333 [Healing Series] Intensive with Dr. Julie Lopez
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/333
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. 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, I'm so pleased to welcome back Dr. Julie Lopez, author of Live Empowered. Dr. Julie returns for a very personal conversation about my experience working with her in a therapy intensive. We talk about what those hours together actually looked like, and I share some unexpected changes I've noticed since, [00:01:00] including feeling more connected with my kids and having more capacity to navigate a very stressful season.
You'll also hear snippets from our conversation shortly after the therapy intensive, along with reflections from other adoptees who have worked with Dr. Julie. Before we get started, if you're listening to this when it's first been released, October 30th, it is Adoptee Remembrance Day, where we remember adoptees we've lost, to acknowledge adoption trauma, to stand with adopted people who are without citizenship in the country they were taken to as infants or children, and we think of those who have suffered abuse or worse at the hands of their adoptive parents.
I've had several episodes marking this important day over the years, and we have an Adoptee Remembrance Day playlist available for you in the show notes. In keeping with the theme of adoptee awareness and healing, today I wanted to bring you my friend Dr. Julie, [00:02:00] who is focused on the latest science in trauma-informed brain and body-based approaches that support meaningful and lasting change.
Let's listen in.
Pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Dr. Julie Lopez. Hi, Julie.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Hey, Haley. It's so good to be here, to see your face, hear your magical voice- ... and be part of the empowerment project that you are.
Haley Radke: Aw, thank you. You and I got to work together very closely for a few hours. It's a year and a half ago, just about two years now, which is wild, because can I tell you, I still picture things in our session extremely vividly. It is locked into my memory, which I thought was unusual to say the least.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Ooh, I'd love to hear more about that. I always love to [00:03:00] hear kind of the things that stick and the stuff that really makes an imprint since we're pulling stuff out of these inner recesses of your nervous system really.
Haley Radke: How about I just tell you that part first? And we are gonna describe what it's like to work with you in an intensive so people can really picture it. But one of the things that happened for me was I was recalling a lot of childhood memories, and during that time I was able to recall the home I grew up in such vivid detail to the point where I could open a kitchen cupboard and look in and recall exactly the different designs of the plates we had.
Same for the varied assortment of glasses or mugs. And I felt like I could, pick one up and look at it, and I [00:04:00] still remember that all very vividly to this day.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Amazing. So it was very sensory. It really took you back to that place.
Haley Radke: Yes, and I still feel like I can do that for my childhood bedroom and all the little knick-knacks on my dresser. Just all kinds of things that I have no access to now. I don't have photos of any of those things, but it's it felt so real like I was really there.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yes, which is exactly what happens when we get into this deeper unconsciously held material. Your cells are holding that even if you're not consciously thinking about it. It's in there for you, and that becomes a pretty important principle to all of this work.
Haley Radke: Let's talk about just the actual what we did.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Because I think this can feel mysterious. I wasn't sure how to explain it to people. And we worked [00:05:00] virtually, so we were on a, secure Zoom call. I was here in my office where I am. I'm assuming you were where you are now in your office. And you had me have binaural music, so I had headphones on so I could hear the music. And binaural just means there's different beats happening in each ear, right? So you're stimulating the ri- right and left side of your brain-
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah
Haley Radke: at the same time. And then you would... we started with some goals in mind. We started the day, I think my thing that came up for me right away was, "I feel unlovable," which is great. Classic adoptee. And we just followed that thought. I would think about it for a couple of minutes. You would pause me. I would report back what I was seeing, feeling, thinking about, and we just carried on over, and over. Those would be called [00:06:00] sets, and we did that for several hours.
Dr. Julie Lopez: That's right.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Do you want me to add to that, a little bit of the science behind it?
Haley Radke: Please do, because that sounds kinda weird. How could that do anything.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Totally. So well, first of all, when we did the goal-setting, which is based on present day, no reliving old hard stuff, just "What's going on today? What's important to you?" We did not do that during the intensive session. We did it prior to that, and we put really measurable objectives on that. And the reason why is most of what I'm trying to do in the beginning of an intensive is get into a neural network that's inside of you connected to whatever your body pushes up as the most important thing.
And your body that day, [00:07:00] when we stepped out of your thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex, and into your experiencing brain, more of this unconscious, implicitly memorized data, was, I was actually taking you into a more dreamlike state, so that we started when your body was fully activated. So that's why we do the thinking part like a different, totally different time, and most of what we did with talking was to get you into this altered state, and then to stay there.
