The other day one of my clients, with tears in her eyes, shared a recent moment she had when it hit her just hThe other day one of my clients, with tears in her eyes, shared a recent moment she had when it hit her just how incredible it was that she survived her childhood. I’ve thought about that often – for myself and for those that I sit with every day in my office.

It really is amazing.

That survival, in part, is because you have Adapted Protector parts that came on board in your childhood, when you needed them. Those parts showed up because you had to adapt to the reality of your family system, in whatever way you could. You found a way to manage whatever it was you experienced, no matter how awful.

That might have looked like shutting your feelings down if it wasn’t safe for you to have them. It might have looked like focusing on your studies and getting straight A’s because you got the message that it was something that gave you value. It could have looked like minimizing what happened to you or tucking it so far away it rarely, if ever, darkened the door of your mind. It could have looked like fawning, people-pleasing, never saying no. It could have looked like being self-critical.

Whatever those adapted ways of being were, you developed them in childhood, and they helped you survive and get through. That is how your brain was designed to work.

One of the ways you adapted to the reality of what you experienced as a child was to, unconsciously, align with your parents.

What I mean by align is that you needed to have some sense that there were adults in your life who knew what they were doing. So whatever was actually happening — neglect, abuse, a parent who was checked out, a parent who was raging, a parent who was absent even when they were in the room — you found a way to adapt to it.

Not because you agreed with it, but because the alternative was unbearable. Believing your parents were unsafe would have meant facing the reality that there was no safe adult available — and that combination, needing someone you can’t trust, is what Jennifer Freyd named betrayal trauma. It’s too much for a child to hold.

So your mind found another way to make sense of it. Not “my mother was right to shame me for my body,” but something quieter and more absorbable: this must be true about me. Not “it was OK that my dad told me to man up when I cried,” but instead: my feelings aren’t okay, I’m too much.

You absorbed those messages as facts about yourself, because carrying them was more survivable than carrying the truth about your parents. Believing you were too much, your feelings weren’t okay, and that you shouldn’t have needs protected you from really knowing what was true: that the person you were wired to trust was the one hurting you.

Aligning with your parents and family system could look a lot of different ways, but the commonality was that the adaptation kept you from connecting with the reality of what was actually happening around you.

Some examples of what this could look like:

• If your mom passed out on the sofa every night and didn’t take care of you, the story became that she was just a heavy sleeper
• If your dad was mean and shaming, you decided it must have been because you did something wrong
• If your parents were consumed by conflict or crisis, you became the one who managed the house, the schedule, the younger siblings
• If a parent couldn’t regulate their own emotions, you became hyper-attuned to theirs, managing your behavior to keep them steady
• If no one was emotionally available, you decided you didn’t need that type of connection, or that there was something about you that caused it

Different behaviors but the same underlying survival belief: it must be me, because the people who are supposed to love me can’t possibly be the ones doing this to me.

Alignment wasn’t the only job your Adapted Protector took on. There’s a difference between knowing what happened and connecting with what it was like to live through it. Another part of the protector’s job was to keep you from having to feel the full weight of the reality of what you were experiencing — to keep you from connecting with the felt experience of what was happening to you and around you.

Using the examples above:

• You couldn’t let yourself feel the loneliness that came up every time you put yourself to bed
• It would have been too painful to feel the depth of shame your dad put on you over and over again
• You couldn’t feel the overwhelm that came with all of that responsibility
• You had to stay disconnected from how exhausting it was to be so hyper-attuned to your parents, and how confusing it was when it didn’t “work”
• You couldn’t let yourself feel the depth of sorrow and fear connected to not having anyone attuned to you and your needs

Looking at the why behind your adaptations invites you to connect with your story in a deeper way. You get a clearer path for your healing.

Being with that reality offers an invitation to deeper healing. Allowing this truth to fully land happens little by little as you’re ready. With the support of your therapist and trusted friends, you will start to experience the freedom that deeper healing brings.

Photo by Katie Gerrard on Unsplash