81 [Healing Series] Grief Part 1

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/81

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Haley Radke: Before we get started today, I want to let you know that fall is back. My kids are back in school and preschool. So thank you so much for your patience over the summer where we had a bit of a not regular schedule. We're back to every single Friday coming into your feed, and today's episode is so good. I can't wait for you to hear it.

You're 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 grief. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Janet Nordine. Welcome, Janet.

Janet Nordine: Thank you. So great to hear your voice, Haley.

Haley Radke: Janet is a fellow adoptee. She is also a licensed marriage and family therapist who works with foster children who have experienced trauma. I'm so glad to chat with you and I have had the privilege of getting to meet you in person.

Janet Nordine: Yay, in San Francisco.

Haley Radke: Yeah. We got to hang out in San Francisco, which was so fun. And I'm just so curious about how you decided to become a therapist. And so why don't you start out and just share a little bit of your story with us and what led you to becoming a therapist?

Janet Nordine: Sure. Well, my biological parents met at the Golden Nugget here in Las Vegas in 1965, and I was born in November of 1965.

And at the time of my birth, my mom, my birth mother had five boys already in foster care. So she felt that she wasn't going to be able to raise one more child. So she placed me for adoption.

So my story, and I've always known this just because of history and Nevada adoption and I was adopted through Catholic Charities, is when babies were born at the Catholic hospital, the mother never got to see them. So she knew I was a girl, but I went out one door and she went out another door. That's just kind of how they did things.

So I've been searching. I had been searching for my birth family for many, many years. I've testified in front of the Nevada legislature for open records with an organization called Nevada Open, which I'm still involved with.

I’ve been very involved politically, and it wasn't until the horizon of DNA for all of us adoptees that are finding families that way, that I was able to finally connect with them. And a first cousin I messaged and she messaged me one evening on Facebook. And this is all in a span of about 45 minutes. So I get an email, she messages me and she said, here's the phone number. Your birth mother's waiting to talk to you.

So I looked at my husband and I said, what do I do? And he said, well, I think you should call. So I called and we had a conversation and I was able to meet her in September of 2017.

And then just this year in February, 2018, I have a paternal biological sister who also found me through DNA testing. She'd known about me her whole life because she'd been with her dad and my birth mother and seen that she was pregnant and knew that she had another sibling somewhere. So that's kind of a cool part of the story.

So all in all, with all my siblings, there's 15 of us between my paternal and maternal side. So it's quite a big group of people to know where they fit and get to know. So that's kind of it in a nutshell.

Haley Radke: Wow, that's a lot of kids. And so what led you to become a therapist and specializing in working with foster children?

Janet Nordine: Well, I was working in the hotel industry in Las Vegas, and then when 9/11 happened here in the United States, I lost my job. I was an executive manager at a hotel and I decided to go back to school. And when I had originally gone to college, I really wanted to go into social work or something with writing something kind of creative.

And so I decided to go back to school, and I went to school seven years straight and I graduated with my master's in counseling, marriage and family therapy. And a psychiatrist that I work with that owns the company I work for, she approached me. They were starting a new project. The project was to help foster children be on less medication, because historically children in foster care are given astronomical amounts of psychotropic meds.

And she asked me to be part of a pilot program, and I'm still doing that now. It's a full project, almost six years later. So it's been an amazing opportunity to work with foster kids, and I'd always known I'd had brothers in foster care. So it was kind of a pay it forward feeling of my heart because I knew about them.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. That is such an amazing story. Thank you for sharing that. So we are going to talk about grief today. And you are an expert in grief because you're adopted, right, I think?

Janet Nordine: Yes. I think it comes with the certificate, right?

Haley Radke: Oh, that's right. It does. Yeah. It's on the second page.

And so, first, can you just tell us a little bit about what grief is. I mean, we kind of know what it is, but how do you define grief? And when you think about grief, what do you want to talk to us about?

Janet Nordine: I think grief is really any loss we've experienced, and as adoptees, I believe we start grieving the second we're relinquished when we're removed from our mother.

So the second I was taken by someone that wasn't my mother through a door into I don't even know where I went then, that's when the grief started. And it's a biological change in your body with your brain. There's parts of your brain that are affected by grief. And it affects language, it affects reasoning and it affects your ability to eat and to sleep.

So it really affects all areas of your life.

Haley Radke: And so the traditional five stages of grief, probably everybody's has heard of them. And I was looking them up and now there's seven. Did you know what? There's seven stages of grief you could go through because five wasn't quite enough.

Janet Nordine: Five wasn't enough.

Haley Radke: Do you wanna talk about that a little bit?

Janet Nordine: Sure. So Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was the originator of the five stages of grief and they are denial, anger, bargaining, depression or sadness, and then acceptance.

And I don't believe they're linear. I kind of think about grief as a big ball of yarn that has a lot of knots in it and you're pulling the string and sometimes your day is going fine and it's just coming out smooth. And then one day there's a big clump of knots and then you have to untie all that, and that's part of whatever stage happens to come up.

And grief is a lifetime process. I really look at grief as a gift that we can give ourselves because if we are grieving, it means that we really deeply love something and we're going to miss that for quite a long time.

And so people that say, we'll get over it and grief shouldn't last this long, or you should be better by now, they're really not honoring the process of love, I think.

Haley Radke: And so grief can be any kind of loss. So we're experiencing grief for different things all through our life.

Janet Nordine: Right. Yes. The obvious grief is when a loved one passes away. Some things are not as obvious, and that's called disenfranchised grief.

So for me, if I lose a pet, it devastates me. I have a hard time with that. I'm very attached to animals. For someone else that may not even be a big deal, or they may not even think about it. Oh, dog passed away, we'll just get another dog. So it just affects people in different ways.

Haley Radke: Okay. So disenfranchised grief. This is a big one for me. The first time I heard it defined, I was like, oh my goodness. This is huge for adopted people. So can you talk about what that definition is and really what it means for us as adopted people?

Janet Nordine: Right. So disenfranchised grief is a term that was coined by Kenneth Doka, who is a PhD professor in New York State, in the 1980s.

And it came about because of the AIDS epidemic where people were losing loved ones to AIDS, but society wasn't recognizing that because there was some shame and other emotions around the AIDS epidemic at that time. So that is where the term came from. So it really is a term that describes grief that's not acknowledged by society.

And of course, as adoptees, we're supposed to be grateful because we're adopted and we're not supposed to worry about what came first. And so society views adoption as a wonderful blessing that you should be just so happy that you're in a good family.

And yes, maybe we are in a good family, but where did we come from? Can we honor the place that we were before we came to this family? And that's the disenfranchised grief that a lot of society and people don't understand.

Haley Radke: And so we have the normal, if your mother passes away, everybody will come to the funeral and they will bring you your casseroles and they will….

Janet Nordine: Yes, the food chain will happen.

Haley Radke: Yes. That's the acknowledgement and you have time. You could even have a few days off of work. People might call you on her birthday to check in on you. Or the holidays that are coming up, there's acknowledgement. It's acceptable for you to be sad for a certain period of time. Right? I mean, until people are uncomfortable.

And then with disenfranchised grief, you don't get any of that.

Janet Nordine: No, it's really not recognized. And I was thinking about disenfranchised grief and society, and recently we lost two major celebrities. People had a hard time with that, but a lot of people didn't understand.

You've never met these people. Why would you be so concerned about these people you've never met? And that's a form of disenfranchised grief. Suicide is another one. People say, well, that was their choice, and you should be angry. People want to “should” all over you instead of being open to letting you feel how you feel.

Haley Radke: So what do you think is the effect on us if we're experiencing disenfranchised grief, which I believe we are if we're adopted. What's the effect of not having that grief acknowledged?

Janet Nordine: If it's blocked, disenfranchised grief can turn into clinical depression, anxiety. There can be PTSD symptoms. If we don't view it in the grief model that you typically would, like you were talking about a passing of a parent, it really makes the grief that we have pathological. It turns it into a depression or an anxiety instead of acknowledging this is really grief and how can I help you heal and how can I support that?

Haley Radke: So not just society not acknowledging, but even just the people around you, right?

Janet Nordine: Right. Yes. For so many adoptees even their closest relationships, they can't understand or they have a difficult time understanding, or they want you to explain it in a different way how you feel about being adopted and what that loss feels like.

