Why Adoptees Feel Alone Even When They're Loved (And What Connection Actually Requires)

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In This Episode

Have you ever worked incredibly hard to be loved, and still felt completely unknown?

That is not a character flaw. That is what happens when the part of you that most needs to be seen learned early on that it wasn't safe to come out.

In this episode, Julie Brumley explores the fourth condition of the 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging: Connection. She names the paradox so many adoptees live inside - longing deeply for connection while being terrified of it - and offers the reframe that changes everything: connection starts internally. Before you can truly be met by someone else, you have to be present to yourself first.

Julie shares a deeply personal story about losing herself inside her marriage, guides listeners through a powerful mirror-based co-regulation practice, and closes with the truth that belonging doesn't require you to be fully healed. It just requires you to bring a little more of yourself into the room.

Chapters

[00:00] Welcome back + recap of Capacity 

[02:28] The adoptee paradox - longing for connection and being terrified of it at the same time 

[04:23] Julie's personal story - the moment she realized she didn't know her own favorite color 

[05:30] Shape-shifting for love and what it costs us 

[06:00] The reframe: connection starts internally 

[08:03] More stories, more connection, more healing 

[09:00] Why real connection heals what insight alone cannot reach 

[09:45] Somatic practice: co-regulation with the mirror 

[15:43] What the mirror practice is actually building 

[16:10] Closing thought - you don't have to be fully healed to be in connection 

[17:33] Next week preview: Consistency

Key Takeaways

• Adoptees often live inside a painful paradox: longing for connection more than almost anything, while being terrified of it at exactly the same time. Both things are true. Both make complete sense.
• Shape-shifting - reading the room, adjusting your personality, being low-maintenance and easy - was an intelligent nervous system response to early attachment disruption. It kept you connected. It also kept you unknown.
• Being unknown, even in a room full of people who love you, is its own kind of loneliness.
• Connection starts internally. Before you can truly be met by someone else, there has to be a you present to be received. Internal connection is the foundation.
• More stories means more connection. More connection means more healing. Real, safe connection - where you don't have to perform or minimize or explain yourself into palatability - begins to heal things that insight alone cannot reach.
• You don't have to be fully healed to be in connection. You just have to be willing to bring a little more of yourself into the room. That is enough. That is everything.

Somatic Practice From This Episode

The mirror co-regulation practice Julie guides in this episode can be returned to any time you need to come back to yourself.

1. Find a mirror and stand near it without facing it yet. Let your feet find the floor, notice your breath, let your body settle.
2. Soften your gaze. Take one slow breath in through the nose and a slightly longer breath out through the mouth.
3. Let one hand rest wherever feels right - your lap, your heart, your legs.
4. Say - out loud or internally - you are not too much. Your longing is not too much. Your grief is not too much. Your need for connection is not too much.
5. When you're ready, turn gently toward the mirror. Make soft eye contact, or look at the base of your neck or the tops of your shoulders if that feels more comfortable.
6. Practice mirrored breathing with yourself - noticing the rise and fall of your shoulders. Notice any urge to look away, shrink, or disappear. Just notice.
7. Repeat the words out loud if it feels comfortable. Breathe. Notice the shift, even if it's small.

The 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging Series

This episode is part of a five-episode series walking through the five conditions that allow self-belonging to emerge:

Curiosity → Clarity → Capacity → Connection → Consistency

Not goals to achieve. Conditions to experience. Practices of returning to yourself.

• Episode 1: Curiosity — Why Adoptees Disconnect From Themselves (And How Curiosity Helps)
• Episode 2: Clarity — "What's Wrong With Me?" Why Adoptees Ask This and What To Do Instead
• Episode 3: Capacity — Why Adoptees Abandon Themselves (And How to Finally Stay)
• Episode 4: Connection — Why Adoptees Feel Alone Even When They're Loved ← you are here
• Episode 5: Consistency — Next Week

