an alarm going off without a fire
You might not connect the dots right away. The constant overthinking. That pit-in-your-stomach worry that something’s about to go wrong. The pressure to hold it all together and get everything just right.
For many adoptees, anxiety isn’t random—it’s rooted in early experiences your nervous system remembers, even if your brain doesn’t.
🌱 when anxiety has deeper roots
Even if you were adopted into an ideal situation— loving, stable, and everything people say it “should” be—it still began with a separation. Sometimes within hours or days of birth. And while you might not consciously remember it, your body does.
Attachment isn’t just about bonding with a caregiver—it’s how we first learn to feel safe, seen, and soothed in the world. It’s the foundation our nervous system builds itself around.
When a baby is consistently comforted, fed, and held, their body learns: it’s safe to need others. It’s safe to rest. And when that doesn’t happen—or when there’s a separation, even one that was necessary or loving—your body can register it as danger. Not consciously, but neurologically.
Your body learns: I might not be safe. I have to stay alert to survive. People leave. Needing others is risky. If I stay quiet and good, maybe I won’t be left again.
Over time, that internal state of high alert can turn into anxiety—even if you’re not consciously aware of the original origin. Because that wiring doesn’t just disappear when you’re placed into a new, loving home. It can stay tucked away and resurface later—especially when things feel uncertain, emotionally risky, or out of your control.
🚨 signs of a nervous system in overdrive
Anxiety isn’t always panic attacks and racing hearts. Sometimes it looks like:
Overthinking everything you said in a conversation
Feeling like you have to be perfect or easy to love
Avoiding closeness or oversharing too fast
Constant fear of being rejected or left out
Struggling to trust
Feeling like you’re “too much” or “not enough”
Difficulty calming down—even when there’s nothing wrong
When you grow up with unanswered questions, missing pieces, or a history of separation that no one really talks about, it makes sense that your brain would stay on high alert. Anxiety is often your nervous system trying to keep you safe—even if it’s exhausting. Your brain and body learned to protect you from loss, uncertainty, or emotional harm.
It’s survival.
But when survival mode becomes your baseline, it can wear you down. You might move through the world with a smile on your face and a mental to-do list that never ends. You might be the one everyone counts on—organized, driven, “fine.” And underneath it all, you might feel like no one really sees how hard it is to just exist sometimes.
You’re not alone if any of this hits close to home. I lived this and see these patterns again and again in therapy with adoptees—especially teens, college students, and young adults. People who feel like they should be okay, but can’t shake the pressure, the fear, the constant overthinking. People who wonder why things feel so hard when nothing really looks wrong from the outside.
Your anxiety isn’t a flaw—it’s a signal.
A sign that there’s more beneath the surface, and that your body’s been trying to look out for you all along.
With the right support, you can start to feel safe enough to let go of constant hypervigilance. You can learn what it feels like to rest, to trust, to not always have to be “on.”
Adoption-competent therapy gives you space to take off the pressure. You don’t have to explain away your anxiety or convince someone it’s real. You get to be curious about your story, connect the dots, and learn how to be in your body without constantly bracing for something bad to happen.
Together, we can start to shift the question from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened in me?”
