Nick Isel doesn’t take no for an answer. When at 15 years old he learned that the distant man with the hair-trigger temper who raised him wasn’t his father, he confronted his mother, demanding details. He learned that he’d been conceived with sperm from the infamous Repository for Germinal Choice, popularly known as the Genius Sperm Bank, a eugenics experiment carried out by an eccentric millionaire, Robert Graham, who believed the quality of American genetic material had gone to hell. The repository was responsible for the births of 229 children from 1982 until it closed in 1999. At least 30 of those children are Isel’s half-siblings.

Isel was determined to find out the identity of his biological father, but his mother couldn’t recall the details about the donor she’d chosen so many years earlier and didn’t know what had become of the paperwork. It seemed like a closed door, but Isel refused to be stopped. He tore through boxes and boxes of records, bent on finding something that would provide a clue to his origins. He persisted until he obtained a document that contained the donor’s code name — Coral 36 — and little else.

Having that piece of paper gave him some measure of peace and even optimism, but there was little he could do with it. There was no longer a repository he could contact and no records he could access. When he became aware that journalist David Plotz was writing an article about the notorious sperm bank for Slate, he tracked him down and asked for his help. Plotz — who eventually wrote “The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank,” based in part on conversations with Isel — came through and provided Isel with the donor’s name. Just a teenager, Isel piled his family — his wife and baby son — into a car and drove from Illinois to Florida to meet his elusive father.

Isel brings this same tenacity and refusal to accept anything less than “yes” to his mission to persuade the government to protect the rights of donor-conceived people and force the mighty fertility industry — valued last year at $5.87 billion — to be accountable and bend to the needs of the individuals born from the genetic materials in which it trades.

Isel’s advocacy was spurred by the knowledge that like him, his 30 half-siblings from the sperm bank — thanks to the longstanding sway of donor anonymity — had no access to medical records that might allow them to assess their health risks. Nor did they have a way to obtain basic information about their genetic identities. Casting around for a way to make a difference, he lit on the idea of filing a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Citizen Petition to influence policy about donor anonymity and record retention, something that had never been done before.Isel researched online for about an hour and discovered that the FDA “already has an entire division dedicated to the regulation of biological and related products including blood, vaccines, allergenics, tissues, and cellular and gene therapies.” He then invested a full week’s time into reviewing the general process of submitting a Citizen Petition and developing his three-page document.

He took a pragmatic approach, not aiming to address all the ills of donor conception, but instead to target several of the most significant issues, setting a precedent and foundation for future action and creating a record state policymakers could draw on when proposing legislation.

Isel’s triple-pronged approach was designed primarily to ensure that donor conceived people are able to obtain their medical histories. It called for an end to donor anonymity, an extension of the record-keeping period from 10 to 50 years to allow individuals adequate time to obtain this critical information, and record redundancy — the retention of records in duplicate locations.

Like virtually all advocates, Isel believes an end to anonymity — which is being hastened by the advent of inexpensive DNA testing — is critical. “The environment of toxic secrecy created by the practice of donor anonymity places an unnecessary shame and stigma on all parties involved. Informed consent is not adequately provided to the donors or recipients when the unfulfillable promise of anonymity is made prior to donation,” Isel says. “Donor conceived people are divested of half of their biological identity and family medical history by design prior to conception and they are treated more unfairly by the practice than any of the other parties involved, despite the fact that by nature they are the only ones unable to provide any shape or form of consent,” he adds.

A 50-year record retention policy is essential, Isel says, “because many genetic diseases do not present until later on in life, and their transmission is not monitored.” Record redundancy, he adds, is crucial in case of the inadvertent destruction of records. “In the event of a catastrophic natural disaster, human error, or corruption of data by computer malfunction, records would still be preserved,” he says. “There also exists the potential for a breakdown in the lines of communication between the fertility establishment and donors, recipients, and donor conceived individuals — for example, if they go out of business or the donor conceived people don’t know which fertility establishment holds their records.” This, he adds, can be addressed by appointing a regulatory agency to maintain a duplicate copy of all records.

Once Isel began this fight, he knew he’d see it through no matter what it took. If the FDA denied his petition, he’d explore any legal recourse available.