And while you were in that altered state, although it was, hey, we started here with a target kind of image that was viscerally remembered so that it was alive in your system The beats were getting your system [00:08:00] into a restorative, regenerative place like you do with REM sleep, right? Rapid eye movement from right to left.
That's what we were doing. And many different, more cutting edge type of non-talk based therapeutic practices use bilateral stimulation. Your system started going on a journey. So it wasn't as simple as what you just said in my recollection of this half a day experience, because sometimes... So you would be in that state, and then I'd have you start the sound, which is you going on that internal journey beyond consciousness, stuff that's already living there already, but we're helping your body pull it forward to work with it and move it and change it and optimize it.
I don't wanna keep talking, but that's basically... So the beats were helping it do that, and then I was working with the material that came [00:09:00] up to help your body do what it wanted to do anyway, which is to optimize your present day life with the most current codes that you already had.
Haley Radke: When you talked about being in an altered state I should just say I've not, I did not take anything. There was no-
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yes ...
Haley Radke: psychedelics are involved. There was nothing like that. This is just full sober, all the things, right?
Dr. Julie Lopez: Exactly. Yeah.
Haley Radke: But there were times where in between a, in a, during a set I would just see shapes. I'd have my eyes closed. I'd just see shapes, stars, whatever. I wasn't... I couldn't tell you, "Oh, I was thinking about this memory," or anything like that. I would just say, "Oh, I don't know, I just saw some shapes." Can you tell me what was happening for me then?
Dr. Julie Lopez: So our body is starting from early on, and you can see debates in the research and in [00:10:00] the scholarly study of implicit memory or our unconscious as early as prenatal cellular memory can be formed.
There's a whole other study also of memory that's inherited ancestrally. And so as a fellow adoptee, the research shows that our hungry little systems take in data through gene expression, the study of epigenetics that's passed on through our DNA, right? So our biological ancestry, even though we may or may not be in reunion or ever know our people that way, it's still impacting us.
And the primary caregivers who raise us in our most acute developmental years, where we're hungry for understanding how to survive, even on an [00:11:00] unconscious level, we can take that data in too. Anyway, all of the stuff impacts us, and that altered state and the shapes and the smells or the sounds or the physical sensations are the layering that your body holds anyway every day that you're walking through your life.
And now we are slowing down with intention, with tools, with language that isn't in words, of working with the whispers of our system that are there all the time, and it comes out in experiences that can mimic what happens with psychedelics because you're accessing the same part of the brain without the chemicals.
So sometimes, I already shared with you, I struggle with how to explain what's happening to people with the words, but one of the things I will say is I'll say to someone, "It's like having a psychedelic journey without the [00:12:00] psychedelics with someone who's very trained in the body and trauma and the way the system metabolizes that and how to integrate the experience afterwards."
Haley Radke: Yes. So there were moments like that where I was like, "I don't know, I saw some shapes," and we just- ... kept going, and that might happen for a few sets in a row. And then there were other moments, like I was describing, like I could open my kitchen cupboards and see things that are... But I was reporting back some childhood memories and things like that.
And then I started getting these physical sensations, and you helped coach me through what to do physically to try and get these things to move. So can you just give, talk a little bit about that and then, what's happening for us? Okay, we're going to all these places, but what's changing in our body, if anything?
Dr. Julie Lopez: So here's what's happening. [00:13:00] Your body is going to get the meta communication that we are cleaning house. Because of the way you're being, quote-unquote, communicated with, right? Beyond words. So it's oh, we went into a place that's got a lot of charge to it, and now we're given the space and the supports and the bilateral experience so that I nervous system, cells, deeper parts of the unconscious feel, oh, this is a place where I can pull forward the things that have been weighing down our system.
Because just like fasting, you don't eat for a period of time, and your body will start to detox. It's what it does. We want our system beyond our consciousness wants to be optimized. It's why you get a cut on your hand, and the blood rushes there and forms a scab. It wants you to [00:14:00] heal. It wants us to heal. It wants us to be optimized. So we're doing a number of very specific things to call the body to pull up what's stacked in there. So it's literally pulling forward important material, and it's not linear the way that we communicate. So sometimes, many times, I'll have someone say, "Ugh, I'm distracted. I'm thinking about this other thing," or, "I'm thinking about my to-do list."
