Transcript: Episode 64
64. Liking It
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Okay, so this group and this workbook are making things way crazier, and I don’t know how to tell if that’s like a good thing, like we’re making progress, or if it’s actually a problem. Because it’s becoming my problem and I don’t want it to be my problem. So, the whole chapter this week that we had to do in the workbook, Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation, the whole chapter was about avoidance.
Now, let me just say from the inside, there’s a reason that we have avoidance and there’s a reason why Emma doesn’t need to know everything or why we are avoiding things or why she needs to avoid things or why we help her avoid things. I’m just saying. It’s kind of the whole point of DID. [Laughing] Except that I get that if we are going to get better -- if we’re going to get better, we need to learn how to do it differently, but I don’t know how to do that without making things crazier or harder or worse or messing everything up.
So, I’m sure that’s why we’re in group and I’m sure that’s why we have the homework and the workbook, and maybe that’s even why we go to therapy. But until we figure all that out -- oh my goodness, it’s making everything harder, and I don’t understand why it has to get harder before it gets better. So, the three big things about this chapter about avoidance are that number one, avoidance or dissociation happens because we didn’t get help with trauma or rescued from it. And so we never learned how to experience those responses. Number two, it’s judged as good or bad, like what happened to us, and we naturally want to avoid what’s bad and unpleasant. Well, let me tell you, the past is bad and unpleasant, people. Okay? [Laughing] That’s the whole reason that we’re really good at avoidance.
So, doing the opposite of avoidance is like creating havoc on a whole new level and I don’t even know how to manage this. I just can’t even. And then the third things was facing hard things triggers intense feelings and memory time experiences, and so it feels dangerous. And that’s the part I want to talk about, because she did -- she was supposed to answer these questions about avoidance every day this week. I think she got out two days, maybe three days, in the notebook.
And let me just say no, okay, oh my goodness. Her focus on trying to face things instead of avoid them landed us in Missouri. You guys, we don’t need to be in Missouri. I mean, a shout out to our friend Donna, who we almost got to see there. Well, she saw her, but I didn’t see her. I want to see her. That was not cool or fair. So, we’ll fight over Donna now. But there’s no reason for us to be returning or being called back to Missouri or dealing with things there. Uh. It’s so complicated I can’t even tell you.
I mean, everything is fine. We are safe. The outside kids had a grand time. We were with The Husband. So, everything was fine, and that is just lovely, but there’s so many things that are there and triggers that are there, and not all of it bad. I get that John Mark and the boys and the kids had a blast - inside kids and outside. Everyone had fun. So, in a way it was good for us and I’m trying to just let that be. But we also did a lot of hard things, like on the way down, we stopped at the mother’s grave. And then on the way to Oklahoma from Missouri, we had to go through Arkansas, where we stopped at the father’s grave on the way to the inlaws.
So, hello. So, I don’t know how long it’s been since we’ve been there, but why do we have to just stop and face all of the hard stuff. Why is that helpful? How is that a good thing? I don’t even know. And so now we’re having terrible nightmares. The stuff that is getting puked up in therapy, like just in the notebook -- I can’t even. It’s just becoming super complicated in a new kind of hard way. And I know that we agreed as a group, as best as we’re able to at this point, that it was time to start talking to the therapist in a new way. Because we can totally hold onto that she’s actually real. She’s safe and we need to talk about this stuff. And so we’re sort of in agreement on that, but as soon as we started letting things slip, everything started falling apart. And everything immediately got harder.
So, how do we know if this is a good thing and what is actually helping? And what is we just need to stop this here and not be talking about all of this? Because that’s a little bit, kind of how it feels. So, we’re trying to remember that we can hold onto now time is safe, but also talk about hard things. And last week in therapy, we talked about a lot of hard things. I don’t mean we went into -- we did not go in depth of anything specific, but kind of, a lot of things came up. And approaching those subjects at a surface level and mentioning them and starting to put pieces together, and to sort of put them out there with the therapist and realize that she’s not freaking out and she’s still keeping us safe and now time is still safe and we can keep ourselves safe and letting everyone inside kind of be aware of that has been a really big deal.
And I think it’s the right thing, and I think it’s a good thing. And I think that maybe is the very evidence of our progress, but it’s also absolutely terrifying. And it’s making the notebook really hard to do, and to keep journaling between sessions, because more and more stuff is getting puked out like fur balls. And it’s really hard then to keep that blurry line more solid, between now time and memory time, especially when we do something like go to the old cabin in Missouri.
The cabin in Missouri where we went this weekend, it’s not even a cabin. It’s like a condo thing. Right? So, we inherited it when the mother died, but we grew up going there all the time, like every weekend when we were little almost. We went there long before Branson was anything, and when Branson only had the Puppet Palace and Waltzing Waters before it’s the crazy show town that it is now.
