How to Rewrite your Adoptee Survival Manual in 60 Minutes

In this transformative episode, Claire dives deep into the "invisible script" that many adoptees carry—the subconscious roadmap formed in the earliest stages of life. You will finally understand why you get triggered and learn exactly how to master your emotions. If you’ve ever felt like you’re repeating the same relationship patterns or "freezing" when someone gets too close, this episode is your secret decoder ring for rewiring your subconscious mind and changing your attachment style for good.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The Primal Wound & The Theta State: Understand why the first 24 months of life create a "Subconscious Manual" for survival, and how the Theta wave state programs our internal working model of safety.
• The Four Attachment Manuals: A deep dive into Secure, Anxious, Dismissive, and Fearful-Avoidant styles. Claire explains why 75% of adoptees fall into insecure attachment categories compared to only 40% of the general population.
• The BTEA Model: Learn how your Beliefs create Thoughts, which trigger Emotions, and drive Actions. Claire explains how to trace a "10/10 emotional charge" back to its root.
• The 15-Point Audit: A practical tool to "Fire and Rewire" your brain by finding counter-evidence to your core wounds using imagery and emotion.
• Dear Claire Segment: Claire sits down with "Ghosted Gail" to navigate a Fearful-Avoidant trigger involving a friend who reappeared after three years of silence.

Somatic Practice & Tools:

At the end of the show, Claire guides you through a somatic grounding ritual to help move these stories out of your head and into your Soma (your living wholeness). This tool is for SAFETY and will help you feel connected with your body more so you can start to trust your body's innate intelligence.

Your body keeps the score - 

Learn to use the power of your breath to help release stored trauma, stress, and pent up energy from your body. 

Just 15 minutes each day can help you start a healthier morning routine and you will start to balance out your nervous system, unblock suppressed emotions, and tap into your body's innate inner intelligence to find the areas that need clearing.

ACCESS THE 15-MINUTE SOMATIC BREATHWORK PRACTICE HERE

Connect with Claire:

• Subscribe: Hit that follow button so you never miss a step on the journey back to yourself.
• Rate & Review: If this episode spoke to your heart, please leave a 5-star rating and review. It acts as a lighthouse, helping other adoptees find this safe space.
• Work With Me: Website  and Email: claire@coachwithclaire.com 
• Share This Episode: Let's continue to empower and uplift our adoptee community by sharing this episode with another adoptee and on your socials. 
• Connect On Socials: FaceBook, Instagram 
• Support The Show: If today’s message or somatic tool brought you a moment of peace, or if our conversation helped you feel a little more seen in your journey, I invite you to join me in an energy exchange. This podcast is a labor of love and a completely independent production. If you’d like to help keep this space ad-free and sustainable, you can send a small donation via my Venmo. Your support allows me to keep showing up as an empathetic witness for our community. Thank you for being part of the ripple effect.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back to Dear Claire. I'm your host Claire, and I'm so honored that you've chosen to spend this time with me as we begin to peel back the layers of what it really means to move through the world as an adoptee who may sometimes get triggered or feel stuck in our relationship patterns. Okay, today we're looking at that invisible script that your heart has been reading from for decades, maybe. This is the subconscious roadmap that's been calling the shots in your life while you're just trying to survive. So think of this episode as 10 years of therapy in 60 minutes. Before we dive into our dear Claire segment with a really powerful question from our listener, Ghosted Gail, I want to start by pulling back the curtain on the why. Why do we find ourselves trapped in these cycles of overgiving until we're empty? And why do our bodies just freeze the moment we finally try to choose ourselves? So in my coaching programs, I teach a framework which I learned from Thais Gibson and it's called integrated attachment theory. For us adoptees, IAT is the secret decodering for our nervous systems. Most people think an attachment style is really just a label like, oh, I'm anxious or I'm an avoidant. But in IAT, we realize that your attachment style is actually a collection of all these subconscious programs that were designed to keep you safe when you were a child. I want to talk about Nancy Verrier's book, The Primal Wound. She shows us that the separation of a child from their biological mother is a physiological and psychological shock. Humans are biologically hardwired for proximity. So to an infant, this closeness equals survival. When that bond is severed, when there is rupture, the nervous system enters this biological panic. Even if you are adopted into the