Life Coaching Translated for People Who Were Adopted—Part Three —the Body Compass and the Nervous System

In the first part of this series, I wrote that my body compass had said “Run” when I was faced with a chorus of voices saying that of course I was embodied. I also wrote that instead of running, I stayed.

I have found that to be embodied and to be an adopted person is a paradox. It’s like being salt and pepper at the same time. It’s like being both the negative and positive ends of the battery. It’s like being the sun and the moon. Adoption as it is generally practiced in the U.S. asks the child not to be embodied in its natural state, it asks the child to give up its identity to become one of us. Claiming embodiment, then, can feel like throwing yourself off a cliff.

I needed life coaching for that. For being right and wrong all in the same instant, always. For being a person who was clearly embodied because my body was breathing, upright, and talking while also being a person who was trying her best not to exist in order to be loved and cared for.

I believe I stayed in Martha Beck’s class because my body compass had pointed yes to staying. I think the truth is that I have direct access to my body compass, and that, as an adopted person, this can present as a big problem, as a bug in a perfectly nice cup of soup.

Yes to staying is a feeling of purposefulness. It’s my head unconsciously and maybe even imperceptibly nodding yes. It’s a feeling that I’m a boat and a current is carrying me. This feels like a lightness in my head that can be pleasant, easeful, like when someone takes a heavy bag from your arms and suddenly life becomes that much easier. This kind of yes, when paired with anxiety, can also feel frightening and like not the safest choice because there’s an element of loss of control.

I had signed up for the class because it was part of a larger goal: I was determined to better understand my brain in my effort to live authentically as myself instead of living as a body in near-perpetual response to real or imagined trauma.

I often confuse the information I get my from nervous system and think it is my body compass speaking, and more often than not, when faced with change or growth, my nervous system tells me to run, to freeze, or to collapse. When faced with the possibility that I was, in fact, an embodied person living out the choices of her body compass, my nervous system flooded my body with cortisol and told my brain to get me the heck out of Dodge. I was in danger of changing. I was in danger of revealing my authentic self to people, and if that happened, I would most likely be abandoned because that’s what happens: you are created, you emerge, and when people see you (your mother), they run. So now that you are old enough and have legs that work, you must run first.