And my professional experience in doing this for over 30 years is that it's never random. It's always in the higher path of healing or of metabolizing something difficult. So every intensive I do is different because it depends on how the material comes forward. But yes, there's many different types of, they're called somatic interweaves, or different types of study of whole system anatomy, physiology, neuropsychology that [00:15:00] supports how to keep it moving.
And oddly enough, a lot of it is me getting out of the way so that your body can keep going with what it needs to do.
Haley Radke: Can I tell you some of the results I've had?
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah, of course.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Like what I live for.
Haley Radke: So some of these things were not goals of mine or intentional. One was. One, I always had hooked together exercise movement as a punishment, and that really unhooked for me. That is, that's gone, which is amazing. Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: That's so amazing.
Haley Radke: I know. I know. Totally amazing. This is just a feeling, I feel like my resilience level has really gone up, and I was pretty resilient prior, I'm, right now I'm in the busiest, most stressful season of my life. I do have an endpoint. I'm working on another podcast, and once that's out into the [00:16:00] world, there's my endpoint.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Love it.
Haley Radke: But I feel like I have the capacity-
Dr. Julie Lopez: So good ...
Haley Radke: which is great, 'cause it's really difficult topics, and I'm doing really well, which is awesome.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh, good.
Haley Radke: So we have a clip that I'm gonna share in a little bit of our kind of debrief after the session, and I talk a little bit about this, but I feel way more connected with my kids, and I-
Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh, good
Haley Radke: yeah, and I think I shared with you then that it's not like I ever thought I was a bad mom or I wasn't connected with my kids, but I felt like something got released that had been in between us, and that's gone.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Amazing
Haley Radke: And this is the most surprising thing for me. I never had an issue with alcohol. I was a very casual, light drinker. I've been totally sober since our session. I haven't drank anything 'cause I just don't want to.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh my God. [00:17:00] I love it. That's amazing.
Haley Radke: Yeah. So there you go. I think those are all pretty huge, and some are unexpected. How do you be like, "Oh, I'm gonna have more resilience after spending a half day with Julie," like, when I wasn't expecting that.
Dr. Julie Lopez: I just wanna celebrate every single one of those, 'cause each one of them is a big deal on its own. You said the exercise, uncoupling it. You said disconnecting it from punishment, and in psychological terms, there are things that we might even logically know are not true, but uncoupling them actually brings up more freedom, which is so great, right?
If you're like, "Ooh, intellectually, I wanna exercise, but every time I do, I start feeling like I'm punished, so ooh, screw that, I don't wanna do that," or you're trying to override that unconscious thing, and you're like, "Why is it [00:18:00] so hard for me to exercise?" And then a lot of times, us human beings, we start- talking negatively to ourselves.
"I'm so lazy. I can't follow through. What's wrong with me?" The self-punishing thing. So having it authentically come from the inside where it just literally is not there anymore is so freeing and empowering. The other thing about having more capacity to do ... I know you are a mission-driven person, and so of course, one of the big pieces of your service to our community is that you're touching in and talking about topics that of course hold triggers in your own life.
And so that's a part of the energetic cost of doing the work. So if on a deeper level, you, it's not triggering the same level of response, or it's not tying in to what already sits in your cells, oh my gosh, that's a huge thing in terms of capacity. What a gift [00:19:00] to the work that you're doing. And then you said connecting with your kids, totally amazing.
And the last thing about being sober it sounded ... A lot of people work really hard, and I call it white-knuckling, to drop ... honestly, and I know this was casual for you. It wasn't what you would call compulsive or addictive. But you talking about it like it's just so easy. It was just an inside feeling, and it's "Yeah, no, I really don't wanna have that. I don't need to. I don't want to." It's as easy as that, is such a gift that comes with doing the work from the inside out, where you don't have to push against, quote-unquote, "invisible forces" internally that can show up as compulsive feelings, meaning before thought, right? "I'm just gonna eat that thing. I'm just gonna work till 10:00 PM. I'm just gonna, shop in this way that is ... " You can feel it when it has a compulsive quality, and it's usually because it's tied [00:20:00] to something in the unconscious that's driving a whole different thing. I worked with an adoptee who always was compulsively spending money, and he said it was related to how he felt really objectified as an adoptee and that he felt like the financial piece of it was really important to try to get mastery over.
He couldn't articulate that when we first started working together. He just had a massive problem with compulsive spending. So it's powerful, really powerful.
