73 [Healing Series] The Resilient Brain Project
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/73
Haley Radke: This show is listener supported.
You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm your host, Haley Radke, and this is a special episode in our Healing Series, where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves, so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee.
Today we are talking about a new free online resource that is going to wow you. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Dr. Julie Lopez. Julie is a trauma-informed practitioner whose primary clinical specialty is working with trauma and PTSD. Welcome to the show, Julie.
Julie Lopez: Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Haley Radke: I'm so excited to finally connect with you. I first heard about you because I saw a poster on Facebook that you and Kathy were doing a really special event for adoptees, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness. Here is another expert who is adopted and who knows all about trauma and is working on healing.’ And then when I went a little further, I saw this amazing thing that you're building, the Resilient Brain Project, and I messaged you right away. I was like, “I have to hear about this.” So that's what I invited you on the show to talk about today. But because it's your first time, I would love it if you would share a little bit of your story with us.
Julie Lopez: Sure, I will definitely share a little bit of my story, but I just wanted to note, because I know you were looking a little deeper, did you happen to notice that Adoptees On is referred to in the Resilient Brain Project?
Haley Radke: I did and I was so happy.
Julie Lopez: Yeah. And I'll get more into that, but I thought that was great that you reached out. Thank you. So I'll give you the backstory. Before the relinquishment, my first mother was 15 years old when she was dating a cool older guy from a different school. They had a little summer romance and she experienced statutory rape.
She never talked to him again, and then found out a couple months later that she was pregnant with me. So she dropped out of school. She was one of the “mothers who went away” and told family and friends that she was going to study on the West Coast of the US. She lived on the East Coast, but she was about 20 minutes away at a home for unwed mothers, had me, and I stayed in an orphanage type of setting for about two months, and then was adopted by my family in Washington, DC.
I have been in reunion for 24 years with my first mother and I'm mostly in reunion with my first father's family, but not him so much, although I've met him. At the time I met him, he didn't know who I was, and that's a much more complicated story. So that's a little bit more recent. And I would say I've just been on a journey for more than half my life. At the time when I first even thought it was something that I needed to look into, I wasn't really awake yet. And I was actually working as an engineer. I have my first degree in systems engineering and sometime in that journey I went back to school, got my master's, and then my PhD focused on clinical social work. And in that whole time period of therapy and personal discovery, I came to just understand how profound my own personal experience had been on my sense of self and my place in the world. So that might not be the version of my adoption story you wanted to hear, but I think it's relevant to my personal passion for working in the healing field and the types of things that I commit my time to and what I've been studying for the last couple-decades-plus.
Haley Radke: Absolutely. That's exactly what I was hoping to hear as your story, and it's so interesting to me what drives adoptees to go into the healing fields like this. And you mentioned this word “awake”. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I hear everyone saying “coming out of the fog”, but I think maybe that's what you're referring to there.
Julie Lopez: Absolutely. When people talk about “the great sleep” or “coming out of the fog”, they're talking specifically about the adoptee’s journey, and I was referring to it on a bigger scale because a big part of how I coped with what I now know was my own relinquishment trauma, was through performing. I got straight A's. I was the captain of the swim team. I did everything perfectly, and it was incredibly stressful and very unhealthy. And it was all based on the fear of being relinquished again, which was not a conscious thought in my mind. It was a little conscious, but not very, and it definitely was not as clear as what I'm saying right now. And through that posture that I was carrying in my life, I went to engineering school, and because I was competitive, I graduated and I got a fantastic quote-unquote “fantastic job” out of school, but it was not my path and it was not my passion. It was teachers and parents that pushed me in that direction, and I was very willing to comply out of that compulsion to perform.
So when I say awake, it's awake on every level. ‘Who am I? What's important to me? How do I feel?’ And that's really important, I think, to negotiating life and to negotiating relationships. And I think it's bigger than coming out of the fog of the dominant narrative around adoption in our country and all of those messages. So that's what I meant when I meant coming more awake. And it's a journey and it's a multifaceted journey. I think that is bigger than just being the identity of being an adoptee and the experience of growing up adopted.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. There's a lot there. We know all about that. We do. We really do.
But I really want to devote our time to the Resilient Brain Project. Can you tell us how did you come up with this idea? I really want to give listeners this resource. I really want to share this with them because it's free. It's amazing. Okay, I'm gonna let you talk about it.
