Shadow Work, Adoptee Attachment, and Why Your Triggers Are Gifts

If you've ever felt like you had to perform okayness to be kept — this episode is for you.

As adoptees, so many of us learned early that being loved was conditional. To stay, we had to be a certain way: easy, grateful, not too much. So we took the parts of ourselves that felt too big, too messy, too needy, too angry — and we hid them. Not just from other people. From ourselves.

That's the shadow. And reclaiming it is how we come home to who we actually are.

In this episode we cover:

• Why I sobbed watching Justin Bieber sing to his younger self — and why so many adoptees did too
• Carl Jung's concept of the shadow (and why it's not the "dark side" you might think)
• The four types of shadow — Rejected, Golden, Inherited, and Protective — and how each one shows up for adoptees
• My own shadow around sexuality — and what Madonna at Coachella unlocked in me about reclaiming aliveness
• The Korean inherited shadow — what epigenetics and generational trauma research suggests about what adoptees carry from their biological line
• Why triggers are actually gifts of awareness, not problems to eliminate
• The Charged Judgment tool — how to use your own reactions to do shadow work in real time
• The receiving shadow — why praise can feel like a threat, and the tiny practice that rewires it
• A listener question from April Chae about dating after divorce, over-analyzing, and the swing from anxious to avoidant
• How to identify fearful-avoidant (disorganized) attachment — and why it's so common in adoptees
• A guided somatic practice + 20-minute letter exercise: The Letter From the Disowned Self

A quote from the episode:

"You cannot build a secure attachment on top of a disowned self. The parts of you you've exiled are not the problem. They are the path."

The "Dear Claire" Segment

Healing happens in community when we find that empathetic witness to help us hold the weight of our stories. This space is a collective healing journey, and I want to walk this path with you. Do you have a question about a relationship trigger, a core wound, or a manifestation block?

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Transcript

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So a few weeks ago, I was watching this clip of Justin Bieber performing at Coachella on YouTube. And now I'm not normally a crier. I'm not that emotional usually. But I just absolutely lost it. Like I was sobbing while I was watching in my living room, watching Justin Bieber. And you know, it really wasn't because I'm a huge Justin Bieber fan. Um, I mean, maybe I'm becoming a believer, yeah, I have to admit it, but it was because he was on stage behind him on stage. Um, he was playing this footage of his younger self from his younger YouTube days when he was like 13 years old, 16 years old, and he was just singing to that little boy. He was so present with the child who had just been through so much. I think we all saw him grow up through all of that, and um, yeah, it was a lot between the way people treated him and his um choices that he made in life. He went through a lot, and it just really, you know, got to me and got me feeling really just all in my feels. Well, that day while I was watching, something just kind of cracked open in me because that is the work, that is the whole work, actually, that I think most of us are kind of terrified to do, and that is what we're gonna talk about today. This is the shadow work. So, what it actually is, why it's so important for adoptees to heal our attachment, and how the parts of yourself that you've been hiding are really the exact parts that hold the key to your freedom. And I'm also going to be answering a beautiful question from a listener named April Che about dating after divorce and how to stop picking the wrong people. So stay with me. So, let me tell you a little bit more about that Justin Bieber moment because I posted about it and on social media, and the response was so overwhelming from not only the adopted community, but everyone just was messaging me. They were like telling me, like, me too, girl, me too. I cried too, and I don't even know why I was crying. I think the reason why it hits so hard is this. As adoptees, we kind of had to grow up in a world that often asks us to perform okayness, like to be grateful, to not be too much, to prove, you know, sometimes without even knowing we were doing it, that we were worth keeping. So we learned to take the parts of ourselves that felt too big, too messy, too needy, too angry, too sad, and we kind of just shoved them down, right? So we hid them, um, not just from other people, but from ourselves too. I know I did. And so when you watch someone publicly turn toward their younger self and say to them, You were never the problem. Oh, this is devastating, it hits me so hard because that's the reparenting moment that we didn't get growing up. It's the empathetic witness we needed and didn't have. And that is the shadow work. That's exactly what we're going to unpack today. And so let's get into it. I want to get into the framework because I want us to be speaking the same language here. So, this concept of the shadow was developed by a Swiss psychiatrist named Carl Jung. And basically, what he said was that the shadow is the unconscious part of our psyche that our conscious ego doesn't really identify with. So, in just plain English, you know, what that means is everything that we've rejected, everything we've repressed, everything that we've kind of hidden, not just from the world, but from ourselves, is our shadow. And here's what where I think people get confused. Now, the shadow isn't evil, it's not like the dark side in some scary movie kind of way, like um Star Wars or something. The shadow is really just everything that we learned wasn't okay to show. And it can be different for everyone. So for some of us, that's anger. Like for me growing up, I was I learned that I wasn't able to express anger. I wasn't supposed to show that. For others, it might be sadness or neediness or grief, or this one actually surprises people. It could be your joy, your confidence, your ambition, like the positive parts of yourself that you were told were too much somewhere along the way. Now, Jung also talked about