The FDA accepted his petition in September 2016 and opened  a comment period during which the public added positive responses and arguments for proposed changes to public health policy. In March 2017, the FDA announced that it needed more time to review the petition, and in September 2018 the petition “was denied on the erroneous grounds that the FDA doesn’t believe genetic diseases act as communicable diseases and, therefore, it has no reason to regulate the spread and transmission of genetic disease,” Isel says.

Not surprisingly, Isel adamantly disagreed. Undeterred, he hired a licensed federal district attorney to draft a petition for reconsideration, which, he explains, “addresses the issue in great detail, explaining why and how the FDA misinterpreted the language of its own code of federal regulations.” In the petition for reconsideration, Isel’s attorney stated, “The failure of the existing regulations to contemplate the difficulties of progeny such as Isel is precisely why new regulations must be promulgated, particularly when the old regulations divest this new group of their Constitutional Rights to receive and maintain their own personal, health, and genetic information.” She notes that donor conceived individuals weren’t capable of opting in or out of the destruction of their genetic information.

The FDA accepted the petition for reconsideration as “timely and cogent” and opened a new six-month comment period. When that ended on March 18, 2019, the public was no longer able to provide feedback. Once again refusing to be stopped, Isel requested and was granted a reopening of the comment period until the agency reaches a decision. Donor conceived people and allies can support his efforts by taking advantage of the extended comment period and weighing in with their own experiences. These comments are key to persuading the FDA to acknowledge the deleterious effect genetic illnesses may have on donor conceived individuals and the importance of access to records. Individuals who’ve inherited genetic health risks can take this opportunity to educate the agency about the personal cost of lack of access to medical histories. Others, including allies, can voice their concerns as well. Comments can be made anonymously. Access the petition and comment here. (If you have questions about the petition or need help navigating the document, send Isel a message at nick.isel@gmail.com or call him at 630-923-2745.)

In addition to supporting the petition, Isel says, advocates should speak with their state representatives about sponsoring bills in their respective states, as he did in his state of Illinois. Isel lobbied his state representative, Keith Wheeler, who filed Illinois House Bill 2140 in February. If passed, it would require sperm banks in Illinois to retain records, including the name and contact information of every donor, for 50 years following the donation of sperm. It further calls for a sperm donor to “agree in writing that he has no expectation of anonymity with regard to his donation and that his biological child may be provided with his contact information upon request of the child or the child’s parent or guardian if the child is under the age of 18.” The bill is currently in committee.

Although he advocates for state legislation since the FDA has been slow to act, Isel insists that donor anonymity should be banned on the federal level in the interest of public health and wellness. In addition, he says, a federal prohibition would align the FDA’s Code of Federal Regulations “with the FDA’s stated mission and congressional mandate to regulate the fertility industry.” If it were to happen at the state level, he adds, “it would need to be done in every state to prevent ‘reproductive tourism.”Isel has called his efforts to petition the FDA “a game of inches,” acknowledging that there are many additional aspects of donor conception that must be regulated. He notes that there exist no screening procedures as there are with adoption. Furthermore, “There are no limits on the number of offspring sired per donor and no federal civil or criminal penalties established for fertility fraud,” he observes. “There are many more steps that can be taken to make the practice of donor conception more ethical and reduce the systematic injustices inherent in the status quo. Preservation of family medical history is the low-hanging fruit.” He identifies the following additional needs:

Limiting the number of times a donor’s sperm can be used. “Using the same sperm or egg to produce an excessive number of offspring increases the eventual chances of consanguineous unions, lowers the genetic diversity of our species, and, by extension, survivability during a global pandemic or other catastrophe.”

Requiring stricter comprehensive medical and genetic testing of donors. “There are more than 7,000 different types of rare disease, and only about 200 to 300 of those are commonly tested for at the more thorough fertility establishments.”

Mandating reporting of births resulting from donor sperm. “This is the only way to ensure that proposed limits on the number of offspring per donor are adhered to.”

Developing a national registry that keeps track of donors. This is necessary “to prevent reproductive tourism. Base universal guidelines and best practices must be established and agreed upon by all countries.”

Tracking donors’ health and updating parents about changes. “This information has the potential to be life-saving.”