So often in society, the adoption is focused on. What we've gained, not what we've lost. You've gained a family, you've gained an opportunity, but we've lost, I mean, I lost 15 siblings that some of them I'll never know because they passed away before I found them. I lost relationship with cousins that I'm very close to now that I could have grown up with.

I'm not saying I haven't had a great life in my adopted family, but I missed out on a lot of things and I wish I would've had those opportunities.

Haley Radke: Do you have ways for us to get that grief acknowledged? I mean I'm especially thinking of our immediate family or spouse or close friends.

You're a supporter of the show. We have a secret Facebook group and a lot of people have shared at separate occasions about the ways that they are so misunderstood by that close circle to you, right? And how much of that is disenfranchised grief really?

Janet Nordine: And also, in the adoption community I'm in several adoptee Facebook groups because I'm interested in learning what people are feeling. I don't always comment, but I'm there often reading. And the thing that I think that even adoptees don't recognize is that they're grieving.

They're so focused often on anger or depression or loss. The relationship is terrible or this thing has been done wrong to me, but they're not recognizing their deep, deep grief.

And then often I think about people that have searched and they found somebody, their birth family had passed away, their birth mother was gone, or their birth father was gone.

And how are they grieving that? They never met this person, yet they're gone and what do they do with that? You're not going to get a bouquet of flowers at your door because you found a grave. It just doesn't happen. And how can people be supportive of that?

Haley Radke: So it's not just getting other people to be supportive, you have to figure that out, that you're in the grieving process.

Janet Nordine: Yes. You need to recognize it in yourself, because so often you're in that second stage of grief, in the anger. You're angry that you're adopted. You know, the angry adoptee that so many people like to point out, that we're all angry. But really we're grieving and we're in that stage of grief. And that's okay.

Haley Radke: And like you started out saying, the grief is kind of a lifetime thing. So even if you searched and you found a grave ten years ago, or you've never searched because you're not interested, you can have grief.

Janet Nordine: You sure can, yes. And people don't recognize it as grief, and I think especially with the children I work with, I'm very careful to honor where they came from.

Some of these children won't be able to go back to their parents or parents have passed away, and that's their traditional grief, but they've also lost contact because of what's happened with their parents. There's a sense of loss that we can't put a finger on. It's really hard to describe a loss of something you never had.

In my situation with my birth mother, I fantasized about who she would be for 51 years, and then I found her, and I grieved the loss of that fantasy because she wasn't Carol Burnett or who I thought she might be. I had to remind her what year I was born and where I was born, because she'd been told to forget me.

So I had to grieve the fact that she had forgotten who, where I was and where I fit into her life. So once I was able to grieve that and I was able to meet her, that experience was wonderful for me. It was a one-time meeting, but it was seven hours of my life that I waited for. And I grieved that I only got those seven hours.

Haley Radke: So if you're listening to this show and you're thinking, am I just angry? Am I grieving? What's your next step to think about this and explore this? Like how do you realize, actually I'm in the middle of a grieving process, which is not linear.

Janet Nordine: Right. It's a big ball of ugly yarn.

Haley Radke: Yeah. How do you sort of awake to that, I guess?

Janet Nordine: I think you just have to really sit and think about is this grief? If I get under my anger, what's under my anger? Because that anger is a secondary emotion. All kinds of things fuel the anger. Fear can fuel the anger, sadness, all of those things. So what's really under that? What is it that I'm missing?

And for me, in my own process of healing, grief was the missing piece. I had to recognize that I'm really grieving so many things in my adoption. I'm a happy person. I mean, I'm really a positive person, but there's this underlying, always has been a river of melancholy I call it, where I just kind of floated in that sadness and then I recognized I'm really grieving.

That's what that feeling is, and it's not going to take me out. It's not going to take over my life, but I acknowledge it. I'm able to work on it. I went to therapy. I still go to therapy. And I really want to be able to process it in a way that makes sense for me and my body and my brain.

Haley Radke: So as we're talking about this, the thing that's getting stuck in my head, Janet, is that phrase that we all talk about “coming out of the fog.”

This feels kind of linked to me. Is coming out of the fog meaning you're just waking up to grief?

Janet Nordine: Yeah, it really does. But once we grieve and acknowledge the grief, we can move on to something else. I mean, it's still going to be there, but we can still be happy in our lives.

We can still have joy. It doesn't have to overcome us every day of our life.

Haley Radke: Okay. So acknowledging the grief. What does that look like?

Janet Nordine: Well, I really work from a holistic Gestalt perspective in therapy, and that's kind of how my brain works. So when your body and your brain can work together and you can acknowledge I fully accept myself, even though I'm still grieving. I fully accept myself even though I still feel I was cheated out of years with my family.

It's acceptance of self and acknowledging your emotions. It doesn't make you a bad person because you're grieving. It doesn't make you incapable of getting out of bed or incapable of leaving the house. Some days it might, and that's okay too, but acknowledging where it's coming from and not letting it become debilitating is the key and seeking out support and help.

Haley Radke: And it doesn't make you weak to acknowledge that you're grieving.

Janet Nordine: No, absolutely not. In fact, the opposite. It makes you stronger. When you can acknowledge your emotion, I feel like you become a stronger person because you're recognizing who you are.

Haley Radke: That's good. Recognizing who you are. I like that.

Janet Nordine: Yeah. And really, isn't the most counterintuitive thing we do as humans is to, when we're in pain, is to just not let it happen. I'm not gonna have this pain because it's just too much. Our instinct is to resist, but really, when you let the pain happen, it'll help you more than it will hurt you if you can just walk through it.

Haley Radke: Are you saying some of us try to numb pain? Is that what you're saying?

Janet Nordine: Possibly, yes. Possibly yes. Myself included. But the other point of that is pain is inevitable and misery is optional. We can feel the pain, but we don't have to remain miserable in it.

Haley Radke: So if we've acknowledged that, maybe what we're experiencing is grief. And we're ready to look underneath. We're ready to do this thing.

Janet Nordine: Pick up that little rock.

Haley Radke: The tip of the iceberg, right?

Janet Nordine: Right. Yes, absolutely.

Haley Radke: What are the next steps?

Janet Nordine: Well, seeking support. If you have a supportive network of friends that will just sit with you if you need to cry.

Do you have a helping professional, a therapist, a social worker, somebody that you can see? Can you go to a support group? Lots of places have support groups for grief.

Can you find a ritual that works for you? I'm a writer. I'm a blogger, and that's the thing. Most of my life since I was a child, I have written stories and I have just written for myself. And that's something that's very healing.

People can do rituals. My birth mother passed away this past September of this year and my therapist suggested that I do some sort of a ritual because there wasn't a funeral, there wasn't something that you can go to and then pay your respects. So what I ended up doing was just doing a ritual by myself in my yard where I created a space where the memory that I have of her can be. And if I need to, I can go and stand in that space.

One thing I do with my kids is we create a timeline and a history of their life. You can do that for yourself. You can write a timeline of your life, and then you can creatively tell that story in pictures. You can cut out things from magazines to represent your life.

If you're that kind of creative person, using your brain creatively really awakens your limbic system and it'll help you heal as well.

You need to also tell people you need support. You just can't sit around saying, why don't they notice how sad I am? Or what I need. You need to say, hey, I'm feeling kind of lousy today. Could you maybe just give me a little extra attention, or can I talk to you about this?

You need to be honest with people about how you're feeling. They can't read your mind always. For me, pets, as I said before, is a big thing. Getting enough rest, some sleep is good. The other thing is self-compassion, and that's different than self-care.

How do you view yourself, oh, I'm a horrible person because I'm still grieving. I just can't get out of this funk I'm in. Can you give yourself some credit and maybe pat your heart a little bit and say, we're gonna get through this together.

Haley Radke: This is making me feel like we need to kind of loop back.

So we talked about disenfranchised grief. So when we are looking to others for support, maybe finding a support group for grief or going to our loved one and saying, I need some help with this. How do we explain it to them in a way that they can actually hear us and acknowledge that this is a real thing.

Janet Nordine: Well, typically if you're going to reach out to a support person, they already know you're adopted, so you don't have to make that announcement to them. If I was going to say to a loved one or a best friend, I'm really feeling sad today. Can you just sit with me? I would explain the sadness. Explain what's sad.

