Healing Trauma Stuck In Our Bodies With Laurie James

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees Podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Laurie, Laurie Jones. James, why did I call you Jones? I've just rechristened you. Sorry, Laurie. Sorry.

Hey, hey, you works, whatever. We're old friends, Simon.

We are. And Laurie's been on the show before, uh, and so you're in for a treat, listeners. And I haven't spoken to you for a while, so I'm, I'm in for it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, we are. And just our little brief conversation before, I'm, I'm super excited about, uh, chatting with you today and sharing what I've been up with, up to, and hopefully help some of your listeners as well. So.

Brilliant. So what does healing mean to you?

Wow. Uh, what does healing mean to me? Well, at this point in my life, what I would say is healing means to me is really going into the body and paying attention to what's happening into our— in our body.

Because—

and I've done a lot of therapy, I've done a lot of various healing Yeah. Processes. I've done everything from the woo-woo energy work to more traditional codependency work, talk therapy. But over the last 5 years, after I fell very, very sick, after I left a very tumultuous marriage, I was caring for my elderly parents, as you know, and I was raising my 4 daughters. I had 4 daughters that were teenagers. I fell ill to the point where I ended up in the hospital not once, but twice. I could not feed myself. I needed somebody there 24/7. I left the hospital the first time with a walker. I had all these weird ailments that nobody could figure out. I had infectious disease doctors, everything. And I have a couple therapy friends or therapist friends. And I wasn't in therapy at the time, which was a mistake. So if anybody is out there and has multiple things going on, I suggest you put yourself into some therapy. But I started working with what's called a somatic experiencing practitioner. And so, uh, just for anybody who doesn't know. Soma comes from the Greek. So somatic comes from the Greek word soma, which means body. And somatic healing therapies, they fall in the spectrum of the mind-body therapies, specifically referring to what we consider a bottom-up approach, meaning that we get into the body and we, instead of getting out of our head, because we can't think through our issues all the time, we need to feel, we need to notice the sensations in our bodies. And I've done the training by, um, what I consider the gold standard, uh, a gentleman by the name of Peter Levine. And he's a PhD and he developed somatic experiencing. He's been doing this since the '80s. And it's really, it's a, it's a very Uh, holistic, naturalistic approach to healing our trauma. And, um, for anybody who's listening, if you do not think that adoption is a traumatic experience, I invite you to revisit that thought and that belief because it is. When we are removed from our birth parents or our birth mother.

Mm-hmm.

And if you're in anywhere from our 40s to 70s, you were left alone. You did not have that, that, um, bond with your parent. That is a traumatic experience.

Yeah.

And the going back to the somatic piece, what, what happens when you work with a somatic practitioner is They, they help you discharge that energy that's stuck in your nervous system. And, and basically it's a fight, flight, or freeze response. And sometimes if we don't complete that, it gets stuck in our bodies. And what happens is if we don't release it, it builds up, it builds up. And it can cause dis-ease in our bodies and disease in our bodies. Okay. And that's exactly what happened to me.

Yeah. So what has—

so that's a long, that's a long definition.

Yeah. So what have been the outcomes for you off the bat?

Great question. Inner— I, I lived with anxiety most of my life, and I would consider it at times manageable, most of the times manageable, at other times not very manageable, where I wouldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, it would affect my digestive system. And I feel a sense of calm in my nervous system that I've never felt before. I sleep better. I am more in tune with what I need. So that way, because I consider myself like an introverted extrovert, I need a certain amount of downtime so that way I can show up for my loved ones, for my family, for my friends, for my work that I love to do, and chatting with wonderful people like you. So it's really getting in touch with, instead of our heads of how can I fix this, getting in touch with our bodies of—

Mm-hmm.

What does my body need? What do I need right now? Because our bodies are full of wisdom. We just don't listen to it because we haven't been taught to.

Yeah. So do any particular healing moments come to mind?

Um, in terms of, like, what I've experienced in, like, therapy or things I've done for myself?

So I've asked you about some outcomes, right?

Yeah.

And you've laid— set those out, uh, nicely for us in terms of a drop-off in anxiety, feeling calmer, sleeping better. Um, and I'm, and I'm really asking you about any, any particular moments when you have, uh, felt a, felt a shift Yeah. Yeah.

