"What's Wrong With Me?" - Why Adoptees Ask This and What to Do Instead

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

Link Schedule a Call with Me [https://calendar.app.google/CHajVJ8EkdqiPSHj9] The Refuge: A Community Membership [https://www.cominghometoself.co/the-refuge] In This Episode Have you ever worked incredibly hard to be loved, and still felt completely unknown? That is not a character flaw. That is what happens when the part of you that most needs to be seen learned early on that it wasn't safe to come out. In this episode, Julie Brumley explores the fourth condition of the 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging: Connection. She names the paradox so many adoptees live inside - longing deeply for connection while being terrified of it - and offers the reframe that changes everything: connection starts internally. Before you can truly be met by someone else, you have to be present to yourself first. Julie shares a deeply personal story about losing herself inside her marriage, guides listeners through a powerful mirror-based co-regulation practice, and closes with the truth that belonging doesn't require you to be fully healed. It just requires you to bring a little more of yourself into the room. Chapters [00:00] Welcome back + recap of Capacity  [02:28] The adoptee paradox - longing for connection and being terrified of it at the same time  [04:23] Julie's personal story - the moment she realized she didn't know her own favorite color  [05:30] Shape-shifting for love and what it costs us  [06:00] The reframe: connection starts internally  [08:03] More stories, more connection, more healing  [09:00] Why real connection heals what insight alone cannot reach  [09:45] Somatic practice: co-regulation with the mirror  [15:43] What the mirror practice is actually building  [16:10] Closing thought - you don't have to be fully healed to be in connection  [17:33] Next week preview: Consistency Key Takeaways * Adoptees often live inside a painful paradox: longing for connection more than almost anything, while being terrified of it at exactly the same time. Both things are true. Both make complete sense. * Shape-shifting - reading the room, adjusting your personality, being low-maintenance and easy - was an intelligent nervous system response to early attachment disruption. It kept you connected. It also kept you unknown. * Being unknown, even in a room full of people who love you, is its own kind of loneliness. * Connection starts internally. Before you can truly be met by someone else, there has to be a you present to be received. Internal connection is the foundation. * More stories means more connection. More connection means more healing. Real, safe connection - where you don't have to perform or minimize or explain yourself into palatability - begins to heal things that insight alone cannot reach. * You don't have to be fully healed to be in connection. You just have to be willing to bring a little more of yourself into the room. That is enough. That is everything. Somatic Practice From This Episode The mirror co-regulation practice Julie guides in this episode can be returned to any time you need to come back to yourself. 1. Find a mirror and stand near it without facing it yet. Let your feet find the floor, notice your breath, let your body settle. 2. Soften your gaze. Take one slow breath in through the nose and a slightly longer breath out through the mouth. 3. Let one hand rest wherever feels right - your lap, your heart, your legs. 4. Say - out loud or internally - you are not too much. Your longing is not too much. Your grief is not too much. Your need for connection is not too much. 5. When you're ready, turn gently toward the mirror. Make soft eye contact, or look at the base of your neck or the tops of your shoulders if that feels more comfortable. 6. Practice mirrored breathing with yourself - noticing the rise and fall of your shoulders. Notice any urge to look away, shrink, or disappear. Just notice. 7. Repeat the words out loud if it feels comfortable. Breathe. Notice the shift, even if it's small. The 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging Series This episode is part of a five-episode series walking through the five conditions that allow self-belonging to emerge: Curiosity → Clarity → Capacity → Connection → Consistency Not goals to achieve. Conditions to experience. Practices of returning to yourself. * Episode 1: Curiosity — Why Adoptees Disconnect From Themselves (And How Curiosity Helps) * Episode 2: Clarity — "What's Wrong With Me?" Why Adoptees Ask This and What To Do Instead * Episode 3: Capacity — Why Adoptees Abandon Themselves (And How to Finally Stay) * Episode 4: Connection — Why Adoptees Feel Alone Even When They're Loved ← you are here * Episode 5: Consistency — Next Week Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]