Educating sperm banks and clinics about those impacts and the needs of donor-conceived people. More information about these issues is needed so recipients and donors can be better informed prior to their participation. “The job of the fertility establishment should not be over after a recipient achieves pregnancy; rather its responsibility for the person it helped create should extend throughout that person’s lifespan.”In addition to commenting on the petition, speaking out in other ways can be equally effective. According to Isel, the personal is political. “In a community as underrepresented as this one, simply sharing your own personal story is a form of advocacy because it increases the visibility of the donor conceived community and pushes other people to ask questions they’ve never considered before,” he says. This type of advocacy, he adds, elicits empathy from people who weren’t previously aware of the experiences and concerns of donor conceived people. It doesn’t take a megaphone and a soap box to make a difference. “Many members of the community are performing advocacy work without even realizing it when they casually tell their friends about their backgrounds.”

By B.K. JacksonIn a black and white photograph with deckled edges, I stand grasping the railing of my crib, my eyes peering over my fingers and staring into the camera lens. I like to pretend my mother took this picture on our last day together — that she snipped a slender strand of hair that fell down my forehead and later taped it to the back of the photograph. Maybe she tucked the photo into a small silver box she carried with her move after move, always placing it on the highest shelf in her closet, underneath a pile of sweaters. Maybe each year she took it out on my birthday, remembering how I fussed when she cut the lock of hair or the way I clutched her scarf trying to make her stay, leaving a sticky handprint and a sweet-sour milk scent that still slays her in her dreams. Maybe over time the photo grew brittle and creased, with flecks of emulsion wearing off and its corners crumbling. Maybe many years later, when her children became old enough to snoop, she took the box down from her hiding place and held the photo over the sink, struck a match to it and watched it buckle and warp, the flame moving inward from its white deckled borders, the fire enveloping me in my crib. Maybe she dropped it in the sink but couldn’t take her eyes off it until there was nothing left but charred confetti. Maybe she thought that immolation would annihilate the memories and let her leave me — us — finally, in the past.

Maybe. I’ll never know. For 50 years, she was a mystery to us while we were skeletons in her cupboard. She left no evidence of my brother and me or her marriage to my father. We had existed only as rumor to the six children born after she left us, children named as her sole survivors on the obituary I discovered three years after she died.

I wonder when we became a secret. There must have been a particular moment when she decided to tuck her past life away, like the photo in the box. Did she have to sever ties with everyone who knew her, who knew us? Did she walk away from her mother and father too? Did she expect we’d try to track her down and so covered her tracks? What did it cost her to keep us under wraps? After all, it’s not easy to shed one’s skin — to slough off the memories and never turn back. It takes work to put on a new face for strangers, paint over your history, scrape away your failings and regrets. It takes practice. Once you start keeping secrets, there’s no turning back. You have to pay attention to detail and remember what you tell people so you don’t trip yourself up. You have to be resolute, even when someone tender enough to consider loving you tries to pry open your heart and extract your deepest secrets.

Or maybe it took no effort at all. Maybe she simply started over and let her old life fade away. Let us fade away.

I don’t know what her truth was. Maybe she carried us in her heart like thorns. Maybe she buried her memories deep down only to have them rise back up, like grasping tendrils of a stubborn weed, like tiny hands reaching out to grab a scarf.

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.

The characters in “Grey’s Anatomy” are right. Dancing it off really works. But it’s nothing new. They’re on to something even our ancestors practiced. Dancing is as old as life, and its favorable effects on the mind and body have been known for ages. In recent decades, dance has been recognized as a therapeutic tool, and dance therapy is now widely used in a range of therapeutic settings. But its remedial aspects were known even among primitive tribes, who, according to educator, researcher, and family therapist Pauline Boss, worked out their trauma by dancing around the fire. As these primitive people knew, dance is a powerful means of releasing emotion and energy — a way of draining pent-up negative feelings.

It’s well known that rhythmic movement has numerous physical benefits. It offers a good cardiovascular workout, improves core strength, and helps build flexibility and stamina. Sustained movement lowers blood pressure, increases endurance, and boosts metabolism. And research indicates that it improves memory and cognition while it decreases the risk of dementia as you age.

But dancing isn’t merely good for your physical health. There’s a significant body of evidence indicating it’s a potent stress-buster and a mood lifter. As famed hoofer Debbie Reynolds once said, “That’s what I love about dance. It makes you happy, fully happy.” Moving to music takes your mind out of time. It trips the release of feel-good neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine, improving mood and easing tension at the same time that it helps your brain develop new neural networks.

