Opening Our Hearts To Ourselves With Jo Willis

[00:00:02] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Thriving Adoptees podcast. So today I'm delighted to be joined by Jo. Jo Wilis, lovely to have you on the show. Thank you for extending your working day to be with us today, looking forward to our conversation.

[00:00:18] Thank you, Simon. I'm looking forward to it also. So we've had a few Kiwis on the show, a few people from New Zealand. I think we've had more Kiwis on the show than we've had people from Yorkshire. So really?

[00:00:34] Yeah, so thank you for thank you for joining us today. Jo lives on the North Island of New Zealand in a place called Hawkes Bay, which is about six hours from Hawkes Bay.

[00:00:48] So I've not been to Hawkes Bay, but I have been to Auckland and now to the Queen's Town. So maybe next time I will see a little bit more of the country. So healing, does this healing word resonate with you, Jo? Yes, it does.

[00:01:08] Initially, that question takes me up into sort of a broader sense, to be honest. Healing is a journey of becoming whole, like being an authentic human being connected to and belonging within oneself. I think healing for me has meant outgrowing the influence of the impact

[00:01:33] of my adoption experience to over many decades, to be honest, to a place now where I experience many more moments without feeling adoption is all of me or that I'm triggered or in feelings of surfacing for me.

[00:01:54] And you know, outgrowing that healing began really at the outgrowing journey began like many adoptees. I was outwardly. Appear to have adapted well to my adoptive circumstances, which made healing a challenge until I didn't actually have a choice

[00:02:15] at 27 years old from the outside, what looked like the perfect life. I had been reunited with my birth parents and I had married my childhood sweetheart, had two beautiful children. But on the inside, I was racked with panic attacks and agoraphobia at one stage.

[00:02:38] So for me, healing really began when the cracks I could no longer keep everything inside or keep it under wraps. So that was really my, it wasn't a voluntary healing beginning, to be honest. If I got to keep it under there, you know, I would have.

[00:02:58] But yes, I think that was all part of waking up at a soul level, at a soul level, at my essential self level, just wanted not to live this way anymore. So I guess it was waking up to the realization that something had happened to me,

[00:03:18] not just something wrong with me. And although it wasn't my fault, it actually now was my responsibility. So those are all the things I guess that came together that catalysted that healing journey for me. Wow. There's a million things that you speak so.

[00:03:41] Yeah, so concisely and eloquently about this. And you've clearly done so much work as you're a coach, right? So you've done a lot of. Reflection on your own experience, it sounds and a lot. Yeah, you express it. You know, there's about seven different attacks

[00:04:05] that I can go for from from there. So there's one bit that really appeals to me, but I think we'll just we'll put that on hold because we might be Russians right in, right? Well, when I ask you whether the word healing

[00:04:23] resonates for you and you said, yes, what one of the words that other people say that resonates for them when if healing doesn't is is growing. And and. And then we go down that we go down that conversation, but you use the word outgrowing, right?

[00:04:46] I think the phrase was outgrowing the impact of of adoption. So. I'm intrigued by this outgrowing word. So I'm wondering whether you could break that down a little bit or just outgrowing me. Yeah, look. I think for me, I felt adoption was just all encompassing

[00:05:14] until the healing journey began that I just described before. Adoption was all of who I was. I felt like my life had been completely. Shaped everything about me. And I couldn't see outside of that way of being in the world. I felt trapped within it.

[00:05:38] And, you know, it wasn't all bad. I had it from the outside. I had a good life and education. I had what would have been considered a good, adaptive family experience. It was a very religious environment. So there was that side of the that those influences as well.

[00:05:56] But. I just felt like it was all of me and I was very open about it with people and all through my adolescence, it was about lobbying for law change, writing to politicians, starting support groups, going on a journey for finding my birth parents at the age of 21.

[00:06:14] Way before it was allowed in New Zealand for that to happen. I went under the radar. It seemed there was a fervence in me, a constant fervence to find a way out of the borders and barriers that I felt were. Just constricting me.

[00:06:33] I mean, I didn't even have words for it then Simon, to be honest. I mean, that word outgrowing kind of came to me as I was reflecting on what we're going to talk about tonight. But I think that resonated with me around thriving as well.

[00:06:47] To me, I was not thriving. As an adopted person until I began to grow and outgrow the triggers, the patterns, the pain and grow more towards my authentic self. I guess post-traumatic growth is another term that might be relevant here.