Why Adoptees Abandon Themselves (And How to Finally Stay)

Links Schedule a call with me [https://calendar.app.google/CHajVJ8EkdqiPSHj9] In this episode: What if capacity isn't about handling more - it's about leaving yourself less? In this episode, Julie Brumley dives into the third condition that cultivates self-belonging: Capacity. This is the heart of the series, and the condition that surprises people most. Capacity isn't becoming someone who never gets overwhelmed. It's the ability to stay connected to yourself while emotion exists - to feel the wave without losing the thread back to yourself in the middle of it. Julie introduces two foundational somatic concepts - titration and pendulation - and guides listeners through a body-based practice they can use anywhere. She also shares something personal: what it felt like to stay with grief after losing her mother-in-law, and what she witnessed in the room at the retreat when participants practiced this work in real time. This episode will change how you understand healing. Chapters [00:00] Welcome back + recap of Clarity  [02:00] What Capacity is NOT, and why so many of us learned a version of strength that was actually self-abandonment  [04:50] What Capacity actually is - staying connected to yourself while emotion exists [06:30] The difference between being the emotion and having the emotion  [07:30] Titration - why the nervous system heals one drop at a time  [09:30] Pendulation - the natural rhythm between activation and settling  [11:59] Somatic practice: pendulation guided experience  [16:27] The most important line in this series  [18:00] Julie's personal story - sitting shiva with grief  [19:30] What this looked like in the retreat room  [20:08] Closing thought - why Capacity asks the bravest thing of us  [21:45] Next week preview: Connection Key Takeaways * Capacity is not handling it. It's the ability to stay connected to yourself while emotion exists - not after the wave passes, not before it arrives, but while it is happening. * The adaptations you developed - suppression, performance, disconnecting from your inner experience - were intelligent responses to real conditions. They protected you. And they may also be the walls now keeping you from yourself. * Titration means going one small drop at a time. The nervous system cannot heal everything at once, but it can heal a tremendous amount when we honor its actual pace. * Pendulation is the rhythm between the activated place and the supported place. Transformation doesn't happen in the overwhelm. It happens in the moving between. * The goal is not to never feel pain. The goal is to not leave yourself inside it. * Capacity grows incrementally - through small, repeated moments of choosing to stay with yourself instead of leaving. Every moment you stay, even a little, matters. Somatic Practice From This Episode The pendulation practice Julie guides in this episode can be used any time you feel activated or overwhelmed. 1. Find where your body feels activated - tension, heaviness, tightness, contraction. 2. Find somewhere in your body that feels more neutral or supported - your hands, your feet on the floor, the weight of your back against a chair. Even your earlobes if that's what's available. 3. Gently let your attention move between those two places. Activated. Supported. Activated. Supported. 4. This is your nervous system learning it can visit the hard place and still find its way back. The 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging Series This episode is part of a five-episode series walking through the five conditions that allow self-belonging to emerge: Curiosity → Clarity → Capacity → Connection → Consistency Not goals to achieve. Conditions to experience. Practices of returning to yourself. * Episode 1: Curiosity — Learning to Notice Without Judgment * Episode 2: Clarity — Awareness Is Enough * Episode 3: Capacity — Learning to Stay With Yourself ← you are here * Episode 4: Connection — Next Thursday * Episode 5: Consistency — Coming soon Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]