“Dance releases endorphins and oxytocin in the same way as laughter, creating positive mood and decreasing stress,” observes dance therapist Chandra Chaikin, MS, LMFT, R-DMT.  “Dance also tends to balance out emotional energy as a result of allowing our bodies to shake and move.”

Research shows dance relieves anxiety, reduces anger and depression, and boosts focus and concentration. One Australian study demonstrated that those who learned to tango were better able to relieve depression and anxiety than were those who meditated. And at the University of London, study participants with anxiety were assigned to one of four classes — math, music, exercise, or modern dance. Only those participating in the modern dance class saw relief for anxiety.Keep it simple. Just dance around the house in your underwear. Take a cue from a cliché and dance like no one’s watching. It doesn’t matter what steps you take or what you look like. Just turn on some music and move. You’ll get rewards if you shimmy and shake for only five to ten minutes a day. Even one session of jumping around to music is enough to release mood-boosting brain chemicals and reduce depression. As Diane Nodell, former performer, choreographer, and adjunct professor of dance observes, “If nothing else, dancing around the house is movement without judgment. It gets the adrenalin moving through the body and the blood flowing — a true cardiovascular workout only with undeniable freedom of expression!”

Find a partner. Dancing alone can bring about the physical and mental benefits, but dancing with others also deepens social connections, promotes bonding, and reduces loneliness. Dancing with a partner in a style that requires physical contact, such as country line dancing, swing, or other forms of ballroom dancing, further offers a dose of therapeutic touch and stimulates the release of oxytocin — the “cuddle” hormone. The psychological benefits of touch are added to the rewards of movement. Grab a partner and go out dancing once a week. The rewards will last through the week.

Change up your workout. Take part in a dance-based workout such as Zumba at your local gym or move to CD- or Internet-based dance videos several days a week. Learn more about dance fitness here.

Take a class: Tap, jazz, salsa, hip-hop, ballroom — it doesn’t matter what kind of class it is as long as it gets you moving and takes you out of your mind, above your thoughts. In addition to the benefits inherent in moving your body, learning a new skill increases feelings of self-competence and enhances coping abilities.

Find a weekend workshop: The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and Canyon Ranch in four locations, for example, regularly offer workshops and retreats in various kinds of dance and transformational movement.

Take it to another level with dance therapy. The American Dance Therapy Association defines dance/movement therapy as “the psychotherapeutic use of movement to further the emotional, cognitive, physical, and social integration of the individual.” It recognizes both that some emotions are more easily expressed nonverbally and that emotions, even trauma, are stored in the body. Dance therapy has long been used for disease prevention, stress reduction, and treatment of pain, PTSD and other types of trauma, and behavioral health issues. Therapists use a range of techniques to assess nonverbal communication and intervene with movement. Numerous studies provide support for its success. A randomized controlled trial, for example, found that individuals who participated in 10 sessions of a dance movement therapy intervention experienced decreased psychological distress that endured for six months after the treatment.

According to Christine Matteson, a licensed creative arts therapist specializing in dance therapy, there are misconceptions about dance therapy. People assume therapy means anything that makes them feel good, she says, adding that with dance you sweat, move, communicate, express, and relate to yourself and others. Dance therapy ultimately makes you feel good, Matteson says, “but it’s process — of increasing consciousness and expanding one’s movement repertoire in a therapeutic container with a therapist who is trained to facilitate, witness, teach, and move with a client.” In the end, she says, it can lead to healing and positive transformation.

“When we move,” Chaikin says, “synapses are sent through the brain that not only go through the motor/coordination portion of the brain, but also pass through our center of cognition, emotions, sense of agency, and memory. That is why focusing on our movement patterns and what our body is telling us is able to provide us with information and help us to process what is going on. We can literally move through our story of our stressor and create our new outcome or we can learn to be more aware of where our stress is coming from and find ways to allow ourselves to let it go.”

In a similar way, Chaikin adds, dance therapy can address trauma and loss. The therapy, however, “may go more in depth and might also incorporate art and more complex interventions from the dance therapist to create safety and containment for processing the feelings and developing increased self awareness and coping skills. Use of rhythm, breath, and spinal connection have been found to be very helpful with trauma among other things.”