[00:07:06] So and when I talk about it now, I think. Well, for the most part, I don't see myself even at one stage. A few years ago, I was running an education and preparation program. And one of my colleagues said to me, Joe, you didn't mention your adopt.

[00:07:21] Did you always say that? And I was like, I forgot. And in that moment, I was like, oh, my goodness, this healing. It really works. I could see, you know, we talked about there are moments where we don't know if we're progressing anywhere now

[00:07:35] and the work we do around our adoption experience. And then there'll be a lucid moment where we go, wow, actually. That's that was a really poignant moment, a significant moment in my own healing. And it wasn't shakling completely the lenses that I saw myself in life by.

[00:07:54] That was really liberating. So there's a sense there that you went outside, but that didn't bring you peace. So you went inside instead. And it wasn't a conscious. It wasn't a conscious decision to go inside. It was brought around by this.

[00:08:25] The yeah, it was brought around by you seeing the cracks with the word that you use when you were 27. Yeah, that's right. And when I went when you. When you say out growing, I'm just thinking about how. How I would sum that up.

[00:08:55] Or how you. So let me just so in as simple words as possible, because simple words land land for me. So. This is my summation. All right, so I love you. I love you thoughts on this. You realized you were bigger than being adopted. That does that somehow?

[00:09:22] How would you think it came much later, Simon? I think that as I mentioned, there were some intrinsic drive within me that was trying to find its way out of the suffering. I don't think it was conscious for a lot for quite a while.

[00:09:39] I think it was a survival, to be honest, in that early stages. But it became conscious along the way because as I started to experience moments of healing and understanding and growth, then. I realized, wow, I want to I'm consciously going to choose more of the things

[00:10:05] that are going to help me to live beyond the borders of this experience. But in saying that the way out was through. The way out was through the fog, through the pain, through the grief, through the loss, through the unedited childhood

[00:10:22] stories and narratives that I'd been telling myself. It was it was at times, you know, a long dark tunnel with glimmers of light in there. But there was a point and I don't recall when, when it became a conscious

[00:10:38] collaboration between the choices I was making and that growth path. So there were moments when you felt whole. There were more moments as you felt whole, more moments of lightness and less of darkness. Yes, and absolutely. And they they came in just. Delicate moments in the early stages.

[00:11:07] And then they just they seemed moments where I'd be like, oh, wow, it's peaceful in here. I might feel more joy, more connection to life to myself. And I would notice those moments and, you know, through practices along the way, spiritual practices, evidence based practices

[00:11:28] I played with as part of my healing journey, you know, mindfulness, mindful self compassion, journaling, neuroscience. I played with all of those pieces to reach for them really to say, well, how can they soothe this? My limbic system, understanding my brain, how had trauma affected me?

[00:11:51] How had growing up adopted and closed era of adoption, particularly when adoption was seen when I was growing up as it was so shame based and my birth mother was sent away at 17, you know, shamed and came back after having me being sent away to a small

[00:12:12] country town and came back and was expected just to get on with her life. And as a result of the trauma for her, she chose not to have any more children, which is not that uncommon for a lot of the birth mothers

[00:12:24] that I've worked with over the years, that whether it's been a conscious or an unconscious choice, there's some sort of connection between that traumatic experience and whether they want to go on and be a parent later in life. So yeah, just there are so many layers.

[00:12:45] But there was certainly I'm just thinking whether it was Carl Rogers said we had this innate, you know, he was a, do you heard of Carl Rogers? Yeah, he's an education psychologist. Was he something like that? Yeah. And he founded the theoretical approach of person centered

[00:13:07] therapy and counseling really. And he held this firm belief that the client, the person knew what was best for them and that there was an intrinsic desire to be whole. And when I read his work in my early days of counseling and

[00:13:25] therapeutic training, I, gosh, I was like, wow, that really held as a truth for me. And it was a foundational truth that I was able to understand that I was a foundational truth that I I suppose was very much a partner in my journey is like, yeah,

[00:13:42] there's some part of me knows that I can have a different experience. That I can, there is something more to me than hating myself and abandoning myself because I was so conflicted and confused. And I seem to feel like, you know, my non adopted

[00:14:01] friends, I just think, oh, why are they not a mess like they're the same things? Why am I so complicated? Why am I so difficult to live with, you know, I was just constantly looking at my deficits and just wanting, you

[00:14:16] know, having times where actually wished I wasn't me. Why can't it be somebody else to today where I'm like, oh, my gosh, I am so okay with being adopted because I wouldn't be the person I am today. I wouldn't be have the breadth and depth and compassion

[00:14:36] and understanding. I wouldn't have the richness that this journey has given me. Except when I'm in the holes, which I still want to life always going to have some degree of triggers trigger and response. And when I'm in those holes, I'm like, ah, here I am again. Okay.