perfect home, okay, with very loving and nurturing parents, that is some of our stories. Okay, some of us is a different story. But whatever the story is, the subconscious records a foundational truth about yourself, okay? And it is telling you that the world is unsafe, it's telling you that the one person that I needed most left. This happens during the first two years of your life, this two-year window when the brain is in the theta wave state, the state of deep subconscious programming. And so your internal working model was set to unsafe before you even had words to process it, before you develop language. So in my practice, I use this framework and it is called Adopte Healing and Attachment Integration, AHAI. So most therapy it stops at labeling and unpacking our trauma. I know I've been in therapy for years and years and years, and therapy is a great place to start. Okay. However, there is um there are tools that we're going to learn that takes us from just labeling and being aware of our trauma to actually integrating tools where it's going to help us move from this fate, this unconscious reaction to our to our traumatic events to freedom, which is the conscious creation through reprogramming our subconscious. So your attachment style is your automatic relationship playbook. Think of it like if you were starting a new job. You were given a training manual on day one, right? But what if you were given the manual for a different job role than what the job was you were actually hired for? I bet that you'd be really confused, feeling disconnected, um, angry, and pretty resentful when your boss wasn't happy with your work, or maybe your coworkers got mad at you because you weren't a team player. So as an adoptee, your original manual was written during the primal wound. Your nervous system didn't have the luxury of learning how to connect, it was just learning how to survive. I'm gonna take you through some of the four attachment styles. And the first one is what we're all striving for in life is to be securely attached, and this is where you see the self is really integrated. Okay, you are if you are a securely attached person, your core beliefs may be I am safe, I am worthy, and I am loved. And the reality is that you may tend to use direct vulnerability. So if you're feeling disconnected, you might simply say to your partner or your friend, I'm feeling a little disconnected here. Can we spend some time together tonight? Or maybe later this week when you have some availability. And just a note about securely attached adoptees: only about 25% of us identify as securely attached. And this is compared to 60% of the general population. So if secure people feel like they might speak a different language than you, it's probably because they do. And I'll touch on the language of your attachment styles and the language of your subconscious in a little bit. Okay, let's dive into the anxious preoccupied, which is also called the AP. If you're an anxiously preoccupied, attached person, you might feel that your core wounds are I am abandoned or I am alone. So the manual tells you that safety is really found in this constant proximity. If you lose sight of the source, you feel like you might actually die. And your behavior is sometimes shown through protest behaviors, um, really clingy behavior. Maybe it shows up like over texting, so that you're looking to regain proximity at all costs. Like you do not want to feel like you're losing that attachment. Okay. The next attachment style we're gonna look at is the dismissive avoidant or or the DA. Okay, and if this is you, your core wounds might be I am defective, I am trapped, or I am shameful. These are really common. So your manual that you were given tells you that safety is found in self-reliance. To need or have needs is to be really vulnerable, and that's really scary to a lot of us. So, what do we do? We build the wall higher and higher to keep people out so that I don't have to rely on anyone except myself. And sometimes your behavior might be to deactivate. So this turns up, this shows up as maybe stonewalling or withdrawing into what I call creature comforts, like um work or TV, so that you are protecting your internal island. Okay, sometimes it can be substances like food or alcohol or drugs, gambling. I know because I was also once a dismissive avoidant, and I've really had a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms. Lastly, I want to talk about the fearful avoidant attachment style or the FA. Now, this one is also sometimes referred to as the disorganized attachment style. And if this is you, your core wounds might be I am unsafe or I am betrayed. And your manual tells you that the source of love is also the source of fear. So you might have this intense urge to reach out for connection, but then pull back because it feels really scary. So the story that you believe, this is um, you know, so common for a lot of us adoptees. This is actually the most common style in our community. About 35 to 40 percent of us adoptees identify as fearful, avoidant, attached people. And I actually live through this as well, and I'm going to touch