The reason I feel sad is because I'm really missing my birth mother, I'm really missing the idea of being with her and having that opportunity again. Sometimes we can't even explain what we're missing. You can just say, I'm just missing connection with where I came from. And that's kind of an overarching feeling.

And if somebody really, truly is your support person, they're going to be able to just hear that. But if you feel like they can't hear you, you may have to explain a little bit further and say, this grief, I've just recognized I have this grief. It's not anger. It's not sadness. It's really deep, deep grief. I feel it in my bones. You might have to get really descriptive so people can hear you.

Typically, society, people just want to tell us to shut up and get over it, and that's across the board, not just about adoption. A lot of people don't have the mentality that we can just move on or that we should just move on from whatever type of grief or whatever situation we're having.

But I think it's important for us to tell our story. No matter how many words it takes, tell your story. And I think adoptees are really doing that well, telling their story. And that's part of asking for support.

Haley Radke: So good. Okay. Is there anything that I didn't ask you about? Just kind of this broad concept of grief and disenfranchised grief, any of those things that you think that adoptees specifically need to hear, understand, look into more?

Janet Nordine: I think it's really about realization and acceptance. If we can think about grief in a different way, we can think about it as it's part of the adoption process. It just is. I don't know if there's any way around it. It just is. We are missing the loss of our identity.

And that's truly what it is. And recognizing in ourself that we have disenfranchised grief. Maybe go doing a Google search. Actually, Wikipedia mentions adoptees and adoption as disenfranchised grief, both for the birth mother and for the adoptee.

I'm sure some adopted person had edited it, helping other people understand it. And helping other people understand how we feel. It's up to us to explain how we feel and to find that person that will listen, even if we have to tell it a hundred times.

Haley Radke: Yes. I mean, I think that's such a good reminder for us, really.

People can't read our minds. And speaking up is so important. That's what you and I are doing here and so many other adoptees are starting to do more and more of that publicly, but also just with their friends or their spouses.

Just having these conversations with their partners and looking at these things at a deeper level is helping us heal.

Janet Nordine: I have been doing several trainings this year to enhance my therapy skills. Every conference I've been to that has brought adoption up incorrectly, I've raised my hand and corrected every time. I just can't keep my mouth closed.

I need to speak up and I need other clinicians to understand that adoption is trauma. And I've had some odd looks and some heads turn, and then people have come up privately and talked to me and it's been a really good experience.

So I think the more we speak up, the more the truth will get out.

Haley Radke: And it takes a number of times for people to hear it and actually get it. So there's not gonna be too many times to talk about it.

Janet Nordine: Right. And each time I do it, it heals another place in me, each time. Because I get more and more courage and more and more confidence in my own story and in my ability to share what it's like to be adopted and how I grieve.

And how adoptees grieve.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, speaking of courage, Janet, where can we connect with you online?

Janet Nordine: Well, I have a blog that I've been writing since I entered reunion and it's called experiencecourage.com. That has been my tagline for many years and just speaks to who I am as a person and how I try to live my life with experiencing new things and having courage.

Haley Radke: Well, thank you so much for teaching us about grief today. It was such a pleasure to speak with you.

We have an Adoptees On Book Club starting right away. So if you love reading, if you love discussing books, come on over to the Adoptees On Facebook page. The. Book Club group is linked right there and you can find out our book title. You can join the Facebook group and just like our last book club, it's going to be a pop-up group.

So we're going to only be active for a couple of weeks. Then we'll archive the group and wait until we have our next Book Club. So it's not a long-term commitment. Just a couple weeks. So go over to Adoptees On Facebook page and join us.

If you love Adoptees On and you're getting value from listening to these free episodes, can I ask you to support the show? And there's two ways that are so helpful.

First is just sharing the show. So if you know of another adopted person or someone that loves an adoptee like you, please share the show with them and show them exactly how to listen. Sometimes people don't even know they have a built-in podcast app on their iPhone, or if they're on an Android, they can get kind of confused.

So you can show them how to listen on Spotify or Google Play or however you like to listen. That is a huge help. That's the best way you can support the show.

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That is such a huge investment in other adoptees’ lives. You will be changing lives by partnering with us to share this message. Adopteeson.com/partner. Thank you so much for giving. Thank you so much for listening and sharing the show, and let's talk again next Friday.

78 [Healing Series] Finding a Therapy Group

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/78

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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.

In our last Healing Series episode we learned about what group therapy is, and today we are going to learn how to find a therapy group. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Pam Greenstone. Welcome Pam.

Pam is a licensed professional counselor in private practice in Austin, Texas, and has been leading psychotherapy groups since 2002. And last time you were on the show, Pam, you told us all about group therapy. What it is, some of the differences between being in group therapy versus support groups or self-help groups.

And you really sold it to me. I would love to go, but like, how do you find a therapy group? I had never even heard of it, really, until you approached me.

Pam Greenstone: Wow. Yes. So it's a big task. Yeah. I'm glad you asked. The first resource I wanted to introduce was the American Group Psychotherapy Association.

It's a national and oftentimes international organization and they have a great website. It's www.agpa.org. And they have a list of certified group therapists all over the country. So if you happen to live in a city where one of the members of AGPA live, then you might be able to find one that way by going onto their website, exploring it, because they have a ton of information about what it is to be in a group, what it's like to be in a group and how to find a group therapist.

But that would be maybe step one. And if you live in a big enough city or happen to live in a city where a member lives, you can find it that way.

I wanted to talk about the challenge of finding a group therapist that is also adoption competent. I feel like I have a lot of work to do in educating my own community of group therapists on how to work with adoptees and in a more effective and helpful way.

And so I'm doing that in my local community, the Austin Group Psychotherapy Society, and also through AGPA.

So I think it's going to be important to ask questions of any therapist that you call that might have a group, asking questions about how long have they been running groups. Do they have any existing groups that you can join?

Because it can be wonderful to join a group that's already been going for a while. You'd really benefit from that and all the work that they've already done up to that point. But then also asking questions about their adoption competence and how much experience do they have working with adoptees? What are their beliefs about that? What kind of training do they have that's specific to that? Have they attended any conferences?

I think both are important and it might be, in a way, like finding a needle in a haystack a little bit. I know when I went to Indiana for their conference and spoke about group therapy, ahead of time I looked online at all the different group therapists in Indiana as much as I could on the web, and then I reached out to all of them. It was about 30 emails that I sent out and I heard back from two. And I know it was really surprising.

Haley Radke: No one needs more clients. I don't know.

Pam Greenstone: What I think it was, I asked specifically if they had experience working with adoption. And so I just wanted to give Indiana folks kind of a list. If after seeing this, you decide to go and join a group, here are two group therapists.

But I didn't hear enough back. I didn't hear from anyone that felt confident in that way. And so it might be a situation where, and by the way I didn't really have any group therapists in my own experience that are what I would call adoption competent, yet I was still able to get a whole lot out of group because of what group provides and how much you're benefiting from all the wisdom in the group, from all the members.

Haley Radke: Can I pause you there because I do want to ask you, I feel like you're a unicorn and so we're likely not gonna find group therapy for adoptees. Right?

You're talking about just joining a group that's already intact, and you're gonna be an adoptee in that group, but that doesn't mean that it's gonna be a room full of adoptees.

Pam Greenstone: That's right. That's rare. I am attempting to start one in the fall because I think it would be incredibly healing and helpful for people and wonderful.

I think that we're on an edge here in terms of what's happening in the adoption world, so I think they'll become more and more common. But until that time, join another kind of group and you can ask a group therapist, do you have any groups that also include another adoptee?

That would be a way of getting something like that for yourself or asking that therapist to read material, like the Primal Wound or other books. And I know we want to steer away from that. We want to start demanding adoption-competent therapists, and I absolutely agree with that.

But I also feel like if you can be assertive in those moments with group therapists, you might find that they might know more than they think they do, number one, and they might be open to learning and being something different for you, which is what I have found with my own group therapist. I've had to teach my group therapist about it and the other members in the group, and it's been actually very good for me. But I have a lot of experience in groups, so I don't think I could ask everybody to do that.

Haley Radke: But I do think there is a great power in being in a group of other people as an adoptee and educating them about what your experiences are. Not just to educate them, but so that you can understand, I can actually express these things and we sometimes talk about it.

I say, you should read this or you should watch this because it's going to give you language with which to express yourself. And we keep all of this stuff stuffed down. And yes, when we're with other adoptees, you don't have to explain that stuff because we all have the same kind of knowing.