[00:14:58] I know this, that you're an old friend. I understand why you're here and I can meet that suffering now with affectionate curiosity and compassion and move out of that hole so much more quickly. And each time I get out, I'm like, oh, I just learned

[00:15:16] something new about myself. And that feels like a whole place to be despite the wounds and triggers that will always be part of the fabric of my being. I don't know if you know, have you heard of the,

[00:15:38] I liken it to the ancient art of the Japanese had called the Kansugi bowl. I don't know if I'm saying it right. Have you heard of that? No, I've not. It's a beautiful craft where the Japanese restored broken China and they put them, that pieces back together

[00:16:01] with a gold filament and they looked absolutely exquisite. And I see our healing journey is something like that, that as we do this work, the gold is the beautiful growth and strengths that come from doing the work

[00:16:23] that make us even more precious and beautiful at the end of it. But the reality is that because we have those broken pieces, we are always going to be just like the bowl will be slightly more fragile and less resilient to some of life's

[00:16:40] stressors and which means I need more self-care. I need more tools in my toolkit to nourish myself and so that I don't keep looking out to other people being needy and reactive, waiting for them to give me what I need. Does that make sense? It does, yeah.

[00:17:04] I'm just in a better space and trying to figure out where I'm going to go now. I'll take a breath while you're there. Did you say affectionate curiosity towards something and did you say affectionate curiosity towards suffering? Is that what you said? Yes, I did.

[00:17:26] Towards my own when I'm in pain, it's like I used to self-abandon and beat myself up and push it down and punish myself in a way I suppose with self-criticism and to now where it's like, oh wow, I know you, I know why I'm hurting.

[00:17:44] I know why you're feeling this way and this hurts right now and being able to be with myself and heal myself in that way rather than previous to outgrowing adoption, it was just not like that at all. My relationship with myself just wasn't there

[00:18:02] and I'll be honest and say I cannot believe how many decades it took me to wake up to the fact that it's all about being in a relationship with ourselves. It's the most important relationship we'll ever have. We come into this world with ourselves,

[00:18:20] we go out of this world with ourselves. It's like wow, how did I not see that so much earlier in the healing process? So is it grace? Is that what you mean? I think it is, yeah. I think it might be. That word's a beautiful word.

[00:18:46] So you talked about the desire to be whole. What do you see as the opposite of whole? I mean, is it incompletely? What word would you use as the opposite of whole? Yeah, it was interesting because just before I came on

[00:19:16] to talk to you this evening, I was thinking actually in some ways it's easier to talk about what unhealed looks like because I was so familiar with that. And I've got two or three people who are very close to me

[00:19:28] who are adopted and who have chosen not to do any healing work. And I'm not ever going to say they're not whole to me, the utmost respect for adopted people or anyone. If you don't want to do the work, that doesn't mean you're un-whole or un-healed.

[00:19:53] I definitely don't hold that belief. This journey is not for the faint-hearted. I often thought that if I didn't have a choice, maybe I wouldn't have chosen either. But what I see in their experience and those around them see it really clearly but they don't is being filled

[00:20:12] with anger, being quite isolated, reacting to life's events and relationships in a way that is what we would consider to be overreacting. Two things, not seeing the patterns, not understanding how adoption, their experience might have shaped them as a person, not wanting to search or know anything

[00:20:46] about their past. She gave me a way, why would I want to look for her? Those kind of statements that suggest that they've said no to going on any kind of exploratory experience around who am I as an adopted person or as a human being even.

