Understanding Your Nervous System: A Guide for Adoptees and Those Who Love Them

Summary
This episode explores the polyvagal theory, trauma responses, and how understanding our nervous system can aid in healing from primal trauma, especially for adoptees. It offers practical grounding tools and insights into self-regulation.

Keywords
Polyvagal Theory, Trauma Responses, Adoptee Healing, Nervous System, Self-Regulation, Primal Trauma, Somatic Therapy, Self-Compassion, Grounding Techniques

Chapters
00:00 - Understanding the Severance Cycle and Trauma
04:26 - Exploring Polyvagal Theory and Nervous System Responses
07:14 - Defining Primal Trauma and Its Impact
09:58 - The Polyvagal Ladder: Navigating Autonomic States
12:33 - Understanding Trauma Responses and Self-Regulation
15:03 - Practical Tools for Managing Trauma Responses
18:01 - The Importance of Self-Compassion and Community
20:45 - Building Awareness and Connection with the Body
21:28 - Grounding Tools for Different States
24:21 - Consistency in Self-Regulation Practices
25:21 - Changing Your Relationship with Yourself
26:18 - Restoration and Reconnection for Adoptees
27:20 - Final Thoughts and Community Resources

Resources

Grounding Resources My Clients Use

Slides I Used Today
Stephen Porges - Polyvagal Theory
Peter Levine - Somatic Experiencing
Kristin Neff - Self-Compassion Research
Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing retreat info

