Why Healing Doesn't Stick (And What Adoptees Need Instead of Another Breakthrough)

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In This Episode

Have you ever had a real breakthrough - a moment of genuine opening - and then watched it slowly close again a few days later?

That is not failure. That is not you doing it wrong. That is what happens when we expect insight alone to rewire a nervous system.

In this final episode of the 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging series, Julie Brumley walks through the fifth and most quietly challenging condition: Consistency. Not the kind that asks you to do more. The kind that asks you to do less, more often, more honestly - and to keep coming back to yourself even in the most ordinary moments of your life.

Julie shares the personal story of the one tiny practice that began building belonging in her own body back in 2022, guides listeners through a closing somatic integration practice, and closes the series with the truth that belonging isn't a destination you earn. It's a relationship you tend.

Plus - a tease of what's coming next week.

Chapters

[00:00] Welcome back + recap of Connection 

[00:45] You showing up is already an act of Consistency 

[02:22] The place where well-intentioned healing quietly falls apart 

[03:30] The shame of going backwards - and a different story 

[04:30] Why insight alone doesn't rewire a nervous system 

[05:00] Healing is repeated, safe return to self 

[05:20] What happened at the retreat when Julie named this condition 

[05:41] Tiny. Believable. Nervous-system sustainable. 

[07:00] Julie's personal story - the hand over her heart and what began to change 

[08:30] Somatic practice: returning to what stayed with you from this series 

[09:53] The integration invitation - choosing one thing 

[11:59] Closing thought - belonging is not a destination you earn 

[14:24] Series close + what's coming next week

Key Takeaways

• Showing up week after week - even while doing the dishes or lying in bed - is already an act of Consistency. You have already been practicing.
• Breakthrough moments are real. The opening is real. The insight is real. But insight alone does not rewire a nervous system. The nervous system learns through repetition, through embodied experience returned to over time.
• The reason most healing intentions don't hold isn't because you weren't sincere. It's because the commitment was bigger than your nervous system could actually sustain.
• The invitation of Consistency is not to do more. It's to do less, more often, more honestly.
• One tiny practice - repeated over time - is what builds belonging. It doesn't have to be impressive. It has to be believable and yours.
• Belonging is not a destination you earn. It's a relationship - with yourself first, and then slowly with the people and places that can hold you. The practice is the returning.

Somatic Practice From This Episode

For this final practice, Julie doesn't introduce anything new. Instead she invites you to return to whatever practice from the series your nervous system recognized most.

Then, from that settled place, choose just one thing to carry forward. It might be:

• A hand over your heart each morning before you get up
• One slow breath before a hard conversation
• One moment of orientation when you feel yourself beginning to spiral
• A truth spoken to yourself daily - I am not too much. I am allowed to need connection. I don't have to earn my place here.
• A self-hug or thirty seconds of checking in with yourself in the mirror
• One moment of pause to invite curiosity, clarity, capacity, or connection back in

Whatever it is: tiny, believable, and yours. That one thing, returned to again and again, is the whole practice.

The 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging Series - Complete

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 (And What Connection Actually Requires)
• Episode 5: Consistency — Why Healing Doesn't Stick (And What Adoptees Need Instead of Another Breakthrough) ← you are here

Coming Next Week

You're going to hear directly from the five retreat participants who experienced this workshop live - plus Dr. Liz DeBetta. It was a profound and sacred conversation and Julie cannot wait to share it with you.