[00:21:18] In those three I mentioned, I mean, that's just come to me as well. So whether there's a difference, I think there is a difference to be honest. So did you say that they are not un-whole? I feel that it doesn't rest well with me to label other people

[00:21:47] as un-healed or un-whole. I think I feel fine speaking about myself. And I feel with the adopted people that I work with, they're all at such varying stages on that journey to wholeness. How do I describe one as I think we're all on the way to being

[00:22:06] whole once we embark upon this journey? I don't think there's ever getting to wholeness as such. I just think for me wholeness feels a certain way in contrast to how feeling un-healed felt. But I don't see it as a kind of a linear path.

[00:22:23] It's a diagnostic in any way. I mean, when I start working with adopted people, I always say, what do you know about your experience? How much personal work have you done? How do you feel about being adopted? What do you know about that kind of exploratory questioning?

[00:22:40] And that will give me some sense of how I might be able to help or not. But there's no judgment from my perspective about whether you're healed or un-healed. How would you describe your relationship with trauma? What an interesting question.

[00:23:02] Well, avoidance was the main relationship with trauma for so long until I felt I had enough safety within myself and outside of myself in terms of understanding and doing a lot of reading and research on trauma

[00:23:21] before I leaned into it somewhat when I learned how to keep myself safe in doing that. I did have an experience, my earliest experience in therapy where it was inadvertent. The therapist, I can't remember how many sessions, might have been third or fourth session

[00:23:48] and I don't have any memory of what it was particularly that she said or where we were heading with it. But the next minute I was flooded with complete darkness. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see. And it felt like I was dying.

[00:24:03] I actually felt like I wasn't going to come out of this. But it was her and her staying close to me verbally that helped me to come out of that. And I was in, I guess, trauma residue for about three days afterwards.

[00:24:21] I felt ungrounded, I felt all heady, I felt sick. And so that for me on reflection was inadvertently triggering the very trauma response that all our patterns are set up to protect us from. And I would never recommend anyone deliberately choose to go back there.

[00:24:44] I don't see that we need to do that level of experience to heal the trauma. I think we can become aware of it and lean gently in it with inner resourcing and outer resourcing that can help us retreat to safety when we need to.

[00:25:01] And how much of that trauma work is, it's multi-layered and I think that's up to the individual to decide how much and how when and how deep and inadvertently. And trauma just can come up as well without us deliberately leaning into it as well

[00:25:22] and it's how we manage that when it does come. So some people talk, I know who I heard talking about this, they say that we have to break down to break through. So in a sense that what was happening for you with that therapy session

[00:25:45] was a breaking down that led to a breaking through. Eventually, is that what it, how accurate is that? Is that what it felt like or anything? To be honest, I feel like the breakdown was literally at 27. That was the breaking down.

[00:26:03] That was where all the defence mechanisms, the adaptive self could no longer keep down any of the that I'd suppressed so much. I felt like that was the cracking open. The trauma activation and I think was definitely a part of the healing.

[00:26:27] I certainly wasn't going there seeking that. I had no conscious awareness that was going to happen. And I really don't know in the scheme of my healing how potent that was. I know it really knocked me around and I know I avoided,

[00:26:44] I maybe even have regressed a little bit around. I was, whoa, I don't want to trigger that again for a while until I developed some more understanding of trauma and some more confidence and then worked with a therapist around my trauma. But that was much more recent.

[00:27:00] That was several decades later when I felt resourced enough to do that. One of the questions that's come up over the last six months or so ago or a question or an opinion really is this idea that coming out of the fog isn't a once and done experience.

[00:27:24] It's not a singular, it's not a one-up. There's a series of coming out of the fog moments. And we, it's like first love I guess. We remember the first time most significantly. And yet it happens again and again. Is that being, I mean does that resonate with you?

[00:27:55] Is that being, would that sum up your experience or do you think it's just a one-off event? So I mean I can experience the fog when I'm in the hole, wholeheartedly. When I'm in a hole, and a hole is a trigger when I've been overwhelmed

[00:28:14] by an adoption-related trigger, like attachment has been a big, an example of what trips me up to this day. And I think looking, knowing what I know now about my early experience, I had four or five weeks languishing in a keratani unit

[00:28:33] before I went into my adoptive home. And there were several other interruptions to my early attachment. And in my primary relationship with my husband, this is something we've had to work together on in our relationship over all the years we've been together.

[00:28:50] Because when I drop into the hole and it's so foggy, I cannot see my way. I can't even self-soothe when I'm at the bottom of that worst hole. I've got better and better at that, more adept at that.