Julie Lopez: Okay, so I do have a center here in Washington, DC called the Viva Center, and I have an amazing group of people who are part of our operations team who make things run. We have a vision, we have a mission, and in one of our annual retreats –which was not last year, but the year before– we were talking about ‘How can we really live our vision?’, which is to create a world that is ready to heal. And we looked at the different aspects of what it means to be ready to heal. And so a part of it is people that are fully empowered to understand about how our human systems work, and that healing is possible; about reducing barriers to access around some of this information and hope and de-stigmatizing mental health.
So it was out of discussions with these key players that are part of my center that we envisioned capitalizing on the accessibility of the internet and creating basically a pretty extensive and action-oriented resource library that's free as long as people have the website address, which I'm happy to share.
Yes, it's www.resilientbrainproject.com and that's where it came from. And the person that we're really hoping to reach is the one who has tried everything that they think is available to them and that they're feeling broken or feeling hopeless or feeling like there's no way to change what's going on in their body or the lens through which they're seeing their life, and that person gets access to something that begins to empower them to recognizing that there's a whole big world out there around opportunities to heal.
Haley Radke: One of the things that I joke about often on the show is just how expensive therapy can be and it's this ongoing joke and yet it's really not funny because it can be really a barrier for people to enter into the healing space if they think, ‘I just can't even afford that. It's just not– I don't have coverage–’ whatever it is. This is like a stepping stone towards that.
Julie Lopez: Exactly. And our hope is that also some of the resources that people are directed to or some of the action tasks that they might see would help them to be able to mitigate some of the symptoms that they're feeling in the moment.
There are definitely some very proactive resources around dealing with stress or anxiety that are here and now. Resources that you can literally look at, go through a checklist and see does this impact the way my nervous system, you might not think of it that way– ‘What's going on? Can I exhale? Can I shift down so that my body is more relaxed?’ Our bodies are complicated, so every person does not experience change in the same ways. Someone who might be very oriented towards, trauma-sensitive yoga, someone else may feel that another type of approach could be better for them. So I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all when you think about the journey of healing, something that's stored in the body.
Haley Radke: So you just mentioned one of those sections is like action. So you've got five different categories throughout your whole site, which has multiple categories for people who are looking for help. And this isn't necessarily all adoptee-specific that we're talking about today.
And yet you do have. That as a I saw it in multiple places. Yes. Things that adoptees could access that are adoptee specific? Yes. Or other people that are a part of the constellation. Going back to that, those five categories: “Actions For Now”, “For Allies”, “You're Not Alone”, “Master the Subject”, and “Advocate.” Can you talk about those five and why you felt those were so important to include?
Julie Lopez: This was such a complicated process because we wanted the end product to be simple. So every single section –and there are 12 different areas of mental health that we look at– has those five subcategories that you just mentioned. And the reason we picked those is because we were looking at the whole person in community and looking at what are the elements that would help get someone that much closer to feeling hopeful around their own experience. So actions for now is here at now. Tips, connections, apps, active, things that people can do to shift their felt state, and they've already been pre-created, so it's just a matter of following steps or downloading an app. They're all accessible. And the thought was, if someone feels a change or notices, ‘Wow, I didn't realize my body worked that way,’ or ‘I didn't know this was something that I could do’, it might inspire them more to think, ‘Wow, there might be a lot of other things that could help me shift and change’.
And there are people out there that know this stuff because they created it. So it's a bigger sense of hope for allies. Unfortunately, all too often a helpful family member or friend or partner can say and do things, or even out of their own fear insist on something and not understand the bigger picture. A great case example, because I do a lot of trauma work, is often when people self injure, cut their arms, do something, it's not at all about suicide yet. People get hospitalized, totally misdiagnosed with very pathologizing diagnoses that have nothing to do with the very normal and correlated act of self-injury, which comes in many different forms. Suicide's another very good example when someone's suicidal, oftentimes, or an eating disorder. Actually, I could go on and on. There are so many times where a loved one means well and wants to help and says 100% the wrong thing. And since we're on Adoptees On, I'll say, when someone says something like, “But your life was so perfect, why would you feel bad?” They don't want you to feel bad, and they care about you and love you, but when they do that, they're totally negating and not validating. A very normal experience. So the For Allies section was really about trying to help prevent those type of ruptures by giving a bigger context and resources for the allies that truly have good intentions but are missing the boat and that they can get support.
Because it's hard to be in that position where you don't have direct power.