on how we can actually change our attachment styles. Um, you can change your attachment style depending on who you're with, okay, and also by um, you know, I talked about the rupture early in life, the primal wound that kind of forms our core wounds, but also how you grew up in the environment with your primary caregivers helps to shape your attachment style, and also it can be influenced by other um events later in life, you know. So if you have a really traumatic experience, like with a relationship, maybe you're heartbroken, um, or if there is a loss in your family and you know you're grieving, sometimes this can also cause you to become a certain attachment style. Okay, but I want to talk about a personal story of mine. Um, when I was first in college and I first started dating, um, I really was a fearful avoidant and I didn't understand this. So, what happened was I remember my college sweetheart, he was um he was so sweet and I loved him so much. He was my first love. This relationship, it actually just really terrified me. So when summer break came up, I was going to be going home to Boston, and um, we were going to um take the summer, and then you know, I was really, really nervous about it because I thought that you know I saw this break as a permanent exit. Like I made up all these stories in my head about how he was going to abandon me, he was gonna find someone else, he was gonna stop loving me, and that was really scary for me. I don't know why, um, but I was like terrified. So what happened was the day I was leaving on the train, um, he met me at the train station and he was gonna say goodbye, and I just became frozen, like I became icy cold to him, and I know that it was because if I was in control of this, you know, of this what was happening in me, I could reject him first so that he wouldn't have the chance to reject me first, okay. And so it was this push-pull dynamic. I was like really wanting to, you know, be stay connected with him, but I was so fearful, I was so afraid of what might happen if he left me that I just um you know I was just really icy cold to him, and it ended up um it ended the relationship. So that was my experience as a fearful avoidant, and it wasn't just that relationship, it was a had happened again and again and again throughout my life, and um, and I thought that something was wrong with me. I really did. So it wasn't until I really truly understood how my attachment style played out in my behaviors, in my um coping mechanisms, in my needs, and my lack of boundaries. Okay, so let's talk about how to rewrite your story. And I'm gonna take you through a framework that is called BTEA, and this is um us kind of like living inside out through this model. So, what I mean by that is we start with beliefs, okay? This is the root. Um, this is like your absolute truth that your subconscious holds. Like if you feel I am a burden or I am unloved or I am unsafe, okay, this is the belief that you have about yourself, and that triggers your thoughts about yourself. So your belief acts as a lens and your thoughts is like the filter, okay. For example, if you have lunch plans with a friend and you get a text from your friend, hey babe, I have to cancel today, I'm so sorry. Um, work is crazy. You don't think that you are busy. If this is your filter, if you believe I am a burden, you're gonna think um like they don't want me, they're rejecting me. I am unloved, I'm a I'm a burden. So this is your filter, and someone who is securely attached might see it differently. They might be like, Oh, I totally understand. You're you know, you're launching your new uh business and you're super busy, and and I'm super, super excited for you. And so you can see how two people might have a different lens or a different filter. So this actually triggers your thoughts, trigger your emotions, and this is a signal your body responds to this thought, not the reality. So, what happens is once you start thinking, oh, they don't want me, they're rejecting me, you get this flood of adrenaline. And sometimes it can show up as a physical sensation in your body that's attached to your emotion, and it could be like tightness in your chest or in your throat, or maybe your stomach gets into knots and um you just don't feel good. Okay, so then the emotions trigger an action, and this sometimes turns up as your habits. So to stop the pain of feeling your emotions, because sometimes they're just too much for us to feel, you may lash out, you may shut down, or it shows up as people pleasing or fawning. Maybe you can relate. So this is all of this, um, your BTEA, your beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions, this is governed by what we call your reticular activating system. Okay, the RAS. And um, it's kind of like this phenomenon where if you um go and buy a new car, let's say I'm feeling crazy one day and I go and buy a purple Jeep because my favorite color is purple. So once I decide to go and get a purple Jeep, I'm driving home, and all of a sudden I see a lot of also purple Jeeps on the on the road where I've never noticed I was like, oh well, there's another purple Jeep. Oh, and