Haley Radke: Can you go into the science behind this again? Because it just doesn't it's really hard to understand how, oh, just I describe, "Oh, we're just thinking about this," and then it's a couple of minutes and then thinking about something else, to like actually seeing a behavior change that I'm linking directly to what we did [00:21:00] together. Like I, I really believe that's what's happened here for me.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. So basically what is happening is we are getting into this whole unconscious territory that you have in your body. We're opening it up, slowing down so that your body itself can come up with the solutions. So what we're doing is allowing you yourself to find, they're called adaptive memory networks, to find your own already existing adaptive memory networks.
And when you do it that way, instead of me telling you, which goes into here in an intellectual place, I like to use a metaphor of like speaking the wrong language. It's like you're speaking Chinese to someone who speaks Italian, and you're both nodding and it looks and it seems, but nothing, there is not comprehension or understanding.
When you [00:22:00] yourself quote unquote "communicate" to you yourself on a cellular level, it changes in an authentic deep way. So if you're like, I want to exercise. I know I do. I've read all about it. Apparently scientifically it's good for my organs, it's good for my heart, it's good for my metabolism, it's good for longevity.
Intellectually, I get it. So I have decided I am going to exercise every day. And every day when it's time to exercise, I don't because I don't want to. I don't know why. It's just not me. Or like maybe it's a critical voice like, "Oh, I'm lazy," or, "I'm not whatever," or, "That's just not whatever." Come to find out on a deeper level when you go into this I'm unlovable place, that's where we started with an image and the visceral material, 'cause the language is visceral and sensory.
It's not intellectual. I'm gonna talk about the difference between the intellectual versus the [00:23:00] sensory. The way it's mapped internally, I don't even know myself. You don't know. It's kind of a web of information that you've taken in through your life on a cellular level on this with visceral and sensory data.
And through experiences that you had, whether modeled, experienced, communicated in actions, you felt exercise as a punishment. You felt it on a deep level, and that came up in some of the processing. So when you allow your system to actually feel and tap into a memory network that's already in there and let it communicate with other real, valid, lived experiences, your body's always gonna choose the most optimized answer for you. [00:24:00] Which you already knew intellectually was to exercise 'cause it's good for you, 'cause you're amazing, and you deserve it, and you're like a ball of love and amazingness, and this is what... when you have a garden that's amazing, you tend it. When you have a car that you care about, you maintain it. And so it makes sense that it might be tied in there. So we're allowing your body to re-optimize itself in an authentic way. I talk about it like it's like cutting butter that's warmed up.
It's so easy. It's like, "Yeah, of course I would do this thing, so easy. No, I don't feel like drinking or whatever."
Haley Radke: Yeah. I love how you're describing it because there, I've also been in talk therapy. I've also tried to change things based on, oh, use this strategy. Use this, right? And you're following this list.
But having something that clicks in your brain is so [00:25:00] different than following the steps that, my psychologist has laid out for me.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. I call it the slow hard way, and it does feel like white-knuckling. It's like pushing a boulder up a hill. It's like, "My gosh, I've gotta do this thing. I know it. I'm gonna try. I gotta work through this stuff. I gotta talk about hard stories that really trigger me also." I gotta do all these hard things. And in my opinion, it's called bottom-up processing, but when you go in, have it click authentically, it, to me, it's like dropping the boulder down the hill.
It's got its own momentum. It does its own thing. You're just like, "Whoa, there it goes. Oh, so good." It's very freeing. And what I've witnessed, 'cause what? It's been a year and a half now, Haley. It's long-lasting because it's authentic.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Dr. Julie Lopez: And I think that's really important, too, and I think that speaks to, and this parallels the world of psychedelics, and I know a lot more people are doing this microdosing and stuff like that.
[00:26:00] My bias is that the most important part is afterward. There's about a six-week window of neuroplasticity where you can create new habits that are so much easier to create 'cause you don't have the resistance literally trying to prevent you from walking out the door to go exercise because somewhere deep down you're like, "Hell no, I'm not doing this. That's punishment. Why would I do that," right? And that's just not there anymore.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah, that's such a good explanation. And I think of course I'm also for talk therapy and there's so many powerful things about- ... having our experiences validated and, those, especially for adopted people, like just literally having someone be like, "Oh yeah, I get it," for the first time is just huge.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Totally.
Haley Radke: However, I'll just say I did say, "Oh yeah," and I was, having these childhood memories or whatever and I'm reporting back to you. I wasn't like describing these big scenes and, going into all this, [00:27:00] painful stuff or anything like that. I literally was more like, "Oh, I just thought about this one time," and it was a couple sentences.