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 adoptive 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, everybody. It is so good to be together as it always is every week. It's my favorite time of the week, being able to spend time recording and spending time with you. So last week we went deep. We talked about capacity, about what it actually means to stay connected to yourself while emotion exists. We talked about titration, about pendulation, about the line I hope has stayed with you this week. The goal is not to never feel pain. The goal is to not leave yourself inside of it. If you've been practicing that even a little, I want you to know it matters. Every small moment of staying counts. And today we move into something that I think is one of the most tender parts of this entire series. Today we're going to talk about connection. And here's where we've traveled together in this series. We explored curiosity that asked, can I notice what's here without needing to change it? We explored clarity that asked, what am I becoming aware of? And then last week was capacity. Can I stay with myself without abandoning myself? And now connection asks, can I let myself be seen? Not the curated version, not the performance, not the version that has already decided what's safe to let be visible. Just me here in a body that has a history. That question is not small. For a lot of adopted people, it might be one of the most activating questions in this entire series. And I want to hold it gently. There's a paradox that we experience as adopted people, and I want to name that because I believe it is true for so many of us in our experience. We long for connection more than almost anything, and we are also terrified of it. Both things at the same time, in the same body. We learned to long for belonging, to need it, to search for it, to shape ourselves around the hope of it. Because belonging is a fundamental human need. The nervous system is wired toward connection, and the body aches toward it the way a plant moves toward light. And yet, many of us also learned very early through real lived experience that love and loss are threaded together. That attaching too fully means risking more than we might be able to survive. So we adapted. We became shapeshifters. I've talked about this many times. We learned to read the room before entering it, to adjust our energy, our personality, our needs, to match what seemed most likely to keep us connected. We got incredibly good at being what people needed us to be, at being likable, low maintenance, easy. And somewhere in all of that, we lost track of who we actually were when no one was watching. I remember a very vivid moment in my own life when I realized this pattern. But I had no idea how to stop it. I'd probably been married for about 10 years, and a friend asked me what my favorite things were. My mind drew a complete blank. She was like, You don't know what your favorite color is or your favorite food. And my initial response was, what would my husband tell me was my favorite? Now I didn't say that out loud, but that's what went through my head. And it hit me that I had zero clue what I liked, wanted, desired. Everything that I liked, wanted, desired was what he told me I liked, wanted, and desired because I so desperately wanted to be loved, accepted, approved of by him. That is not a character flaw. This is an intelligent nervous system response to early attachment disruption. The shape shifting kept me safe. That performance kept me connected, but it also kept me unknown. And being unknown, even in a room of people who love you, is its own kind of loneliness. So here is where the reframe happens that I think can change everything. Connection starts internally before it can live between you and another person, before you can truly be met by someone else, something has to happen inside you first. You have to be present to yourself. Not the edited version, not the version that's already decided what's allowed to be seen. The actual you with your sensations and your needs and your old fears and your real longings. When we are disconnected from ourselves, when we have spent years managing experiences from the outside, performing okayness, like I talked about last week, shape shifting for safety, like I've talked about many times. We don't actually show up in connection. A version of us shows up, a very functional, sometimes charming version, but it's not the whole self. And then we wonder why we still feel so alone, even when people love us. It's not because connection isn't happening, it's because the part of us that most needs to be met never fully made it into the room. Internal connection is the foundation. It's coming home to yourself first. So that when you reach toward someone else, there's actually a you to be received. More stories means more connection. More connection means more healing. That is Dr. Liz's motto for migrating toward wholeness. There is something that happens when we as adopted people find other adopted people or find a room full of people who say me too, without flinching. There's something in the nervous system that exhales when that happens. Something that has been held very tightly begins to loosen because so much of what we carry as adopted people was carried alone in families where no one quite understood, and I wouldn't expect them to understand, in a culture that told us we should be grateful or that we were lucky or that we were rescued, in a silence that felt like it was ours to keep. And connection, real connection, safe connection, the kind where you don't have to perform or minimize or explain yourself into palatability, that kind of connection begins to heal things that insight alone cannot reach. But that kind of connection requires something of us. It requires us to actually show up, to bring the real self, even a little, into the room. That is the work of connection. So I'd like to invite you to practice something with me right now. And if it feels supportive, I would like to invite you into a brief co-regulation practice, nothing to force, nothing to perform, just a gentle experiment. I'd like to invite you to move into a place where you're near a mirror. I don't want you to face it yet. Just move into a place where you're near one. And if you need to pause to do so, go for it. If you're driving, obviously, please don't do that. Wait until you are home and can do this practice. So I'd like you to let your feet find the floor. They're obviously standing on it. But what I want you to do is just notice your feet against the floor.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Notice the air around you.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