there's another one, and there's another one. All of a sudden, I start seeing them everywhere. Okay, and if your program is I will be abandoned, your reticular activating system it scans every room for evidence of rejection, okay. And so what's gonna happen is you're gonna overlook the 99 signs of safety to find that one sign of distance, that one little tiny look on your partner's face when they get home, that maybe they are dissatisfied with you, maybe they're angry at you, maybe they're bored with you, and then you're going to go into the spiral thinking that they're going to leave me because they stopped loving me. Have you been there before? I know I have. So, this is what happens when your reticular activating system is in full effect. Next, we're going to talk about this filter I'm talking about, and this filter, you know, we talked about your thoughts being the filter that you see your world. Um, and this is your perception. So you've probably heard the saying genetics loads a gun, but the environment pulls the trigger. In my work, what what I've experienced working with adoptees and attachment theory, I see it differently. Your perception of the environment is actually what pulls the trigger. So imagine you're walking through the woods and you see this dark coiled shape in the grass, okay? You get a little bit closer, and immediately you're like, oh my god, it's a snake, and your heart starts racing, you catch your breath, and your brain just screams, okay? You feel yourself going into full survival mode, you're in your fight-flight. Um, I remember this actually happened to me while I was hiking. It was so scary, and it turned out as I got closer to the snake, it was like this little harmless garter snake, and what happened to me it was like it sent me in this full um, you know, alert mode. It was almost like there was this tiger attacking me. And so I actually got so scared, like it was so funny, I almost shipped my pants. I'm not lying. So I want to talk about what happened, this actual reality, okay, that it was a little harmless snake, it was not gonna hurt me. It changed my whole filter, it changed my perception of how I saw the world. So you can imagine next time I go on a hike or a walk in the woods, do you think that I was looking for all of the pretty little flowers, the birds, the moths? Um, no, I was looking for that snake to like pop out and scare me again. So this is just an example how two people they can actually stand in the same room and they can see two different realities based on their perception filter, okay, or their dirty windshield, like I talked about in the last episode. If your filter is programmed with the wound, I am not wanted, I will be rejected. You're gonna see your friend's busy week as a personal rejection. If your filter is programmed with the I am safe, you see that same friend having a busy week as a sign that your friend is flourishing. She is eating and really should be happy for how she's showing up for herself. Okay, we aren't reacting to reality, we are reacting to the dirty windshield of our past. So, how do we actually change our core wounds? How do we heal and change our thoughts, our behavior, our actions? In order to do this, we have to go to the root and change the belief that we have about ourselves. Okay, and we're gonna do this by overwhelming the subconscious with new data. So if your core wound is I am unlovable, your brain is seek is seeking this evidence that supports that lie. It's gonna ignore the friend who sent that message. Um thinking of you, I love you, can't wait to see you. Um, but what you're gonna do is actually hope hyper focus on the partner who forgot to do the dishes, or that family member that never meets your needs for validation or reassurance. They don't see you or hear you, okay? To heal, we must consciously force our brain to find this counter evidence. Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. Before we start the work of rewiring your script, we have to understand who we're talking to. So your conscious mind, the part of you that's listening to my voice right now, is speaking in language, logic, and words. But here's the catch. The conscious part of you is only responsible for about three to five percent of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. The other 95 to 97% is run by your subconscious mind and your unconscious together. So your subconscious doesn't speak English or Koran or any other spoken language. The subconscious only speaks in the language of imagery and emotion. So if we want to change our lives, we have to stop yelling at our subconscious in a language that it just doesn't understand. Okay? We have to learn its native tongue in order to really reprogram it. Here is a tool that I'm gonna give you to help to reprogram your subconscious and overwhelm it with this new data. So remember, your subconscious speaks the language of imagery and emotion. The first step is you're gonna look at your primary core wound, okay, and and I realize that you might have many. I've pretty much had all the core wounds. Um, and just to let you know that there are um there's many, many