I'll even just take this, our conversation, for example. I have my own podcast, as you know, and I've been a guest on yours. I talked about my adoption and my book way back when with you. And I used to have this underlying, you know, anxiety before I would come on. And part of that is I've been doing it more, but part of it Is I, I don't— like, I feel a little bit of it. Like, when I, when I get that sense of anxiety, because we all get a little bit of it. And I just know how to drop into my body and just pay attention to the anxiety and let it dissipate, not trying to stuff it or push it away. And I don't, I don't have it, like, in my daily life. I don't have that. I used to get this gnawing in my head too, right? I don't get that as much anymore, you know. And any type of healing— I feel like healing is like an onion. There's always another layer. There's always another layer, right? And I, I could stop doing somatic work because I still see my personal practitioner probably every other week. I could stop and I would be fine. But you don't know what you don't know, right? So if you've kind of lived that way all your life, you feel like that's normal. And then when you do this type of work and you realize, oh my God, I don't have to feel like that all the time. It's, it's almost— you get a— I don't want to say you get addicted, but a little bit because you want to keep feeling better.

Yeah. Yeah.

And what's, what's, you know, instead of feeling better with drugs or feeling better with alcohol, what if you could just do it naturally and feel better? Right. And don't get me wrong, like, I have moments where I'm tired. Like last week, I was just, I, you know, I felt a little drained. I had been really busy and I still get that, but it's different, right? I, I, the idea is you don't have as low lows and as high highs because when you learn to heal and learn to work with your win— what we call the window of tolerance, you, and I don't, I don't know if this is on video or if this is just talk, but the, it, your highs and lows are less.

Yeah.

Right. And, and so, you know, you're like, oh, I'm feeling a little too high. I'm gonna, I'm gonna downregulate my nervous system. And then, oh, I'm going too low. Right. And it's, I hope that answers your question.

Yeah. So is there also a sense that you're less, that the lows aren't as low?

Yeah. And they're, and they're not as long.

And long.

And right. They might not stretch out as long as they might before.

Okay. And is the less feeling low about feeling low?

Yeah. You don't go as low. Or if you do go low, the idea is you honor that. You honor what's going on instead of going, oh my God, why am I, why do I feel this way? I don't like to feel this way. I want it to go away. You sit with it, you stay with it. And, and I have a beginner's guide to somatic healing that we can put in the show notes for people if they give them some very basic exercises. But maybe you stay with that. If you're low and you're sad, you stay with that sadness and you feel it in your body. Like, where do I feel that sadness in my body? What does the sensation in my body feel like? Can I stay with it? Because if we stay with it, and what I say, if we, we need to feel to heal. And if we can stay with that feeling and allow it to move through us, then it doesn't— it, it comes back. Less frequently. And when it does come back, it stays for a shorter period of time. It's, it's kind of like your, um, you know, that, that relative that you don't really care to be at your, at the holiday parties.

Yeah.

And you develop a boundary. You're like, eh, maybe Uncle Joe doesn't need to be here at Christmas and Easter and Whatever, Father's Day, right? You're like, maybe he just comes at Christmas. Yeah. One day, one holiday a year.

So, um, I've got a, a podcast coming up with a, a therapist called, uh, an adoptee who's also a therapist, called Diego Vitale. And he, when he was, when I was talking to him a couple of weeks ago, he talked about Uh, the fact that, uh, we— and it's not just adoptees— we, we villainize, we villainize our feelings.

Yeah.

So, you know, we, we make bad feelings the bad guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where this is about, uh, making— I don't know, is this about making feelings, bad feelings, the good guys? Because they're pointing us towards another layer of healing.

I guess that's— I mean, that's definitely a way to look at it. And if you can't go to that place where— because none of us like to feel bad, right? First of all, our society has taught us to not feel our emotions. Or, you know, how many times have you heard on a TV show or walking around town a parent saying, oh, stop crying. It's okay, right? Don't cry about this. Or a friend who have said, oh, don't cry. And it's because they don't know how to deal with you crying. They are uncomfortable, so they want you to stop crying. But if we, if we accept that we're human beings, we should be able to feel a full range of emotions. But that sadness, that anger, that past experience, experience that might have triggered you in the present moment, it's uncomfortable. We might have shame around it. We are— we get embarrassed if we're out in public and we're crying or upset. And so, and so we have a negative— definitely we have a negative mentality towards These harder emotions, and the other thing is these emotions sometimes they actually have physical pain with them. They hurt, and but if we don't address them, and any emotions or feelings that come from adoption, if we don't address them, they stay with us until we do. And again. They cause— they can cause autoimmune issues. They can cause dis-ease, anxiety. They can cause us to be triggered if in certain situations. And, you know, and when we work through it, it helps us to develop better boundaries. It helps us to develop— basically what it does is it gives us a better tolerance so that way when we— if we can feel it, Feel to heal and work through them, we have a better tolerance to deal with it the next time this thing comes around. This, you know, ugly side of us or whatever you— the Uncle Joe that we don't want to come visit.