And I didn't have to explain over and over all these things to you. That's not what the, that wasn't the point of those things.
Dr. Julie Lopez: No. It's, doesn't matter at all. The point is how it's sitting in your cells now. So all that matters is now, this moment and going forward. That's it. Yeah. And your body responds to that too.
Haley Radke: Yeah, so I mean I think especially for folks who really don't wanna talk about difficult things, this is great.
Dr. Julie Lopez: So great. It's so great. And I don't, at this moment I don't know which clip you're gonna share, but you were so generous to give permission for me to use some pieces of it to train some of my practitioners at my mental health organization.
And we all, myself included, were so blown away by watching what we [00:28:00] all clearly felt, and I don't know if you felt it this way, was definitely material from when you were in the womb.
Haley Radke: Okay. Tell me more. I think when I was talking about the shapes and things-
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yes ...
Haley Radke: is what you said, "Oh, I think that is early on stuff."
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yes. It was when you were so parched. You were so parched. Set after set you were like, "Oh my gosh I am so thirsty. I'm like so thirsty," and you were... I could watch you actively drinking water. It wasn't about your actual present-day thirst. I felt very confident it was a earlier kind of memory, and I think what cemented it, 'cause I'm on the journey just like you are. I don't know what your unconscious map looks like. Nobody does. It's like in the moment it's coming forward, and you had shared that you knew that your [00:29:00] biological mom had smoked while she was pregnant with you.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Dr. Julie Lopez: And so it really felt so, so early and so just cellular, this thirst and not having enough satiation in your system. So that's powerful.
Haley Radke: Yeah. That... And it was such a weird experience to literally be drinking water. I think I put ChapStick on again 'cause my lips felt dry. I think I had tea with me. Like I'm drinking different beverages, and it was like nothing could touch it. That was weird.
Dr. Julie Lopez: But, and those are the types of feelings that I think everyone can relate to when there's a compulsive energy in our system. I have to meet this thing, and no matter what I do on a logical level, it's not quelled, and that's the kind of drivers that really have people [00:30:00] sacrifice with their lives for a substance or a behavior that feels like they're gonna get somewhere. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, like business owners, who think when they have a certain size company or a certain amount of wealth or a certain number of gold stars that say success, that they're gonna finally exhale, and feel like, "Oh my gosh, I've finally, arrived and I'm valuable," and that kind of thing.
And often it's not about the quote unquote drink, right? It's not about the beverage. It's about something deeper. And when you talk to that in a way it understands, you get the kind of results. I would guess on a theoretical level that your just absolute freedom around whether you want to have a drink or not, even though you didn't identify as an alcoholic or someone with a drive, you're just like, "Eh, no, I don't really, I don't want that [00:31:00] actually. I don't need it. I'm not whatever," is probably in part to being able to rework that on a deep level, that like insatiable thirst that lived in your cells.
Haley Radke: Interesting.
Dr. Julie Lopez: It's so fun.
Haley Radke: Okay. I'm excited for people to hear the clips of us talking about doing this, like right after, I think it was maybe two or three weeks after we had our time together.
And we also have a couple of adoptees who worked with you sharing their results as well. So we'll let folks listen to that. Before we go to that, Julie, is there anything else you wanna tell us about working with you, doing an intensive like this?
Dr. Julie Lopez: I guess I would wanna say that really incredible results are possible like this. It's not always in the logical map that someone thinks. And I would say that I'm not the only one doing this kind of work, this like... I think that it's [00:32:00] very specific to who is facilitating, right? People have what they've learned about this particular area of study. But I do believe that this is the wave of the future.
This is the most advanced way that I've seen to work and change and really break patterns and really have freedom and peace and optimization. So I'm just a big proponent of this non-talk-based way of working. So I know you're asking about me specifically, but I think there's a bigger message for everyone.
I know you and I are both adoptees, and this is Adoptees On. So what I think is really powerful is that you can actually access material that you're never going to remember, that those moments that may have greatly impacted the life you're living today, that you're like, "Wow, no one was around that's gonna tell me what happened when I was 2 or [00:33:00] 1 or these times."
Or, "Yeah, I don't have access to ancestral information." I wanna say this is the most, in my opinion, compelling part about the work. You literally don't need that data. You don't need the information 'cause your body's already holding the things that are impacting you today. So that's the biggest thing that I would wanna say about it, that there's hope for healing even if you don't have access to information that it logically feels you would need. Your body already has everything that it needs to change.
