58 - Coming Home

[00:00:01] Hi everyone, welcome to The Cult I Left Behind podcast. I'm your host, Amanda Briggs, and I'm here to tell you my stories of growing up in the IBLP cult, which you might know from the Duggar family.

[00:00:15] And I'm your other host, Kyle Briggs. I'm Amanda's husband, and I have not heard most of these stories before, so stay tuned and we'll all get traumatized together.

[00:00:30] Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode. We are without Kyle this week. He is off on an epic dirt bike adventure across the country with his buddies, and I'm very happy for him.

[00:00:45] And also, I miss him very much, and hobbies are great, and also he needs to come home. It's just like that weird tension, you know, of being a supportive spouse, but also like kind of liking your spouse and wanting them to

[00:00:58] come home. So anyways, Kyle, we miss you. And y'all are stuck with me this week and maybe for a few more episodes.

[00:01:08] So I was thinking, you know, I can't really, I don't know if I can top the episode I did by myself last time. I think that was episode 40 where I shared music I've written and shared how music has really come into play to save me multiple times in my life.

[00:01:27] And yeah, I don't know if I can top that, but I figured we'd go deep again into a different topic, and that is dissociation.

[00:01:36] And for those of you who don't know what dissociation is, it's basically where you, as a person, you like disconnect from your body, and you almost become like a passive observer of your own life.

[00:01:52] And it's a coping mechanism that is not a bad thing. It's there to protect us and to kind of be a safety net or a rescue in really terrible situations.

[00:02:06] I dissociated enormously when I was being sexually assaulted as a child. I remember feeling like I was withdrawing from my own body, and my mind and my soul just kind of like hung out in a corner of the room and watched what was happening to me.

[00:02:24] Horrified, but detached, very detached. And it is a survival mechanism. It is a coping mechanism, but it isn't intended to be in place forever.

[00:02:35] Like it's not a way to live. It's a way to get through a scenario, like a traumatic situation.

[00:02:40] But for me, and for a lot of trauma survivors, it became a way of life when I was younger.

[00:02:47] I lived very dissociated, very checked out through my childhood, through my teenage years, and really until I went off to college and started grappling with my childhood, with the abuse.

[00:03:02] I hadn't quite yet connected that I'd grown up in a cult, so that wasn't as present in my mind as the abuse was.

[00:03:12] And I didn't really learn about dissociation or start to understand it until I began therapy when I was in college.

[00:03:21] And it was such a startling thing to realize that there was so much more to me than I realized.

[00:03:29] Like after living checked out of yourself for decades, coming home to yourself is a terrifying experience.

[00:03:40] You don't feel like home to yourself. You feel like an alien in a foreign land.

[00:03:47] And it's uncomfortable. It's scary. It's unfamiliar.

[00:03:52] It feels yuck and ick and just not like a place you want to be.

[00:03:58] And that's really sad because it's you.

[00:03:59] Like you feel that way about you, about being in your own skin, being in your own mind, being present with yourself, being grounded with yourself.

[00:04:07] And I remember struggling so hard with just staying connected even for brief periods of time.

[00:04:15] Back when I was in college, I studied classical vocal performance in college.

[00:04:21] And so that was on my mind and part of my experience while going through the initial couple waves of therapy.

[00:04:30] And like back when I was in college.

[00:04:33] And in vocal performance, there's this concept called singing on the line.

[00:04:39] And I'm going to do my best to explain it the way I understood it all those years ago.

[00:04:43] It was basically where as you sing, your breath stays connected to the notes appropriately.

[00:04:51] And you're keeping the sound in the proper placement in the mask of your face, which technical singing terms I know.

[00:05:01] But basically it just means that the sound is in the proper – it's being directed in the proper location to resonate well.

[00:05:07] And it's being well supported, like consistently solidly supported by the breath.

[00:05:12] And it all just like syncs up.

[00:05:15] And at least for me, that was my definition of singing on the line.

[00:05:20] And I remember trying to take something I could do, something I was good at, singing on the line,

[00:05:26] and connect it to this struggle of trying to live connected to myself, to my body, to my feelings, to my emotions, to my thoughts.