For individuals who have had trauma and stress related to family separation and genetic identity issues, Matteson says, a dance movement therapist would work to assist a client “with creating sense of safety, trust, and stability; with integration of the trauma; and with the development of the self.” Unlike a dance class, she says, “The focus is on the therapeutic process, not product. We do not prescribe dances! Take two tangos and call me in the morning!” The emphasis is on the therapeutic relationship, she says, on “expanding one’s movement repertoire so the individual, family, and/or group have more ways of coping with both internal and external stressors, and on working with symbolic, creative expression within the therapeutic container.”

To explore dance therapy, choose a dance therapist with training that meets the standards set by the American Dance Therapy Association, which offers an online directory. And you can learn more by listening to the association’s ADTA Talks.It doesn’t matter how you dance, just get yourself in motion. Dance promises improved health and mood, reduced stress, increased confidence, and, when done with others, an increased sense of community.

Take it from one of the world’s greatest dancers, Agnes de Mille:

To dance is to be out of yourself.

Larger, more beautiful, more powerful.

This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.

So start now. Click on this video and dance along. No one is watching.

By B.K. JacksonWhen Julie Lopez was born, she was removed from her first mother and taken to an orphanage, where she lived without a primary caregiver for two months until she was adopted. She had a good upbringing in a loving home, yet for much of her life was troubled by puzzling symptoms. At one point, for example, she experienced dizzy spells and disorientation that made her feel “as if time moved out of space.” She went to a neurologist who prescribed medication for what he believed to be extra electrical activity in her brain. “My life was pretty great, so some of the symptoms I had were inexplicable to me.”

It’s a phenomenon she believes is common among people who believe their early lives were essentially carefree. After working with a therapist skilled in brain-based therapies, she came to know that some of her symptoms were triggered by behavior-influencing codes stored in her implicit memory — the memory that can’t be consciously accessed. As a result of that therapy, the symptoms dissipated. Lopez attributes much of her own personal therapeutic success to those early experiences with brain-based work.

Cracking those codes is the subject of her new book, “Live Empowered!: Rewire Your Brain’s Implicit Memory to Thrive in Business, Love and Life.” There, she explores how these memories, which normally help people function efficiently, can become tripwires, setting off cascades of negative emotions and destructive symptoms.How can you be affected by experiences about which you have no memory or that happened before you were able to understand and express them through language?

It all begins in the hippocampus, a part of the limbic system, which controls the autonomic nervous system. It’s the part of the brain “responsible for coding and putting date and time stamps on our explicit memory — the memory we can consciously recall,” says Lopez. There are four circumstances during which information is stored in implicit memory.

1. When an individual is in the first three years of life, before the hippocampus is fully developed
2. Following a physical brain injury that damages the hippocampus
3. When stress levels are high, cortisol levels rise, and the hippocampus shuts off
4. When bodies dissociate from the experience of extreme trauma and the hippocampus similarly shutters.

Implicit memory, says Lopez — founder of the Viva Center, a Washington, DC community of therapists specializing in brain- and body-based therapies and a trauma-informed approach to healing — is a concept developed in the early 1900s by a number of scientists in different disciplines to explain how our systems hold data that we don’t consciously remember.

Every human, says Lopez, has implicit memory, which she describes as a hidden control panel in the brain — not one you can consciously direct, yet which holds all the data that informs how we live. “Everything stored in implicit memory is there to help us in our most primary function, which is to survive and to excel.” Although we can’t directly tap into this vast reservoir of experiential data, it nonetheless influences our behavior and wellbeing, both positively and negatively.

Suppose, for example, there had been a time you felt unsafe during your infancy and that period of danger coincided with a terrible windstorm. Those experiences were encoded in your implicit memory. Now, when a strong wind blows, you may feel your heart rate rise, your palms sweat, and your breath quicken — reactions that may make you afraid of going outside. You don’t remember the inciting event or the windstorm. All you know is that when the wind kicks up, it stirs strong emotions. Or perhaps you were terribly frightened in infancy by a man with a big bushy moustache. Even now, without knowing why, you may recoil from anyone with similar facial hair. These implicit memories can be triggered by any sensory information — a scent, a color, a sound, or anything felt or observed.Infants and babies taken from their birthmothers tend to perceive that severance as a danger, a threat to their well-being. The physical sensations associated with being removed from their mothers and the consequent feelings of being unsafe are stored in the body and the mind as implicit memories — remnants of trauma that remain and can cause distress throughout life. But because individuals don’t understand these as memories — that is, as narratives they can express — they may not identify their experiences as traumatic or link their distress symptoms to these early preverbal experiences.