Website

Instagram: @juliebrumley_

Facebook: julierasbrum

TikTok: @juliebrumley_

Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group

You Tube: @julie_brumley

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi y'all, I'm Julie. I'm a trauma-informed adoptee coach and somatic healing guide. After overcoming deep abandonment wounds, I now help adult adoptees move from feeling lost and disconnected to experiencing profound self-belonging. I know what it is like to carry the weight of abandonment, to feel stuck in patterns of longing, adapting, and searching for belonging. To have tried every healing modality available and come up empty. My own healing has taught me this. The answers aren't out there. They're buried within me. And I'm here to guide you home to yourself. The Resilience Project Podcast brings voice, visibility, and validation to the parts of adoption society rarely names, but all of us feel. Through an trauma-informed somatic lens, I explore the lived experiences of the entire adoption constellation with a tender emphasis on the adoptee experience. This podcast goes beyond storytelling into soul telling. It offers embodied insight, compassionate education, and a path towards awareness, hope, and strength. Each episode invites listeners to understand adoption more deeply, not just with the mind, but with the nervous system, and to reconnect with the truth, identity, and belonging that were always yours to come home to. Welcome. Welcome back to the podcast. It's really good to be with you. Two weeks ago, we talked about the severance cycle. And we discussed how, as adoptees, our bodies experienced something different from the very beginning. We talked about what happens in the womb, maternal stress, cortisol levels, early rupture, and how that begins shaping our nervous system before we ever had language. As I was recording that episode, I found myself referencing something I realized later I hadn't actually walked you through yet. The polyvagel theory, trauma responses, what's actually happening in the body with those. And I caught that after the fact and thought, okay, we need to go back and talk about this. Because this matters, not just for adoptees, but for the people who love us. Because when you don't understand what your body is doing, it's really easy to believe that something is wrong with you. Why do I shut down? Why do I feel anxious in connection? Why do I pull away when I want closeness? But what I want to offer you in this episode is this. And I've said this multiple times in the past. Your body isn't broken, it's responding. And this is where the work of people like Peter Levine and Stephen Porgis becomes so important. First of all, Peter Levine, who is the one who wrote Waking the Tiger and is the founder and creator of somatic experiencing, said Trauma is one of those things that must be dealt with at the roots. And for many adoptees, the roots go way, way far back, as we talked about two weeks ago, before memory, before story, before understanding. And at the same time, he also reminds us of something really, really important. That we aren't stuck there. That we are born with an innate capacity to move through trauma. And that healing can actually be a catalyst for something deeper, for awakening, for connection, for transformation. So today we're going to slow this down a little bit. We're going to get an umbrella view of all of these things, and we're going to talk about and look at what's actually happening in your nervous system. Not so you can analyze yourself, but so you can begin to understand yourself differently. So let's dive in. First of all, I want to share with you some images that I use for my reborn group. And this is really, really fascinating to me. Primal trauma. This is something that I have talked about and discussed a lot, but I want to define it. It is otherwise known as early life separation trauma or attachment disruption. Some people call it relinquishment trauma. This term, primal trauma, actually emphasizes the traumatic impact that separation from the birth mother, bio mother, first mother, and other changes in caregiving over time before we're actually adopted can have on the infant's ability to emotionally and psychologically develop in a naturally healthy way. And the impact on us can be profound. This has been researched, y'all. This isn't new information. Primal trauma can occur when the time frame from conception, usually multiple relinquishments, first by the birth first or biomother, then to the nursery of a hospital, potentially to foster care, and then when the child is actually given to adoptive parents. Now, there are times when they're in an orphanage for extended amounts of time or in a maternity home. I have heard many different stories about different variations of this. This is when primal trauma occurs from conception all the way until adoption. It is attempted abortions during pregnancy. It is maternal stress, like I talked about two weeks ago, transferred to the fetus in utero while developing crucial parts of the brain. Not knowing or feeling the nurturing touch of our biology, being taken immediately from the first mother and moved into a nursery, foster care, whatever, never to see her again happened a lot and still does to many adoptees. Making a decision before even having language that protecting yourself from that pain at all costs is what we needed to do to survive. Multiple relinquishments before actual adoption occurs, usually before the child had language, like I said. However, it happens that people are five years old and being adopted, obviously have language, seven years old and being adopted in foster care for years. I mean, y'all, there is a massive variation of this. Multiple foster homes. All of these things contribute to primal trauma. So it's important for us to understand the trauma that we experience, the actual fact of that trauma, which I've talked about a lot. So I don't think this is new information, in order to understand what's happening in our body, and that's where the polyvagal theory comes in. This is the work of Stephen Porgis. And I want to share a quick definition of this. This is a summary of this. It is very detailed. And I just want to make sure that it's not too overwhelming initially because it can be really heady. So the polyvagal theory emphasizes the role of the autonomic nervous system, the hierarchy of it. And we're going to actually look at an image of that in just a minute, especially the vagus nerve, which I did refer to a couple of weeks ago and I described it, and I'm going to go a little bit into it today, too. I think repetition is important. It plays a regulating role in our health and our behavior. In order for us to see things differently in our own world, we really need to understand what our autonomic states are. And we're going to get into that obviously now. So if you see right here, I'm going to zoom in a little bit so that you can see this better. This describes the different system states that we have in the autonomic nervous system. We have the relaxed state, the mobilized state, the immobilized state. Now they can overlap. And I'm going to show you a picture that will describe this even better. But what's important to understand is there is a hierarchy in the autonomic nervous system. There's