And we weren’t going there for the shows. We went there I think to get away from the family. I think our mother was trying in that way. And so we would go there ,but she would either stay in her room or like kind of overdose on pills and sleep all weekend. And so those weekends in Branson were like the best pieces of our childhood probably, because we could romp around outside and play in the woods and by the lake and everything with our brother without any trauma or drama, because our father wasn’t there. Our mother was asleep, and no one cared. There was no getting locked up or getting hurt or being hurt or anything like that. We were just completely on our own, probably to a neglectful degree, but we’re fine. We’re adults. You know? It’s not like today where the children can’t even play in the street without one of us being out there.
So, I really have mixed feelings because maybe that was a safe place to start, and maybe that was exactly right in what we need to be talking about, but it’s also so scary, because if we talk about those things then we’re going to talk about other things. And I don’t know what all is going to come up or what all is going to come out. And so I have as much anxiety about that and feeling like I’m losing control of what's getting filtered and what's not getting filtered that I don’t even know what to do about it.
So, this weekend brought up a lot for us because of being in that place, and all of the memories there, except they’re not necessarily bad memories. And that’s kind of the first time for that to happen. And so, I don't know if that’s what drew Emma to go or if it’s because Dawn was trying to run, because we were talking about so much stuff and that’s just where she ran, or I don’t know. But, I don’t even know how it happened, because it was not at all planned. It was completely spur of the moment, but we did it somehow, functional enough that we went with reservations to the cabin. We could actually get into our cabin, and we went with the whole family. We weren't on our own or running away exactly. Or maybe we were, but we took them with us? But that’s different than hiding or disappearing.
So, somehow it was more functional and the memories that we had were good ones. And maybe it’s because the therapist asked us about -- I don’t know. I don’t know how she asked it, because I wasn’t there. But she asked something. I saw it in the notebook. She asked something about anything good from the parents. And so I don’t know if just thinking so much about that or trying to identify something good, and going to the cabin was our good. And so we ended up actually, physically there, which is like three hours or four hours from our house - 12 hours if you have six children in the van with you.
So, I’m not sure what happened, and I’m trying to piece it together. And I know I’m rambling a little bit, but I have to talk out loud about it to process it. And I need to figure out what happened, because it wasn’t entirely bad. It’s like do we share memories a little bit, except they were good ones, and so it was like a safe way to practice that? Are we developing skills at that? Or is it more like something malfunctioned and I don’t know why we went to Missouri. Or it is just everything's chill and we also went to Missouri. I really don’t know.
What I do know is that they wrote a lot while we were there, and we had a lot of time to think about things and to sort of let things sit in a safe way, because we were in a place that’s very triggering, except we were also with The Husband and with the children and between therapy. Like literally, after therapy and now before therapy, and we haven’t been home yet hardly. And so it was a safe time and space to sit in that environment.
So, it’s almost like here’s the part that’s getting to me, and maybe it’s a good thing. But here’s what’s significant. It’s almost like we did on the outside what’s happening on the inside. Does that make sense? Like externally we went in a safe way, at a safe time, exposing ourselves to what was a little bit triggering, but not actually bad, in a setting where we all kind of have memories in different ways, and in a way that sort of connects us - both internally and externally.
So there was this weird new level of co-consciousness with some people if I’m understanding co-consciousness. The therapist has been talking about it. We’ve been writing about it. It’s been in group and in the workbook a little bit. And I think some of that was an example of it. There were a lot of us that were kind of aware that that’s where we were and that that’s what was going on and that we were having lots of memories from the past, but also that those memories were good ones. And so it wasn’t that it was a bad week or that anything bad or wrong happened. It was just super trippy. It really tripped me out, and I haven’t quite recovered or feel fully present since then.
The other thing that’s happened in the last week at the same time as all of that going on is the Littles have been writing a lot about their time with the therapist, but as part of that that they’re talking about is about good touch and bad touch. And not just bad touch as in getting hurt or abused, but specifically about unwanted touch. And I have never ever thought about that, even with our outside kids. Because there is a lot to be said about grooming and touch that’s not appropriate, but they try to make it feel special or make it feel good or as if you’re getting rewarded when it’s actually not appropriate. So, I know already, the outside kids, we never make them hug their grandma or never make them kiss Aunt Sally or whatever. We don’t force that, because their body is their body, and if they are not wanting a hug or attention physically or a physical affection, we don’t push that on them. That’s not fair or appropriate. But we never thought about this in the context of our own abuse or our own experiences in the past or about how abuse happened that there were ways at different times and in different experiences that it was set up such that not that you wanted it to happen, but you were kind of manipulated into it happening or tricked into it happening.