But in this scenario, I think maybe that's a benefit.

Pam Greenstone: Good point. I'm getting goosebumps because that is such a good point. Because there is something so powerful about asserting that voice in a group therapy setting over and over again and teaching yourself that it's valid in all the layers, right?

Because sometimes when we are in group, and we know this from individual therapy as well, we feel like four years old, right? Other times we feel like we're 12 years old, and so we hit different parts of our development, different parts of our memory. And if we can assert it in those moments and then assert it more in our adult moments, we will just master, right, that capacity to understand when it's happening, put words to it in our own minds, and then find ways of sharing it that are effective in getting your own needs met.

And sometimes our need is to just express it. To assert it. And then other times we need something from the other person. And so we can get better and better at saying, I'm feeling hurt and scared right now because this part of me has just been, we've tapped into my adoption experience and this is what I need from you right now in order to feel more secure.

That's powerful stuff. Yeah. And I think you might be right that in our families sometimes we are the only adoptee. And so practicing in a setting that's similar to that might be helpful. But I have had one group in my life and there was another adoptee in there, and it was incredibly helpful and I loved it.

And it did make me feel more empowered to keep using that voice. And to value my own experience and trust it because I think for a certain part of the adoptee community that part of us that needed to talk about it pretty often was invalidated over and over again in different ways.

Not out of malice, but just out of ignorance. And so we trained ourselves to not either see it as valid or to not put words to it. And so this is a way of over and over again doing something very different that will change our idea of self in a very positive and grounded way.

Haley Radke: Okay. So we want to find a group. We're okay with only one other adoptee in the group and we're okay with that. But yes, I don't know, what's the next step?

Pam Greenstone: So I like to tell folks that they don't have to decide to join a group. They just have to decide to go to an intake session.

Because what that does is break it down into a more manageable and realistic goal. Because almost always, especially in the groups here in Austin, there are several intake sessions. And in those intake sessions we gather history, we get to know one another, right? The therapist gets to know the client, and the client gets to know the therapist to make sure it's a good enough fit.

We go over the agreements and see where those might get hard for people. And then we also just start describing what it'll be like to be in a group. And so then together with the therapist, you can decide, over time, right, over the few sessions if you feel ready.

So anyway, I like to break it down into smaller steps, decide to go to the first intake appointment, then decide to go to the second intake appointment, then decide to go to the third one, and then together you decide, is this a good time to do group?

Or maybe I can do a little more individual therapy with the therapist first until I feel a little more secure, remembering that the intake process will give you more data that will help you in making the decision.

Haley Radke: Okay. So you're getting more data from the therapist. Is this group right for me? But you're still feeling like, I don't know, is this actually right for me? Kind of feeling anxious? How do you overcome that? Make the phone call? Or please just have an email booking form because then I don't have to talk to anybody. How do you get over that?

Pam Greenstone: I think it's important to remember that anxiety about joining a group is very normal.

In fact, if it's not there, I get very curious about that for people, and I try to help them bring it into their consciousness because there is a natural human reaction to joining a group. It's pretty regressive. And so we're going to have nervousness about it. But then for each individual person, it's different what that anxiety is about.

And you can explore that either through journaling or through talking to your therapist or through talking with friends. What is it that I'm scared about? Be careful about which friends you talk to because they might have their own stuff around it and they might not be all that encouraging, but just exploring it could lead you to goals that you'll have for group.

Or exploring it could help you just understand yourself better. And then even before you've joined the group, you're already working, you're already learning things about yourself. So I think that's about it with that.

Haley Radke: Okay. Thanks so much for sharing about that. Is there anything else that you want to tell us about being in group therapy as an adoptee or just joining another sort of support group in another form if we're not able to move forward with this in our city?

Pam Greenstone: I'm thinking about the state of our world right now and how disconnected people are and feel. And how virtual connections don't necessarily feed those parts of us that long for authenticity and connection with other people.

And so if you can add any kind of group to your life right now, whether it's a supper club or a book club or a support group or self-help group or a therapy group, you are going to benefit from that, especially in our current world and in the current climate. It's the time for group therapy, even though it's maybe the hardest thing for people to do right now given how disconnected they are, even though they're in hundreds and thousands of connections.

I guess I wanted to share that.

Haley Radke: There's something so powerful about just being in-person with other people and really showing up as your true self, I think. So thank you. Thanks so much for telling us about this and helping us do our little steps towards finding a group. That's perfect.

Pam, where can we connect with you online? And if you're in Austin, I'm jealous, where can we find out more about your groups?

Pam Greenstone: Just go to my website where there is an online scheduling form.

Haley Radke: Oh, come on. I'm so glad I set that up because I wasn't kidding and I did not know you had an online form.

Pam Greenstone: I do. It helps people take that step. It's www.pgreenstonetherapy.com and my email address is just pamgreenstone@me.com. If you'd rather just send me an email, that's okay too.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us all about group therapy.

Okay. You have to let me know if you try and look for a therapy group. I'm so curious. Are you already in group therapy? I want to hear about your experiences. If you are in group therapy or you're interested in it, come and find our posts about this episode on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter and reply and let us know because I'm so curious.

I'd love to hear from people who have actually been in group therapy and what their experiences have been. If you are the only adoptee in the room, what that's like or if you are in a group with other adoptees, even if it's a peer-led support group, I'd love to hear about your thoughts about that.

The more ways we can find to connect with each other in real life, to look for a therapist that really understands us, to pursue healing in a variety of ways, if it's reading or through art, any of the things that we talk about here on the show. I'm so proud of each and every one of you that actually goes out and does something kind for yourself, like pursuing healing in this way.

So share with us on our social media profiles, direct message me if you'd like. I'd love to hear about what you are doing to find healing in this super fun adoptee life, and thank you so much for listening.

This episode is brought to you by my very generous Patreon supporters. I literally couldn't keep bringing you content like this if it wasn't for their amazing monthly support of the podcast.

If you'd like to join them, you can go to adopteeson.com/partner and you can find out the details there. And if you're an adoptee, you could also join our secret Facebook group that's just for supporters and guests of the show. We talk about all kinds of very real life stuff in the Facebook group, and it's become such an amazing place for me.

I go there when I need advice, which is awesome. People are in reunions, they are searching, they are being found. We have some discussions about what to do about some complex relationships we might have with our adoptive families. How they're dealing with our reunions or our searching. There's a variety of topics.

So if there's something that you are going through that's adoptee-related, I'm pretty sure you'll find someone in the group that is going through a very similar circumstance or has already been through it. So come partner with us, adopteeson.com/partner, again, has the details. I'd love to have you as a member of our secret Facebook group.

Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again very soon.

77 [Healing Series] Group Therapy

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/77

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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 learning all about group therapy. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Pam Greenstone. Welcome, Pam. Pam is a licensed professional counselor in private practice in Austin, Texas, and has been leading psychotherapy groups since 2002. So Pam, you approached me about doing a couple of episodes on our healing series about group therapy, and I was like, Okay, that sounds really cool. I don't really know what that is. So, why don't you first tell us a little bit about your story and how you got into being a group therapist?

Pam Greenstone: Sure. I am an adoptee myself, and was born in 1970 in Dallas, Texas, in foster care for two weeks, and then adopted by my family. And see…I think I'm in reunion right now since 2014, with both my birth mother and her family, and my birth father and his family.

I just returned, actually, from a family reunion with my birth father's family, which was incredible and wonderful. So yeah, I'm in full on in reunion. And I wanted to start by talking about the history of group therapy, and I think that'll lead into how I got involved in group, as well. So, in 1906 (it's been around for a long time), Joseph Pratt did what is considered kinda the first group therapy experience. And he brought together 15 tuberculosis patients, and thought it might be helpful to do education with them and have them talk about their experience. And then he also had them agree to certain things upon joining the group.

So those two factors–the fact that he was getting a group of people together to talk about their experience and then that they had this certain set of agreements, that made it the first group therapy, and it went well and the outcomes were really good. And so he (I think) kept doing it and kept spreading the word.

So a lot of doctors, and also psychiatrists would do this kind of work with schizophrenics, alcoholics, people that were struggling with socialization, and they were doing this until about the 1940s, just in their medical practices. But in the 1940s, it became a bigger deal, because there were all these World War II soldiers coming back with what they were calling “shell-shocked,” or “fatigue from battle,” and what we would now know as PTSD. And so just because they had to (there were so many patients), they started seeing them in groups. And from there, they started to see how good the outcomes were, how well these people did–even better than individual therapy in some ways.

