reflected, or met, if you got in trouble for having feelings.
• 21:57
  This reads to you still as danger today until we tend to that and heal it in therapy. This is the heavy price for connection, a wound of attachment rising from years of abuse and neglect in childhood. But then she gives us something to compare that to or contrast that to with chosen family. She uses the example of the LGBT community because the LGBT community so often adopts these mothers, like they say about RuPaul or they say about Taylor Swift or aunties or aunties. That happens in the indigenous world too.
• 22:44
  Or brother and sister or these siblings or cousins were cousins. These kinds of relationships creating chosen family, whether that language is explicit or not. She says they are your good enough emotional home, the place where they have to take you in. Creating a family of choice powerfully disrupts internal working models that predict being alone and used by others. A family of choice can give your EPs repeated opportunities to practice noticing that you can have relationships that are toll free and emotionally meaningful and have people in your life who care about you without using you.
• 23:29
  In families of choice, everyone gives and everyone gets. There are implicit agreements that people will do their best to be kind to one another and and repair ruptures when they occur. This is actually really important to safety. If you are in a relationship with someone who is not assuming goodwill or presuming goodwill and already default to your bad because they have not tended to that in their own trauma history, in their own therapy, and that's getting dumped on you, that is also coercive control. That is also emotionally abusive, and there is no way to win that.
• 24:09
  That is not safe. The word choice is super important. You have chosen this family. They have chosen you. No one has assumed that a price must be paid.
• 24:19
  These are relationships that are voluntary, reciprocal, and mutual. You can say yes or no depending on whether you can really do something. And if you say no, you do not have to defend it. Pay attention. Pay attention to the relationships you already have where there's no limbic resonance, no use where even though it feels like weird people are still hanging out with you.
• 24:47
  Notice people who are generous of spirit and yet have good boundaries. People who say no when they mean no and yet often say yes because to do so gives them pleasure. Notice who shows up for you before you even ask for help because they're paying attention and who seems to be pleased to be there for you, not because they're doing their version of paying the price of admission, but simply because they want to. They actually like you. Give people a chance to show you that they simply like you rather than what they can use in you.
• 25:21
  This is what we have been saying about what we learned from doctor Tema, from Laura in this book, from Chuck in that podcast interview and conversation sense and with our attachment therapist, and now we've got this new therapist that has been so powerfully good for us. Attachment styles are not labels on our forehead that we are stuck with forever. That is what I always thought. It is not true. We use those attachment strategies either having to approach care or having to avoid harm.
• 25:58
  We use those strategies when we are being harmed or not being cared for. When our environment and our relationships are safe, we do not use those strategies because we do not need them. So we could have approach or anxious attachment from childhood or in certain relationships or avoidant relationships or strategies because we're having to avoid harm in other areas of our life and also be very secure in some relationships in our life when they are safe and healthy and reciprocal, and we are being cared for and not in danger. This is so powerful and this gives me so much hope because we are not condemned to act out the trauma that was already done to us. We are not stuck in relationship patterns that continue to hurt us or neglect us.
• 27:06
  We are actually fully capable of engaging in healthy and safe relationships with healthy and safe people. And I think that is a beautiful and powerful and healing thing. And the more we experience it, the more we find those people as part of our chosen family, the more exponential our healing becomes. That is how connection brings healing. I'm loving it.
• 27:38
  This keeps getting dissected more and more and keeps coming up, but I mean it. This is how connection brings healing.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: 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.
• 28:36
  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. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too. That's what peer support is all about, being human together.
• 29:06
  So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.