core wounds out there, and I just want to take you through some of the top core wounds that adoptees tend to have that I've seen in my work and what I've learned about myself. Okay, so the top 10 adoptee core wounds are I am abandoned, I am rejected, I am defective, I am not enough, I am unseen or unheard, I am unworthy, I don't belong, I am unsafe, I am powerless, and I am disconnected. Just take a moment and sit with those core wounds, and I want you to think about do any of these resonate with you? Do you feel like a visceral reaction in your body when you hear them? And if you do, just take some space for you because I do realize that sometimes this awareness of oh shit, like I have all these core wounds, it can be a lot, but I just want to let you know that we're going to. The work, and it's not going to be easy, but it will be worth it because we are going to start to actually root reprogram these core wounds that you have about yourself, these beliefs that are false, okay, little by little. So you are not going to feel as triggered when these things come up, when these relationship issues come up. Back to step one. We're going to take a core wound. Let's just start with one. And for example, let's start with the one I am unlovable. So we're going to find the opposite. What is the polar opposite of I am unlovable? It might be I am lovable and worthy of connection. Okay, whatever it is that is meaningful to you, I want you to think about what is the opposite of your core wound. Okay, so you're going to find the 10 to 15 specific pieces of evidence from your life where that is true. And I want you to look in all areas of your life. Okay, it doesn't just have to be in your romantic uh relationships, it can be in your friends and family category of life, it can be in your work and the area where you have community, it could be in your health, your physical health, or maybe your financial health, or maybe your spiritual health. All of these areas of life are fair game, okay? And so you're gonna go and find those pieces of evidence. So for example, for me, um, I'm gonna take my core wound, I am unlovable, and the opposite is I am lovable. So when I look for the pieces of evidence, I remember the time when my daughter Jolie she texted me that she loved me, and that really felt so good. And maybe there was another time when there was a friend that reached out for help navigating through a challenging time, and um I was that friend that that they reached out to, and I felt really important, and I felt like I had a lot of value and I was lovable. And maybe also I showed up for myself this week. I went to the gym, I ate healthy, nourishing food, and I just really prioritized my self-care, and that showed me that I really love myself. Okay, so these are the the things that you're going to look for in life, and I want you to realize this in the beginning, it sometimes is really hard, really hard to find those pieces of evidence because we're just so used to looking for the opposite, we're looking through this filter. So if you can't find any pieces of evidence that you are lovable, don't worry because your conscious and subconscious mind and actually doesn't need um actual pieces of proof. Um, it really depends on what you believe. So I want to give you this example. Okay, if I say to you, oh, don't think about this chocolate chip cookie, don't think about it. Don't think about I don't want you to picture it. I don't want you to think about how it tastes, how it smells, how it is going to be so amazing when you eat it. Don't think about it. Did you think about it? Of course, because our subconscious speaks in imagery and emotion. And so you already thought about the chocolate chip cookie. So this is just an example of how you can actually trick your mind into thinking something is true, even though it's not true. Okay, so we're gonna use that to look for pieces of evidence that even if you don't find the evidence, you can kind of make up things like, oh, I it would feel so good if and I would feel so lovable if I got an invitation from a friend to come to a get-together, or if my family member reached out to me and said, Really want to connect with you and hear more about your adoption story. Okay, we can think about these as pieces of evidence as well. So the last thing about the last step, okay, so this is the most important part. Do not skip this step because your subconscious speaks the language of imagery and emotion, we have to tap into your emotions that are tied to those pieces of evidence, the image of you doing the things and being that person who is lovable. So that time when Jolie texted me that she loved me, I'm gonna sit with that image and just feel into all the amazing emotions that I felt. I felt this warmth in my heart. It was like a warm blanket covering me, and I felt so loved and I felt so happy, and it just made me feel like so connected. This is what you want to do for each piece of evidence. So we're gonna use this tool, which is called auto suggestion for 21 days. Okay, we're doing the reps to recondition our subconscious programming. Every morning or every night or both, I