a parasympathetic and a sympathetic system. The parasympathetic is the rest and digest. The sympathetic is the one that gets really, really activated. The vagus nerve is what regulates the parasympathetic and the sympathetic, but we're going to get into all of this in just a second. So I'm going to move to the image that has impacted me the most since I started this work. It's the polyvagel ladder. Now, this image, when I first saw it, it made me burst into tears. I was on a call where I was really able to deal with what was going on in my body. Sarah Jackson, I think was her name. And I am telling you, y'all, it blew my mind how she described the polybagel ladder. Now, this image is what caused me to burst into tears. I saw this and I realized I have been doing this, experiencing all of this for a very long time. And it scared me because I didn't know how to manage it. First of all, you'll see the different states. Dorsal vagal activation is when we are in a flop or a fawn response. And then there's the sympathetic activation, where that is fight and flight, and freeze is in the middle of these two. And we're going to go into all of these in just a minute, but this is how you can notice them. So when you're in dorsal vagal, your attitude may be something like I am buried under a huge load and I cannot get out. I am alone. I am in despair. The world is empty, dead, and dark. Literally. That is depression. That is the flop state. In a lot of ways, it's similar to the whole idea of playing dead. I cannot move. I cannot get out of bed. When you think of Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine, he talks about that. Sympathetic activation, mobilized, agitated, frantic, the attitude of I'm getting overwhelmed, I'm having a hard time keeping up, I'm feeling anxious, I'm irritated. The world seems dangerous, chaotic, unfriendly. This is where I said fight and flight is. This is where that lives. There's also freeze that lives kind of in the middle of these two. Okay. And then there's ventral vagal activation. This is where frolic lives. Play, rest and digest. You're able to be social. You feel safe. You're engaged. This feeling of I'm at ease. I can manage whatever comes my way. I feel empowered. I feel connected. I'm able to see the big picture and connect to the world and the people in it. This image, I realized when I saw it for the first time that I had been cycling through all of these for most of my life. That's when it began. And I remember being in the session with Sarah Jackson and sobbing, turning off my camera and sobbing because I had finally had um words and experiences and feelings to describe what I was going through. It was, it was so hard, but it was also empowering. So I'm going to stop sharing that and then talk more just about what we are experiencing in the trauma states. So we're going to go through each one of the trauma states so you can understand what's actually happening during them. So I want to describe a little bit about the vagus nerve, like I did before. It is a very important nerve that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. So this nerve, like I talked about two weeks ago, wanders from the base of the skull to the base of the spine. And it manages all of those regulating behaviors. It is crucial to our being able to regulate. In the polyvagal theory, there's three things that are spoken about, which I'll get to in just a second. It moves through the heart, the lungs, the stomach, the digestive system, all of those different systems that are so, so very important for us to be able to survive. The vagus nerve stimulates all of them. What is important to understand about this specific theory is that it also involves neurosception. Neuroception, the definition of that is the non-conscious detection of safety or danger by the autonomic nervous system, which triggers autonomic responses and social behaviors. That is neurosception. Now, the way to move through those different autonomic responses that are triggering us is through co-regulation. And you can learn to do that with yourself as well as another human. Let's talk about that. So here are the different states that we all experience one way or another. And we have our go-tos, y'all. Every one of us has our go-tos. I think it's important to understand that as adoptees, our primal trauma started before we had words, like I said. So when we entered into the world, we were already traumatized and in a sympathetic state. We were already in fight, flight, fawn, freeze, and flop. That was how we survived. We survived by those states. So let's learn about them. Okay. So you've probably seen this before in some way, shape, or form, but I want to be able to describe it. Frolic is what I talked about before. That is the ventral vagal at the top of the ladder. It's where we are calm, it's where we're able to play, it's where we're able to rest and digest and be, which is the state all of us want to be in. Fight is when you'll notice angry outbursts, controlling the bully, narcissistic, narcissistic tendencies happen here. There's explosive behavior. With flight, it's usually somebody who throws themselves into work. They could be a workaholic, an overthinker. They may have anxiety or panic disorders or OCD, difficulty sitting still. They could be perfectionists. That's me. Fawn is people pleasing. A lot of adoptees experience this one: lack of identity, using others as their identity. They have no boundaries. They're overwhelmed. They could be labeled as codependent, which I'm not a big fan of labels. We talked about that last week with Sydney. This one is very, very common for adoptees that I work with. Freeze is difficulty being able to make decisions. Stuck, dissociating, meaning kind of removing yourself from the situation, isolating, and becoming numb. And then there's flop, which is the complete shutdown, depression, unable to cope, unable to get out of bed. These are the different trauma responses that we have that I just described that get triggered in our autonomic system. The more we know, the more we can learn to regulate them. So what I'd love to invite you all into is a little bit of homework, if you will, where you can actually do this. Meaning, what I'd like you to explore is what happens to you when you are triggered. Notice when a triggering event occurs and allow it to teach you which reaction happens most for me. Do I fawn? Do I fight? Do I flee? Do I flop? Do I freeze? What is your tendency? Meaning, what do you do habitually? That's all that you need to do is notice that and allow it to teach you. Don't judge. Learn to show yourself compassion here. And I want to show you how Kristen Neff talks about this because it is, she's the most leading researcher in self-compassion. You may have already heard all of this, you guys. But this is honestly the beginning of how I was able to move through my triggers without judgment and with curiosity. So she says that there are three different parts to self-compassion. One is mindfulness. A lot of these are going to seem so simple. Mindfulness is a state of non-judgmental observation where thoughts and feelings are acknowledged without any attempts to suppress or deny them. So let's say you get triggered by some event. Okay. For for me, it could be, you know, the recent event of finding out that