[00:05:36] During such a scary time of trying to come home to myself.

[00:05:39] And so I called it like living connected, living checked in, living on the line.

[00:05:46] And it took so much practice.

[00:05:49] It took – it was like months or years before I really felt like I could consistently go a whole day,

[00:05:57] like living on the line, where I was fully present, fully checked in, and just like fully at home living within myself.

[00:06:06] And I would initially just try to do it for a couple seconds at a time, like a couple breaths.

[00:06:12] I would think through, all right, Amanda, we're going to go home now.

[00:06:16] Like deep breath, close your eyes.

[00:06:19] All right, feel your body.

[00:06:21] Think your thoughts.

[00:06:22] Feel your feelings.

[00:06:23] And then I'd usually freak out.

[00:06:25] It was real scary, real different, real weird.

[00:06:27] And I'd run away.

[00:06:29] And that cycle repeated for, like I said, months and months until I could successfully live connected,

[00:06:36] live on the line for like half a day.

[00:06:39] And I would be so excited because it was a huge achievement for me, really,

[00:06:47] allowing myself to come home, to come home to myself.

[00:06:51] And eventually I got really good at it.

[00:06:53] I got to the point where I could live connected for days at a time, weeks at a time, months at a time.

[00:07:01] And then, you know, something would come up.

[00:07:02] There'd be a blip.

[00:07:03] And I would retreat real hard and dissociate again.

[00:07:07] And I would realize what I was doing.

[00:07:10] Okay, all right.

[00:07:11] That's all right.

[00:07:12] We can come back.

[00:07:13] And I'd ease my way back into being fully present with myself again and thinking my thoughts and feeling my feelings

[00:07:22] and being grounded and present in my own skin and my body.

[00:07:26] And I would recover the ability.

[00:07:28] And I'd coast along again, living on the line until the next time there was a blip.

[00:07:34] And it got easier and easier to recover from the blips with time.

[00:07:40] And I'm sharing this for a couple of reasons.

[00:07:44] First of all, for any of y'all who are trauma survivors of any kind or you come from a really restrictive environment

[00:07:53] or oppressive environment, which I would also classify as a trauma,

[00:07:57] it can be really intimidating to try to figure out who you are apart from the abuse or the trauma or the environment.

[00:08:08] And that's because it's hard to even know who you are in the trauma and the abuse and the environment if you've lived in a dissociative state.

[00:08:18] So I feel like it's such a strange, winding, long path to self-discovery after surviving something difficult.

[00:08:28] Because if you check out of yourself during the difficult situation or in the difficult environment, you don't know who you are.

[00:08:36] I mean, you don't feel at home within yourself.

[00:08:41] A lot of times you have to figure out what you like and what you don't like and what works for you and what doesn't work for you

[00:08:47] and maybe even what your favorite color is because you were just so checked out of yourself for so long.

[00:08:55] And then you have the monumental task of figuring out who you are outside of that environment,

[00:09:03] outside of that abuse or the trauma.

[00:09:06] And that, for me, took a lot of therapy.

[00:09:10] It was a combination of healing the trauma and discovering myself.

[00:09:16] And then in there or after, I kind of forget the sequence of events,

[00:09:20] but somewhere in there or after there, you have to put it all together and start living inside yourself again.

[00:09:30] And there's a lot of power in that.

[00:09:32] There's so much power in showing up to your life, knowing who you are and what you're about

[00:09:40] and how you feel and what you think and being able to stay grounded and present,

[00:09:46] even intense or difficult or triggering moments.

[00:09:49] And then what I found was that there was also a very high cost for coming home to myself.

[00:09:55] And the cost was being able to see through the bullshit.

[00:10:00] When you live really checked out for a long time, it's amazing what you can tolerate.

[00:10:06] It's amazing what you're willing to put up with in life, in the world around you and the people around you.

[00:10:14] And when you wake up and you come home to yourself and suddenly you're in tune with your body and your intuition and your senses and your gut,

[00:10:22] and you're in a situation or with a person and your gut is going, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

[00:10:28] Well, you're not dissociated from it anymore.

[00:10:30] You're not disconnected.

[00:10:31] You're in there.