[00:29:06] And then when I'm out of the hole and in a new phase of post-growth, for one of a better word, the sun's out. Things are as clear as a bow. Insights are pouring in. My heart is open. I feel like, wow, I feel whole.

[00:29:20] Now this is, I feel whole. But inevitably on this journey, I'll fall into another pothole. And inside that pothole is the fog. I think the fog, it's definitely the fog is more like subtle dew these days

[00:29:37] as opposed to heavy black fog where I couldn't see anything in the dark. Totally lost. These days it's more like a dew on the windscreen that if I get my act together quickly enough, I can clear some space to see out the windscreen.

[00:29:52] A lot quicker because I'm like, ah, here you are again. I know what you are in. That's right. I'm going to get those windscreen wipers on to see a bit more clearly. I don't try and avoid it.

[00:30:04] I try to get through it and find there's some other learning here. I'm going to learn, I'm going to get some other piece of myself back on the other side of this. So I'm going to do the work and the reflection and the processing

[00:30:15] and the journaling and the talking and whatever it takes to heal and grow through whatever that piece is. Yeah. I love extending metaphors. I love extending the metaphors. I love the way that you did that.

[00:30:35] And at the same time, I'm thinking the difference between whole and whole is just a W. Absolutely. Yeah. Interesting. I'm also thinking about patients and inpatients on the on the healing journey. I'm just thinking that inpatience is if we just separate out and put a post-refery.

[00:31:05] It's I'm patient. Right. Yeah. The last episode we did with it was with a Brit, a Brit American adopter who's a comedian. So maybe I should leave the jokes to. I'm going to get the comedian, Jean. I'm afraid. So. So.

[00:31:30] One thing that popped into my head is you've got you've got you've used to kind of. To contrary contrary words to to opposite almost between exploring exploring our suffering with affectionate curiosity. So you've got explore versus avoid. I can't go a bit left brain on these things. Right.

[00:32:07] How do so? I'm seeing them as opposites, right? And you might see it more as a continuum. How do you how do you see that? How do you see the relationships between those two? You said what were they again? Sorry, the. Explore. Explore and avoid.

[00:32:25] And we're talking about exploring trauma versus avoiding trauma. I think I'm not sure if I'm quite grasping what you're asking or inquiring, but on the healing journey, I think both of those have held an equal measure at different times,

[00:32:44] avoiding when I feel I can't tolerate or I'm not resilient enough.

[00:32:51] And in the past, early days, I probably wasn't aware of that would have been an unconscious avoidance strategy and then a natural inclination to lean towards and explore with curiosity when I am feeling stronger and in a resourced place.

[00:33:11] So I feel that they're all part of the fabric. There's just like having different tools to build a house, you know, you don't use one tool. You've got multiple types of tools for different aspects of that, putting that house together.

[00:33:24] And I see the same with that with the healing journey as well. Yeah. You answered it very well. The question, even though it wasn't very well sat on. So thank you for that. What what do you other than avoidance?

[00:33:51] What do you feel if, if anything has caused you to cause you to pause on that healing? I think sometimes life events on the outside. I felt so stretched. So my like my, I feel like there's kind of three layers to the life.

[00:34:17] There was the internal adoption journey to wholeness. There was my professional learning and you know, it was it was exceedingly tiring at times working with adopted people educating adoptive people writing adoption reports.

[00:34:31] There was this whole adoption. I felt just sometimes something had to pause and often between external raising children having a family, elderly parents, life death situations, ill health, studying. Those were moments where I felt I needed to pause in the healing journey.

[00:35:00] And even like this year, I've lost four people very close to me and that in itself is actually because I've created the space to be with the enormity of that grief. And it's actually stripped me bare right back to the most vulnerable.

[00:35:19] I think I've ever been because what I realized was that old traces of grief and loss always come back when we're faced with current day ones. The historic so I felt I thought I wanted was pausing but in actual fact, I've been doing probably more work this year.

[00:35:40] In healing then than typically maybe last year. Kind of has a life of its own now. Did all the work in the the adoption space. Did that to what extent did you did that bring you down or were you conscious of that or

[00:36:10] Yeah, I'll leave it at that. Were you were you aware of that? I was aware when I knew what it felt like to feel it was all getting too much. I was also writing a book alongside that.