And if you're sitting against something, notice your back against whatever it is that's supporting you. I'd like you to take one slow breath in. A real one, not a performed one.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

And let your body settle slightly on the exhale. Now I want to invite you to try something.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Let your gaze soften. Not closed, just soft. As if you're looking at something slightly blurred and gentle. And let's take one more slow breath in through the nose together. And then a slightly longer breath out through the mouth. Notice what happens when you don't have to scan the room for safety or work hard to stay on guard. And now, gently, without any pressure, let one hand come to rest wherever feels right. Maybe against your legs, maybe over your heart, maybe just laying in your lap. And I want to say something to you. Not as a podcast host, but just as one person to another. You are not too much for this moment. Whatever you're carrying, whatever version of yourself you've had to perform just to get through the week, you are not too much. Your longing isn't too much. Your grief is not too much. And your need for connection is not too much.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Whatever just moved in your body, let it be there.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Notice the shift.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Even if it is just a small percentage.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Now I'd like to invite you to turn toward the mirror if that feels comfortable for you and make gentle eye contact. It's okay if it doesn't, then just look at the base of your neck or the tops of your shoulders. I'd like you to experiment with what I call mirrored breathing with yourself. Notice as you breathe in and as you breathe out, just pay attention to what happens in your body as you do this. The rise of your shoulders when you breathe in, the lowering of your shoulders when you breathe out. And notice if you are looking at yourself, any urge to look away, to shrink, to giggle, or maybe even to want to disappear. Just notice as you breathe in and out. This is you co-regulating with yourself. And I'd like to invite you to speak what I said earlier out loud if it feels comfortable for you in the mirror. Or just say it in your mind if that feels better. You are not too much. Your longing is not too much. Your grief is not too much. And your need for connection is not too much. Take a breath in through your nose. Maybe your throat actually feels more open and able to communicate. Just notice those shifts, even if they're just a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

And let's take one final deep breath in together. And sigh it out.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

And you can move away from the mirror. I'm sure that if you were doing that, it probably felt a little uncomfortable if that was new for you. And that's okay. Again, we're just learning how to be with ourselves in these uncomfortable moments. That's building the capacity that I talked about last week. I think one of the most painful things about the adoptee experience of connection is this. Many of us worked incredibly hard to be loved and can still feel unknown. Not because the love wasn't real, but because the self that most needed to be seen learned early on that it wasn't safe to come out. Curiosity began to show us that. Clarity named the patterns, our capacity gave us enough inner steadiness to tolerate them and allow ourselves to begin to be seen. And connection, this condition, this practice is where we begin to extend that. First inward and then slowly outward. You don't have to be fully healed to be in connection with yourself. You do not have to have your whole story figured out. You just have to be willing to bring a little more of yourself into the room. That is enough. You are enough. And that is actually everything. Thank you so much for being with me today. I'm so glad that you took the time to spend here with me today. Next week, we arrive at the fifth and final condition in the series: consistency. And I want to offer you a preview because I think consistency is where a lot of healing intentions quietly fall apart and where this series becomes something you can actually live. Consistency isn't about doing more. It isn't about grand commitments made in emotional openness. It's about small, repeated, ordinary moments of returning to yourself. As always, if something came up for you in this episode, a question, a reaction, something that landed, you can DM me on any of the socials, or you can schedule a conversation with me. The link is in the show notes. I'd love to connect with you and hear where you are and how I can support you. And if this podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review or a few words in a written review go such a long way in helping this work reach more people, more adoptees and those who love them, and more people who need to hear that they are not alone in this. Because you are not. You are never alone in this. And I'll see you next week. Peace.