The loss of a primary care person, Lopez explains, is significant, and deprives a child of mirroring (when a parent reflects a baby’s emotions as expressed by voice or expression) and attunement (a sense of safety that develops when parents are responsive to an infant’s needs). Often, those who didn’t have those primal experiences have symptoms of anxiety related to friendships and intimate relationships. “That struggle can look like any part of the classic symptoms for PTSD,” says Lopez. “It doesn’t mean they meet the diagnostic criteria, but they’ll exhibit avoidance of things associated with vulnerability in relationships.” Other symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares, dissociation (a sense of separation or disconnection from oneself), anxiety, and depression. They may rely on coping strategies to avoid having to be close, such as excessive drug or alcohol use or other types of behavioral addictions that help them avoid what they see as threatening.

“There may be codes that are put in our brains that tell us the way to get through life is not to attach to people, because when you really attach, you get hurt,” says Lopez. Many people who’ve had great losses in their lives or in relationships, she adds, have had those types of codes embedded without being consciously aware of it. She’s worked with clients who say they want a relationship, yet their behavior tells a different story because of those codes. Thus, for reasons they can’t understand, adoptees may fear being abandoned, be unable or afraid to securely attach to others, or find it difficult to trust people.

Similarly, those who were not raised by their genetic parents, even though they may not have been aware of that fact until adulthood — NPEs (non-paternal events or not parent expected), donor conceived people, late-discovery adoptees — also are likely to have been imprinted with memories about which they have no conscious awareness and which may cause dis-ease. They may react in ways they don’t understand to people, places, sights, sounds, smells, or other sensations associated with childhood experiences.

NPEs and others also may have stored sensory data from subtle or outright signals they observed that indicated they didn’t belong, were unwanted, or were a source of conflict between their parents — sensations that may stimulate feelings of disconnect, alienation, and inauthenticity. “When a child grows up without genetic mirroring and in situations in which there is deception — when the parents are actually sitting on a secret — the child picks up on data energetically, in a nonverbal way, and those pieces of information can be stored in implicit memory,” says Lopez.

Furthermore, she adds, “There are some physical and visceral experiences that go along with being disconnected from people that you’re related to.” Although in her practice she most often sees clients with expressions of anxiety, others may present with feelings of hopelessness and despair. There may be uncomfortable bodily sensations and symptoms such as those associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, “where they have a compulsive drive to put things where they belong or keep things in order or a difficulty handling stress either personally or professionally. They may have overly controlling behavior because it feels scary to loosen the reins on relationships.”

They don’t grasp that they’re being triggered by unconscious memories. It’s as if they’re being sent signals that they can’t  see, hear, or understand. So the feelings their memories engender may seem to make no sense and to be incongruous to the situations in which they arise. And when symptoms occur, clients have no reason to suspect they’re linked to past experiences. But, says Lopez, symptoms are always telling a story. The question, she adds, isn’t what’s wrong with you, but what happened to you? When they don’t know the answer — when they’re unable to peg their symptoms to something in their past that was destructive — they may feel there’s something wrong with them, that they’re broken or defective.Lopez is dedicated to changing these destructive patterns and helping individuals realize that symptoms occur for a reason. Since traditional talk therapies are typically ineffective for treating issues arising from memories for which one has no words, she sees it as her mission to help people use more pinpointed techniques that have been advancing in the last 30 years. In “Live Empowered!” she describes three brain-based therapies — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Brainspotting, and Neurofeedback — through which therapists can access the mind’s hidden control panel, explore the root causes of obstacles, and reprogram responses and behaviors.

Developed by clinical psychologist Francine Shapiro to mitigate symptoms linked to traumatic memories, EMDR is an evidence-based therapeutic method that relies on bilateral brain stimulation, whether through eye movements, sound, or touch, to target and process memories stored in the nervous system and manage maladaptive behaviors that stem from them.

