Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Back to the Beginning

Transcript

Back to the Beginning · 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.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: I have been crying, and I don't mean to be whiny now. I really don't. I just have so many feelings and so much awareness of them. It's so much harder than when I didn't know anything. I'm not afraid in the same way, so I think it still counts as progress.
• 2:04
  It counts for something. But I'm exhausted and feel like I'm slipping away. I started out the day with hope. Almost. Barely.
• 2:43
  We had three choices for therapists. After trying for so long and so many different times to settle on someone, to find someone who could help us, suddenly three people wrote back. Well, four. Our girlfriend had an idea of one, but they don't take a sliding scale, and they also have a wait list. Everyone is so full right now.
• 3:30
  It's really hard to get in with anyone. So since that didn't work, we had three others that were possibilities. The first was someone who is queer and familiar with religious trauma and faith transitions and even trauma, but not necessarily DID. The second one is familiar with DID, accepting and friendly an ally of LGBT, unaware but not experienced in religious trauma, And the third is just someone who wrote back. They say trauma generally, LGBT friendly generally, and religious trauma specifically.
• 4:46
  But I don't know about DID, and their website doesn't say much. So we have one of those fifteen minute free consultations later this week with them. But today was supposed to be our session with the queer therapist. The one who knows trauma but not necessarily DID specific, And where I live, they're not even licensed as a therapist, just as a coach. They're licensed therapists in the state next door to me, but I don't have an address there.
• 5:44
  So I thought maybe maybe I could use them as a coach for the LGBT and religious trauma stuff while I worked in therapy. I almost had hope. But when it came time for our session, I was running a few minutes late. There was a thunderstorm with lightning, and I was scared for my girls to be walking home. So I drove my car to the elementary school to pick them up, and the timing was exactly the same.
• 6:28
  So I felt rushed and unsettled as I climbed into my chair and turned my computer on, which didn't help with presenting well. Well enough for coaching. Good enough. Stable enough. All my triggers, I guess.
• 6:55
  I'm trying to prove myself well enough to get help. Also, it's been a long time since I had regular therapy, much less coaching. And when our session started, I began to panic, and I froze. And the longer I froze, the worse it got. I couldn't come out of it.
• 7:30
  I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. I couldn't turn off my camera. I couldn't type. And so she walked me through some breathing exercises,
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: and I felt stupid. Not because breathing is bad, but because I should know better.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: And because she's telling me to put my hand on my belly and my hand on my chest, like, I
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: want to touch my body, like, as if I can feel my body. And I thought this isn't working. This isn't helping. It's making it worse. And I couldn't say so.
• 8:28
  And then I felt ashamed because I've made more progress than that I should be able to say so. She tried to ask me questions, and I couldn't get anything out. She was so intense, and she was so direct. And I thought, oh, this has happened before when I was not strong enough, not gay enough, not bold enough, and I can't do it. And it spiraled from there that I was not real enough, that I'm not well enough, that I am not good enough.
• 9:39
  And I tried to get out of it, and I couldn't. It took me fifteen minutes to be able to turn off my camera to come out of freeze enough only to survive and only because I couldn't stay there with it getting worse and worse. And as soon as my camera went off, she said I was not ready for coaching. She said that she needs to refer me for therapy like I've not tried all the same people that she's referring me to. And it felt like there are not answers for me.
• 10:29
  There is not help for me. And I hung up. I couldn't stay. I couldn't stay to hear the words. I could not stay to not be wanted.
• 10:49
  I could not stay to face hopelessness. I could not stay to face despair. Because I hung up, she emailed, of course, to make sure I was safe. And, of course, I'm safe. Everything is fine.
• 11:19
  It's just fine. I'm so sorry. So sorry. So sorry. And so she emailed me again a link to Psychology Today with people in my area because that's what she's required to do, Because she doesn't know that's what I've been trying to do.
• 11:52
  I don't know what I'm doing, Quig. I don't know why it's so hard to find a therapist. I don't know why it's so hard to stay. I don't know what I'm acting out. I thought about it in group.