And then one issue that’s come up for us, just barely, just barely -- I’ve seen it in the notebook for the first time this week is about being taught or made or tricked or whatever into liking it. And I don’t mean liking being abused, but I mean just like the physical responses - the natural physical responses to different things. Or growing up and -- I know one thing that is way too much information. But like, I know that I can be way more aggressive than what my husband is, and that that makes him uncomfortable, and we have to work really hard on those boundaries of what is comfortable for him. And a lot of shame issues that I have for what I was taught growing up sexually or about pain or about different -- almost -- I don’t know how else to say it. But almost like the culture of how my identity or my sexual identity or my sexual development happened because of growing up in abuse, and because of growing up in different settings.
And so not only learning to like what was wrong, but also being more comfortable being hurt or also not knowing that that should not have been happening as a child. Or feeling bad because of those pieces of knowing how to manage the pain or knowing how to manage your body responding to what they did or knowing how to push away the shame in that avoidance kind of way like has been our notebook.
But at the same time not realizing that there were others inside who were younger or who did not like it or who were being hurt in ways I didn’t know about. Or who were being exposed to things that I didn’t know about. Or realizing if I am created just for one piece of things then not understanding that that’s out of context to what everyone else is experiencing. And so I didn’t realize how it all fit together until I read what -- well, specifically, it’s -- until I read specifically about -- until I read specifically about one of the Littles, the one with words, they call her. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say her name or not. I’ll have to ask Sasha.
But the one who is starting to talk about some of these things and helping the other Littles to talk about some of these things with the therapist. When she wrote in the notebook this week about the way some of the others came to be, and I don’t know how to explain it other than like a family tree, which in itself is kind of triggering, actually. But for us, there’s one of the Littles that was primarily for the mother, and one of the Littles that was primarily for the father. But if we take just the father one, for example, and again, I don’t want to say any names that I don’t have permission to say. So, I’m not mentioning that. But if we take the one for the father example, then from her, there were other -- I don’t know if it’s splits or they were born or how you talk about it in the right words. I don’t know the words for it. But there are others that came from her, like one for this thing, and one for this thing, and one for this thing. Because those things happened over and over and over again for years. And so it was like she wasn’t enough to handle that and that and that. And so from her, she experienced all of the pain of those things, but it was this one that dealt with it and this one who dealt with it and this one who dealt with it.
And then when that was not enough, like as we got older, then other things happened. And then developmentally -- and so there I am at 13 realizing that I either -- realizing that to survive, I have to deal with this. And I have to figure out how to endure it or like it or be good at it so that I can just survive. And I don’t think that that’s fair. And I don’t think -- but at the same time, it’s just who I am and who I was. And so coming down into the confines of our current relationship, and choosing to be committed to that if only because all the other relationships I tried ended up so dangerous or so awful or so miserable that I was just unhappy. And so even though this limited me in lots of ways, he was kind and safer in ways no one else ever had been. And so I was agreeable to that in that context.
But now, looking back, I’m starting to have a whole new layer of my own shame issues of if I hadn’t of done this or done this or done this -- and that’s just as an adult. I didn’t know better, and I didn’t know that others were suffering because of what I was doing. And I want to be careful and take my own responsibility. And I know that I need to be accountable for that, but I don’t know how to work from what happened to me in the past to being -- to dealing with my own stuff without it impacting them, like even being able to talk about it.
I didn’t know that things that I was doing -- that they were getting hurt. It was like because they were getting hurt, they couldn’t deal with the part of having to be good at what I was doing and so there I was, and this is what I do, and this is who I am. But I didn’t know that they were getting hurt. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like one experience, half of it got assigned to me, and half of it got assigned to them, and I didn’t know what they were enduring. And I didn’t know that what I was going through was not as it should be as far as healthy, normal development of children. I didn’t know. Or that my adolescence was at all abnormal. Or that my adolescence was at all unsafe, much less the years of destruction of young adulthood. Or everything I went through those early years and trying to stay away from the people that now I understand were now trying to help me, but at the time, I thought they were just trying to lock me up or whatever. And so I just kept trying to get away and I just kept trying to get out of that. And I just kept trying to go back.
But now the notebook and the podcast and the therapist and the family that we have, all of these things, learning about these layers and learning about these pieces and seeing things as a whole is a whole different perspective. And I feel like a whole new shame of not just what was done to me, but what I did to myself. And I don’t know which is harder to deal with. And as I think about that difference when I look in the notebook like the one for the mother and the one for the father are still both waiting for the other parent to rescue them. So the one for the mother thinks the father is good and that he’s going to help her get away from the mother. And the one for the father thinks the mother is good and going to help her get her away from the father. And I don’t know how to deal with that of like telling them neither one are good, neither one are going to help, neither one are going to rescue them.
I don’t know how to get through that much less, we have rescued ourselves and we have gotten to a safe place now. So maybe that’s where we’re supposed to focus, and maybe that’s what therapy is about. But it’s just heartbreaking and gut wrenching to read and to sit with and to deal with and to see that perspective and realize that that’s part of what’s going on and part of why I was even born or came to be or whatever is the word - as far as my earliest memories.