something called the persona, and the persona is kind of like the social mask that we wear to fit in. And so anything that doesn't fit that mask, we kind of banish it into the shadow. All right, and for adoptees, you know, this gets really, really intense because so many of us learned really early on that being kept was conditional, that to stay, we had to be a certain way. So we built this persona that says, I am easy, I am grateful, I am not too much, and we kind of just exiled everything else, all those other parts of us. So there's actually four different kinds of shadow that I want to walk you through. So just listen and see which ones really resonate with you. Okay, the first one is the rejected shadow, and these are the parts that you were told were bad. So that could be anger, could be selfishness, ambition, neediness, maybe sexuality. The parts that just like you know weren't okay to express. And let me just stop here for a second and um let me be really honest with you because the last one I mentioned, sexuality. Sexuality is one of the shadow parts that I have struggled with the most. And I think a lot of you might also have too, whether or not you've ever named it like that. Just hear me out. For most of my life, like I hid my sensuality, like I hid that part of me that is alive and embodied and woman, really feminine. I performed this version of myself that felt acceptable, maybe um being modest, being palatable, staying small. Because somewhere along the way, I absorbed this message that like my sexuality was something that I needed to manage or quiet or just kind of tuck away. And um, as a especially as an adoptee, where so much of my early programming was around being good, being grateful, being the version of myself that kept me kept. Um, just for example, I just remember the messages that I received, and it was probably my perception of the messages, but like I felt like I was always um hypersexualized growing up, and I would hear comments from you know, like family members and friends and like uncles about my sexuality being too sexy or being a certain way that like I think I didn't think that I was allowed to be that way, or the way they perceive they perceived me. I was like, oh, that is not really supposed to be like that. That's not okay, that didn't sit well with me, so that's kind of like where I'm coming from, and I don't know if you can relate, but it's all like the little things like the looks and the way that I felt in someone's presence. Um, it was the attention I got as I became older, like a teenager, and in my early 20s, like I got so much sexual attention. Um, it was a little bit just it, it kind of like rocked my boat. Let me just say, I wasn't able to handle it. And um, so let me just say that what I know now about myself, I'm not speaking to everyone, but I feel like sexuality is power. And for those of us who learned really early on that our survival depended on being easy and being acceptable and being acceptable, that power often got exiled into the shadow. And then just for example, like recently, um, you know, let me go back to Coachella because Coachella, oh my gosh, not only Justin Bieber's moment, but when I was watching Madonna's Coachella performance, oh my gosh, something in me cracked open again. And not the same moment with the Justin Bieber moment, but kind of adjacent. So here's this woman, Madonna. I idolized her growing up, idolized her. I loved Madonna. And in her 60s today, on this huge global stage, just embodying herself fully, like her sensuality, her power, the artistry, all of it, who she was being, um, not performing for anyone, just not shrinking, not apologizing, not asking permission. She was being fully unapologetically her. Okay, she was just Madonna. And so, what I was feeling when I was watching her, I felt this wave of grief and then this wave of longing. Um, because I realized just how much of my own aliven aliveness that I've kept under wraps, how much of my own sensual embodied self that I have hidden from the world, not because it was wrong, but because somewhere I learned it wasn't safe to be that version of me. And so Madonna wasn't powerful because of the spectacle. You know, she was powerful because she's a reminder that the woman who stops shrinking is the woman who becomes fully herself. And there's no age, there's no life season, there's no role where that stops being the work. So this is what I'm talking about. This is the rejected shadow. That's reclamation. And if you felt something when you watched her or when you've watched anyone else who embodies themselves unapologetically, pay attention because that's your shadow saying, That's mine too. I want her back. All right, let me just calm down. I'm gonna simmer down. I got excited. Back to it. Okay, so let's talk about the golden shadow. The golden shadow is your gifts that you've disowned because they felt too big or too visible, kind of like what I was talking about, or too threatening to the people around you. And this one hits different for adoptees, you know, because sometimes our brilliance, our creativity, our magnetism, that was the thing that felt the leaf safe to show. And um, yeah, like let me know if you resonate because I know that I definitely resonated. Like I feel like I wasn't allowed to be um, you know, that person, that version of me. And so I kind of shrunk and I kind of minimized and downplayed all of the amazing um gifts that I have. So that was something that I definitely um I will come back to this and speak more on it. But let me go to the third one. The third one is the inherited shadow, and these are the patterns that we absorb from our family, from culture, from lineage that we just never really examined as optional. Um, we kind of just took them on as truth, like from our adoptive families. And so, for adoptees, this is huge because we have the inherited shadow from our adoptive family and the epigenetic shadow from our biological line, our lineage. And so let me slow down here for a second because this one is also a really big one for me, and I think it's so big for me, and so many of us who are transracial or maybe um transnational adoptees, international adoptees. So, like as a Korean adoptee, my Korean identity, my lineage, my ancestral history, all of it was hidden, hidden