Adoption Trauma: Why Your Body Still Remembers And How To Heal

We are talking this week about the biology behind adoption.

And as we look at what are we.

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What are we wanting to understand when someone or ourselves even have that history of being adopted?

Or even beyond that,

Just having a family dynamic that created confusion,

That created some tension.

We're going to talk about the biology behind being adopted.

And then I interview actually one of my own mentors,

JJ Virgin,

On the topic.

And what she shares is very,

Very common and very important for us to understand,

Because of her early experience,

She always felt like she had to rely only on herself.

She felt like she could never fully trust someone else.

And so as we look at what is the biology behind that.

What is the biology behind that experience of being carried in the womb for nine months?

And then being given to someone else.

Now,

I will say that in previous decades,

People,

Even experts,

Have said things like they won't remember.

That won't affect them.

If they were adopted early enough,

They won't remember.

And that is not true.

The biology behind adoption is that the body does remember.

And when we look at the nervous system,

We understand why.

And so let's look at the nervous system to look at the biology behind adoption.

And the nervous system is what keeps us alive.

It's what is our innate.

Strategies in order to survive life.

And it starts in utero.

In fact,

One of the first things that forms is our spinal cord,

Is our nervous system.

Why?

Because that's what we need in order to stay alive.

But then when we're born,

There's a big transition because we go from a very different environment,

One in which we are fully protected,

Surrounded.

We're not even having to breathe for ourselves.

And all of a sudden,

We're faced with cold.

We're faced with.

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Pain we're faced with discomfort and we have to take that first breath and so that's really when we see that nervous system kicking in And it kicks in in order to be able to help us survive.

And so how does the nervous system How is the nervous system in play when we have that experience of being adopted?

In order for us to feel that it's safe to survive,

Our nervous system needs familiar.

And when we have been in someone's womb inside of their belly for nine months,

We have become familiar with their body and specifically with their heart rate.

With their breath rate and so our body knows their body it is our place of security it is our place of safety And when that infant is adopted.

They're taken from everything that's familiar to them at a time when they are most vulnerable.

And this leads to attachment pains.

We have six different attachment panes,

And I want to see if I can share those with you.

Let me see if I.

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I can do that we have.

Here we go.

So we have the hold me attachment pain as the first one.

And this is when we are first born because we are so fragile.

We're so vulnerable.

That even our biology,

Even our physiology,

Needs containment.

It needs safety.

And with that,

It needs familiarity.

And even just looking at this infant,

It feels.

Like it can rest.

Because it feels safe enough.

And so when we don't have that familiarity,

When we are even being taken care of by a someone else,

A nervous system that is not our biological mom,

There will be that impact of.

I don't know if I can trust this person.

I don't know this person.

And there is that sense of deep.

Fear?

And terror.

It's a terror for our life.

Because we are,

Of course,

So young that we cannot take care of ourselves yet.

And we know that.

We depend on others.

And there's this expectation that we're born with that the person who formed us,

The person that carried us,

Is the person that's going to take care of us.

And so when we don't have that.

Our own body will go to a place of terror and it will feel like it can never fully relax.

What does that mean for our body?

When our nervous system cannot fully relax,

Then it always feels like it has to stay on guard.

Sometimes very loudly on guard,

And sometimes it's just in the background,

But there's always that sense of danger.

And the result is that our body cannot sustain that for a period of time.

We can't sustain stress for a long period of time.

We eventually crash and then we kind of recoup and recover and we go back into vigilance.

And so that's the pattern that starts to form in our nervous system where there's this vigilance and we're very guarded.

Very self-reliant.

And then we kind of go into this collapse and this shutdown and this period of time where we don't have the energy to keep going.

We don't have the energy to keep fighting.

We don't have the energy.

And we often retreat during those times because that feels vulnerable that if I'm in this place of I don't have the energy to keep my guard up,

Well,

Then I need to isolate to be by myself.

And then when I have the energy to keep myself protected,

Then I can come back into the world.

And so we can start to see this pattern in the nervous system that persists into adulthood.

And that would be the other key takeaway from the biology behind adoption is that it is a very hard burden that happens on the body and then on the biology.

This is.

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One of the earliest wounds that can happen and sets into place a biology that will develop chronic disease later on.

Maybe this starts in childhood.

Maybe this starts in teenage years.

But definitely by 30s is when I and my practice have really started to see people.

Develop these chronic health conditions.

That have been building for a long time,

But they've been ignoring it until finally they can't.

And these would be things like autoimmunity.

Autoimmunity is a big one associated with adoption because a person has come to believe that they were the problem,

That they were not lovable and so were given away in essence.

Even though that's not what was the reality,

That was the truth for their body.

That was the conclusion that they came to.

And so they see themselves as the problem.

And that is what becomes their biology is that their nervous system.

Very much self critical.

Makes the immune system also self-critical and attacking oneself.

So autoimmunity in the form of our immune system,

Seeing ourselves as the problem,

Starts to attack ourselves and we develop immune problems that can include other things,

But especially autoimmunity.

And we can have autoimmunity and not even realize it.