And so that's when psychiatrists, psychologists started doing research, and writing books, and it became more of a mode of its own (a therapy mode of its own). And so since the 1940s, it's been what it is today, which is small groups of people getting together to talk about their thoughts, feelings, and reactions in the moment as they're having them, getting to know themselves, and getting to know the way they do their own relationships, finding ways to get along better with lots of different kinds of people, and what it is today, what you see today. In the year 2000, I was in graduate school and also coming out of the fog and also in my group therapy class. And when I saw the list of therapeutic factors in group–which I could go over them right now, if you think that'd be a good idea.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Pam Greenstone: It's Yalom. Irvin Yalom is a theorist. He's written books on existential group psychotherapy, and he listed out these therapeutic factors that we still have today and he's worked with them. So it's–these are things that happen in group that are helpful or therapeutic:
-installation of hope -universality–just knowing that what we're going through, everybody is going through -imparting of information (just like psychoeducation kind of stuff) -altruism–because in group, we're not only getting help the whole time, we're giving help the whole time. So helping others is really therapeutic. -recapitulation of the family of origin, or the family group (and that's when you're sitting in a room with a group leader who's a trained therapist who can sometimes feel like a parent, right? Or maybe there are two of them in the room, and then other members, which can feel sibling-like.)

All of a sudden we can start having feelings like we did in our family in different times in our development. And so that's–we can heal those wounds in the moment, if we're in a therapy group where we have room to express all of those kinds of feelings, or we can do things differently and learn to grow and change that way–have room to react and respond and say things in a different way than we usually would.

Then the other factors are: -developing socializing techniques -imitative behavior (just seeing how other people interact and using that and practicing with that and seeing if it works for you) -other kinds of interpersonal learning -group cohesiveness–which is just a sense of belonging (which is huge) -catharsis–which is like having strong feelings and talking through them at the same time -existential factors–just this sense that, in a way, we're all alone in the world, and that it's important to find ways of relating and connecting with one another in a deep way

So, listen to that list! So I was sitting in my group therapy class and I'm like, Why aren't we all in group therapy? Why isn't everyone in group therapy? I just thought, This is incredible. The fact that I was also going through coming out of the fog, I thought, Oh my gosh. For me, as someone with the wounds, and the trauma, and the loss that I've experienced in my life without a way of talking about it– I didn't know how to talk about that. I could see how group would provide me not only therapy and psychological help that I needed at the time, but also just a constant sense of belonging.

Once you become part of a group, you benefit from that group cohesiveness and that feeling of belonging the whole time. And I thought, Oh my gosh, that would hold me, and then also give me the therapy that I needed. And so I felt really lucky to be in that place where I was looking all at all of that stuff, all at the same time.

Haley Radke: So you were already doing training for therapy when you've discovered this, and then you just got really passionate about it.

Pam Greenstone: Oh my gosh. I had so much passion. I talked to everyone about it. I got in my own group, I started talking to my clients (once I started seeing clients) about it. And yeah, I'm a real advocate for it. I just can't believe how helpful it is in so many different ways.

Haley Radke: Well, I was just gonna ask, can you tell us what's the difference between having a therapist lead a group? So, group therapy versus peer-led support groups (which we've talked about before on the show as well).

Pam Greenstone: Yes, and I want to say that I… Of all the different kinds of groups, there are support groups, there are self-help groups, there are sometimes like book groups that follow along with a certain kind of self-help book, there are AA groups, or different kinds of 12-step program groups.

I refer to all of them. I think group is helpful in all kinds of ways, and if someone doesn't feel ready to join a therapy group, a support group might be a good fit for them. You know, so I just want to say that outright. And I think one difference is (because there are a lot of differences) is that in therapy groups, we really always try to bring it back to the here and now–bring it back to the moment. So when a member might be talking about something that's going on in their outside life, right? Say they're talking about… “Talking to my spouse and I feel so misunderstood.”

So they might tell that story. And then another member or the leader might say, “Is there a way that happens in here?” Or they might say, “I think that happened between us, and this was my experience of you in that time.” So there's this opportunity to bring, keep bringing everything back to the moment and to the relationships in the room, right?

And with that guidance of a therapist, you can grow your capacity to start observing yourself, right? In your relationships in the room, and then also in your relationships outside of this group therapy room. So that's one big difference. That doesn't really happen in support groups, and it shouldn't, because I think it's a therapy– It's a psychological kind of tool that a therapist is skilled in using, whereas a lay-led group, it's not gonna be as effective in helping us change, right? Change our interpersonal style, or make characterological change, which is very possible in a group setting with a therapist who's trained in a certain kind of group therapy.

Let me think of other ways it's different. Oh my gosh, there's so much structure in a therapy group. When you join, you adhere to a certain set of agreements, right? And the agreements are there to create a very holding and containing environment, so that people feel safe enough or brave enough to do the vulnerable and difficult work of sharing their thoughts and feelings and fears in the moment, right?

And so, it's usually a group that's going to be together for a long period of time. So that's holding, right? Knowing that it'll keep being there every single week. You attend weekly, and you try to be on time, and if you're not there (or if you're not on time), we tend to talk about that. What might be getting in the way of having all of the time in group? If there's a new member added, that's something that the group is told a few weeks in advance about, so that they could talk about their feelings and thoughts about that and prepare, right? And then the new member has gone through at least three intake sessions, and they know what the agreements are upon joining. And so they're brought in a way that's very structured and very predictable, right?

Because what happens in the room is completely unpredictable. Everybody's gonna be sharing their thoughts, feelings, and reactions in the moment, but we don't know what's going to happen. So I think there has to be a lot of structure available and in place, so that the more in the moment stuff can happen without feeling scared about that or like it might go off course. Those are some things I can think of right away. Does that…?

Haley Radke: Yeah! So you listed off this amazing–this big, amazing list. I tried to copy some of them down, the therapeutic factors. Do any of these happen in other groups? Like you were listing off the support and all those different, like in AA, da, da, da... Did any of those happen…?

Pam Greenstone: Yeah. So yes. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah, especially in AA, right? Installation of hope, universality, imparting information. There is so much that's happening between the people, right? In the room. I think in AA groups there, there's no crosstalk, right? You share what you wanna share (from my understanding of it), and you don't–people don't respond to that. And that's a way they create a holding environment, which is a little bit different.
In self-help groups, oh my gosh, so much of this happens. Yeah, absolutely.

I think you get any group of people together, and if you're open to it, there is so much wisdom, and beauty, and ability to connect there, if we let everybody just be themselves. And if they can allow themselves to be who they are, right? Those are the difficulties. Can we allow ourselves to be exactly who we are, instead of maybe trying to fit into what we think people want, or, Oh, I'm trying to avoid conflict, or…

These are the big things we work on in group therapy. “Wow, I noticed that I'm not really being myself. I'm just saying the things I think will keep things smooth in here.” Or “I want to make sure you like me, right?” Just all of those kinds of things come up, but we have– In group, we have room to observe that out loud, and then keep talking about it, and other people can relate as well, and okay, then what do we start doing about that? Or practicing in here that'll help create a change?

And in a self-help group, that doesn't tend to happen and we don't–we wouldn't necessarily want it to right? We want it to be about support, about learning things, about seeing how we all relate to one another in our shared experience, feeling less alone. I think that's more about self-help. That's more of what you get from self-help groups.

But they're all good, in my opinion, especially if they're– If you go to a self-help group or a therapy group and you don't feel pretty good most of the time, something's wrong. Not all groups are helpful and therapeutic. It's okay to listen to your instinct, and exit a group if you don't feel like it's a safe enough place for you.

Haley Radke: So, how would someone come to the realization that this kind of group therapy (for an adoptee, specifically), would be helpful to them? Versus going to see their therapist kind of week-by-week? What would spur someone on to say, Actually, I think I am gonna look into this?