You're Not Alone. Also, very important around normalizing an experience when people actually feel like, ‘wow, I'm not the only one,’ or ‘so-and-so's talking about something and it's my story, but I didn't tell them the story, so maybe my experience of it doesn't mean I'm broken or crazy or really out there’. And we find that all the time in our adoptee communities where we hear someone else's story and they feel really alone, like no one's gonna get it. And then someone– I'm a member of a number of closed Facebook groups that are just for adoptees, and there are so many times where someone says exactly the right thing, and I feel that it's because there's a shared experience and that alone is so incredibly powerful.
Master the Subject. All about science, all about how our bodies work, all about statistics, all about information, and all about being empowered to advocate for yourself, which leads to the fifth one, which is about advocacy.
Because on the journey to healing anything, oftentimes when people get to the other side or they really feel more at peace, they want to advocate, they want to bring others along because they see themselves and the struggle they had and they feel compelled as the final step in really integrating experience to improve the lives of others. So these are bigger organizations that are usually poised to do that or to facilitate that and allow people a vehicle to get involved. So those are the five areas, and it's all free and it's all there.
Haley Radke: Okay, so you said 12 areas of mental health. So you've got all of these different ones. And can you, oh look, you have a list ready to go.
It's just our little postcard so you can, do you wanna just give us a couple of those and then talk to adoptees specifically? Yes. What are the things that we can be going there and looking and finding for resources for ourselves in any of those five categories that you were talking about?
Julie Lopez: So specifically for adoptees, I'm going to start there. You would look in the section under “Trauma and PTSD”. And it's listed as relinquishment trauma. And there's a subsection under each of those five categories. So you'll see very specific resources there.
And this is just a little bit about my journey as a clinician and as I was an adjunct professor for 10 years in a master's program for social work, and I always integrated my own knowledge and understanding and identity as an adoptee and as a trauma practitioner. So because the course I taught was a fall to spring sequence, I just wrapped it in because I think that's a part of normalizing and experience. And so I love that personally about I. This particular resource is that it's just wrapped in as one of many different types of things that people can experience instead of it being a big taboo subject or very threatening to the popular narrative.
And so that's where you would find the resources that are adoptee-centric and adoptee-specific. I'm going to be honest with you, because we're people and we have these complex lives, every section could be a benefit to an adoptee. But that's where you're going to find the language that really speaks to the adoptee experience, and I think importantly validates the concept of relinquishment trauma and some of what it means to grow up adopted, which are two separate things that people can, depending on the way that it metabolizes in their day-to-day life, experience a lot of symptoms around.
Haley Radke: Definitely. What are some of the other 12 areas?
Julie Lopez: Stress; Relationships and Sexuality; Confidence; Grief and Loss; Life Changes; Depression; Anxiety; Addictions; the Trauma and PTSD section, which I already mentioned; and then Identity and Discrimination.
Haley Radke: Yeah, so I think we check a few of those
Julie Lopez: Yeah. And especially now it's very accepted and normalized that eating healthy and exercising is good for your system. Our system also has emotional and psychological mapping and the way that our bodies work and our minds work, and how we relate to ourselves and others. Is what we're going after when we're talking about being mentally healthy.
So like I said, a big part of the Resilient Brain Project is giving it a title that has some biological connections to it, because we really do know how to rewire our brains in different types of ways and how to improve brain function, not just through psychotropic medication, but through other brain-based interventions.
And kind-of saying, “Hey, this is a part of our body and this is a part of our human system and it's resilient and we can make changes, and this is how we integrate experiences that can be traumatic, disempowering, that impact our sense of selves.” Our identity was really important to the mission of putting together this resource.
Haley Radke: And what does being resilient mean to you?
Julie Lopez: Resilience to me is about having the tools and the ability to get through something that's difficult. Getting through a difficult time, getting through a difficult experience, and being able to find your way to not just survive it, but pull the pieces back together to be able to thrive. Not as if something never happened, but in spite of, and because of finding ways to really thrive in your current day life.
Haley Radke: I love that. I love that. And so many of us just feel like we're always just treading water and trying to get by, and so this whole idea that we can heal our brains and heal our systems, taking these small steps towards that, I just get this big sense of freedom when I think about that.
Julie Lopez: That's awesome. I love it. And I will say, because you said something and you said it was part of what compelled you to reach out about the Resilient Brain Project. It is free and it's completely accessible, but I will say some of the more advanced therapeutic approaches that we have now are expensive.