from me growing up. Not you know, maliciously, I just think that there wasn't like the awareness that this was actually important. And I remember my parents tried to send me to Korean, um, Korean school. It was like on Saturdays, and they taught language and I don't know, culture, and maybe they had Korean food, and I was like, ew, no, I went I wanted nothing to do with it because I just wanted to blend in, I wanted to be white, and this was just bringing too much attention to that part of me. So it was that this whole Korean identity, it was just absent from my childhood. Like the culture I came from, it wasn't around me. Um, we didn't eat Korean food, no one spoke Korean. Um, we didn't learn about the rituals or the lineage stories, none of it was really mine to grow up with, it wasn't part of my adoption story. I was raised in one world while my body was remembering another. And for most of my life, I just rejected the Korean part of me. Like I pushed her away, I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be just American, and that meant white American. I didn't want to be the one who looked different in the family photos at school. I just wanted to blend in. So what I learned to do was exile her. My Korean self became one of my deepest shadows. Not because she was bad, but because I learned that integrating her felt impossible. And here's where it gets really interesting because in the last decade, the science of epigenetics has kind of caught up with what so many of us have felt in our bodies our whole lives. That we carry more than just our own experience, like our lived experience, like there's something else that we're carrying. Maybe we carry the imprint of those who came before us. And I this is like a mic drop moment, like a truth bomb. When I started to learn about this, and I was like, it just opened up so much for me. And so I want to like tie this back because there is research being done around this. There's a researcher named Dr. Rachel Yehuda at Mount Sinai, and she's been studying this for years, and so she did these studies on child on the children of Holocaust survivors looking at the stress hormone genes. There's one gene that's specifically called FKBP5. I hope I'm getting it right, and that's what she found was that there were these measurable epigenetic changes in the survivors and the survivors' descendants. Okay, so meaning like the trauma didn't just live in the survivors of the Holocaust, it changed their stress response genes, and these genes were then expressed in their children. Their children, even though they weren't directly exposed to the trauma of the Holocaust. Okay, so there's another researcher, Isabel Mansui, um, from Uruk. I'm sorry, from Zurich, who has shown similar things in animal studies. So the science isn't fully settled in humans yet, but the evidence just keeps growing every year. And now hear me on this, okay? This isn't fate, all right? This isn't our destiny. The same research consistently shows that these epigenetic changes are not permanent, like we can do something about it, like they're a reflection of our environment, and our environment can change. Epigenetics. Ah, I geek out on this so much. Sorry, I'm gonna hold back a little bit. No, I'm not, I'm not. But what it means for us adoptees is this. So when you feel grief that doesn't seem to belong to you, like there's something you're holding in your body that might not be yours, pay attention. When you feel anxiety in your body that has no source that you can name, pay attention. When you feel a longing for a culture, a land, a people that you've never met, pay attention. Get curious because your body might be carrying the inherited shadow of your biological line. The grief of mothers that you've never met, maybe, the fear of generations who survived things like war, famine, displacement, occupation. All of the loss that lives in our Korean history or Chinese history or whatever lineage you come from, that doesn't disappear just because you grew up somewhere else. And on top of that, like you also have inherited the shadow of your adopted family. We get double drama. Um, so their patterns, their unspoken rules, their generational wounds, their idea of what makes a good child, and all of that. So, what I want you to really hear is that as adoptees, we were walking around with two inherited shadows running in the background, two operating systems, and no one tells us that this is happening, right? No one told me. We just feel a little off. Maybe feel a little homesick for places we've never been. Maybe we've felt grief for losses that we just really can't name, we can't place where it's coming from. And so for me, the shadow work has meant turning towards like the Korean part of me that I have exiled for so long, and just like honoring her grief, learning her language a little, eating her food, and just remembering the smell of it, the taste and how it like sits in my tongue. Reading her history and acknowledging that the trauma of being relinquished is also threaded through these generations of Korean women whose stories shaped me before I even existed. So, like reclaiming the inherited shadow isn't just personal healing, it's actually healing our lineage. Okay, we are the change makers, and for adoptees, especially, I think it might be one of the most important shadows of all, if I just had to say, because it's the one we're that we were taught was gone. And it's not gone, it was just hidden the whole time. Okay, and then there's the last shadow. This is the protective shadow, and the protective shadow is the coping strategies that once kept you safe. So things like perfectionism, people pleasing, control, numbing. Like they served you, they got you through during survival mode. Yeah, they definitely helped get me through. Um, but if you look at it, they're not really costing you now, they're not serving you in the same way. And the version of you that you're becoming, she needs access to all four of these, all four of the shadows, not to live from them, but just to integrate them. Because here's the Jung quote that absolutely stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. Carl Jung said, Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. I'm gonna let that land for a second. Because the patterns