Haley Radke: Amazing. It is such a hopeful message. Okay, let's listen to us from the past talking about our experience. And then we'll hear from those two adoptees, and we'll be right back with you.
I felt proud of myself for, like, when I had the really big insight about this used to be my pattern as a child, no wonder I'm still [00:34:00] doing it, and I felt just self-compassion when observing it. I was like, "Good job, Haley." Like- Yeah ... that could have been really judgmental, but instead it was like, "Oh, okay. I get it now." Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: And kind of love for your struggling self.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. So it's almost like I don't have to feel guilty for doing that. It's like it totally made sense-
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah ...
Haley Radke: and that's just, that's how I could stay alive. The insight I've been thinking about the most is when we were talking about how sick I was through both my pregnancies and wanting to just get my kids out of my body, right? So I've spent the last week thinking about are there ways I'm pushing them away right now, and just feeling more able to connect.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Aw.
Haley Radke: Yeah
Dr. Julie Lopez: With your kids?
Haley Radke: With my kiddos, yeah. And I've always I don't ever feel like I've not been a [00:35:00] good mom or anything like that, but I just feel like there's just something else that's just been removed in between us, which is really cool. Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: It's really cool. And you are the one in the relationship, so you are the best judge of the quality of your presence or your ability to be without feeling like you need space or feeling like you need, some distance or some freedom or whatever. Because it did seem, as an observer, right? You're living the experience, but as an observer, it did look like you, during that time period, were very triggered by the experience, of course.
So let me tell you what I saw and then what was so cool about what was happening. And I feel like I've gotten pretty good at this, 'cause I've seen it happen so many times.
A lot of your material that was coming forward [00:36:00] didn't have pictures or words or anything. Remember when it was, like, shapes-
Haley Radke: Yeah ...
Dr. Julie Lopez: and kinda... I think that was all stuff in the womb or pre-verbal stuff, that you were like, had main meeting in your system and you were sorting it through with new information coming into it. That's what I saw. Because, and I could go back to the exact thing, I felt like I was watching your system catch up to today, instead of that stuff that never had room or space to, work out just being stuffed in there. And remember, there was a lot visceral with your-
Haley Radke: Oh, yes.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Do you remember that or not really?
Haley Radke: Yeah, my throat. The dryness. Oh my God.
Dr. Julie Lopez: But it wasn't about water. You were drinking-
Haley Radke: No ...
Dr. Julie Lopez: your water. It wasn't about that.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: It was like a thirst that couldn't get quenched.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: It was like something that you needed. And yeah, so it was like watching the shapes during that time. You mentioned that you had strep throat and had your tonsils out. [00:37:00] Me too. I see all these patterns and I wonder how correlated they are to this- ... like pre-verbal trauma type of thing, but that's just me. There was a lot of physical stuff happening. There was nausea, there was head stuff. As the person watching, I was just trying to take my cues from you and have your system feel super attended to, like listening to what it needed and not demanding anything outside of what your insides were actually saying. And there was a lot of pain in there. In this not, in this amorphous form. Not enough sustenance, not enough fluid, physical pain.
Haley Radke: Can I say something about that?
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.
Haley Radke: When you were talking about the thirst thing, what you observed for me, you were, you at some point were like, "Oh, sometimes it, you can have low amniotic fluid."
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.
Haley Radke: And just now when you were talking about that, I was like, oh my gosh. So my [00:38:00] parents told me that I was a super colicky baby and they had to try all these different formulas. And so I wonder if I was hungry and thir- for, and for milk, and it's like it's not coming, or the right thing's not coming, or the right... I wonder if it's that.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. We're not just doing an excavation for the fun of poking at something that's painful. And the reason why I'm biased about this is there's not a lot of storytelling. You don't need to tell the horrible stories. You do a little if it's coming up for you, but we're not just talking about really hard things that are just gonna re-traumatize you.
We're letting stuff be expressed so that it can move, and sometimes it doesn't have words. It's just a visceral feeling that you're moving through.
Haley Radke: That is fascinating.
Dr. Julie Lopez: It's so wild how it happens in the present moment. Last week you were burping actually a little bit. Do you remember that?
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: It was like actually happening, like the stuff was actually [00:39:00] coming forward. I had a client that I worked with who had a lot of severe physical abuse as a child, and while we were working, and I'm gonna pull my hair back so you can see it, like a hand print came up on her neck.