They're expensive to be trained in. Some of the equipment is very expensive and it's an investment. One of the pieces of equipment we have here, which is a neurofeedback system, was over $20,000 for us to purchase, and then each person who got trained, which is beyond a master's or PhD, spent another couple thousand dollars and it's best practice to do ongoing supervision.
So it's all expensive. I worked at the DC RIP Crisis Center back in the nineties, and it’s a nonprofit. All the services are free. We got grants and foundation money to cover what we were doing, and that was actually how I got my first level of EMDR training, because there was a humanitarian assistance program that was part of the EMDR International Association that sponsored the training because they wanted to make it more accessible to the frontline where people had experienced trauma.
And these tools can make profound shifts and they're shorter. I just wanted to say that because I know money can feel like a big barrier, but most people would get heart surgery if they knew they needed it or they would get pretty radical about losing weight or about exercising if they had a heart attack and they're recovering, when it's really a serious thing.
And I unfortunately have seen people who've their lives cuz they're in a lot of pain or they're having really extensive symptoms that put them in the hospital. And I would just like to add one other thing is that some of these very effective treatments can be short. They're not long. They're not, like, a five-year investment in insight-oriented type of therapy, relationally based. They can be shorter. I've had clients for two months, three months, depending on the presentation, so I don't want to oversimplify it but it's been pretty radical, the changes that can be made in a shorter amount of time.
Haley Radke: That's fantastic. It's there's different levels for all of these.
I'm just like this huge range, right? You can go on the website. If you're just feeling really stressed out, you can find an action right now that's going to take you back to a more mindful state. Exactly. And then we can also think, ‘Okay, I really just wanna really address this head on and I'm going to go and get neurofeedback or EMDR, brain spotting, something like that and like really address the problem.
This is just a huge range. And I think you mentioned earlier, we just want to have accessibility and also normalize that mental health care is just one other facet of being a human.
Julie Lopez: Totally. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And one of the things that was fun was when we were first developing and selecting some of the materials for the Resilient Brain Project is I would just try it out with my family and close friends, I'd say, “What do you think of this resource?” Or I would say, “Hey, if you're stressed out, can you try this out?” And so we got real live feedback and it was great because part of what we're also trying to do is share information so that people might be able to use what we have there. Which is more cookie cutter than a custom tailored individual kind of therapy treatment, but it might do the trick and it might be enough, and then it goes in the toolbox and it can be used. We were really trying to add in the types of things that we also share in the more expensive individual therapy sessions where someone could just apply it to themselves. I will say this about adoptees and about relinquishment trauma is, it's much of it, especially if someone was relinquished as a baby or if some of the pieces around being with different primary care providers, maybe a number of them, foster care.
And then is that the mapping in our brains around how the world works is not stored in our explicit memory system, it's in our implicit memory. So the sensations and the feelings and the behaviors are coming out of a space that we don't have any conscious memory of. And so although the cookie cutter approach, which is what the Resilient Brain Project is, it's like a plug and chug. There's no one looking at you and saying, “Hey, this is gonna be helpful for you.” You're saying, ‘Oh, I need this and let me pull this out.’ If you have a workout tape and you put again, and it's just one size fits all, is that one of the challenges of having trauma that's stored as implicit memory is that while we might see the symptoms, it's very hard to see what the mapping is without professional help.
So I think of this as like a great tool that can be used and hopefully avoid a bunch of expensive therapy experience. But if you really want to get into the custom tailored piece, and you think that some of what you're storing is from your implicit memory, then you're going to need or probably be inspired to do a little more custom tailored work for a little time. But our goal is to try to cut down the amount that you have to do that.
Haley Radke: Thank you, Julie. That was a really great overview of your site and a lot of little insights here and there in our conversation. How can we connect with you online and how can we find the Resilient Brain Project? Do you want to give us that website address again?
Julie Lopez: Yes. So the Resilient Brain Project is www.resilientbrainproject.com. If you want to see some of the work that we're doing in DC, the center’s address is www.vivapartnership.com.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much.
You can find show notes for this episode and every episode of the Adoptees On podcast on our website, Adopteeson.com. In there you can also find links to our social media profiles. We're on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can find a spot to subscribe to the monthly newsletter and also there is a spot there where you can support the show. I want to say a big thank you to all of the people who have generously partnered with me on a monthly basis so that I can keep providing content like this for you for free as well. So thank you so much to my generous Patreon supporters. I couldn't do this without you. Thank you for listening, let's talk again next Friday.