Pam Greenstone: It can look a lot of different ways, but I think if they start to notice in their individual therapy certain patterns that happen in their relationships, right? But they can't quite make progress. They keep with their therapist, noticing these patterns, but not really feeling– feeling kind of stuck around it, right? So, maybe for an adoptee, they have more of an insecure feeling in certain kinds of relationships, and they notice that over and over and over again, but it doesn't seem to help them shift or make a change. That might spur somebody to go, Maybe if I do group work, it'll happen in the group in a way it wouldn't happen with an individual therapist and I'll be able to address it in the moment. And really start practicing in a contained way, new ways of doing it.

Haley Radke: Could you pause there and just tell us what that would look like? Give us an example of…so, they're sharing something in group, or maybe someone else is sharing something in group, and it rubs them the wrong way, and they have a negative reaction. Is there, I don't know, can you give us an example of how that would actually play out?

Pam Greenstone: Sure. Let me try to give you an example from my own experience in group. So for me, goodbyes in group were always very hard. So if someone started talking about leaving the group, I would have strong emotional reactions. I'd feel a lot of grief and I'd feel like I'd want to withdraw. It's almost like they–then they'd just be gone already, as a self-protective. So, I noticed that, right? In group, because a lot of people talk about leaving group, even when they don't leave. Because they're like, “Get me outta here! This is too hard.”

So when they would talk about it, I started noticing that kind of over time, that those same feelings and those same thoughts would come up for me. Well, I guess they don't need me, or I can't have a say in their decision. That was a common one for me. I would think, Well, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. I have–there's nothing I could do about it. I have no say.

So I would just shut down or not give my opinion, or not engage with them about my own feelings about that loss. So I started to notice that, and over time I found that if I could say a little bit of that (that was going on in my mind), it actually had an impact on the other member. And they used it to influence their decision, right? I was a part of their treatment team ( in their mind), and so they would use that, and it became part of their decision making process.

Haley Radke: And is there–do you have another example of, I don't know, someone feeling like they have this negative pattern? And so they can't get out of it with their own therapist, so they go to group, and then what kind of situation would happen in the group that could break that pattern for them?

Or is it something like, “This happens over time, this happens over time.” Or another member, or the therapist will reflect this back to them: “You've said this thing like 10 times before, what are you doing about it?”

Pam Greenstone: One example I can think of is, say a member has noticed jealousy, right? In their relationships with others, either friends or their spouse. So they notice that pattern; they can't quite seem to get a hold of it. So they go into group, and at first, when you're in group, you're really just–I mean, if you're talking, you're doing a good job. You're just letting the group get to know you, you're sharing about your life, you're observing, seeing how the group culture is, getting adjusted–but eventually, you're going to start to have that feeling, right?

That jealous feeling in a relationship, and it'll happen in a similar way to, say it does in maybe in your marriage or in a friendship, right? Where a friend starts talking about a vacation they're taking and you get jealous and shut down and distance yourself from them for a while. So when that jealous feeling happens in group, you have a lot of people watching you, and it's likely that someone's going to notice a change, or a withdraw, right? If that's unusual.

And so someone might check in, right? Or the leader might check in and say, “You haven't said anything since, you know, so-and-so talked about their vacation. What's going on?” So then you (the member) has an opportunity to talk about the feelings, and maybe that'll happen three times before they're able to actually say out loud, “I got so angry when you start talking about your vacation. I have no idea why.” Okay, so that might be what it looks like at first. Then maybe the next time it comes up, “That thing is happening again. I'm feeling angry and jealous, and I don't get why.” So then there just–there becomes more room, more space to describe the feelings and to have it go pretty well, it brings you closer to these people.

It brings you closer to yourself. You start to understand all the layers of that emotional experience, and then you start to get interested in it, instead of afraid of it, or instead of feeling like, Oh, this is gonna go wrong. So over time, you just get better and better at that particular emotional experience and using words in those moments, rather than behaviors.

And so then that's a mastering of a certain special, emotional, difficult, emotional experience for you. So then you have more room in all your relationships outside of group when it comes to that particular part of your, either personality, or your own history, your own psychology. So it's like water over a stone.

This is not–it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen in one group session. It's like you slowly just keep growing your capacity to accept your own feelings and know that if you dive in there and start talking about them, it's probably gonna go pretty well. And you're probably going to end up feeling closer to the other person, and yourself.

Haley Radke: And I love just that you are actually– You have a chance to practice. Essentially, it's like practice relationships in a safe space. And you can just say whatever you want and then you can see the other person's reaction. And then you can have a do-over or have a back and forth until you can figure out, Okay. What should I have said here?

Pam Greenstone: Right. With all that room, where the culture is valuing of that kind of work. And in our families, that's usually not the case. We get criticized or we–people's defenses come up and there's not usually a chance to keep talking about it.

But what a therapist loves is when we talk about that. So that's going to be encouraged. You're going to get positive reinforcement, you're going to get positive messages like, “Wow, that was brave to say that.” You're probably not gonna get that out in the world as much–like maybe, in some of your friendships.

But that's not our culture as it is right now. So, until that day, I think groups can be really helpful. The other thing that I think of when you say that is that– I went to a training group one time and the leader suggested that… So all the members in this training group were group therapists (so there was a high level of kind of awareness and knowledge about group therapy).

But there was a member who was having trouble just asking for help at certain times from the leader. And so the leader just suggested, “Just yell out, ‘help.’” And the member was like, “What? I can't just scream out, ‘help! That's gonna be hard. I'm gonna feel embarrassed.” And the leader was like, “What's wrong with feeling embarrassed?” And then, “Well, people might have a bad, an angry reaction toward me if I just do that, if I interrupt them and do that.” “What's wrong with people having angry reactions to being interrupted?”

So it's just this constant—just making room for, yeah, that practicing and then that acceptance of whatever it is that people experience in the room, and a willingness to listen. So just because someone might not like being interrupted doesn't mean you can't interrupt them, and then keep talking about that, and then they can talk about that experience of being interrupted as well.

And there's room for that at–there's room for that, too. So over time, we just develop more, and more, and more room for lots of different kinds of people, experiences, and emotional communication.

Haley Radke: And one of the… Okay. So you said one of Yalom's factors was having that sense of family and what did you call it? Recapitulation?

Pam Greenstone: Corrective recapitulation of the primary family group or groups.

Haley Radke: Okay. So let's talk about adoptee-specific. Why is this so helpful for adoptees?

Pam Greenstone: So, as I was reading and thinking about our time today, I was reminded of a couple of quotes and one is I think by Harry Stack Sullivan and he said, “We are harmed in groups and therefore we must heal in groups.”

And then I also read about Winnicott. And Winnicott was a physician who was a child psychiatrist, and also a pediatrician. So he really knew and noticed a lot about babies and their relationship with their mothers. And he said, “There is no such thing as a baby. A baby can exist only in relation to a mother.”

And that really–when I read that, it struck me. It was like reading The Primal Wound, right? There is a way that our loss as adoptees who were relinquished is so–it's non-verbal. It's something our body remembers. And so, now let's bring in Yalom's idea of recapitulation of the primary family group or groups. And how adoptees or people that were raised within the foster care system can't necessarily put words to the loss or the grief that they experience when they sit down in a group of people, especially when one is a parent figure.

And so we have–I think we have times of remembering, or body sensations, or just senses, or feeling that we need to say. And we didn't have a lot of room to say any of that stuff in our adoptive families most of the time, especially for my generation or your generation (even though it was very palpable for me and what I've heard described by a lot of adoptees). And so for adoptees, it might come in the form of that–either a longing, or a sense that something's missing, or an insecurity about how long this might be able to last for us, or that at some point, we're gonna leave anyway (so why bother?).

So it might–it'll come up in lots of different ways. At first, maybe as sensations or feelings. And then over time, we'll be able to put that into words. And so I think it's incredible to be able to have that experience, and then also say it out loud, and then to have that welcomed, right? By the group and by the leader–not maybe 100% welcomed, because I'm not saying other members won't have their own reactions to it. But that the culture is of “I'm interested, I'm listening,” and that will be enough to allow an adoptee over time to value those insights when they have them. And then start saying them in safe enough groups of people, so they can feel understood, and heard, and get to know that part of themselves much, much better than we tend to know that part. Does that fit with what you're asking?

Haley Radke: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so you said that when people join a group, they have a couple of intake sessions with a therapist, and they go over exactly what the expectations are for the group. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Pam Greenstone: Yes. I'll give you a set of agreements that are pretty basic and most groups would adhere to something like this.