[00:10:32] You're fully checked in, which means that when the warning bells go off, you know they're going off.

[00:10:37] And that you probably need to do something about it.

[00:10:42] And for me, that cost looked like recognizing all of the toxic people and environments in my life.

[00:10:50] And I had to make some really tough choices.

[00:10:54] Part of that was when I reported my brother and began distancing myself from my biological family.

[00:11:01] I also began distancing myself from some of my more toxic and or abusive friends in college.

[00:11:08] I think I've mentioned in the past that we're attracted to what we know.

[00:11:13] And so my first round of friends in college was comprised of people who had many traits, many toxic traits that were similar to my biological family.

[00:11:26] And there was a lot of grief in that.

[00:11:27] There was a lot of grief to, you know, this joyful experience of coming home to myself only to realize like,

[00:11:34] oh, wow, I got a lot of alarm bells going off in here that I was not previously aware of.

[00:11:46] And I'm the sort of person where like I had to do something about it.

[00:11:49] And it wasn't always, you know, dramatic like, oh, this is the end of an era with this person or whatever.

[00:11:55] Sometimes it was subtle.

[00:11:56] And I just slowly, quietly stepped away and let myself kind of drift off or, you know,

[00:12:02] didn't put in the effort to keep the relationship going.

[00:12:06] And it just sort of naturally drifted off and we went our separate ways.

[00:12:11] But especially in the case of my bio family, there were some moments that called for more deliberate named action

[00:12:21] where I made some really big steps to listen to myself and my gut and recognize that I needed to make some changes in my life.

[00:12:33] And I remember thinking like, gosh, it was so much easier when I didn't feel.

[00:12:38] Life was so much easier when I didn't feel.

[00:12:41] And I think that's true and false.

[00:12:43] I think it was easier in that I wasn't aware of how bad certain things were.

[00:12:50] I was able to successfully hide from my red flags and my alarm bells that were going off.

[00:12:58] But I think the cost of that is that I wasn't really living my life.

[00:13:05] I was a passive observer of my life.

[00:13:11] And life was just happening to me.

[00:13:14] I didn't really feel like I was happening to my own life.

[00:13:17] And while there is power in coming back to yourself,

[00:13:23] I think that we also have to be prepared for the grief that comes with it.

[00:13:28] And I think that's a way we can support ourselves but also support others.

[00:13:31] If you know someone who is struggling a lot as they come out of a toxic relationship

[00:13:38] or an abusive environment or an oppressive religious atmosphere,

[00:13:44] just recognize that part of your support might need to be helping them grieve

[00:13:51] and come to terms with how many alarm bells are going off inside them

[00:13:57] now that they're living present and living aware and living on the line

[00:14:02] where they're connected with themselves again.

[00:14:05] And I've been through that cycle a couple times in my life now.

[00:14:10] And I think part of the reason that this has come up for me

[00:14:13] and is something that I wanted to talk about here on the podcast

[00:14:18] is that I'm kind of going through that again

[00:14:22] where I'm in the process of coming home to myself

[00:14:26] and it's scary and, you know, kind of terrible.

[00:14:30] But also I've been there and done this before

[00:14:33] and I know that it's worth it in the end.

[00:14:37] It's just really hard going through it.

[00:14:39] We've referenced many times in previous episodes

[00:14:43] that I was really sick for a while.

[00:14:46] And I think that just the process of trying to survive

[00:14:53] that medical catastrophe,

[00:14:55] it was so drawn out years long

[00:15:00] and there was so much medical gaslighting and trauma

[00:15:05] and the military actually diagnosed me with PTSD again from that.

[00:15:11] And just, yeah, I did not have good medical care

[00:15:16] through that whole scenario.

[00:15:18] And I had unnecessary surgeries

[00:15:19] and lost unnecessary body parts

[00:15:23] and had unnecessary limitations to my future life options.

[00:15:30] And I was in so much pain

[00:15:35] that my world just focused down to like a pinpoint

[00:15:40] of trying to stay alive

[00:15:42] and survive until I got out of the military

[00:15:46] and got the medical care I needed.

[00:15:50] And I dissociated again for several years there.