That was my case.

And so when I developed fatigue,

Then I went and got my labs done and found that my autoimmune markers were high,

Anti-nuclear antibody,

So an antibody that's actually formed against my nucleus where my DNA is held at the core of my cells.

And because I didn't have any other specific symptoms of autoimmunity,

Then they didn't give me that diagnosis.

But that's a way in which we can have autoimmunity and not know it or not have the diagnosis.

But that's not what's important.

We have the antibodies and the antibodies are what is going to cause the problem.

So we want to address that and I'll go into that briefly.

But then we can also develop other types of chronic health symptoms.

Fatigue is a big one because our nervous system,

Again,

Is always on guard.

And so it then goes into that shutdown and that collapse.

And the more times that we cycle between stress and overwhelm,

The more that we end up just being in overwhelm.

Part of the reason is that our body burns through nutrients when we're in this chronic vigilant state.

Things like magnesium.

Magnesium deficiency is one of the most common deficiencies that I see in people who have had stress even from early life.

But it's not just magnesium.

Vitamin D is another one.

And especially those with any immune problems will want to not only check your vitamin D levels,

But make sure that they are optimal.

Not just in the normal range.

I want them in the optimal range.

And then we look at other symptoms like fibromyalgia,

Or we can look at symptoms that don't have a diagnosis,

Like just brain fog and the mental fatigue.

Those will also often come from early life trauma because that level of terror actually did what is called primed our microglia.

What you need to know is that there are immune cells in our brain that are designed to remember moments of extreme stress and fear.

And they do that by changing their shape after they've experienced extreme fear or stress.

And what happens is that once they've changed their shape,

They don't go back.

Now they're primed and what that means is that they are more sensitive to stress because they want us to be on guard.

They help us to literally be on guard.

And so other things can now trigger those immune cells that are already primed.

And we will go into brain inflammation with the brain fog and the mental fatigue,

All of these things that come from just having inflammation in our brain.

Knowing this,

It gives us a lot of things to do.

One would be understanding that your body has burned through key nutrients.

I want you to get on certain nutrients.

It may be helpful for you to do a lab panel,

But even before you do that,

For most people,

It can be safe to start magnesium.

I take magnesium during the day.

I take magnesium at bedtime.

What is absorbed better.

So you're going to look for things that end in eight.

So magnesium glycinate,

Magnesium orotate.

There's a magnesium trienate that is actually the magnesium that is said to be the best one for our neurons or the nervous system.

I take that one,

Especially when I've got my prime microglia that get re-triggered and I feel that brain fog.

I'm taking the magnesium that will help my brain cells,

Those immune cells,

Get back to a place of safety.

You to know your vitamin D levels and start taking vitamin D.

If you don't know your levels,

Again,

It's safe enough for most people to start taking a vitamin D supplementation.

And if you know your levels,

Then be able to be more strategic about what dose you take.

There was a time in my life when I was taking.

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20,

000 milligrams of vitamin D every single day to get my levels back up to where they were because the levels that I was taking that were the standard doses were not touching my body,

Not even touching it.

We had started at vitamin D level of 12 and I was taking the recommended dose that they had prescribed me.

Three months later,

It had moved to 20 and I'm like,

I can't do this.

My immune system is struggling.

Vitamin D is going to be very helpful for that immune system.

So key nutrients,

Be looking at key nutrients for early life stress that where your body has been in that danger zone and being hypervigilant for a long time.

Else can you do?

I would want you to understand that your nervous system is wired to brace.

And I don't want you to think that you just one day are going to stop bracing and be able to be open and trusting.

We have to meet your body where it's at.

This is where I really bring in the somatic work.

And then I bring in the somatic parts work so that if my body is bracing,

Say my shoulders are tense and they're bracing,

I actually help them brace.

But I'm going to help them,

Meaning I'm going to rest them on a pillow or I'm going to rest them on a desk so that they can still feel like they're bracing and protecting me.

Hold themselves up that's really what starts to drain nutrients is them the muscles our body having to hold itself up so i can meet my body there and i can provide it that sense of protection without it needing to do it by itself.

And then we start to form that relationship.

So somatic work and parts work is going to be very,

Very important.

For any of you who have had early life attachment,

Trauma,

Or adoption.

And then we look at one more thing,

Though,

And this is going to be neurodevelopment.

And neurodevelopment was how we moved,

How we learned,

How we learned to regulate our emotions.

And we would not have done that as well if we were in fear and having to brace and feeling like.

No place,

No person was safe enough.

And so that's going to be a piece that you're going to want to bring in,

Which means that we're going to repattern your nervous system,

Specifically the brainstem areas like the pons and the medulla things that I'll teach later.

But these are areas that we need to repattern so that they can help us with emotional regulation.

Even now as adults,

We can repattern those attachment wirings,

Even as adults,

When it comes to our neurodevelopment and how down to the core of our nervous system,

To naturally regulate our emotions or not.

And when we've had those attachment wounds,

Adoption wounds,

And not done that neurodevelopment work,

That will be a gap that we will still need to address even when we've done the other pieces.