So when I introduce the agreements, I say, “Now these are not rules that are to be followed. They’re agreements that you make, and we imagine that you won't be able to adhere to them all the time, and that the work is to talk about it and why it's hard to follow the agreements.” So the first one is:
-Agreeing to be present each week to be on time and remain throughout the meeting. -You agree to work actively on the problems that brought you to the group and talk about the important parts of your life.
-Agreeing to put feelings into words and not actions. -Agreeing to use the relationships made in the group therapeutically, and not socially. -Agree to remain in the group until the problems that brought you to group have been resolved. -Agree to be responsible for your bill. -Agree to protect the names and identities of your fellow group members -Agree to terminate appropriately.

So there are–it's protective that everybody makes these agreements because It's like saying, “We're gonna talk about these things when they don't happen.” For instance, like the one that's about paying your bill. What we're saying with that is, “We're gonna talk about money in this group.” And that's a good topic to talk about consistently. People struggle in their financial lives, and so when someone overpays, we talk about it like, “What was that about? What was going on? Is this something that happens? In your life, is it expressing or saying something? Do you feel like you're getting a lot out of group?” If they don't pay on time, maybe it's important for them to be talking about that part of their life, because it's happening in their outside life as well.

They're not paying their bills, or their lights have been turned off, or they're struggling financially. And people have a hard time saying that out loud in a group of people; a lot of shame comes up around that. So that's an example of a way that can work, and that creates this holding environment where everybody feels like they'll be able to bring these things up if they affect them.

So for one member, if a group member comes in late consistently, it might remind them of a member of their family, or somebody they grew up with? So every time that person comes in late, they're like, having all these feelings and all these thoughts. It's reminding them of their parent that was late picking them up from school all the time, or things like that.

And so it's almost like it gives permission to everybody. Like it's okay to talk about it and say, “I don't like it ever when you're late and I'd like you to never be late again.” And the other person has room to talk about what they're struggling with, why it's hard to be there. They don't wanna be there at all. So being late's much better than not coming.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's good. There's so many little insights, just from that. Just from having someone be late. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing about group therapy. And it's just so intriguing to me, the lessons you can learn from being in a group of people versus just one-on-one. So that was really, really interesting. Pam, where can we connect with you online?

Pam Greenstone: I think the best place to reach me would be my website, and it's pgreenstonetherapy.com.

Haley Radke: Perfect. Thank you so much. And we are gonna have you back to talk about–we just talked about how awesome group was, so we have to talk about, “How do you find a group?” So we will do that next time you're on the show. Thank you.

Wasn't that so interesting? I loved how Pam gave us all of these lists of benefits from being in a group setting, whether it's group therapy, or being in a peer-led support group (which might be the more manageable thing for some of us right now). And it also was just so validating for me to hear, because we've been working very hard to start a peer-led support group here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And there's many popping up around the U.S., as well through Adoptees Connect, and around the world.

So, if group therapy sounds like something that you're interested in checking out, we are going to have another episode very soon where Pam talks us through finding a therapy group in our area. And the steps to go about doing that, and also alternatives if that's not really something that you're able to do at this point.

I want to recommend a couple of things for you to go back through while we're on summer break, and we're going biweekly. I have so many episodes in the Healing Series. It's mind boggling to me. If you go to adopteeson.com/healing, you'll see a list of all the therapists who have joined me. And underneath their bios, there's little icons for each podcast episode that they have been on, and you can see all the topics there. One of them in particular is “How to Start a Peer-Led Support Group,” and Jeanette Yoffe was on, and she talked us through that and gave some really good advice. And I found out that some of the support groups that are already happening have been listening to that episode and tweaking the way they're running the groups a little bit.

So that was very, very cool to hear. So, thank you for those of you who've shared that with me. And in other news–that's it! I am so glad to be back with you for this week, and I'm excited to share Pam's next episode with you very, very soon. And this fall, we'll be back every single Friday with a new Adoptees On podcast episode for you.

And there's going to be some other kind of exciting announcements coming up. So, if you want to make sure you're informed about all those things, you can go to adopteeson.com/newsletter and sign up for the (mostly) monthly newsletter. I keep saying monthly newsletter, but guys, my life is just so bonkers, that sometimes it's a little bit in between monthly. If that's something you're interested in, adopteeson.com/newsletter. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again, very soon.

75 [Healing Series] Brainspotting

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/75

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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 brainspotting. First of all, what is it? And why is it so helpful for adoptees in particular? Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Dr. Julie Lopez. Julie's a trauma-informed practitioner whose primary clinical specialty is working with trauma and PTSD. Welcome back to Adoptees On.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Thanks so much for having me.

Haley Radke: I am so excited to talk with you today because we are going to touch on brainspotting. I've seen it all over Facebook, all the adoptee groups are talking about brainspotting. I know it's not brand new this year or anything, but it seems to be getting really popular, especially in the adoptee community. So do you want to just give us a brief overview, like, what is brainspotting? It sounds like such a funny word, like, what is that?

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah, so brainspotting was developed by David Grant up in New York, a psychologist, who had long been doing EMDR and was an EMDR practitioner. And he noticed, especially, I think the story that he tells when he first started researching what was going on with eye positioning, was when he was working with a professional level figure skater. And she was having trouble mastering this one particular move. I'm not sure I'm gonna get it right, it was like the triple toe loop or something very challenging. And every time she went to do it, she wasn't landing it. And so she came to him to do the traditional EMDR, and he realized when she was doing some of the eye movements, that her eye position, when they were going over the move, was always in the same area.

So he started to get curious about what that relationship was, and by having her stay in that one area where it seemed more activated or there was some area of distress, he realized, and they realized together, that there was another experience stored in there, and it was mapped into the way she was focusing for that move. And when they resolved that, she was able to land the move. So, does that sound–

Haley Radke: You didn't see me shake my head and be like, ‘Wow!’

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah! But I can see you!

Haley Radke: You can see me, that's why you're laughing.

Dr. Julie Lopez: But yes, so it's really fascinating. The premise behind brainspotting is that our eye position actually maps to spots in the brain where some of this material is stored, that's in our unconscious. It would seem nonsensical that this distressing experience she had prior would have anything to do with her physical mastery of a move in ice skating. But it was from there that he started to research the way that you could actually work with a brain spot and change someone's here-and-now present day experience.

Haley Radke: It’s pretty amazing to just think about this spot in your visual field being connected to some kind of memory or experience or something. Like, that sounds a little bit woo-woo, but I know this is all scientifically–

Dr. Julie Lopez: It totally does.

Haley Radke: Yes, okay. Go on.

Dr. Julie Lopez: It would be even more woo-woo if we were doing video for this podcast, because I would bring out some of the materials that go with it. Like, there's a wand that you use that has a ridge– it looks like, I don't think you're old enough to know about this, but an antenna off the back of a TV, that you can stretch. So it's a stretchable wand.

Haley Radke: I have seen an antenna before!

Dr. Julie Lopez: Well, it was a major part of everyday life when I was growing up. Anyway, there's this red wand, and you actually use it to hold the spot when you find a spot in someone's range of vision. And theoretically the spot is then correlating back through our brains and accessing a neural network where material's been stored. And so by using the gaze, you're actually accessing some of that material and the processing goes faster.

It's very similar to EMDR in that you're looking to access where some of this emotional and psychological mapping may be stored, and it's particularly effective for reducing physically held symptoms.

Haley Radke: Can you walk us through, so you're working with a client and you found the spot– how do you find the spot, I guess? How do you find the spot? And then what are you doing when you've got their gaze in that one section?

Dr. Julie Lopez: Every question you just asked has multiple answers to it, so I'll give you all those answers. I don't want to confuse people, but I'm just going to start out with this disclaimer that in this interview, I'm basically giving you a commercial– I'm giving the Cliff Notes of a commercial about a show that's for a whole series. So I'm going to really just give you the high level overview. Basically, I'm sitting with you and you say, “Every time I hear my first mother say, ‘I didn't have a choice,’ or ‘I couldn't help it about giving you away,’--” and I'm sharing that because this used to drive me bananas every time. Every time my first mother would say something like “powerless” or wasn't taking responsibility, I would become enraged. And I knew all the logic behind it. I knew about the time period, she was part of, the Baby Scoop Era. I knew about the dynamics with her parents. I knew about the dynamics of the conception. I knew everything intellectually, but my body would just go bananas, and I was so pissed. And there was a time period I just wouldn't see her because I knew I would get triggered every time to that feeling, and I knew I wasn't going to be kind. I wouldn't take it head on –sometimes I did– but it just was very unpleasant for me. And it would really upset me, it would affect my sleep, things like that.