Yeah. So what you've got me thinking about here really is this, you were talking about Mums telling kids to, to get their acts together.

Yeah.

Right. So this, this is not just an adoptee, adoptive parent thing. This is a biological parent, biological thing. And this is a broader kind of, um, well, a mentor of mine calls it emotophobia. Right. So, yeah. Um, what's wrong with you? Right. If, if you're feeling, if you're feeling bad, there's something wrong with you, right?

Yeah.

You, you've got to put the, uh, false smile on, you know, this whole idea in, uh, in personal development of fake it till you make it. Yeah. But who wants to deal with a fake, right? Yeah. Who wants to?

What about if we were just honest with ourselves and it's like, yeah, I'm feeling a little Sad today, or I'm feeling, you know, low energy. Or what if you just, instead of walking around going, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.

And, and so this is a societal thing.

It is a societal thing. Yeah.

And I'm, I'm sensing that this is, this, this, this thing is a bigger thing for adoptees. And I'm— yes, and I'm, and I'm sense— I kind of, I'm getting a sense for this because this is about, um, if it's about— it's, it's the earliest invalidation.

Right. It's, it's that baby in us, right? That baby who comes out of the womb And in my opinion, on a cellular level, already feels abandoned. Because we are energetic beings, we feel each other's energy. I mean, have you ever walked into a room and felt somebody who was sad or depressed versus somebody who's like happy and upbeat? You can feel that energy. So think about, you know, being nonverbal and being this little thing, this little creature that just came into the world and already feeling like, oh my God, where's my mommy? Where is my mommy? Where, you know, I have been inside the womb of this person. I feel her energy because I'm guessing, just based off of my own experience and talking to my own birth mother about my adoption, she wanted me. I was born in, in the mid-'60s. She wanted me, but our society didn't allow her to keep me. So there's all these mixed emotions. So I'm feeling that, and then I come out of the womb and it's like, There's nobody there to bond with me for 3 days in the hospital. And I get bottle-fed by a nurse until finally I get taken home after 3 days to my adoptive parents. And don't get me wrong, I, you know, my, my adoptive parents did the best they could. And if I can tell a quick story about—

Yes, sure.

You want me? So I was the 3rd child that my parents adopted. My mother had a stillborn, her, um, and my, my parents had a very difficult time getting pregnant. And I didn't find any of this out until my 40s, late 40s, early 50s, which was also helped complete a lot of the puzzle pieces that I talked about on our last podcast. And maybe you can link the, um, we will link the podcast in the show notes, or, but if anybody wants to listen. But so, so not only that, so I come out of the womb, you know, feeling disconnected, not really feeling like I, I'm bonding, you know, obviously this is all pre-verbal and I have no memory of this, but based off of the work I've done and, you know, I've been on this healing journey for 10 years and. I think healing is something that you continue to do your whole entire life, especially if you're adopted, ideally. But in addition to that, my parents adopted— their first adoption was a boy. In between their first and second adoption, they adopted another little girl. So They adopt this little girl, and 6 months into my parents having this little girl, the birth mother decided she wanted this baby back.

Hmm.

So then I come along. So not only did I have wounds, right, because I'm adopted and I'm pre-verbal and I don't know, and, and I can remember being very angry and unhappy as a child. Right. But I feel this emotional distance from my mother. I know I'm loved, but I feel an emotional distance. And I knew she had lost a baby, um, you know, a stillborn. She had a stillborn at 8 months, and I knew she had lost that, and that's why she adopted. I didn't know about this other baby girl until I was again in my late 40s and 50s. And so, and it put a lot of puzzle pieces because again, I felt an emotional distance. And why wouldn't I? My mother lost a stillborn. girl. She— her second little girl that she brought into the family was taken away from her. So her fear was that I was always going to be taken away from her, right? And so she had this natural fear that she probably never really worked through, and which is what I make sense out of always feeling An emotional distance, even though I knew I was loved. She told me that she loved me. And it just— when I found that out, like, I'm like, oh my God. There was a sense of relief of, okay, it makes sense. And, you know, and I had already started my healing journey by that point. So it, you know, it really helped. put some of the puzzle pieces together for me about my adoption.