[00:15:55] I was not checked into myself.

[00:15:57] My body was a very painful, dangerous place to be

[00:16:02] from a medical perspective.

[00:16:04] And I knew it was happening.

[00:16:08] I could tell.

[00:16:09] I know the signs in myself.

[00:16:12] And it was hard to know

[00:16:15] I was drifting away from myself again.

[00:16:19] And I think I actually made the conscious decision

[00:16:24] not to stop it

[00:16:25] because I couldn't be fully present in my body.

[00:16:32] It was literally too difficult, too painful.

[00:16:35] And I've never been so certain

[00:16:39] I was gonna like lose my sanity

[00:16:42] from the amount of medical distress I was in.

[00:16:47] And so I just, I let myself drift off for a couple years.

[00:16:51] And this year, we've made some really huge changes to life

[00:16:58] to try to get me back on track medically.

[00:17:00] You know, we've talked about moving across the country.

[00:17:03] And there's been a lot more going on behind the scenes.

[00:17:11] And it's, you know, we've had to prioritize different things.

[00:17:16] I feel like I have so many like wonderful ideas

[00:17:19] for this podcast and for our community.

[00:17:20] And I want to do them and Kyle wants to do them.

[00:17:23] And then we look at the reality of kind of

[00:17:25] what we're grappling with in life.

[00:17:27] And we go, okay, we're gonna have to put a pin in that.

[00:17:31] We'll circle back to it when we can

[00:17:33] and when there's more bandwidth.

[00:17:35] And I've like, honestly, between you and me,

[00:17:38] it's been hell.

[00:17:40] You know, you think, oh, cool.

[00:17:43] I'm getting better.

[00:17:44] I'm getting healthier.

[00:17:46] And I can do more things.

[00:17:48] And I'm not stuck in my house and stuck in bed.

[00:17:50] And I go more places than physical therapy

[00:17:54] and doctor's appointments.

[00:17:56] And I'm pursuing, you know, this dream of my PhD.

[00:18:00] And it's wonderful.

[00:18:01] And that is all good.

[00:18:03] That's all amazing.

[00:18:04] But then there's like, dun, dun, dun.

[00:18:06] I've had to check back into myself.

[00:18:10] Which sucks, as it turns out.

[00:18:14] It's so much work.

[00:18:16] And I was crying about this in therapy last week.

[00:18:20] Just like, I've done this before.

[00:18:24] So I know how good it is.

[00:18:26] But like, I've done this before.

[00:18:27] So I know how hard it is.

[00:18:28] I know how hard it is to have to figure out again

[00:18:34] that I'm a safe place to be.

[00:18:37] And that my body's a safe place to be.

[00:18:39] My brain's a safe place to be.

[00:18:42] My emotions are a safe place to be.

[00:18:44] And while there weren't, you know, 5,000 alarms going off this time,

[00:18:50] there were a couple.

[00:18:51] And they were really big.

[00:18:53] There were things that, issues I've known needed to be addressed

[00:18:57] in different categories, different things, different people in my life,

[00:19:03] that I hadn't had the bandwidth to even notice

[00:19:09] the incessant ringing of the alarms.

[00:19:11] And as I've made the journey back toward myself,

[00:19:17] they got really loud and really insistent.

[00:19:22] So that, of course, meant confronting them and dealing with them

[00:19:26] and doing the things it takes to turn those alarms off.

[00:19:33] And it's painful.

[00:19:37] It's really painful.

[00:19:38] I don't know if there's a way around that,

[00:19:41] like the alarm bell side of coming home to yourself.

[00:19:44] And that part's been heavy and hard.

[00:19:46] And it takes a lot of time and energy and effort to handle that

[00:19:52] when you come back into yourself

[00:19:54] and you see all the messes you need to clean up.

[00:19:57] On the other hand, there's some really beautiful parts to it

[00:20:00] that I've been enjoying.

[00:20:02] Like I have morning routines that I used to do

[00:20:06] that I was too ill to do for so long.

[00:20:09] And like I'm getting that part of myself back.

[00:20:11] And I've been writing more.

[00:20:13] I write a lot of free verse.

[00:20:16] It's, I guess, a form of poetry.