that we keep repeating in our relationships, in our career, in our body, in our dating life, that's not fate. That's the shadow running the show because we haven't turned on the lights yet, we're not aware of it. And okay, so here's where the shadow work gets really, really practical and kind of uncomfortable too, just to let you know, giving you a heads up. So, one of the main ways the shadow shows up in our lives is through projection. And projection is basically when we see in other people what we refuse to see in ourselves. So if you're really despising someone for being lazy or being dismissive or um being too like selfish, whatever it is, whatever trait you're seeing in somebody else, it might actually be because you're repressing your own need for rest, or you can't stand someone. For being too much, or it might be because you've been silencing that part of you that is too much, that part that wants to take up space, and the way that you actually feel projection, all right, it is through triggers, it is our triggers that we can look at because um let's take a trigger, it's a strong, often kind of disproportionate emotional reaction to someone else's words or actions. Like we can go all day by ourselves, you know. If I was a monk living at the monastery without anyone that I had to talk to, had to deal with, I was just being a monk, like I could probably go through a whole week and not get triggered, okay. If I was doing the work on myself and just being in my own little like cocoon at the monastery, like silently just going about my own business. But as soon as you start to interact and be with other people, why is it they trigger the fuck out of you? Okay, it's like when um someone does something that's really small, maybe they're just like cleaning their nails while you're talking, or maybe they're just being a little bit dismissive. Um, suddenly, why is it that you're just flooded with rage? Like they're so disrespectful, you know, and it's really not about what they're doing, but if you look at a trigger, a trigger, I've talked about triggers before on my podcast. Triggers are an opportunity to look inside ourselves. It's like someone is holding up a mirror to us that we're able to now see a part of us that we didn't see before, and is usually a part of us that needs more healing. So here is the reframe that absolutely changed everything for me. These triggers are gifts of awareness. So, like the intensity of your reaction is basically a flashlight pointing right at a place inside of you that needs this integration. And so when something is just a rational annoyance, you go, okay, that's annoying. But you kind of just move on and go about your day, right? But when something is a trigger, you get obsessed, you replay it over and over again, you ruminate over it and you cannot let it go. I know I've been there, and what it happens, your body is so activated, and that is a signal that this isn't really about them. This is what we call a charged judgment, and it's showing you something about you. So I want to give you a tool for this because honestly, it changed my life, and I call it the charged judgment tool. And next time you feel kind of rubbed the wrong way by someone, and you start to feel that charged emotion. Um, like, oh my god, you're getting really activated, and um yeah, you know the feeling. I think you know the feeling. I want to walk you through some steps, okay. Step number one, you're going to notice the emotion and the sensation. Like, what am I feeling? Where is it in my body? Is it showing up as tingling in my chest? Is it pressure? Is it heat on my face? Is it like a punch in my gut? Where do you feel it? Number two, I want you to recognize the behavior and also the trait. So, what exactly do they do? And what trait am I judging them for? Okay. Number three, check your thinking, and this is where it gets a little uncomfortable. So, where in my own thoughts am I expressing this trait? Like maybe I judge myself for being lazy. Uh-huh. Yeah. Maybe I silently judge other people for it too. So you're noticing the thought patterns first. Okay. And then number four, find that in your own behavior. So, where am I actually acting this way? Find two real examples. So, one towards yourself, and then one towards others. So, if I judge them for being disrespectful, where am I disrespectful to myself? Maybe it's crossing boundaries. So, what if I judge someone for being dismissive towards me? So, where am I dismissive towards someone else? So, you see where you're looking at one is the behavior towards yourself, and then one is that behavior towards somebody else. And the last step, number five, is the integration step. How can I express this trait in a healthier way? Because here's the thing repress rage when you integrate it, it becomes healthy boundaries. Repress neediness becomes the ability to actually ask for what you need. And repress selfishness, it becomes healthy self-prioritization. So nothing in the shadow is bad, you know, it's just misdirected energy. And this shadow work that we're doing is really about reclaiming that energy and using it consciously. So I want to name one more shadow territory before we get into our listener question, okay? Because this is another bonus shadow that I didn't talk about before, but this one really almost never gets talked about and it's huge for adoptees. And this is the shadow around receiving. So let me tell you what I mean. Okay, so um, I had this moment recently at work last week where I was in one of our big um company-wide meetings, and one of my managers she started to praise me in front of the whole company, like she was giving me a shout-out, but like she didn't just say something kind about me, like she went on and on and on and on. Like they said something so kind and celebratory about my work, it was such a nice thing to do, and it was so kind. And in this moment, instead of feeling warmth or joy or validation, I felt this flinch, like this wave of embarrassment go through my body. My face got really hot, and I'm sure I was blushing. Um, I felt the intense urge to deflect just to minimize it, and I actually like literally thought about crawling under the table so no one could see my face. I was cringing. Oh my gosh, I don't know if anyone has been there. Well, you