my mother-in-law had passed very suddenly, not something that was expected. What I did, I dropped my phone, I started immediately sobbing, and I ran downstairs because I was with my dad and my bonus mom. And then I immediately got on the phone with my boys, was just me dealing with the emotion in the moment. And later I had to get back and become mindful of the grief that I was experiencing and allow myself to move through it without judgment, obviously, because what I just experienced was a huge loss. Mindfulness is the beginning of that. The next step is self-kindness, showing yourself warmth and acceptance, speaking to yourself as you would a friend. When you go through something that triggers you, when shame begins to rear its ugly head, which we've definitely talked about in one of the past episodes, and you notice you want to isolate, immediately hand over heart, self-hug, whatever feels comfortable for you, maybe it's box breathing, whatever it is, tune into yourself and think, what would I tell a friend in this moment? And show yourself that kind of kindness. Y'all, when you do this consistently, it makes all the difference. And then the last part is common humanity. You aren't alone in this. I say that all the time. It's this revelation and acknowledgement that our struggles, our challenges, and our imperfections are shared among all human beings. Now, with adoptees, it's shared in the adoptee community. We understand each other. And it's important to have that community for sure. Shameless plug for the unmothered retreat that's coming up in May on the 23rd and 24th in Moscow, Idaho. As always, the link will be in the show notes and would love to see you guys there because that's where you'll experience this common humanity. So these things are so very important to our own ability to self-regulate. And it's important to start there. The more we begin to learn how our body chooses to respond to these triggering events as teachers, as we allow them to teach us, the more we learn how to show ourselves compassion and what we need in those moments. Here's one last thing that I wanted to show you guys because this has been a really, really helpful tool for me because it's actually grounding tools that shows you what to do in each state. So when you look at this chart, what you see is each state and what's actually happening. I call this a self-titration chart. And I will share all of my grounding tools with you guys in the show notes. But when you feel hopeless, depressed, numb, like we just talked about shutdown, that's when you're in flop. How you can help yourself is by just visualizing movement. When you aren't able to move, you don't want to get out of bed, visualize it. Move in small ways. Maybe it's as simple as wiggling your fingers. Do gentle breath work. Tune into just your inhale and your exhale. Maybe connect with a pet. For me, it would be giving Murphy. Hug or petting his fur. These things can pull us out of flop if we do them consistently when we notice it's showing up. If you are feeling anxious, scared, irritated, frustrated, and angry, you're more than likely in fight or flight. The way that you release stress is doing some form of somatic practice, like shaking to release the energy, or punching a pillow, or screaming into a pillow, journaling. Sometimes we just need to get stuff out of our heads, speaking aloud or even voice memoing ourselves or getting our feelings out, dancing or stomping. These are all things that I have used when I've noticed that I'm in this mobilized place. When you're feeling wired but tired, burnt out, stunned, fatigued, you are in fawn or freeze. This is how you show your body that you can signal that you are safe. You sit or lay with a weighted blanket and notice the sensations that you feel. Apply warmth of some sort to your body. You could take a hot shower, listen to relaxing music or relaxing frequencies. This is a whole other thing that I'm getting trained in right now is sound. It's amazing. Put your hand over your heart, self-hug. Gently stroke parts of your body that may need attention. These are things that really, really help when you are in any of these states. And I wanted to share them with you because they've been very, very helpful for me. And this is only some of them. But one of the things I will say is consistency with these is key. It's not something that you just do when you're triggered. So for example, I, when I go to bed at night, I self-hug. I'll put my right hand under my left arm and my left arm on my right shoulder, and I will rock myself sometimes to sleep. I'll listen to a meditation or two, and then I'll do some four, seven, eight breathing, which is basically breathing in for four, holding for seven, and then slowly breathing out like through a straw for eight. I do that every night consistently. I don't just do that when I'm triggered or when something traumatic happens. I do that consistently because what it shows my nervous system is that I am here to regulate it and I'm here with it. Being with sensations, whether we have triggering ones or not, is how we teach our body that it can be regulated and calm when traumatic events happen so that we can respond in ways that are more healthy. So, with all of that, y'all, as you sit with everything that we have talked about today, I don't want you to leave this episode thinking, okay, how do I fix this? I want you to leave thinking, okay, this makes sense because understanding your nervous system isn't about changing yourself overnight. It's about changing your relationship with yourself. It's about recognizing what you've actually been experiencing, the shutdown, the anxiety, the pull toward connection, and then the push away from it. Those aren't character flaws, as I've mentioned many times before. They're wisdom responses from our body. They're patterns that our body learned in order to survive. And as Peter Levine says, we have an innate capacity to move through trauma, not by forcing ourselves out of it, but by gently coming back into relationship with our body, back into safety, back into connection, back into choice. And for adoptees, this is especially important. Because when the beginning of our story involved disruption, like I talked about two weeks ago, our healing often involves restoration, not becoming someone new, but reconnecting with the someone that was always there. So as you move through the rest of your day today, just notice where does your body feel safe? Where does it tighten? Where does it soften? That awareness alone is a powerful place to begin, just like I talked about the homework of noticing when you're triggered which your which trauma response is yours, which one do you go to? And as always, if you have questions, reflections, feedback, or something that came up for you while you were listening, you can reach me on any of the socials. Just DM me, like I say every week, and of course, all of my information is in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. And I just want to remind you all that there is a free Facebook page that I have called the Resilience Project, surprisingly, that you can be a part of too as an ad hoctee. And that link is also in the show notes. Last thing I want to say is I'm really, really glad you are here, and I hope you have a fabulous Thursday. Peace.