want you to go through each of these pieces of evidence, okay? Bring it up, think about it, imagine it happening. Okay, remember it doesn't always have to be real. We're gonna imagine as if it was real, and then you're going to anchor into that emotion that you felt. What did you feel inside your body? Where did you feel it? After about a minute or two of each of each piece of evidence, each specific um image, you're gonna go through all of them, and this is going to help you to actually heal your core wounds, okay? Now, it's not gonna be like, oh, after you do it one time, oh I'm I'm healed. It's gonna take work, and I know that it's going to be worth it, but also you might feel like, oh, this isn't working, this isn't working. Believe me, trust me, if you do it diligently and you incorporate this into your daily habits and practices, it will start to work. Let's commit to our practice, this new practice of auto-suggestion. And um, just uh just a little bit about why I want you to do it in the morning or in the evening, you can do it any time of the day, really. But these are the times when you're more in your alpha and theta brainwave state, and your subconscious mind is more open to being um reprogrammed, it's more open to suggestion. All right, let's move into our dear Claire segment. I'm so excited. I'm gonna read a question from our listener. She calls herself Ghosted Gail. Okay, she writes the relationship challenge that I have is about an old friend. Let's call her Amy. Amy was one of my first friends when I moved to a new city. Even though she is 10 years younger, we had a lot in common and even grew up in the same area of our hometown. Throughout our friendship, we were there for each other, and towards the end, it was often me supporting her through tough times, poor choices, and eventually having a child. I won't be going into all the details, but let's just say I went above and beyond as a friend. Shortly after she had her child, she moved back to our hometown for family support. It was then that I started realizing that she was not returning my texts or my calls. Even when I was visiting family in the area, I never heard back. I guess I was ghosted. I feel like it's not personal, but it left me feeling confused. At times when I had been abandoned or betrayed in the past, it definitely brings up my core wounds from being adopted. So then after three years of not hearing from Amy, she just called and texted me saying, Hey girl, it's Amy. That's it. Dear Claire, what do you think I should do? Do I respond? And if so, dot dot dot. Okay. Alright. I want to just take a deep breath with you and say to Gail, first of all, thank you so much for submitting your question. I think we all could probably relate a little bit. Um, I know I definitely can. First of all, I just want to sit in the stillness with you for a second, and I want you to know that I see you. Okay. I wanted to know, I want you to know that your feelings are valid. And sounds to me like there's a lot of big feelings here. Um, I want you to know that that full body freeze to your nervous system, that hey girl text isn't just a friendly greeting reaching out, it probably feels like a threat to your nervous system. Okay, and so I want to just say that from what I hear from your other answers, I'll go into those in a minute. I feel like you might be navigating the landscape coming from a fearful avoidant attachment stat. I could be wrong, but this is how I'm reading the situation, and I'm reading your reaction and your thoughts and feelings and behaviors. Okay, and I just want to say that the fearful avoidant attachment style is the most common style in our top in our adoptee community because we were hardwired to view the people that we love as the people who could also cause us the most pain. Let me go into the next question. When this challenge arises, what do you feel in your body? And Ghosted Gail writes, I feel frozen, full body freeze mode. Yeah, I get it. I totally get it. Um, you know, your body feels like it's under attack, and you feel like there is a tiger attacking you, or there's a bear in the woods. Next question: What is the story your mind tells you in these moments, and what do you make it mean about yourself? Goes to Gail Writes, it's not safe to open back up. Okay, safety. Boom, there it is. Your core wound is around, I am unsafe. Gail, if you could feel 100% safe and secure in this situation, what would that look like for you? So, what I'm asking is, what are you really needing in this moment? And Gail wrote, I feel like I would want full transparency and to be respected, for them to give me some kind of explanation. Right, yeah, I totally get it. So I just wanted to say that when Amy disappeared, okay, your subconscious wasn't seeing it as just a busy friend, like, oh, she was busy with raising her child and this and that. It actually you read it as you were being betrayed, okay, and that opened up these core wounds for you. Um, you know, I am betrayed, I am rejected, I am abandoned, I am unsafe. And these are the core wounds of a fearful avoidant. So, what I want to just say that as an FA or fearful