felt the same way, but underneath all of that, when I kind of went back and replayed it and I got curious, I felt the old familiar feeling that I'm too much. And so here's what I think was actually happening in that moment, and I really want you to listen for this in yourself. When praise comes in, when love comes in, when someone offers you something good, your nervous system can read it as a threat, not a gift, but a threat. And that's not weakness, okay? That's an old protection, that's a coping mechanism, and for adoptees, especially, uh, receiving can feel really unsafe, and for a few reasons. Like being seen might bring up the fear of being knocked down later, like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, or visibility might have felt dangerous at some point, like being the strong one or the easy one or the grateful one. Yeah, often meant being invisible in your own needs, or maybe your worth has been so tied to doing, to earning, to performing that simply being acknowledged, it feels like ungrounded, like there's no floor underneath it, and so it shows up as maybe embarrassment, and um, this is your your nervous system trying to shrink to back to that familiar feeling, that familiar size when you stayed small. Okay, so hopefully this is starting to make sense. Here's what I want to offer us this week. We are going to start practicing receiving, not big, but just tiny. Okay, we're gonna start there. We're gonna meet ourselves. So when a compliment lands and you feel that flinch, don't try to feel differently, just notice it. Silently name it like uh there's that feeling again, that too much feeling, or maybe not enough feeling. That's it. That's the tiny act of witnessing instead of immediately deflecting or performing gratitude that begins to separate you from the reaction. Then what I want you to do is physically ground. Okay, if you're sitting on a chair, feel your feet on the floor or feel your legs against the chair. Go outside if you want to. Go outside in your yard and just walk around barefoot. This is grounding, and then I want you to take a big slow breath in and one slow exhale. You are telling your nervous system, I am safe, I can stay here, and I don't have to flee this moment. And then have a really simple placeholder response. Okay, have this response ready. So, because when you freeze and you don't know what to do what to do in this moment when you're feeling like you need to get out of there, um something like thank you so much. I appreciate you, and that means a lot to me. Now you don't have to feel worthy of it yet, you don't have to feel that in the moment, you just have to not push it away, okay? Don't disconnect from it. Like sometimes I disconnect from my body because I don't want to feel that. Don't do that. The feeling will catch up later, okay. And here's a reframe that I want to offer you that's really changed this for me. I want you to know receiving isn't passive, it's actually an act of generosity towards the giver. Because when someone offers you this praise or love or care, they're offering you something, so it's because they want to, okay. And so deflecting it even internally is a kind of a subtle refusal of their gift. Letting it in is what completes the circuit, and this is what is going to help you manifest more abundance, okay? Like you want more love, you want more, you want all of the things, right? But when we are constantly refusing it, refusing to um receive it, it's like we're telling the universe, no, we're not worthy of it. Give it to someone else. Like you're not taking something you don't deserve, you are honoring what someone chose to give you. So this week we're gonna try this, myself including. When anything good comes in, a compliment, an act of kindness, even just a moment of ease, I want you to pause for one breath and silently say, I am allowed to have this. I give myself permission to receive this. And this is the whole practice. That's it. Small, repeatable, and this is exactly the muscle that needs building. Because at the end of the day, you really cannot build a secure attachment with anyone if you can't let them actually reach you. Receiving is how connection happens, and so many of us have exiled that part of ourselves into the shadow, too. Alright, so this brings me to this really, really beautiful question from our listener this week. Oh my goodness, I love this question so much and I resonate so much with April Che. Thank you so much. I think her question is really going to resonate with so many of you as well. So April writes, after my divorce, I spent time exploring my identity and trying to understand the root of my trauma. Despite being in therapy most of my life, I hadn't had a therapist ask the right questions. The hardest part of learning myself was realizing that I was part of the problem when it came to choosing bad partners. Girl, same girl, me too. Selfish, emotionally unavailable, immature. I went through a phase where I didn't trust myself to choose. So I didn't date seriously for a while. Recently, I've re-entered dating and found that I do trust myself to choose, but I can't seem to find who I'm looking for. So I'm left wondering if I'm fishing in the wrong pond. April, I love this so much. All right, let me finish. April goes on to say, I know I'm very capable of latching onto a bad partner because the examples I had for love weren't healthy. And I can excuse the red flags because they just seem normal to me. Where I used to excuse behaviors and try to find the why behind mistreatment. I now become a bit avoidant. I've gone from one end of the spectrum to the other because it just feels safer there. Gonna just pause, let that land. Okay, April 1st, thank you so much for sending this. It's so honest, and I love it. I really do. I really want you to know that what you're describing is a textbook shadow material. Okay, we're talking about this shadow work, and oh, it's so perfect. It's so workable, all right. So let me just reflect back what I'm hearing in your question. You learned really early what love looked like, and the models you had, maybe they were inconsistent, maybe they were disappointing, maybe they were dishonest. So your nervous system encoded that as normal. And for a long time, that like you were maybe pulled towards