And they're -- not -- innocence is not the right word. But when I read the one from the mother -- when I read what she has written here in the notebook on this page, it’s all about the setup for what the father is about to do to the one that’s for the father. But the one from the mother doesn’t realize that. She just thinks that he’s getting her out and getting her away from the mother and is going to get special attention that she has waited for and needed from the mother, but not getting from the mother. And so I don’t want to read it and I don’t want to go into details more than that. That’s already plenty enough triggering.
But reading this and seeing she doesn’t realize what I know is about to happen. And what if that’s my fault? If I would have faced things instead of avoiding them, what if I could have gotten us away? Or what if I could have stopped it from happening? Or what if I could have done something different. I mean, I know in this example we were like ten, and a ten year old can’t stop an adult. I know that in my head, but I don’t know how to hold onto that or deal with realizing what a set up it was and what a trap everything was. And how -- like no wonder I don’t trust people. No wonder I don’t believe what people are saying when they say, “oh, I’m on your side” or whatever. Because no one was. And because the people who said they were the very people who were trying to hurt me worse. And so when someone says that, it feels like a danger signal of you’re actually really triggering me right now. Please stop saying that.
Because it always meant something worse was happening. And I think that’s another reason that sometimes, as an adult, like a young adult, I sometimes stayed in those really awful domestic violent situations with those alcoholics when I was in those relationships, because I knew that. I could predict that. At least I knew what was happening. I knew what those truths were. As opposed to leaving that and trying to be in a safe relationship like we’re in with The Husband now. It freaks me out and it’s really hard sometimes to just be present in that relationship, because I’m waiting for the day he’s going to change his mind.
I’m waiting for the day the therapist says, “This is actually too much, and now you’ve said the wrong thing, and it’s officially my limit, and so you’re done here. Please leave and don’t ever come back here.” I’m waiting for that to happen, because no one has rescued us. No one did help us. And I have worked really hard to get us away from all that and so now to go back and face it is really, really difficult. And to go back and sit with it and look at it or let her see it, no. How do you even -- I don’t even know how to do that safely. I don’t know how to do that and hold onto now time is safe, because none of it feels safe. And none of it was safe. And so how do I know that now is different?
The other part of it is just feeling crazy, because the more that you see all of these layers and the more of trying to learn between now time and memory time, means the more you recognize what was happening to you and what was created within you to deal with that. And so part of what came out in the notebook this week is that the playroom where the -- one of the really little ones plays and is like -- I knew already in that house that it was down the hall from the father’s room and studio. But what came out in the notebook this week is we realized it wasn’t actually a playroom. It was the laundry room and it was where the dirty laundry came down the shoot and landed on the floor. And that when we could get away from the father at night, we could go sleep on the dirty laundry to rest or recover or whatever. And in the laundry room there was this picture, like a painting, like an old black and white painting, of a playroom. There was a rocking horse and there were toys and like a nursery kind of picture painting. I don’t know how else to describe it.
And we could see that painting from the pile of laundry. And so this whole thing with this young Little - this Little Little -- she’s four -- about being in the playroom. She was the only good we had and those were the only good things we had. And now all of that is imagination. All of that was created internally. It was not an actual place externally. And it means that all those times we thought we were in the playroom were all these times after we were abused. And I don’t know how to deal with that. I don’t know how to let that in my brain. I don’t know how to let her connect that or how to communicate these pieces that are going on or coming out or unfolding or that we’re seeing. This was the hardest, cruelest chapter about DID this week.
I mean, I understand learning that avoidance is what dissociation is about and how that’s protective and all of those things. I get those layers, but to put it together to reach beyond that veil or beyond that curtain of what we’re avoiding and to look at it. That’s harsh. It’s harsh and it’s awful, and it’s messy, and I don’t like it. And I don’t like that I was the one getting stuck with what was bad and having to avoid how bad it was by thinking that I liked it. You can’t fix that. How do you fix that? That just makes me wrong from the beginning. There’s no way to redeem that. I don’t know how to heal that. I don’t know what to do with that or who I’m supposed to be if that’s always a piece in me.
And it is like the deepest and darkest shame of everything I felt thus far, of everything we have noticed thus far. And now, because everyone’s talking and everyone’s reading the notebook and all of this communication that everybody wanted, now they all know. So, how am I supposed to show my face? How am I supposed to participate or go to therapy or see my Husband? Or even look him in the eye, much less go to therapy or talk about these things? I don’t know and I don’t have good answers. I just know it’s been a really hard week for therapy and a really hard work of dealing with therapy. And that I need coping skills, not just to deal with hard things from the past, I need coping skills to deal with therapy itself.
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