I'm not even kidding. While we're working, a big red welt came up, and then it moved out. It's like these like memories from childhood. So like we're working on something, you're having the held visceral experience, and you started burping, and then you were like, "Yes, I was colicky, I had this." It's like your physiological reaction from the time is still in there, right? And of course, if your body feels terrible or your body is like feeling really distressed, then that's gonna play a factor on how you try to cope with it. Yeah.
Haley Radke: I think this is the first time... the phrase, the book, whatever, The Body Keeps the Score.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Of course.
Haley Radke: Like this I feel like is the first time I've really [00:40:00] pictured what that could mean. I think I've always thought of it as oh, so you might get a chronic illness or you might... like more in that vein versus no, it's all in there somewhere.
Dr. Julie Lopez: All in there, and you could get a chronic pain.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: And that's why when I do these intensives, I've had not one, but many clients who have had a diagnosis that's like chronic fatigue syndrome or like some type of other inflammatory condition, and Gabor Mate talks about this. When you take the stress load down in the body, you can actually reduce physical symptoms that lead to these diagnoses, where a lot of times medical doctors will say, "Ah, it's all in your head," or, "The scans are fine. You're fine." You're like, "No I'm literally not fine. I know I'm not fine," and it makes people super depressed because they feel a little bit crazy, and they're not.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: So yeah, the body keeps the score [00:41:00] in a very specific way, and there's a way to read it, and there's a way to move it and change it, which is huge.
Haley Radke: I think one of the most powerful things for me was when you were like, "Oh my gosh, it's like a perfect storm."
Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh my gosh.
Haley Radke: Yeah. 'Cause the outside world looking in, it's like, "You're so lucky. Everybody loves my parents. They're elementary school teachers pillars in the commun- all those things. And no- but nobody sees me, right? Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. And gosh, I don't know about you, but I think the dominant culture in general, like my little parents were doing the best they could. They were told, "Tell her she's adopted so she's not surprised." Good on them, right? I wasn't a late discovery adoptee or whatever.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: But no, I was not traumatized. I was a blank slate little baby in a blanket that, had no [00:42:00] pre them. The first three months just didn't happen, nor did the pregnancy or anything.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: And so there was a cultural collusion with negating the real experience that your body might have been going through.
Katie Hern: My name's Katie Hern, and I'm author of the book Reunion, which features letters my birth mother and I exchanged during the first year of reuniting 30 years ago. I've done a lot of talk therapy, but I found I reached a point of diminishing returns. I understood the trauma of being relinquished as a newborn and how this had rippled out in my life, but my issues weren't shifting.
It felt like the trauma and its aftermath were locked in my body. A friend recommended EMDR with Julie Lopez, and I've done two half-day sessions with her over Zoom. For both, we met beforehand, and she had me articulate goals and external ways we could track whether the goals had been met. Afterwards, I could see [00:43:00] progress on all of these.
For example, I started with almost no tolerance for sitting quietly on my own. It just made me way too anxious, and now I love to spend time on my own, and I make it part of every day. The biggest effect was one I hadn't planned for. After our first session, I noticed that almost all my shame had lifted. I could look back over difficult past experiences and see the shame from the outside, see how it took hard situations and made them much worse.
I didn't even know how much shame was affecting my life until I wasn't swimming in it anymore.
Gregory James Kaple: I grew up in a loving adoptive family and spent most of my life believing I was simply driven, ambitious, and determined to succeed. What I didn't understand was how much of that drive was fueled by something deeper. For decades, I unconsciously carried a belief that I needed to earn my place, prove my value, and work harder than everyone around me to deserve belonging.
From [00:44:00] the outside, it looked successful. I built a career, achieved leadership roles, and checked many of the boxes I thought would finally make me feel settled. But underneath, there was a constant sense that something was missing. Everything began to change when I discovered Nancy Verrier's book, The Primal Wound, and started exploring the impact adoption had on my life.
Through that journey, I located my birth family and learned that I had been given a name at birth, Anthony William McDermott, together with the name I grew up with, Gregory James Kaple. Around the same time, I began intensive EMDR work with Dr. Julie Lopez. For me, that was the turning point. Talk therapy had helped me understand my story.
EMDR helped my nervous system finally process it. The healing wasn't about uncovering new information. It was about releasing beliefs and patterns that had been operating beneath awareness for decades: hypervigilance, overachievement, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the feeling that I had to earn love, safety, or [00:45:00] belonging.