Yeah. So healing clearly is head and heart.

I'm sorry, say that one more time.

So healing is head and heart, you know.

Oh, head and heart. Absolutely.

You're talking about—

Mind-body connection. Yeah. Yeah. And another healing moment for me Since we're talking about healing was, um, I, I won't get into the story about how I met my birth mother because it wasn't— I think I talked about it on the last podcast. So go back and listen to that. It wasn't an ideal situation, but fast forward, um, I, I'm at a lunch around the holidays with my birth mother. And I have my 4 kids with me. They're, you know, kind of teenage age. And so we go out to, we go out to lunch with her and all my kids at the end of lunch go off to the bathroom. And, you know, we walk out together and she just said to me, Lori, I, I, I need you to know that I did not want to give you up for adoption. And in that moment, it's one of those things like you don't know you need it until you— until it shows up. That was another very healing moment for me, those words, you know, because I am a words of affirmation kind of person. But that really like sunk in. And that hit my body of like, Oh my God. You know? And that was a healing moment for me because I could feel it. I could feel the truth in what she was saying. And I had done enough work on myself to be able to receive that because sometimes, like, we build up armor and build up walls so we don't feel. So I was able to receive that. And that was a super healing moment for me from my birth mother that I didn't even know I needed. No.

Well, it's a bit— you made, you made a, a similar comment about the somatic stuff. It's kinda like we don't know what we don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. So how can we be curious and, and a little more inquisitive?

Yeah.

Right. That's kinda where it begins. And, and, and awareness. Can we be a little bit more inquisitive and curious instead of afraid of like, oh my God, why am I feeling this anxiety? I'm ashamed of it, or whatever it is that, that you might be feeling. Let me hide it. How can I be curious about it and become more aware of it as part of your healing journey?

Yeah.

Whatever it is that Anybody who's listening might be experiencing.

So I was, uh, I recorded a podcast with Heidi, um, Pulled by the Root, and Amy Hansen last night as a guest.

Yeah.

And we talked about this idea of, um, and it's a similar kind of analogy, I think, to your to your onions, you know, the peeling back the layer of the onions. And I think I've also talked about this in brief on another podcast when I've been hosting, but I'm interested in your, your take on it, right?

Yeah, sure.

So the essential idea is that most of us talk about coming out of the fog. Yeah. As, as, as a once and done thing. Right. It's, it's once and done. But it, it seems to me that yes, the first one is the biggest one.

Yeah.

But, and, and that, but that process keeps on happening. We, we keep on becoming aware of, of new stuff.

More and more.

More and more.

If you, if you want to, like, some people are like, you know what, that's enough. I don't, I don't need anymore. Right?

Like, yeah.

And some people are afraid. I mean, I have a friend, a girlfriend, who you— she, she does, she does do some work, but she's afraid to get into therapy because she's afraid that— and she has literally said that— she's like, I'm afraid if I go into therapy and I'm going to explode and I'm going to die. Because so much has happened and she's held it in, so much of what's happened in her life in. And she's not adopted, but she had, she did not have a great childhood. You know, parents were not present, was not a good situation. And, and that fear is real and our brain is wired to keep us safe.

Mm-hmm.

Right. But what if you could, instead of coming from a place of fear, of, again, curiosity and awareness of— and that's the beautiful thing about somatic work is it's very gentle and it's slow, but it's very powerful. Very, very powerful. And that's the beautiful thing about it. Is you— it, you know, yes, you might Start telling a little bit of the story, but then we kind of stop you and really slow everything down so you can really get in touch with your body.

Yeah. So you mentioned this Peter Levine guy. This is a funny little, a funny little story.

Yeah.

Because I bought his book on audio.

Which, which one? Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a great book. Hard. It's hard to listen to. I've heard. I, I have the, I have the—

You have the hardback. Yeah.

I have the hard— yeah.

Yeah. So I, I didn't, I, I didn't like it. I, I, I didn't think—

Because?

I didn't finish the book. I don't know. Um, but he's writing a book about a, a healing that isn't about words. You know, like, you— how can you— somatic is about body, not words, right?