[00:36:23] But the interesting thing was the the incredible desire to keep growing and learning was initially an external thing as well alongside the internal

[00:36:36] I wanted to help adoptive people. I would have to help people so I was learning myself and growing myself and then feeling that I could then partner with adoptive people as a counselor and to help normalize, validate, acknowledge their experience be able to create a safe space

[00:36:52] for them to understand a bit about adoption to help them search to help whatever way I could. So there was a nourishment in it and a fulfillment in a meaning that helped along the way.

[00:37:10] But inevitably there were times when other things in life stretched me to the point was like, well, I'm just going to have to take a breather here or I'm feeling wary.

[00:37:22] I need a rest. I was very well supported in that work as well like a regular supervision, great colleagues. There were other, you know, really supportive things in there as well. I wasn't just isolated and alone in that professional journey.

[00:37:43] So you use the word a couple of minutes ago that I'm not sure I've heard recently. You talked about the adaptive self. I think that was the word. You used it, right? Adaptive self.

[00:38:00] How do the... Well first off, what is the adaptive self? How would you define that? How would define it that at the outset of birth, the moment of separation from our birth mothers, that we don't have a...

[00:38:22] According to numerous theories, we don't actually have any sense of self until we're around three months of age that starts to develop as separate from the mother. So I feel... That's all humans, right? That's not just...

[00:38:37] Sorry, humans, yeah. And so I have this visual image of being thrust basically into survival, fight flight survival mechanisms took over. And in order to be loved, to be safe, to survive, there was adaptations that needed to come into place in order to survive.

[00:38:57] And that that overshadowed the normal... The nourishment that the essential or authentic self would have received had that severing not taken place at that vital time of life. That nourishment and that safety and connection was severed. And so the adaptive self had to come in for survival.

[00:39:23] The tricky thing was that as we didn't know any other form of self, the adaptive self was all we knew. And then on top of that was the layers of growing up in adoption in the social cultural era that each of us grew up with.

[00:39:43] You know, sense of difference, no mirroring, all the stories and narratives around being adopted, not being allowed to know our stories, our heritage, our genealogy, growing up feeling marginalised.

[00:39:54] All those things layered on that experience. So for the essential or authentic self to grow in my view, in my experience is it requires us to go back as adults

[00:40:10] and offer ourselves all the qualities and ways of being and meet our needs in ways that weren't able to be then to create that nourishing, nurturing soil I guess for that essential part of us to come into being as Carl Jung,

[00:40:30] the psychiatrist and Carl Rogers suggested is within us. But at the same time, sitting with all the tangles of what we know about early trauma separation, growing up adopted, sitting with those tangles and allowing, getting insights and consciousness around them so that they can dissipate and disentangle

[00:40:53] at the same time as nourishing the authentic self. So the adaptive self we don't, it doesn't need to be there served a purpose.

[00:41:02] But it doesn't need it's past it's used up by date. It's actually robbing us from the very things that we know that nourish us as human beings. Every human being needs connection belonging needs to be themselves.

[00:41:17] I don't believe it. I've met many adopted people that could honestly say they had those things or experienced those things.

[00:41:25] So the adaptive self was a blessing for our survival, but you know, it played out in perfectionism pleasing behaviors, fear of rejection pushing people away so that we didn't activate the okay memory traces all these triggers and things going on.

[00:41:45] That wasn't us living our real life. That took a lot of energy, a lot of sensitivity constantly fight flight. We're in hyper vigilance mode all the time.

[00:41:56] So we couldn't be present. You can't be present with and be authentic when you're in fight flight freeze for you just it's not possible the different parts of the brain. So, so yeah, sorry, the long answer to the short question. How would you sum up the adaptive self?

[00:42:18] Yeah. So how would you, how would you sum up the how the adaptive self? How would you sum up the adaptive selves relationship or impact on our essential self essence?

[00:42:44] I've used the adaptive self and our essential self, it was completely covered up like that's what the fog is for me. That's the fog. Our essential self can't see feel be itself and It hides. It hides us the adaptive self. It seals our essence.

[00:43:05] Yeah. And it's, it's, it's relationship is obviously a survival one. It's not a compassionate one from the heart. It's a mechanism just like a limbic system.

[00:43:21] And so I feel like the relationship. It's our essential self in our heart slowly opening our heart and becoming aware and conscious of the adaptive self that then rebalances the helps the essential self grow. I think in just thinking about the relationship.