avoidant, your emotions are so highly intense. Okay, you can fluctuate between that wanting that connection and also that super, super intense need to protect yourself at all costs. Your coping mechanisms is often hypervigilance. So you're just reading the room, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and boom, there it is. She goes to do. Well, okay, the shoe dropped three years ago. Okay, that happened three years ago, and now it's trying to walk back into your life, or she's trying to walk back into your life, and you're like, no, you're like your body is screaming in a high alert. Um, because your needs right now, you are needing transparency and respect to know that it's safe to re-engage, to reconnect, to reattach. And you want an explanation because you want to feel safe again, and you want to feel that there is that attachment and that um the possibility of her ghosting you again is not gonna happen. Here's the hard truth, Gail. Just listen to me and hear me out. Amy may not have the capacity to give you what you need, okay? That transparency and respect. However, she responds, however, you respond, and then she responds, you may still have these open core wounds, and you may still feel disrespected, and you may still feel abandoned and betrayed and unsafe. So, what we aren't going to do is just think our way out of this freeze. We are going to reprogram it, okay. This is your way to actually change the way that your brain and your body are reacting to this core wound, reacting to being ghosted, so that you're not gonna feel so triggered, okay. The feeling that you have, the full freeze mode, is gonna feel less and less and less, and that is the goal of healing your core wounds so that you can actually see it for what it is, and you could um potentially, if you wanted to, choose to re-um connect with Amy and build a beautiful, healthy relationship. But this really depends on a few things, okay? So, first of all, we're going to use a BTEA chain that we talked about earlier. That is your beliefs trigger your thoughts, which then triggers your emotions, and that brings upon the action. So the belief is that I am disrespected, I am unsafe, right? And then it goes to your thoughts, and you might be thinking, Oh, she doesn't care about me. How could she just ghost me after all we've been through? After how much I showed up for her as such a dear friend, and I really valued our relationship. And how could she just ghost me? So that is the thought, and then the emotion inside of you, you've told me that you're in freeze mode, and this is your hyper vigilance, this is your trauma response, this is how you react to the belief and the thought. Okay, your fight, you're in fight-flight mode, but you're it's the freeze response. The action. Let's talk about the action. So, withdrawal or pushing back. Um, by naming this chain of reactions, you move from your reactive brain, your reptilian brain, to your observing brain. Okay, we're just observing it like a cloud in the sky, you're not becoming this um this emotion. Gail, we are going to prove to yourselves that you are respected, you're safe regardless of what Amy does, because you can't control what she does. That's just the truth of the matter. So, I want you to do this. I want you to pick the core wound that hurts the most. What is that core wound? Okay. I am disrespected, I am unsafe. Now, let's find the opposite of that lie. That core wound is a lie, that's not true. Okay, and the opposite, I am respected and I am worthy. Now, you're gonna look for those 10 to 15 tiny pieces of evidence that you are respected, you are worthy, and look at all of the different areas of your life, look at your career, look at all of your clients who value you, you are worthy, you're respected. Um, and they stay and keep coming back to you know to learn from you and to receive from you. Look at your relationships with your partner, with your family, with your friends. Look at all of the areas where you are respected and you are worthy of these relationships. Look at your spiritual world, okay? Where are you showing up as respecting yourself? And where are you showing up as worthy? And where are you showing up in your health um area of life? Um, you know, are you showing up for your physical health, your mental health, all of the things that you do to respect yourself and show yourself that you're worthy? Find the proof that you are a woman of value and that you do not abandon yourself, okay? You are so worthy so that you keep showing up again and again, okay? Find these pieces of evidence, you're going to write them down, and then here is the biggest most important part of this tool. You're going to anchor into the emotion. How did you feel when you when you showed up for yourself? How did you feel when your partner showed respect and honored your boundaries and showed that you are worthy? Um, tap into that emotion. Where did you feel it in your body? So you're gonna read this list every morning and every night until it feels like the truth. It feels like you are aligned with this version of yourself that you know is authentically you. Okay, you're gonna keep