"What's Wrong With Me?" - Why Adoptees Ask This and What to Do Instead

Links Last week's episode on Condition 1 - Curiosity [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-adoptees-disconnect-from-themselves-and-how/id1849822021?i=1000770000410] Connect with Julie [https://calendar.app.google/zmYLYmpFcdyQm6hf7] Clarity isn't certainty. It's awareness. In this episode, Julie explores the second condition for self-belonging: the gentle, non-judgmental ability to notice what's happening in you - without needing to have it all figured out first. Building on last week's episode about curiosity, Julie unpacks why so many adopted people (and others with early trauma) get stuck waiting for complete understanding before they allow themselves to heal, and why that's not how healing actually works. In this episode, Julie covers: * Why clarity is awareness, not resolution - and why that distinction matters * How the body holds clarity before the mind can catch up * The difference between intellectualizing your experience and being with your experience * The patterns that develop when love doesn't feel consistently safe: pulling back from closeness, working to justify your presence, hiding emotions that weren't received well * The most important shift clarity makes possible: moving from what's wrong with me to what is happening in me Somatic Practice - The Clarity Practice: Julie guides listeners through a body-based exercise to gently meet what they've been carrying. The practice includes grounding, orienting to your space, and three reflective prompts: * A part of me learned... * A part of me still believes... * What I actually needed was... Keywords adoption, self-awareness, clarity, somatic practice, trauma, emotional patterns, healing, nervous system, curiosity, self-belonging Chapters: 00:00 - Welcome & The Distinction That Changes Everything Clarity is not certainty - it's awareness.  02:28 - What Clarity Actually Is Clarity isn't having it all figured out. 04:50 - The Body Knows Before the Mind Does  07:12 - Seeing the Patterns Without Judgment Clarity doesn't diagnose or condemn. 09:27 - The Clarity Practice A guided somatic exercise to gently meet what you've been carrying. 15:38 - Whatever Came Up, That's Enough Reflection on what the practice revealed 16:03 - Why This Work Matters for Adopted People  18:04 - Preview of Next Week: Capacity Next week: The third condition — Capacity. Learning how to stay with yourself while emotion is happening, without leaving yourself inside of it. If something came up for you in this episode, DM Julie on socials or schedule a conversation using the link in the show notes. If this podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review or a few written words helps this work reach more adopted people and the families who love them. Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]

Why Adoptees Disconnect from Themselves (And How Curiosity Helps)

Links & Resources Schedule a Connection Call with Me [https://calendar.app.google/CHajVJ8EkdqiPSHj9] Understanding Your Nervous System: A Guide for Adoptees and Those Who Love Them [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/understanding-your-nervous-system-a-guide-for/id1849822021?i=1000758846244] Summary In this first episode of a brand-new series inspired by Julie Brumley’s workshop The Art of Cultivating Belonging: Returning to the Body After the Story, Julie explores the first condition that helps self-belonging begin to emerge: Curiosity. As adoptees - and honestly, as people shaped by trauma - many of us learned to immediately judge, suppress, explain, minimize, or abandon what we feel. But curiosity interrupts judgment. It creates space to notice what is happening inside us without immediately trying to fix it. In this episode, Julie shares: * how adoptees become skilled at reading everyone else while disconnecting from themselves * why hypervigilance, people-pleasing, performance, and emotional suppression are survival adaptations * the difference between asking “What’s wrong with me?” and “What happened in me?” * why the body often tells the truth before the mind can explain it * and how healing begins not through force… but through noticing Julie also guides listeners through a gentle somatic noticing practice designed to help reconnect with sensation, safety, and self-awareness in a nervous-system sustainable way. Because belonging is not something we think our way into. It’s something the body slowly learns it can build internally. Keywords adoption, adoptee healing, curiosity, belonging, nervous system, somatic healing, trauma, hypervigilance, emotional suppression, self-awareness, embodiment, identity, self-belonging Key Topics * The five conditions that cultivate self-belonging * Curiosity as the first condition of healing * Hypervigilance, shape-shifting, and adaptation in adoptees * Why love may not have felt safe in early life * The body’s role in healing and self-awareness * Learning to notice without fixing or judging * Reconnecting to sensation after disconnection * Somatic grounding and orientation practices * Healing through awareness rather than force Key Takeaways * Curiosity interrupts judgment * Survival often teaches adoptees to disconnect from themselves * The body often communicates before the mind understands * Healing begins with noticing, not fixing * You don’t need to force transformation * Small moments of staying with yourself matter * Belonging grows through repeated moments of returning to self Chapters 00:00 – Beginning a new series on belonging 01:20 – The five conditions of self-belonging 02:10 – Why curiosity matters in healing 03:00 – Hypervigilance, performance, and adaptation 05:00 – “What do I need to be to be accepted?” 06:15 – From “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened in me?” 07:10 – Where the body holds truth 08:00 – Guided somatic noticing practice 12:00 – Grounding through sensation and orientation 14:30 – Letting the body know you’re listening 15:15 – Why healing begins with noticing 16:20 – Staying present with yourself 17:15 – Closing reflections + next week’s episode on clarity Closing Reflection Belonging doesn’t begin when we finally “fix” ourselves. It begins the moment we become willing to stay curious about what we carry… and gently turn back toward ourselves instead of away. Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]