[00:43:48] I don't know that there was a healthy one. They had different agendas. But at the same time being able to see our adaptive self is being grateful, grateful, being appreciative of it helping us get thus far.

[00:44:10] Everyone has an adaptive self to some degree Simon we're all all human beings are socialized, have traumas of some nature and have an adaptive aspect to themselves.

[00:44:22] I just for those of us separated from our birth mothers from the outset of life that adaptive self is all we've known. That's why I think we can feel adoption is all of who we are. So I You've talked about, you know, you talked about affection and curiosity.

[00:44:47] And you talked also about realizing that the adaptive self has done its job. That's the job that it was supposed to do. And to have affection, would you say to have affection for our adaptive self and see that it has concealed that the adaptive self conceals our essence.

[00:45:10] So the metaphor I always want to always the metaphor for that I use them for that is this diamond in a fist. So the fist represents the anger. So that's my me coming out of the fog was expressed through anger, that anger not being the authentic self.

[00:45:36] That and the natural the natural shape and position of our hand isn't a fist. It's being open. So as we open, as we unclench our fist, we see, we see a diamond. That's hidden. That's concealed.

[00:46:04] So true, I talk about trauma, hiding our essence, not harming our essence. How would you have you got a metaphor for that to what extent does that metaphor feel true to you or resonating with you.

[00:46:27] I think what you just described is just for me, just really illuminates the essence of the whole piece that we were talking about. And it just surprised me that I was doing that I didn't know about your diamond.

[00:46:38] Oh, well, I've seen the sorry I'll send the emblem on your on the on your podcast series but I hadn't quite connected it to to what you just shared now. To me, that's I agree 100% with that.

[00:46:52] So why don't we see that? Like, why did you take that case to see that, you know, we're back to my patients or in patients right.

[00:47:06] Do you know what's a big a big piece? I don't know what it's like in the UK but what we experience here in Aotearoa New Zealand is even today with, you know, in 1985 we had the adult

[00:47:21] adoption information act which essentially opened up a pathway for birth parents and adoptive parents.

[00:47:29] I won't go into the details of that but it started to crack open society's belief about adoption that they have been happily ever after story, but there still the reason we can't see it is because it's not.

[00:47:45] When not when you're in something you can't see it and our experience has not been acknowledged, validated, understood even to this day my main role these days outside of working with the doctor people is educating

[00:47:59] education counselors and therapists and my biggest work is helping them to deconstruct the narrative that was blind to it as we are Simon because they've been indoctrined in the same narrative that we were marinating in our whole upbringing.

[00:48:16] So it's in some ways it's not their fault because and but it's again we have had to do the work of speaking up speaking out telling our stories and a lot of the time being gaslit for that which is extra painful and can trigger trauma as well.

[00:48:33] So the reason we can't see it is because it's no one's acknowledged it until trauma the latest trauma theories come out and yeah I just an impact on the brain and understanding our neurological system the impact of trauma on that and all these pieces of the puzzle.

[00:48:55] But I've had to put all those pieces together myself no one's given that to me. And that's what takes so long that's what takes that's what takes decades damn it.

[00:49:05] I mean these days I say to Dr people oh yes there's so many things out there that could help now that weren't there before. But there's some people got different feelings about Nancy various book the prime of one theory.

[00:49:19] But when that came out in 1995 I felt like that was the biggest gift someone outside of the adoption. If an adopted person had written that at that time certainly in our country it would have been just completely.

[00:49:34] Oh yeah adopt that adoption adopted persons got issues you know that's how it is if there's a problem it's the adopted person's problems never anyone else's problem. They're off the rails that used to be say when I was growing up or you know we've got four times more.

[00:49:50] Mental health issues and statistics and alcohol and drugs and if they all that's their problem it's the adopted person is the problem not adoption might be the problem.

[00:50:00] And so as more and more people are speaking out about it and educating about it I think you've got Paul Sunderland in the UK he's been amazing around educating about adoption and the severance that's in and what the child what the adopted child gives up.

[00:50:16] So that's why it takes so long because it's still denied. We've got something going on in the country at the moment where a television ad to advertise one New Zealand which is like a voter phone or.

[00:50:34] No, but yeah and it's a story of a Māori adopted person with Pakiha parents sorry English parents who gets told as an adult that he's adopted given a given a necklace and he's.