doing it. Um, you're gonna honor this practice every morning and every evening when you're in your alpha and theta brainwave state, and you're really open to suggestion, this auto-suggestion. I want to also offer you a somatic processing tool, okay, because sometimes we really need to be in our homeostasis, we need to be regulated in order to allow the healing to happen. So when that hey girl text pings your phone and you look at it here and you go into your freeze mode, this is your snake in the woods alarm, right? If you're walking in the woods and you see that snake and you're like, you know, this is this is that feeling that just goes through your body and it you go into full freeze mode. Don't respond yet. I want you to regulate. You're gonna put a hand on your heart and you're going to breathe slow. Breathe into the heart space. This is somatic regulation, and you're gonna tell your body I am the source of my own safety. I am the one who stays for me. Okay, and you're gonna repeat this until you feel more regulated, more calm. Your breathing is slow and controlled, and you're able to feel um the good emotions. I want to also offer you this. Gail, if you feel 100% secure, what would that look like to you? Okay, sometimes security, feeling safety doesn't mean that you need her explanation. It doesn't need you don't need her to validate that you are safe, right? You don't owe her a seat at your table just because she knocked. Now, if you feel that you want to respond, absolutely respond, but do it from a place of direct vulnerability, okay? This is how secure people, a securely attached people respond with direct vulnerability. You have to open up, um, and that's the risk that you're gonna take, okay? But when you feel like you know you are starting to do the healing, it's not gonna be as scary. You could say, Hey Amy, to be honest, I was really hurt when things went silent three years ago. I'm in a place now where I prioritize transparency and consistency in my friendships, and I'm not really looking to reconnect right now. So that's just one way that you could respond. But I really invite you to feel into the best way for you. I want you to know, Gail, that you are the one who stayed for yourself these last three years. You are the source of your own respect, you are the source of your own safety, you are the one who did not abandon. All right, I'm sending you so much love and I'm sending you so much healing and joy and peace and all of the emotions. I really, really am honored that you took the time to write into the Dear Claire podcast. And I'm I'm so honored to be part of your healing journey. I hope the listeners that you also receive some support from this segment and from the um unpacking the ghost to gale questions. And so I just want to say that this is the path that we're walking on together, and I welcome you to right back after you've started to do the work with the auto suggestion and the somatic processing. Let me know how you're doing and how you're feeling if you have any further questions. Okay, all right, bye for now. Before we close, let's move into the soma. The soma is your living wholeness. I invite you to practice this transformative modality called somatic breathwork, which helps us to get these stories out of our heads and really process them through the body. Now, this tool is for Safety and this will help you feel connected with your body so that you can start to trust your body's innate intelligence. Your body keeps a score. Let's learn to use the power of your breath to help release that stored trauma, your stress, and all the pent-up energy from your body. Now, just practicing this tool for 15 minutes each day, this can really help you start a healthier morning routine and you will start to balance out your nervous system, unlock suppressed emotions, and really tap into your body's innate inner intelligence to find these areas that need clearing. All you need to do to access this somatic breath work practice, just click the link in the show notes and it will take you right there. I want to thank you so much for spending this time with me. And I want to leave you with one final thought. That is, knowing this information about your attachment style is just really the first step. But doing the work is the key to your freedom, to your happiness, to your feeling joy and love. By practicing these tools that I've shared with you today, this is how you transform. This is how you manifest the happiness, the peace, and the freedom that you really, really deserve. You can be free from the suffering of your core wounds and you are not late to your healing. Your body knew when it would finally be safe enough to do this work and you landed here. So if this episode resonated with you, please hit the subscribe button. And if you could just take 60 seconds to leave a rating and review, it really helps the algorithm so that other adoptees can find these tools and they can also find their way home to themselves too. So want to let you know that you are safe, you are worthy, and you are loved. I'm Dear Claire, and I'm right here with you, and I will see you next time. Much love.