Right.

So it's great for pre— our pre-verbal trauma, right? adoptees, right? Like, talk therapy involves words, right? Talk therapy is about words. But if you haven't got words for your trauma, then—

But he— but here's the thing about somatic. I, I had a hard time reading that book the first time I read it too. And then I've, I've come back around because I wasn't quite ready for it. And I, I, I, I hadn't done enough of my own personal work to really kind of grasp the concept. But here's the thing, healing happens in the body, not in the brain.

Yeah.

Right? And it happens in the— in, in terms of his style of healing, it happens in the nervous system. The theory is that we hold our trauma in our nervous system because we haven't completed The fight, flight, or freeze response. So that energy gets stuck in our nervous system, and the somatic experiencing is a way to slowly release that. It doesn't matter if it's pre-verbal or in a verbal state. It's about— even if it's in a verbal state and you're an adoptee and you've had this, you know, horrific experience, with whatever your adopted parents or your birth parents or whatever it is, it's slowing down that process and taking it bit by bit and saying, okay, when you— when X happened, what did you notice in your body? Where do you feel that in your body? Can you sit and stay with that sensation? Because that's the sensation is the stored energy. And when you can sit with it and allow it, the energy to complete and release out of your body, that's where the healing happens. Does that make sense?

It does.

Because talk therapy is only going to get you so far. Yes. I was in talk therapy for 6 or 7 years before I started somatic work. And, uh, or started working with a somatic experiencing practitioner. And I've had so much more healing and growth in the last 5 years versus the first 7 that I was just in talk therapy.

Yeah. It's a theme that we keep on coming back to on this show. Right. Talk therapy is not great for preverbal trauma.

Yeah.

And, but there's a certain irony here with the, with Peter Levine's book because he's writing, he's, he's writing about somatic stuff, right? Yeah. But somatic stuff isn't about words. So there's a, there's a fundamental challenge in writing about it.

So yeah, I see what you're saying.

I've started, I've started, although I didn't like the book.

Yeah.

Although I didn't like the book or didn't get along with the book or whatever. And maybe, maybe it will come around. Maybe I'll take, take another listen at it. Uh, but I, I went ahead and, and spoke to the somatic therapist, and I'm working with the somatic therapist anyway because I, I know, like you, that, um, it's about the stuff that I don't know.

Yeah.

And, but it's driving my wife slightly mad, right?

Because?

Because she's like, well, are you ever going to be healed? Cured? No, she didn't use the word healed. Are you ever going to be cured, Simon? Are you ever going to be cured? And, but we're like you and me, I think we're looking at it from a, we're looking at it from an explorative sense, not a defensive sense.

Right.

You know, we're not in a crisis.

Right. Well, and the other thing, you know, maybe a different way to maybe explain it to your wife, or if somebody else who's listening kind of feels the same way about Somebody or because I've had moments of like, oh my God! Like what Oprah has said before, God don't teach me anything today, right? And there are days that's like I can't take anything. But you know from from a you know because I'm a coach and and and I approach it from a somatic place. But the the important like the important thing I think to. Realize is we are— as humans, we can either be fixed mindset or growth mindset. Right? And so instead of looking at it as like, are you ever going to be healed? Are you ever going to— or whatever word that she used. It's like, I want to continue as a person to continue to learn and grow. Because when we're in fixed mindset, set, that's when we get stuck. Right? And growth. Yeah, you have to get out of your comfort zone a little bit. Right? The fact that you went to a somatic therapist, good for you, that you, that you want to explore this, this and learn something new about ourselves. Like, I come from a frame of mind of growth mindset. And I may not have always been that way. But I want to continue to learn and grow because Until I'm, I'm dead. Because that's where the part of joy of life is, of like learning new things and trying new things and being curious. And otherwise, like, I'm just sitting on the couch watching, you know, Family Feud or Jeopardy or whatever. It's like, that doesn't interest me. So, but it is, it is scary. It can be scary. But if we can just like flip that mindset of be curious and, and be open and choose to learn more about yourself and about others and about the world around us.

I'm glad. You, you put it like that because I thought you were talking about me trying to flip my wife's mindset, which I am not going to attempt.

Yeah. No, no, no, no. I just meant, like, if anybody's listening and, and feeling that way, you know, think about flipping not your wife's mindset, but your own mindset. Right? Because that's where—

That's where it is. Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, I wanna, I wanna take you back because to, to, to this, this area of the, uh, this, this early invalidation.