partners who confirmed that template. Um, you know, like your reticular activating system, it was definitely in play here, and that's not a character flaw, you know, that's a nervous system thing doing exactly what it was trained to do. It seeks a familiar, it seeks a comfort, even when the familiar hurts. Okay, we are always striving to get comfort met and run away from pain. So now that you've done the work to recognize it, and this is so much work. I uh I want to honor where you are and all of the work that you've done just for the awareness, just to like come into consciousness around it, and you've stopped choosing those partners, yes, girl, yes, but you've kind of swung to the other extreme, okay? And this is the avoidance, the overanalyzing, because it's safer to be honest, right? I know I've been there. So, April, I want to name something for you because I think it'll give you a framework to what you're feeling, and what you're describing sounds a lot like fearful, avoidant attachment. Sometimes it's also called the disorganized attachment style. And so it's basically when the part of you that wants connection and the part of you that learn that connection is dangerous are both running at the same time. So if you think about the other four attachment styles, there's secure, there's anxious, there's dismissive avoidant, and the fearful avoidant. The fearful avoidant is the one that swings back and forth. Like anxiously attached people, they tend to just pursue trying to get that connection. Dismissive avoidant people tend to withdraw and deactivate, but fearful avoidance, we do both. We want closeness really deeply and we fear it really deeply, so we tend to oscillate. And listen to what you wrote, April. I used to excuse behaviors and try to find the why behind someone else's mistreatment. I now become a bit more avoidant, and I've gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. So that swing is the signature fearful avoidant. And the overanalyzing is part of it, it's the hypervigilance. So when your anxious side was running, the hypervigilance looked like maybe reading your partner's moods to keep the peace. Um, now that your avoidant protection is louder, though, the hypervigilance looks like scanning every new date for red flags, right? So that you can pull away first. The same nervous system, just a different reaction or a different direction. And so here's why this matters, and why I really want to say this out loud for everyone else listening. Because fearful, avoidant attachment is so incredibly common in the adoptee community, and really I think it makes complete sense. So our first experience of love ended without warning. Our nervous system learned in the cradle, in that closeness, that bond with our birth mother, closeness is unsafe, and distance is also unsafe. So we built a system that protects us from both. Alright, and so I want to tell you the good news. April, hear me on this. This pattern is not a fixed identity, it's not who you are. Okay, it's a nervous system response that you can absolutely rewire. And earn secure attachment is real. I've watched dozens of adoptees move towards it, and so many are doing the work, and I know that you are too. All right, here's the shadow piece. Okay, here is the the work. This is the protective shadow at work, and also the golden shadow is asking to come forward as well. I'm sensing. So the protective shadow is that part of you that learned for a very good reason that other people are unsafe. And that part is really loud right now. She's the one over analyzing, keeping people at arm's length, kind of staying safe behind the wall of I can't find who I'm looking for. Like that's the wall. And so the golden shadow, okay, April Hear Me, is the part of you that knows what healthy love actually looks like. This is the part that trusts. This is the part that's willing to be chosen and to choose love. That part is just quieter because you haven't you really haven't gotten to practice her much. She hasn't been well used, you know. It's kind of like um when you start going to the gym, you start getting stronger. You're not gonna get strong and buff in one gym session or one week. You have to do the reps. And so when you say, I'm fishing in the wrong pond, I want you to like I want to offer you a reframe. Just listen, it might not be the pond, it might be that the part of you who knows how to recognize a healthy partner is still kind of underdeveloped, just because like she hasn't had the reps yet, okay? And the part of you who's scanning for danger, um, who's scanning for the red flags is the overdeveloped because she had to be this way for a long time. And what I want to do, I want to offer you two things here. Number one, the emotional magnet concept. So ask yourself, where am I being emotionally unavailable to myself? Because so often the partners that we attract or the connection that we can't find, they really mirror the relationship that we're having with our own needs and so our own tenderness, let's just call it. Ask yourself, get curious. Are you letting yourself be seen by you? Are you sitting with your own grief, your own longing, your own need to be chosen? Because the partner who can really meet you is just calibrated to the level that you're actually able to meet yourself. This was like a huge concept for me when I started to understand this about myself, and so um I just want to say like this is manifesting your partner, this is doing the work of manifestation, okay? Because like a high-value partner isn't gonna show up to do it for you, like you have to be standing in your own truth and your own power and be authentically you and know exactly what you bring to the table, and know exactly what you're looking for, and know exactly what you're open to receiving, even if you get hurt. All right, number two, the over anal um, the over-analyzing. April, you said that you spent a lot of time analyzing, and I get this, I do too, and that is your protective shadow trying to control what felt uncontrollable, maybe like when you were younger, when you were first dating in your earlier relationships. Um, like analyzing this, it feels safe, but is actually a way of staying one step removed from your body, and your body is where the real information about a partner