[00:50:50] On a journey throughout New Zealand looking for his heritage and it's just causing so much distress in the adoption community and.

[00:50:59] Right and writing to broadcasting doing as much as we can to say get that off there are so many people out here that that is such a painful story for and they just don't get it they put it back on us.

[00:51:12] It's like oh well it's just a light hearted look at searching for your roots and it's like well does anyone else have to search for their roots no.

[00:51:21] If you're adopted you have to go on that really hard journey why would you use that as a sales tool so we're still up against that that's why that's why adopted people often don't even know they just think something's wrong with them Simon and that just breaks my heart.

[00:51:37] Every doctor person that shows up on my website says you know Joe there's something wrong with me I don't even know where to start and I'm like you know what there is nothing wrong with you. You have an experience. That's impacted upon you and that's where we start.

[00:51:53] You mentioned Nancy very I saw I can't help but ask my next question. What do you think is wounded. My first response to that is our essential self.

[00:52:19] I don't I don't want to say it's it's our soul because I feel like I don't know if that is damage a bill. I don't because I feel like that's the part of me that's bought me home.

[00:52:37] I feel like that's the but the wound in the psyche in the heart personality the mind is our essence wounded. So is that essence and our soul different in your view. I'm just I'm just posing that. I was in the question.

[00:53:11] I think we could have a whole session on that. I don't really I don't there's just different terms for different things. And I'm not sure I feel like my essential self and my higher self are different things. So my higher self is more my soul.

[00:53:33] My essential self is my my being Joe Willis who you know my person is is my essential self and my higher self is that connection with. The greater good to a whole or God or whatever the term is.

[00:53:52] And I think that that the latter part doesn't get wounded and is the part that has helped heal in my own experience. The other part of me that was wounded maybe a question to Honda. I feel like it is for me.

[00:54:16] It feels like well I just would like to spend some more time reflecting on that one. Is there anything else you'd like to share that I've not asked you about?

[00:54:34] I think just just going back to something we talked about earlier about those moments of when we realize how far we've come in healing and a really poignant one for me. I'd like to share if that's OK.

[00:54:53] When I had grandchildren, I was absolutely obsessed with them and we were it was a special birthday for me my 60th birthday actually and we were in Australia on a holiday family holiday and I was tucked up in bed on the morning of my birthday with my five year old grandson Jack and he was about this far from my face.

[00:55:14] And three inches or eight. And we were eyeballing each other that close and I said to him oh my gosh Jack I love you with my whole heart. And he looked at me and he said nonny which is what he calls me do you love yourself?

[00:55:31] And in that moment I stopped breathing and I was like do I love myself and he was waiting but he didn't move his eyes were just waiting and I was like and then I had to go really I had to reach inside myself and go you know Jack.

[00:55:46] For a long long long time nonny didn't love herself but you know what I do I can tell you now I do well in a flash he was out of that bed running down the hall happy as a pig and I was left lying on the bed going.

[00:55:59] Oh I just had a really big insight.

[00:56:02] Oh look I can say I love myself if he hadn't asked me I might never have realized so sometimes just want to say sometimes you don't realize how far we've come until something happens and we respond to life to a person to a situation in a way that we never would have done before.

[00:56:22] And in that moment itself is so healing so special and and in those moments we should savour that we deserve that moment of joy and that insight that valuable precious insight.

[00:56:39] And savour that and I'm holding my heart as I'm telling you that because it was yeah and since then it's just like I can love myself well even saying that out loud was quite really a revelation.

[00:56:51] Yeah so the workers with it and I felt really whole in that moment even if a week later I was in a dark hole again for a short while. That was a moment of wholeness wholeness and experience of my authentic self. Can I ask you another question. Sure.

[00:57:17] Does a does a title for this podcast episode spring to heart spring to mind. Gosh I work with so many words just fluttering around I guess open look I've just something. I'm not even sure if this is it Simon but something like opening our hearts to ourselves.

[00:57:49] I mean part of me wants to say coming home to ourselves but I can always think of Mary Nancy various second book was that so that's plagiarism. But there is something about coming home to the wholeness that is within us.

[00:58:11] Beautiful and as always listeners check out the show notes fillings to Joe's websites and socials and speak to you again very soon. Thanks a lot. Thank you Simon. Thank you. Bye listeners.