Yeah.

Of our, uh, emotions. Because I, I think that is, uh, the resentment.

Yeah. Anger, resentment.

Yeah. But the resentment about that invalidation.

Okay.

And, and, uh, I don't know why, but it seems a big thing for me. I've, I've tried to lay it out. Uh, it's a new— this is a new idea, so I'm, I'm perhaps not 100% fluent and capable of talking it, talking it through, but let me give it a go, right? So we're saying that, uh, even, even bioparents uh, tell their kids to, um, get their stuff together and stop feeling bad, right?

Yeah.

So this is the societal thing, um, not an adoptee thing, not an adoption thing. And yet at the same time, the degree to which the, the, the amount of hurt caused through that invalidation To us as adoptees, I feel is bigger.

Right. So I, I would agree. And what did you have more, or did you want me to—

Well, I, I was just thinking, um, uh, maybe you could use, use your coaching ninja skills. You could talk around that.

Yeah. Yeah.

But to help people see that, because it, it might— people listening. Might be, um, might be intrigued by that. Yeah. So before, before I go, something—

Yeah, go ahead. Go, go.

So we're doing this on a Wednesday, doing the recordings on the Wednesday, listeners. I just want to put in a story that brings this right up today. Well, almost. Um, I'm talking about last Sunday. So it was Mothering— it was Mothering Sunday.

Yeah.

In the UK. last, last Sunday. And I, and my, um, my, my mum wanted reassurance that I'm okay.

Your mum?

My mum. I'm 57. She's—

Your adopted mum or your birth mum?

My adopted mum.

Your adopted mum. Okay.

Um, she wanted reassurance. Now, right? She's she's coming up. She's coming up 24. She's coming up 86 this year. But she still wants. She knows that I'm doing all this, you know, right?

Right.

And I get the feeling that she's slightly worried that I might it might be upsetting me. And she wanted she wanted reassurance for me. At 85, she still wants reassurance from me that I'm feeling okay. So this is a big thing. It doesn't go away.

It doesn't go away.

Go away. They want this. So I'm just wondering if you can talk about that.

So I can talk about that invalidate— about invalidation or about that specific Scenario or the pain?

The— well, it's not about that scenario. I think that is—

That was just an example, right?

That's an example of this.

Yeah. Right. So, so 2 thoughts come to me, and one, I'll talk about the adoptee, because what happens is if we already come out of The womb, let's just say below zero. So, you know, we're in the red, so to speak, emo, you know, having that emotional connection and bond. So we're already feeling abandoned and we're already feeling that womb. That's kind of our foundation that we are starting with. So we're starting at a negative. And then you have somebody who then comes along to you, your parent, and, you know, look, it was our era. It was our— right? Um, and, and our parents were doing the best that they could. But then you have somebody that comes up to you and then says, oh, Simon, stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about. I don't know if you heard that, but I heard that.

Yeah, I've heard that.

So now I'm upset. And now I've just been invalidated. So I'm, I'm already angry and have some resentment, preverbal. I can't, I don't, I don't even know where it's coming from. Right? Because it's preverbal. It's, it's pre-memory, but it's just ingrained in me. This like resentment, anger, sadness, whatever emotion it is for somebody. And then I have somebody who then piles on top of that foundation. Call it, you know, a pile of crap or whatever. You just felt like you got shit on.

It's probably lovely.

So it's like, so how is that gonna make— so how is that gonna make you feel? It's gonna— it, you know, that's a trigger, right? Like, that's gonna trigger you even more.

Yeah.

And then what's that going to cause you to do as a person? It's going to cause you to be more angry, more resentful. You're going to act out. You're going to want to leave. You're going to want— your flight response is going to kick in. I can remember, you know, leaving, you know, my household and I just want to get out of this house and going down to the park and then realizing, you know, which was down the street going, oh fuck, how am I going to take care of myself? Like, so then you like crawl back with shame of like, okay, now I gotta come back to the house. So yeah, I mean, I have a picture in my book of me. I'm like 8 years, 7, 8 years old, and I got my hands on my hips, and I'm like, I'm an angry little girl, right? I had a lot of anger, you know, and there were other things that were complicated in, in, in my childhood too. I had You know, my oldest brother had a lot of dysfunction and learning disabilities, and he had a lot of anger, and he took his anger out on me. And later it got worse when I became a teenager. And so, so that's one thought, right? Like, you've got the foundation, you're already coming out in the negative, and then you've got more stuff piled on. So that's important to be aware of and for us as adoptees to work through. Yes, we, there, there's another layer there. Um, and of course now I forgot my other thought around that, but hopefully it'll come back.