lives in your body, in your nervous system. So, what I'd like to do is offer you a practice on your next few dates or next time you go out and you meet someone before you start analyzing the person, you know, and thinking about is this person good for me? Just ask yourself, how does my body feel around this person? Not what are your thoughts thinking, but your body. Are you tense? Are you settled? Are you performing? Are you able to be yourself, like your true authentic self? Because your body has been collecting this data like your whole life. And she knows so much more than the thinking brain does. Last thing I'll say is this trust that the practice is the path. Okay, you set it yourself. Practice makes perfect, and as it makes your connections, it gets easier to find peace. You're exactly right. You are so right, and every connection that you make from your regulated self, it rewires the template. Okay, these are the reps that you're doing. You're not doing it wrong, you're just doing it slowly. And slowly is how lasting change happens. Like, as you know, if you want a transformation in any part of your life, you're not just gonna like expect it to change overnight, it's going to change slowly, and that's the kind of transformation that will last. Okay. I want to say lastly, thank you so much, April. Thank you so much for being vulnerable and for submitting your question because I know so many people resonate. Um, and I just want to say you're amazing. I love you so much. Keep going doing the work, and I'm just so excited to be able to witness this growth and this beautiful path that you're on. All right, before we close, I really want to give you something to take with you, like an actual practice, because the shadow work can feel really kind of abstract until you actually do it. Like you might be like, what the hell is she talking about? I know it's it really is very complex. And so I want to give you an exercise that I really, really love. It's called the letter from the disowned self. And you're going to need about 20 minutes, a quiet space, and something to write with. Um, so I'll go ahead, I'll let you pause. You can pause this recording, and you can go get yourself into a quiet space, get your journal or a piece of paper and a pen, and um, we're going to start in a moment. I'll see you back in just a few minutes. Before we walk into this exercise, the writing exercise, I want to take you through a short somatic practice first to kind of bring you into your body to soften your nervous system and to create a sacred space inside where this exercise can really land. Because here's the thing: we cannot meet the disowned parts of ourselves from a dysregulated nervous system. The body really has to feel safe first. Okay, so we're going to give your body that safety together right now. Okay, let's start by finding a comfortable seat or you can lay down wherever you choose to practice. I want you to close your eyes if it feels safe to do so. Now take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out through your mouth. Nice. And one more breath in, a big belly breath in, in through your nose, and out with a soft sigh. Beautiful. Now I'm going to walk you down through your body. You don't have to do anything. Just lay there or sit there and just notice. Let's start by bringing your awareness to the top of your head. Soften your forehead, letting your eyes rest behind your eyelids. And moving down to your jaw. Unclench your jaw. Let your tongue fall away from the roof of your mouth. Just relax. And moving down to your throat. I want you to soften your throat. This is a place where so much of our I have needs lives. So just send it some breath, some awareness, and breathe. And moving down to your chest, maybe place your hand on your heart if it feels right to do so. And just notice your heart beating. It has been beating for you your whole life. And it has never once stopped showing up for you. So let's just send some love to your heart space. Breathing into it. Breathing out. And now moving down to your belly. I want you to soften your belly. Just let it rise, let it fall with your breath. This is where your knowing lives. This is your inner compass. Moving down to your hips and your legs. Feel the ground beneath you. And just feel so held. You are held. You are rooted and you are safe. Deep breath in. Let it go. Now, from this regulated place, I want you to imagine a warm, soft light surrounding your whole body. Whatever color comes to mind, just trust it. This is your inner sanctuary. This is your anchor point. This is a space inside you where every part of you is welcome. And inside, from inside the sanctuary, I want you to gently invite the younger version of yourself to come and sit with you. The one who learned to make yourself small, the one who carried what they shouldn't have had to carry. And don't just search for them, just simply open the door and see whoever arrives. I want you to silently say to them you are safe here. You are welcome here, and I am ready to listen. Take one more breath in. Soften your shoulders, let them drop. And when you're ready, open your eyes. Okay, so now you're going to write two letters. The first letter is a letter from him or her to you. So let them speak, okay? Messy, angry, sad, defiant. Like, what do they need? What are they still carrying? And what do they want you to know? What do they wish that you knew about them? Okay? And I want you to give them a full 10 minutes. Don't censor, don't make it pretty, just let them have the pen and let them express. And go ahead and pause the recording. And I'm gonna give you 10 minutes, set your alarm, and we'll come back in 10 minutes. Alright, welcome back. Now this next part, we're gonna write another letter. And this letter is from you today. Back to them, back to your younger self. So you tell them you see them. Tell them what you're willing to reclaim on their behalf, and also tell them that they are not alone anymore. Okay? And I want you just to sit with it. You don't have to resolve anything, you don't have to fix them. You just have to let them know that you finally showed up. Maybe say, darling, I am here for you. And when you're done, I want you to ask yourself three questions. I want you to ask, how old were they? This younger version