So let's just say, pretending you're me, you've come in and you've said, “Oh, I just can't take it, and it's really affecting my wellbeing, and it's affecting my relationships, and I really wish I didn't have this big reaction. And I know all the intellect behind it, but I'm still having it. My throat closes up, like, my face gets red, my adrenaline starts running.”

I would have already explained brainspotting and you would've already said, “That sounds really woo-woo to me and crazy.” And we would've agreed we're going to try this different kind of approach, and we could find a spot by using an “outside window”, is what it's called. So I would take the wand and I would have you think about that feeling and pull it up, and I would take it across the x-axis of your vision. So I'd have your eyes watching –and actually you just did it right now– I'd be looking for areas of response. So like right here, you had a little response to that. Look, this isn't even real because we're talking about my issue, not yours, but you had a little response.

And I would say, “Oh, okay,” so outside window, I'm looking for where you have a response, where there's some area of agitation. And I would stop there on the x-axis and I'd say, “Okay, now I want you to follow my little wand up and down,” so we'd be looking at the y-axis. And I would be deciding where you had– I would say, “Okay, it looked like right here. Does that feel about right?” I'd be getting your input. And then actually, once you've done the brainspotting level two, there's also a z-axis, so closer, further. So we've done x, y, z, I'd be identifying it: outside window.

Another way is inside window. That's your own experience. So I would say, “Okay, pull up that feeling,” and we'd do it again. But it doesn't matter what I'm seeing in your physical response. You would say, “Oh, right about there. It feels most active,” y, z, right? And we'd be looking at that. So that's how we identify it.

And then I would just hold it there. You'd already be active into that neural network, so I would just let you be in that heightened space with that experience.

I think what's hard when I'm training people –students, or I'm training supervisees– is a lot of healing professionals want to be helpful and they want to be “value-add”. And the challenge with some of these more brain-based therapies is actually the best posture is to get out of the way as much as possible. Because our bodies want to heal. So you're basically opening a window, like a direct hit, into a felt experience and without all the intellectualization or the cultural norms. We're really trying to get into the space where the body's going to do what it wants to do anyway.

So, believe it or not, I don't do anything. I hold the space where we've already accessed an activated spot for you and let you have your process. And people will naturally start to process the visceral experience.

Haley Radke: Like, will they talk about it? Will they say what's going on for them? Or are you just sitting there feeling sick, or what?

Dr. Julie Lopez: It depends on the person. So for some people, they are talking about it or they're even moving. They're like, “Oh my gosh, my neck is killing me.” I basically encourage people to listen to their bodies. So while I'm holding the spot, they might move around. Their processing might be non-verbal. And if you think about the power of being able to process something, and especially for an adoptee that's pre-conscious or pre-verbal, it's not even stored in our system with language. So how in the world are you going to use language to process out an experience that wasn't stored that way? So you’re right, they might not be talking at all. They might be saying –or not saying but just feeling– ‘I'm gonna be sick,’ and I'm watching how they process. And when it looks like they're through a segment of processing, which could be 100% non-verbal, it could be just their eyes are going, or they're crying– and I've told them already, “Once you feel like you want to share something, then share it,” and if it's a very verbal thing that they're processing, they may be just telling me, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm remembering this thing,” or that type of thing. People process very differently.

Keep in mind, I'm just giving you a demo, but when you're doing it, you're actually looking for the most activated space. So you're already in that place, and then we let the body do what it wants to do anyway. My job as a practitioner is to help the process keep going, to make sure the person doesn't get flooded in case they need resourcing. Because our ideal on the healing path is that we're stretching, but not torturing ourselves. There is an ideal space to manage healing. We don't want someone to get so overwhelmed or flooded, and I firmly believe the body brings up what it can handle. So a part of it is just helping to provide the container for the person to do their work, and to intervene if it starts looping or not moving through like we would want to.

Haley Radke: How long would that sort-of take? What's the range? I mean, I get it, it's different for everyone, but is this like a–

Dr. Julie Lopez: It is so different!

Haley Radke: Like, a five minute moment, or is it like–?

Dr. Julie Lopez: No, it's not. And I'm a little bit biased on this one because I do work with a lot of adults who've had developmental trauma, and especially with my special connection and interest in working with adoptees. When you have the earlier experience that's hard for your system to take in, or that hasn't been fully metabolized or digested, whether it's having an impact today, the longer it might be to process. And it's complicated because the way that you could have a twin sister that went through everything quote-unquote “the same as you”, but there are so many factors that play a part in how it's stored in your system.

Sometimes people think I have a crystal ball, which I absolutely do not. It's just as mysterious for me, how you as an individual are going to have these experiences stored in your body. So it could be within a normal session kind of timeframe. A little bit of time to set up, and then we're looking to work with each spot. So you process a whole spot and then you might move on to another spot, depending on what's evolving.

I do take some notes while I'm doing the work because things are not linear in our system. They're stacked, in usually a more complex way. So you may be– I gave you that example about working on the anger, and the kind of beliefs held with it might be that ‘I don't matter,’ right? Or that ‘I'm being diminished.’ And in that process, other themes may come up like ‘I'm all alone’ or ‘I'm gonna die,’ or something like that. It might not seem logical, but there's schema that can all be attached to one root target, so it can get complicated. And you would just desensitize each spot as you go.

Haley Radke: That sounds magical.

Dr. Julie Lopez: The other thing is having a center like this where we do a lot of advanced brain-based therapies, we've actually found that a picture's worth a thousand words, and even more so the experience. So sometimes we'll do empowerment-based free workshops in the community, just so people could see, touch the equipment, ask the questions, hear the history, understand the theory. Especially like with something like neurofeedback, which has the big computer system and you're hooking electrodes up to your brain, it seems crazy that you can change your brainwaves by playing a video game where there's no words, and the reward system is helping encourage your brainwaves to operate at a different level. It's very hard to conceptualize without sitting down, having it attached to you and seeing what happens. But it's pretty amazing. So I know you say it sounds magical, and it does, if you saw the equipment. And even us, like, I've been doing EMDR for 25 years, and brainspotting, it's only been a couple years now, two or three? And when I first got the equipment I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ Because I've got these goggles that are half black on the right eye and on the left eye, because you can do single eye training. They encourage bilateral sound, so there are special CDs that do that. I could go on and on. Like I said, this is the Cliff Notes of the commercial about the show that's a series. It's a very short, condensed version. But it does seem pretty incredible. Our brains are amazing..

Haley Radke: Wow, you've definitely inspired me to seek out a practitioner in our area here, so thank you. That was a great explanation. I'm excited to hear from listeners if they try it out and what it's done for them.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Great. And I would just say, too, if I can, there are many different ways to change the way that your brain is mapping information in some of those automatic responses to inputs that we get in our everyday, whether it's relational, or just inputs from the outside environment. And if it works for you, great. If it doesn't, it's not the only way to do nonverbal work on your system. We are exploding with information about different ways to access the nonverbal part of our lived experience.

Haley Radke: That's so important to note, right. There is something that's gonna work for everyone, and we've talked before about how adoptees have stored that trauma non-verbally, and it's important to address it in that same way. So, thank you. Thanks so much. That was so helpful. How can we connect with you online?

Dr. Julie Lopez: My center's website is www.vivapartnership.com, and from the site you can connect. We have a lot of great information that goes out in our newsletter, really empowerment-based. We have a Facebook page and Twitter.

Haley Radke: We'll link to them all in the show notes.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Perfect. Actually. But I will say, I would like to get the word out there about the Resilient Brain Project, which is a free online resource for folks. So another way to start feeling empowered around how to make change as an adoptee is to go to that site. It's www.resilientbrainproject.com.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much for your expertise in this area.

Links to everything we talked about today are over on Adopteeson.com, where you can find all the past episodes of the Adoptees On podcast, links to all of our social media accounts, you can sign up for our newsletter, and you can also support the show at Adopteeson.com/partner. I want to say a big thank you to my monthly supporters. You are literally making it possible for me to continue producing this show for you every single week. Thank you, and thanks for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

73 [Healing Series] The Resilient Brain Project

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/73

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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.