Yeah. So this, this doing the best that they could thing is a theme that keeps on coming back to, to, to us on the podcast. So, you know, and I, I— it's almost as if we're judging 20th century parenting with 21st century knowledge.

Yeah.

It's not fair. It's not fair for us to do that. Um, it's more than— this is, this is me really just underlining, because it's very easy to say they were doing the best that they could. But, but I, I get this. It helps me, you know, I think about, I think about my stuff as a, as a kid. And, um, I don't have a lot of conscious trauma. As you were talking about running to the park, I did, uh, I did, uh, run away once. I got about 400 yards, I think, and then I went back crying.

Yeah.

Um, but I don't have a lot of— and I— and how much of that is adoption, who knows, who knows. Um, it's all— yes, it could be all adopted. Um, but I don't have a lot of conscious memories. I wouldn't— I, I wouldn't say I was an angry kid, do you know what I mean? Like you said, you I wouldn't say that. So, but to what extent that— to what extent I was just blind to my own stuff, you know, we don't know.

Yeah.

I'm old enough and hopefully, what's the word, humble enough to say that I'm not the best judge of my own stuff, right? So I think we are, but we are judging 21st century, which 20th century parenting with 21st century knowledge, Bessel van der Kolk, et cetera, et cetera.

So, so let me just make a comment around that. My parents were doing the best that they could comment because I got there because I've done the work and I've healed. Right? I was mad. I was angry. Like, I had a dad who was like another child. I took care of my parents for 14 and a half years. My 2 older brothers, you know, not daily, like I wasn't there daily caring for them, but I oversaw their care. I took them to doctor's appointments. Uh, my mom had dementia for 12 years.

Wow.

She needed around-the-clock care for over 7 years. So, uh, and, and my 2 older brothers, my oldest brother has addiction issues and is on and off of meth. Still to this day. And my middle brother, he emotionally checked out. So, you know, I, so what I want to say is, I mean, I did have anger towards my dad. There were times when my dad would totally trigger me with some of his behavior. But what I did is like, yes, and I did get angry and I was resentful, but I allowed myself to feel the emotions.

Mm-hmm.

To feel whatever the emotions were and to work through them. So I could get to a place where it's like, yes, it's a reason. It's not an excuse. Yes, they were doing the best job that they could. Is it an excuse?

No.

For invalidating my feelings. Does that make sense? Right? Like, and, and so, and what that does is when you Do the work, the healing work that we've talked about somatically, or you know, and there's lots of different forms of of somatic work. Yoga is a type of somatic. You know, that was my first introduction probably you know fifteen years ago to or over ten years ago to my nervous system. But that's a little side note. But when we do heal. We can work through that resentment. We can work through that anger. We can work through the sadness or whatever. We can work through our triggers, whatever emotions we're feeling, so that way we can feel that inner peace of, yeah, it, you know, it's a reason. It's not an excuse. And, and do it for yourself, not for other people. Do it for your own well-being and your own peace of mind and your own inner peace and inner freedom.

You used the trigger word, and I've just thought of a different way of saying something that I mentioned to you earlier on. So is this the wave you talked about? You talked about lower lows and shorter lows. It strikes me that we're also talking about being less triggered about being triggered.

Yeah. Well, so, so our nervous system is there for a reason, right? It's there to help protect us. It's to help us give us adrenaline in the moments we need more adrenaline. It's there to Um, parasympathetic to calm our nervous system, melatonin kicking in so we can sleep and rest. Right? So it's, it's, it's there for a reason. And I, and our, our nervous system is meant to be out of, or to be dysregulated and to go up and down. We just don't want it to go up too high and get stuck there. And be hypervigilant, right? That's hypervigilance where we're, you know, constantly on guard and we don't sleep and we're going, going, going, and we don't slow down to feel, or we get too low and it goes into what we call dorsal vagal. And, you know, that's where depression happens and you can't get yourself up. You're stuck down there and you can't get out, which is what happened with me when I got sick. My body shut down. And I was there, you know, it took me 6 months to recover from that fully. But, you know, I couldn't barely do anything for myself for over 2 weeks. Right. So it's, it's not, it's getting in touch with your body and noticing when it, your body does get dysregulated. So you don't get too high and get stuck there or go too low and get stuck there where, you know, you're like, okay, I'm feeling a little high. I'm going to regulate my nervous system and come down through exercise or yoga or doing some of the practices that are in my guide. And again, getting in touch and with your body and learning and developing a relationship with your body.