Website

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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 adopte 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. Last week we talked about connection, about the paradox so many adoptees live inside, longing deeply for belonging and fearing it in equal measure about shape-shifting, about the truth that connection starts internally, and that before we can really be met by someone else, we have to be willing to bring more of ourselves into the room. And I said, you don't have to be fully healed to be in connection. You just have to be willing to bring a little bit more of yourself. That is enough. That is actually everything. So today is our fifth and final episode in this series. And I want to begin by saying I am so glad you are still here. Because showing up week after week, episode after episode, that is already an act of consistency. Even if it didn't feel like much, even if you listened while you were doing the dishes or driving to work or lying in bed, you kept coming back. And that, it turns out, is exactly what today is about. Here is the arc that we have traveled together so far. We started with curiosity, which asked, can I notice what's here without needing to change it? Then we move to clarity, which asked, What am I becoming aware of? Next, it was capacity that asked, can I stay with myself without abandoning myself? And last week was connection, where we asked, can I let myself actually be seen? And now consistency asks something both simpler and more challenging than all of the above. Can I keep coming back? Not because I've arrived, not because I have it all figured out, and not because the work is done. Just can I keep returning to myself? And I want to name something honestly here, because I think it's one of the places where the most well-intentioned healing work quietly falls apart. You probably have had moments in the past of a real opening within yourself, real insight, real shifts, maybe at a retreat, maybe in a therapy session, maybe in a conversation that broke something open or broke something loose, maybe in an episode of a podcast, including, I would hope, one of the episodes in this series. And then life happened. The dishes happened. The difficult conversation happened. The old pattern showed up. The familiar numbness crept back in. And slowly, sometimes within hours, sometimes within days, whatever had opened up began to close again. And maybe you felt ashamed of that, like you didn't do it right, or like you can't hold on to anything, like everyone else is healing around you, and you keep returning to the exact same place. Well, I want to offer you a different story. What you experienced was real, that the opening was real, that the insight was real. But insight alone does not rewire a nervous system. The nervous system learns through repetition, through embodied experience returned to over time, through showing up again and again in ordinary moments, not just peak emotional states, and practicing staying with yourself in them. Healing is not one breakthrough. Healing is not one insight, healing is not one emotional release. Healing is repeated, safe return to yourself. That is consistency. It's funny because when I brought this up at the retreat that this was the last condition, there were sighs of uh, oh, I don't want that. A lot of people didn't like to hear that word. But here's what I know about lasting change. It does not come from grand commitments made in emotionally charged moments. It comes from tiny, believable, nervous system sustainable practices chosen in ordinary moments. The reason most healing intentions don't hold isn't because the person wasn't sincere, it's because the commitment was bigger than the nervous system could actually sustain. We decide we're going to do all the things every day starting Monday, and then by Wednesday, it feels like another thing we failed at. The nervous system doesn't respond to ambition, it responds to safety, to repetition, to experiences that feel manageable enough to actually return to. So the invitation of consistency is not do more. It's actually do less more often and more honestly and authentically and transparently. So, in my own personal experience with this, when I began to practice this condition, I had just started learning the language of the nervous system. It was back in 2022, uh, actually the summer, August of 2022. And I had started a somatic program with my dear friend Becky. And she had recommended that I find a tool that would be my go-to. And so she suggested laying a hand over my heart. And I remember when she said that, I think I audibly went, okay, that's gonna solve my problem. I was in such an imposter place. I had been helping people for 10 years at this point, maybe even longer. And I felt that I had failed. And when she told me that placing a hand over my heart, whenever I noticed my heart beating faster, that that was going to solve my problems, I thought she was losing her ever-loving mind. But y'all, that one tiny thing repeated over time, is what began to build the belonging that I so desperately wanted within me first. So I would like to do something a little different today when it comes to our body-based component of this series. So for our last practice, instead of doing something new, I would like to invite you to return. See what I did there? Return to something from the series that stayed with you. Maybe it was the orientation practice from curiosity, where you noticed your feet on the floor, the room around you, your breath without changing it. Maybe it was the clarity practice where you completed the sentences with your hand resting over the place where something lived inside of you. Maybe it was the pendulation part of capacity moving gently between the activated place and the supported place. Whatever practice has stayed with you or stood out to you from the series, that is the one your nervous system recognized. That is the one worth returning to. So let's do that now just for a moment. Feet on the floor, back supported, one real breath in through the nose, and out through the mouth. And from that place, gently, I want you to choose just one thing. That's what I'd like to invite you to do. Just one. It might be a body-based practice, like a hand over your heart, like I described before. And maybe you choose to do that every morning when you wake up. One slow breath before a hard conversation. One moment of orientation when you feel yourself beginning to spiral. It might be a truth that you need to speak out loud to yourself daily. Something your nervous system needs to hear again and again before it starts to believe it. I'm not too much. I'm allowed to need a connection. I don't have to earn my place here. It might be one small act of self-connection, a self-hug, or 30 seconds of checking in with yourself in the mirror rather than pushing through. It might be one moment of pause to invite curiosity, clarity, capacity, or connection. Whatever it is, it needs to be tiny, it needs to be believable, and it needs to be yours. So I'd like to pause for a minute and give you space to choose what that one next step will be, that one thing that you return to again and again.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

That is the whole practice.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Belonging is not a destination you earn. It's not something that happens when you've healed enough or worked hard enough or become enough. It doesn't arrive at the end of a podcast series or a retreat or a breakthrough session. It's a relationship. A living, ongoing, tender relationship with yourself first, and then slowly with people and communities and places that can hold you and that have earned the right to do so. And like any real relationship, it needs tending. Not perfection, just returning. Coming back when you drift. Because you will drift. We all drift. That is not failure, that is being human. Welcome. The practice is the returning. Every moment you brought curiosity instead of judgment that was belonging. Every moment you named something true about what you were feeling, that was belonging. Every moment you stayed with yourself instead of leaving, that was belonging. And every moment you let yourself be seen, even just a little, that was belonging. Every moment you return tomorrow, next week, in the small and ordinary moments of your life, that is belonging growing. That is you cultivating belonging. You do not have to have it figured out. You just have to keep coming back. So this is the end of the five conditions of self-belonging series. There were five conditions, there were five episodes, one arc, curiosity, clarity, capacity, connection, and finally consistency. They aren't goals to achieve, they're conditions to experience, practices of returning to yourself, in your body, in your life, in your ordinary days. I've been so deeply honored to walk through this with you. This work, this particular work for adoptees through the body, it matters to me more than I can fully say. And every person who shows up for it matters. So thank you for every episode you stayed with, for every moment you listened with more than just your mind. And next week you're going to get a tweet. You get to hear from all five of the participants who came to the retreat and experienced this workshop in real time. You will also hear from Dr. Liz as well. It was a profound and sacred experience that we can't wait to share with you. There is so much more ahead, and I cannot wait to keep building this with you. As always, if something came up for you in this series, a question, a reaction, something that stayed that you want to talk with me about, you can DM me on any of the socials. You can schedule a conversation with me. The link is in the show notes. I would 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 and a written review goes such a long way in helping this work find more people, more adoptees and those that 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. I'll see you in the next episode. Peace.