This is a guest article by Nicole McGrath, an Australian adopted person and certified breathwork facilitator based in the UK.
Have you ever felt the urge to lie down, to be held, to simply stop – and then immediately judged yourself for it?
For many adopted people, rest can feel unsafe, weak or indulgent. Something to be earned rather than simply answered.
Recently, during one of my breathwork sessions focused on safety and belonging, one participant felt drawn to curl up under a weighted blanket after our practice. Rather than trusting that impulse, they interpreted it as collapse and pushed themselves to go and help a sick neighbour instead.
Later that evening, they found themselves compulsively eating sugary foods, spiralling into shame about their ‘lack of willpower’, feeling useless and weak, unable to help themselves despite knowing better intellectually.
This experience illustrates something I see consistently in my work with adopted people: how disconnected we can become from our own body’s signals, and how that disconnection can lead us to override the very wisdom that could support us.
Two very different kinds of stillness
One of the most important things an adopted person can learn is the difference between regulated rest and dysregulated shutdown. They can look similar from the outside. Internally, they are very different.
Regulated rest has a particular quality to it. The body feels heavy but peaceful. There is a sense of safety in the stillness. The mind becomes quiet but remains clear. There may be a desire for comfort or holding. This is the nervous system saying: I feel safe enough now to rest and integrate. It tends to appear after moments of genuine calm or connection, as it did for my participant after our breathwork practice.
Dysregulated shutdown has a different texture entirely. The body feels stuck, frozen or collapsed rather than peacefully heavy. The mind becomes foggy or spinning rather than quietly clear. It is often accompanied by compulsive behaviours, shame and self-criticism.
Shutdown is protective. It is the nervous system’s way of conserving energy or surviving perceived threat. But it is not the same as rest, and it is not where my participant started.
What happened in her story is that the initial urge to rest was regulated. The shutdown came later, after the rest was overridden.
Why this pattern is so common for adopted people
In my work with adopted people, I consistently see how early separation creates specific nervous system patterns that show up in adulthood in very recognisable ways.
Many adopted people develop a hypervigilance to others’ needs, because the nervous system learned early that survival depends on not being a burden. This creates an almost automatic override of personal needs in favour of helping others, often before there is even a conscious decision to do so. My participant did not think carefully about whether to help her neighbour. Her body simply moved her there.
There is also often a real difficulty trusting body signals. Early disruption in attachment can create a deep disconnection from internal cues, leaving us to rely on external validation rather than internal wisdom. We learn to read the room rather than read ourselves.
Many adopted people carry shame around needing comfort at all. The need for soothing can trigger the belief that I shouldn’t need this, and that shame frequently leads to the very self-sabotaging behaviours we then judge ourselves for.
Learning to tell the difference
When you feel the urge to rest or be comforted, it is worth pausing to notice the quality of that feeling rather than immediately acting on or against it.
Ask yourself: does this feel peaceful or panicked? Can I think clearly, or is my mind foggy? Does my body feel heavy and safe, or stuck and disconnected? Is my breathing natural and easy? Do I feel present in myself?
You might also try what I think of as a compassion check. If a child came to me asking for exactly this comfort, what would I say to them? What would it look like to answer that need with kindness? How might I give myself what I am asking for?
The goal is not to always be in one particular state, or to never feel activated. The goal is to recognise what your nervous system is actually asking for, and to respond with curiosity and compassion rather than judgement.
Reclaiming rest as resistance
For those of us who were adopted, learning to rest when the body first asks, not when it finally forces you, is a quiet act of revolution. It is saying: my needs matter. I can trust my body’s wisdom. I do not have to earn the right to rest.
That is not a small thing. It directly challenges the deep patterning that taught many of us our survival depended on constantly proving our worthiness, on being useful, on not taking up too much space.
Each time we honour what our body is asking for instead of overriding it, we build something new. We strengthen our capacity for regulation. We create trust between mind and body. We begin to heal the early disruption that told us our needs were too much.
Your body’s request for rest and comfort after healing work is not weakness. It is not collapse. It is a sign that your nervous system felt safe enough to ask for what it needed. That, in itself, is profound.
Nicole McGrath is an Australian adopted person who now lives in the UK. She is a certified breathwork facilitator running programmes for adopted people focused on embodied, trauma-informed healing. To learn more, visit www.thisbeautifulbreath.com
A note on language
While VANISH uses the term ‘adoptees’ throughout our website based on community feedback and common usage, we respect that language preferences vary. Nicole intentionally uses ‘adopted people’ in her practice and writing. In Nicole’s words: “The ‘-ee’ suffix places adoption at the centre of a person’s identity, as though being adopted is the primary and defining thing about them. But adoption is only part of our story, not the whole of it. We are people first, with all the complexity, contradiction and richness that implies.”