So I think I, I think I misunderstood your highs and lows then. Earlier on, I was, you know, I, I thought that the scale was happy and sad. What?

Well, it's, it's, it's that too.

That too.

It, it can be that too. But it's, it's, you know, when, when you're in parasympathetic and you're on a high, sometimes, not always, but sometimes you can get stuck there. Like, if you know somebody who's always on the go, go, go, doing, doing, doing, and has a really hard time shutting down, or maybe they're up here and they stay high and then they just crash.

So, so the, the scale then is the high and low scale is more about, um, uh, energy than, uh, let's call it, uh, emotional well-being.

It's all of it. They're intertwined. It can be energy. It's energy and it's emotion.

Yeah.

And they're intertwined.

So, uh, okay, I'm thinking about, um, bipolar, people with bipolar and, and people with a whatever. Sorry, I don't know how to People that have a bipolar— I don't know what the PC term is for having bipolar people, people suffering from bipolar disease, whatever it is. Um, they're, they're gonna be frantic in the highs and they're gonna be slumped in the lows.

And I'm not a psychiatrist and I'm not a therapist, um, but I am trained in this somatic experiencing practitioner training. But yes, that's a, that's a really good example of what can happen in very severe cases.

Yeah.

And somatic therapy can help with people who have bipolar disorder. And if they continue to work with somebody You know, in the body, somatically, it can help to, they can learn to regulate their nervous system better. So maybe they need less medication and maybe eventually get off of it. But again, I'm not a psychiatrist and I'm not a therapist, just to, that disclaimer.

So yeah, so the highs for us clearly would be us as adoptees, not just you and me. Is, is that hypervigilance in the highs?

Hypervigilance. It could be high anxiety also, right? Can be that as well. And that typically comes from, from trauma.

The sleeplessness would go with that as well, wouldn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, you know, that a lot of that comes from trauma, right? If, if we had to be hypervigilant as a child and always worrying about, you know, whatever, who's coming into the room— of like, if you had a very angry parent or a bipolar parent and you— or an alcoholic parent, you didn't know what was coming home. You're, you know, as soon as that door opens, what does your nervous system do? All of a sudden it gets tense. Your whole body gets tense. What happens if you stay tense like that for 30 years? It's gonna have an effect on your body, right?

I mean, you could just see, you could just see my body tense up. Yeah.

You get, you get frozen like that.

For the listeners, I was gonna say, uh, Laurie's become a statue.

So, um, so think about being stuck like that, stuck like a statue for 30 or 40 years. It's not fun.

Yeah, it's like, uh, Madame Tussauds, uh, waxworks. Yeah, you've got the waxworks in, um, in California.

We do, in Hollywood.

Hollywood, haven't you? Yes. Um, yeah, so, uh, As you mentioned, we'll link to the past, the last episode, um, in the show notes. We'll link to the, um, the, uh, the guide to somatics in the show notes.

Wonderful.

Uh, and we'll link to, put all your social links in as well.

Thank you.

Before we bring it in, is there anything else that you'd like to share?

No, you know, I think we covered so much here. And I just want to thank you for allowing, you know, having me back on. I always enjoy our conversations. And, you know, for any adoptees out there, I hope this resonated with you on some level.

Um, if they're still listening, it did.

If, if they're still listening.

If they didn't, they're not.

Yeah. Um, and, you know, I hope you at least, you know, consider taking a look at the You know, Beginner's Guide to Somatic Healing, because, you know, every— what I often say to my clients, every relationship begins with us. Right? And, you know, we, we touched on this. It's like, let's all— if we can all be a little bit more inquisitive about ourselves and how we're showing up and why we're showing up the way we're showing up, then You know, what better gift can we give those who we love? Our children, our spouses, our adoptive parents, our birth parents, whoever it is. But yeah. Beautiful.

Thanks a lot, Lori.

Thank you, Simon.

Thank you, listeners.

Goodbye.