of you who answered the door when you opened the door. Who have you been sitting with? And what are they carrying? Like what are they carrying that they need to release that they need to tell you about that maybe you're not aware of? And lastly, ask them what behavior or ask yourself what behavior in your current life suddenly makes sense through their eyes. This is them seeing you. This is the Justin Bieber moment, right? This is singing to your younger self, and this is the hard work, this is the reparenting that you didn't get offered, but finally you can offer it. You are maybe the only person who can really give it to you now. You are the one. So I want to just say a side note about shadow work. This work is really, really challenging. It can be really hard, and it's so potent. Like if something really big surfaces, like a memory, a grief, a rage, an emotion, please don't try to resolve it all in one sitting. Just know that it might be too big for you to process right now. Okay. I want you to regulate your nervous system first. Okay, so move, ground, breathe, walk outside, call a friend, journal some more about it. Um, some integrations really can take months and a long time. So do what you need to reach out to your therapist. Yeah, I know it sometimes can feel really big, and I just want to offer you the support and the encouragement to do the work because even though it might feel really hard and uncomfortable, this is the work that is truly life-changing. And so I want to just offer you this. Your younger self has been waiting for you a long time, okay? Maybe decades or longer. They can wait a little longer while you tend to yourself with care. So show yourself kindness, show yourself compassion, self-care, okay, and then you can give back to doing the work. All right, everyone, I want to leave you with a few things, okay? I want to just remind you all why this matters so much. Um, because you really can't build a secure attachment on top of a disowned self. So the parts of you that you might have exiled are not the problem, they are the path, and just like every piece of you that you've pushed down below the surface, you've pushed away, you've repressed, this part of you still has energy. And that energy is either going to be expressed consciously by you or is going to leak out in some way. Um, it could look at uh it could show up like as self-sabotage, projection, resentment, or just chronic underliving in your relationships. And let me just be honest and real with you, even though you think that you're doing a good job of hiding it, uh uh. Other people can feel this, they can feel it from you. So just know that it's gonna come out at some point. So let's mute ourselves, okay? Shadow work isn't really about becoming someone new. This is the work that we do, it's coming home to who you already are, and for adoptee specifically, just hear me on this. I want to I want you to know that you were never the problem. The parts of you that may have been too loud or felt too sad, too angry, too needy, too bright, um, too joyful, they weren't the reason why someone left. Okay, they are the pieces of you that made you you, okay. And this healing work isn't about making yourself smaller or more acceptable, it's really about reclaiming every single part that you were taught to hide. Lastly, I want to offer you an affirmation that you can take with you this week. The parts of me I have exiled are the parts that she needs most. I am willing to come home to all of myself. So say it out loud if you can. Say it tomorrow morning when you wake up, say it every time you catch yourself performing or shrinking or overanalyzing things in your head instead of feeling. Okay, so if this episode hit something in you, if it landed, I really want you to do two things. First of all, don't sit with this alone, okay? Reach out, share it with a friend, another adoptee. Um, write into me and and share it with me. I would love, love, love to hear from you how it landed and um something that you are doing as far as your shadow work. And secondly, what I want you to do is submit your question just like April did. Um, use the Google Form link that is linked in the show notes, and I'd really, really, really love to hear what you're navigating through, and so that we can share it on this platform so that not only can you start learning the tools that can help you become more securely attached, you can help other listeners who have the same questions, who are navigating the same things. Okay, I'd really love to hear from you. And lastly, I want to thank April. April, thank you so much for your courage and your honesty. I really thank you, every single one of you, for being here today, for being the empathetic empathetic witness and take good care of yourself this week and really want you to tend to yourself with kindness and compassion. Just know that you're always loved, you're safe, and you matter. Before we close out today's episode, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you. Thank you for showing up for yourself today and for having the courage to do this work. Remember, healing isn't just a concept, it's a practice of reclamation. And to make sure that you never miss a step on this journey, please hit subscribe to the Dear Care Podcast. This ensures that you'll be the first to know the moment a new episode drops. It's also a sign of a commitment to yourself and for committing to doing the work on your journey. I would also be so grateful if you could just take 60 seconds to read and review the show. In the world of podcasting, your review acts like a lighthouse. It helps us reach more adoptees who are looking for this space to heal their attachments and find their way home to themselves and bring more joy and peace into their lives as well. Remember, this is a conversation, so if you have a question about your relationships, about your core wounds, about your manifestation journey, please submit it via the link in the show notes. By asking your question, you aren't just helping yourself. You are empowering every other listener who is likely struggling with the exact same thing. I'm so honored to be on this path with you. I cannot wait to do more of this healing work together. This is the Dear Claire Podcast, and I'll see you next time. Much love.