Changing the Meaning Part 2: The Laws Behind the Associations We Carry

Resources Mentioned * Revelation LIVE [https://www.cominghometoself.co/offers/ABHeozLi/checkout] * Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing Retreat [https://www.lizdebetta.com/un-m-othered-adoptee-healing-retreat] * Schedule a call with Julie [https://calendar.app.google/CHajVJ8EkdqiPSHj9] Summary A few weeks ago, Julie Brumley released an episode about changing the meaning we attach to experiences and how those meanings shape the stories, emotions, and patterns we repeat. But in this episode, she goes deeper. Because meanings don’t just shape thoughts. They shape the emotional and nervous system baseline we live from. Through an adoptee lens, Julie explores three concepts she first learned from mentor Kelly Brock: * The Law of Vibration * The Law of Attraction * The Law of Assumption Not from a “just think positive” perspective… and not from a place of blame. This conversation is about understanding how the body learns associations long before we have words, and how those practiced associations quietly shape what feels safe, familiar, expected, and possible. Julie explains why adoptees often struggle with: * hypervigilance * fear of rejection * emotional guarding * hyper-independence * difficulty receiving love or rest …even when they consciously desire connection, peace, and belonging. She also shares a gentle somatic exercise to help listeners begin loosening old meanings and creating space for new experiences in the nervous system. Because healing isn’t just cognitive. It’s nervous system work. And changing the meaning changes the signal your body is broadcasting. Keywords adoption, adoptee healing, nervous system, trauma, somatic healing, hypervigilance, attachment, identity, emotional patterns, belonging, trauma responses, embodiment Key Topics * Why meanings shape nervous system patterns * The Law of Vibration through an adoptee lens * Practiced emotional states vs. conscious desires * Why adoptees often anticipate abandonment or rejection * Familiar pain vs. unfamiliar safety * The Law of Attraction as emotional familiarity * How assumptions become identity over time * Hypervigilance, over-functioning, and emotional guarding * Releasing old meanings gently through somatic awareness * Building new nervous system experiences through safety and openness Key Takeaways * Your nervous system learned these meanings for a reason * Familiar does not always mean healthy * The body often broadcasts practiced associations, not conscious desires * Healing is not just insight - it’s repeated safe experiences * Survival meanings are not always ultimate truth * Awareness allows you to interrupt old cycles * “That makes sense” is often more healing than “How do I fix this?” * Changing the meaning changes what becomes possible Chapters 00:00 – Why meanings matter so much 02:21 – The Law of Vibration and nervous system signals 06:53 – Why adoptees struggle with stillness, visibility, and safety 09:20 – The Law of Attraction and emotional familiarity 11:44 – The Law of Assumption and identity formation 14:05 – Guided somatic integration practice 15:34 – Julie’s personal example around money and safety 18:29 – Why awareness changes the nervous system 20:36 – Revelation LIVE, retreat updates, and closing reflections Closing Reflection Your body adapted around what it experienced. Not because something is wrong with you… but because your nervous system learned what it believed it had to do to survive. And maybe healing begins the moment you stop asking: “What’s wrong with me?” …and start asking: “What meaning has my body been carrying?” Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]