[00:20:18] I don't know.

[00:20:19] I'm not a poet.

[00:20:21] But I really do like writing free verse and other creative writing.

[00:20:26] And I haven't quite gotten to the level where I'm writing music again.

[00:20:33] But I'm also feeling my feelings a lot more deeply and profoundly.

[00:20:39] And that's had really great positive impacts on my friendships

[00:20:43] and my relationship with Kyle.

[00:20:46] And I'm very lucky that, you know, my closest friends and Kyle

[00:20:52] understand that I'm coming out of such a significantly difficult time in my life.

[00:20:58] And they give me grace to find my way home to myself.

[00:21:02] And they celebrate my wins with me.

[00:21:04] And they let me or they remind me to forgive myself

[00:21:11] and give myself grace on the days where I just, I can't check in.

[00:21:16] I'm still just dissociating.

[00:21:18] And that's good for me because it's possible that giving myself grace is not like the best thing.

[00:21:27] It's not what comes the most naturally to me.

[00:21:32] So having their reminders when, you know, I'm struggling and I'm trying to figure out how to

[00:21:39] give myself grace on a day when it's just, it's really hard for me to be in my body and in my mind

[00:21:44] and in my emotions.

[00:21:45] I really appreciate that.

[00:21:46] So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if you are also someone who has gone through a lot in your life,

[00:21:57] and especially if it was during your formative years, like, oh, please give yourself a lot of grace.

[00:22:05] Because that initial time where you, like, wake up and you realize, okay, I've been living very checked out.

[00:22:13] And I had to.

[00:22:15] There was a reason I did that.

[00:22:16] I had to.

[00:22:17] It was a way I protected myself.

[00:22:18] It was a way I saved myself.

[00:22:20] It was a way my mind saved me.

[00:22:23] But also, wow, there's so much here.

[00:22:26] It's so hard to be grounded and be present and to realize how much is in there.

[00:22:34] Like, how much is coming up that maybe doesn't feel right and you're reconnecting with your gut

[00:22:42] and learning how to trust your gut.

[00:22:44] Like, just know that it's hard.

[00:22:45] And what you're experiencing is real and it's valid and it's a painful, yuck, messy, sometimes cringey part of the process of coming home to yourself.

[00:22:59] And also know, like, it might happen multiple times in your life, which sucks.

[00:23:04] But here we are.

[00:23:06] And it's real and that's part of being human.

[00:23:08] And I hope you can give yourself love for that and grace for that.

[00:23:13] And I hope we can all support each other and give each other love and grace and support around that.

[00:23:20] And I guess the other thing that I have to remind myself that I want to remind you is that you're a safe place to be.

[00:23:28] Even if you don't think it right now.

[00:23:31] You are safe to come home to.

[00:23:34] You are safe to live in.

[00:23:37] Your body is so wise.

[00:23:39] Your body is never going to lie to you.

[00:23:40] Now, your brain will try to fuck you up.

[00:23:42] But your body always tells you the truth.

[00:23:45] So if you're getting feelings in your gut or like an intuitive sense of something, you can listen to that.

[00:23:53] You can trust it.

[00:23:55] It's safe.

[00:23:56] You're safe.

[00:23:57] Who you are is safe.

[00:24:00] And you deserve to live in yourself.

[00:24:04] Like fully present.

[00:24:05] Fully there.

[00:24:06] Grounded.

[00:24:07] Connected.

[00:24:07] On the line.

[00:24:09] However you choose to think about it.

[00:24:12] You're a good place to be.

[00:24:15] You're a beautiful place to be.

[00:24:19] And wherever you are on that journey, I hope you're able to celebrate how far you've come.

[00:24:26] And I hope that you are able to look forward to whatever is left of the journey to reconnecting with yourself with some hope, with some joy, with some anticipation.

[00:24:41] And know that no matter how hard it gets on the journey home to yourself, it is always worth it.

[00:24:50] Thanks for listening to another episode of The Cult I Left Behind.

[00:24:53] Until next time, don't join a cult.

[00:24:56] If you enjoyed this podcast, please like, share, and subscribe.

[00:24:59] And we will catch you on the next episode.