• 12:15
  I realized we were talking about getting a new therapist, and I thought, what if that in itself is a reenactment? What if I keep landing with bad therapists and therapists that don't work out because I keep looking for a therapist like my first therapist? And that's why I was trying to find someone so different, trying to find therapy that looks so different. And that didn't work either, and I just can't keep trying. I know that I am facing my core trauma stuff, but I cannot do it by myself.
• 13:11
  That is part of the trauma. What do I do when I cannot be good enough for therapy, well enough for therapy, plural enough for community, clinical enough for colleagues, gay enough for my people, Good enough for church. Normal enough for family. Where is there left for me to go? What is there left for me to try?
• 14:18
  I am torn between them all and belonging nowhere. How do I leave a culture but keep my faith? How do I set boundaries with teenagers but still parent lovingly? How do I live the life I need without abandoning the children whose biological parents would give anything, anything for a moment with them? And I am living across the country.
• 15:35
  What is that about? And the ones that are here, how do I love them well without drowning? Why does not available enough make it safe enough? Why is that the thing? How do you find connection with attachment that only feels safe alone?
• 16:53
  How do I make that okay? How do I find the gray? We went this last weekend to a movie with Jules to meet her family. The movie was, are you there, god? It's me, Margaret.
• 18:17
  And I remembered that it was a coming of age movie, and so I thought I should go see it in case I could show my girls, in case it would be helpful to them. I forgot how much of the movie was about the fighting of religions and that the truth that the girl finds is the truth of herself. It is just me, she said. And I think I am grieving. I think I am grieving.
• 19:15
  I am alone. I am safe, and I am healthy. But I am alone. And how can I say that and not be ungrateful? When so many have tried in so many ways.
• 20:05
  What is wrong with me that I am still at the end of the rope? That I cannot climb out of this, that I cannot get out, that I cannot get ahead, that I cannot find help. Why is it so hard to find help, and why do I keep acting this out? How do I learn to heal this peace when it's other people who will not stay? And when they do, why do I run away?
• 20:59
  And how is it therapeutic for someone to say, you are too hard for me? You are too complicated for me. You are too much for me. It made me sick in my belly, all the way in my gut. That is the same truth.
• 21:27
  That has always been. I was too much for the college. They did not know what to do with me. I was too much for the therapist that moved me in. She did not know what to do with me.
• 22:03
  I was too much for the high school before that. They did not know what to do with me. My own mother would rather die than care for me. And those who did try to care for me did die. What am I supposed to make of that?
• 22:33
  What sense is there in that? And the recognition and understanding that before that, all the way back to my parents' divorce, that I was only a trophy, a symbol of the conquest of my mother and her escape from her family, but also a burden. Too much. Too much. Too much.
• 23:54
  Too hard. The cause of the problems. And that my father did not need me when I was no longer a weapon against her, And that any fever I thought there was was only grooming. Makes me sick. What do I do with that?
• 24:30
  I cannot carry this by myself. But these have been my weeks with everyone fighting about lived experience and everyone fighting about plurality and everyone fighting, fighting, fighting. Just stop. I don't feel safe with such ugliness in the world. And causing more pain is not advocacy, and delaying care and response is not therapeutic.
• 25:36
  How can any of us feel safe or connected when the world is still cruel, when we are being unkind to each other? And how am I supposed to figure out who we are, who I am when I am not welcome anywhere, when I cannot be accepted for the pieces I tried to be, Or settle when I am. Why does it not settle? Because I know it's going to be taken away. It's one more therapist has crossed off the list.
• 26:33
  One more effort has failed. I keep missing the next monkey bar, and I am going to fall. There is no one waiting to catch me. It is just The coach today told me to put one hand on my chest and one hand on my belly, but to focus on feeling my belly move when I breathe, not my chest, and to breathe in for the count of five and to breathe out for the count of 10, to exhale twice as long as I inhale. I have not heard that one, and I'm sure that under normal circumstances, that is very helpful.
• 28:26
  And I'm trying it right now. Because giving up is not an option. I see my children playing outside my window, and I feel children little and frightened inside of me. And I think of the Zoom faces in the community, and giving up is not an option. We've come too far.
• 29:44
  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.