Over the last four years, I've experienced a level of integration I didn't know was possible. Rather than choosing between different parts of myself, I've learned to welcome them all: the son raised by the Capel family, the child born Anthony McDermott, the performer, the executive, the coach, the seeker.
For the first time in my life, those parts feel connected rather than fragmented. My message to other adoptees is simple: healing is possible. The effects of relinquishment trauma are real, but they are not permanent. Sometimes the path forward requires approaches that go beyond talking and engage the brain, body, and nervous system directly.
Today, that experience informs the work I do helping high-performing professionals navigate pressure, identity, relationships, and life transitions with greater presence and authenticity. I am profoundly grateful for the adoptee community, for pioneers like Nancy Verrier, and for clinicians like Dr. Julie Lopez, who helped me find a path toward [00:46:00] becoming more fully myself.
Haley Radke: Okay. Julie, that sounds like you have really I know you've really impacted my life and others. I love that. It's so amazing, isn't it, to hear how your life's work- ... is like having ripples out that you might not even know about.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh, totally. Yes, totally. It's so meaningful in the most significant ways, honestly.
Haley Radke: Amazing. Where can folks connect with you online and learn more from you, or if they want to experience what I did, sign up for an intensive with you?
Dr. Julie Lopez: So the intensives for me are wrapped into my expert one-on-one consultations, and this is gonna be really hard to remember. It's at www.drjulielopez.com.
You can see all the things that I'm up to. I'm just really passionate about sharing this message of hope and healing to audiences, my books, [00:47:00] my programs. I offer some wellness packages for organizations that's all built on the same science that fuels those intensives. And yeah, it's easy, Dr. Julie Lopez.
If you happen to be in DC, Maryland, or Virginia, then I also have a mental health center that does this type of work, other people that are doing intensives here, and that's called the Viva Center, and that's at vivapartnership.com. But I know your listenership is global and people are tapping in from around the world, so the local stuff is limited 'cause they're all licensed practitioners, so it has to be people in that area.
Haley Radke: And you personally have chosen folks who are adoptee competent and have trained them in that way.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Totally.
Haley Radke: I was looking at the list of your therapists that you have there now, and they look great. So well done.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Thank you. [00:48:00] They are great.
Haley Radke: Thank you, Julie. You've made a huge impact on my life. I really appreciate you.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh my gosh. Thank you for letting me and for being a beacon of sharing good news and for having me on your podcast again. It's always a pleasure to be here.
Haley Radke: Pleasure is all mine. Love it.
I wanted to wait until some time had passed before I came to you to talk about this experience with Dr. Julie. And, ah, she gifted it to me, which I'm very grateful for, but I didn't want to bring it to you until I was like, "Do these things really stick?" And I can't believe the impact it had, and I know there's so many ways you can invest your money.
There's therapy, there's the psychedelic assists there's all kinds of coaches out there. There's all kinds [00:49:00] of books and courses and, self-helpy things, just high and low. And I try very hard to make sure I only bring you people that I actually endorse and believe are doing things in an ethical manner and have the credentials to back up what they do.
And I'm so excited to have someone else to recommend to you, some, some other really amazing brain, body-based approach because I don't know how many people email me every week asking for the list of therapists, and, "I need someone adoptee competent, and I'm working on this and that, and I'm not seeing any change."
And so I'm so grateful to have people I can point you to for when you really need help. [00:50:00] And I trust Dr. Julie. She has really made a difference in my life. And she's been a real cheerleader for Adoptees On for many years. I got to meet her in person a number of years ago when I was in DC, and she's just as amazing as she sounds on air and incredibly well-researched, science-backed.
I think if this is something that sounds up your alley and you have the resources, I can't wait to hear what changes for you. So with all that, thank you so much for listening and, taking a peek into what it was like for me. I have the whole session recorded. As Julie mentioned, she uses it as some training with her staff.
And I was going through it to be like, "Oh, is there any clips I can play for you guys?" And there wasn't any... it's so [00:51:00] strange in the moment, and it sounded just as strange when I went back to look through it. So I didn't include any of those, but I thought that hearing our conversation from just a few weeks after would be helpful.
And I'll tell you what, it was helpful for me to read back through it and just be like, "Wow, I am proud of Haley, and look at what she's, dealt with and accomplished." And it's nice to feel that way about yourself, so yeah. Anyway, okay, I digress. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again very soon.