David Grand, PhD, who discovered Brainspotting, describes a brain spot as a “a point in visual space that a client has a strong reaction to.” With his technique, a therapist uses a pointer to guide clients’ eye movements across their fields of vision to help identify those points, which, Lopez writes, “hold an active memory (explicit and implicit) tied to an undesired symptom or corresponding to the neural pathway you want to modify.” Brainspotting helps them process and let go of the stored emotions.

Neurofeedback, or electroencephalogram biofeedback, is a therapeutic strategy that that tracks brainwave activity and teaches clients to modify their brainwaves. When those modifications move in a direction that influences the brain to function more efficiently, clients receive visual, auditory, or other types of feedback that reinforce their efforts.

Each of these techniques is effective due to neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to adapt, reorganize, and form new neural connections. These aren’t the only approaches to accessing implicit memory and treating trauma. Other approaches falling under the umbrella of somatic therapy are used by some therapists to target the encoded memories through the body rather than the mind. And therapists can use many additional nonverbal approaches outlined in “Live Empowered!” to decode implicit memory.

Working with implicit memory, Lopez observes, is a great opportunity to clear troubles or roadblocks that might otherwise impede individuals for the rest of their lives. “It’s about changing the codes that are driving what’s going on now so that people can live more productive lives, be successful, and feel good about themselves.”

Check back for more in-depth explorations of these individual brain-based therapies as well as somatic therapies that may also be helpful for problems arising from trauma stored in implicit memory.In addition to reading her book, you can learn more about Lopez and the techniques she uses at her website and in this episode of the Adoptees On podcast.

By Laura McMillianAs a teen, I’d once imagined I had a secret identity. Little did I know that I was right.

All my life, I’d learned to live with what could be described as a pervasive form of impostor syndrome — a sense that I was never fully able to know or be myself, whoever that was. Sure, I recognized certain stable personality traits in myself, such as kindness, rationality, humble priorities, and interest in the well-being of others. But they weren’t enough for me to fully know who I was on a gut level. I could also list all the factual pieces of information about myself, including the good, the bad, and the neutral — my ethnicities, behavioral and emotional tendencies, intellect, biases, tastes, political and religious views, and personal principles. But the sum of these facts never quite added up to me feeling like a full person.

I craved an understanding of the core aspects of myself and sought it by asking my parents about themselves and their family histories and by trying to understand my psychology and physiology through clinical testing and professional feedback. Still, something was always missing. Why? How could I fill it in and gain the self-confidence I should have had? The mysterious identity gap had me grasping at straws for all my young adult and adult life.

As I became older, the identity gap closed a little bit, and by the time I was in my mid-thirties, I might have felt as if I were 80% of a complete, knowable person. That missing 20% remained like a chronic pain I’d learned to live with and was resigned to always having. I still suffered from confusion in my career and relationships, and there seemed to be no answer or solution. But being stubbornly genuine, I never put up a false persona so that others could more easily grasp me. Those who did grasp and befriend me seemed to share a similar sense of alienation.

When I was 34, a 23andMe DNA test revealed that I was not genetically related to my dad, leading me to conclude that I had likely been donor conceived. Once I overcame the initial shock and denial, I felt as if a new door had opened. Finally, there was hope for a way out of my inexplicably confused sense of self. I’d always loved my dad and never suspected or hoped not to be related to him, but I chose to view this development in as positive a light as possible. This new knowledge offered me the chance to get answers about why I was the way I was — why I was different in personality and thinking style from the parents who raised me. Generational difference was never a sufficient explanation. Being donor conceived absolutely was.

The drive to identify half of my origins came over me like a tornado; this new and all-consuming obsession swept up everything in my world. The human mind naturally seeks completion, and mine very badly wanted it. For three years, I underwent trials and tribulations that failed to give me definite answers.

Finally, when my biological father appeared in my AncestryDNA test match list, I was able to walk through the door that had opened three years earlier. His four daughters, who didn’t know he’d been a sperm donor, had purchased the test as a gift, ironically, for Father’s Day. He hadn’t been expecting to discover offspring; he’d simply been looking to further explore his genealogy. Just as I had done, he reacted with denial and skepticism. But once the reality settled in, he was very excited to have found me and happy to get to know me.

The hopes that had been raised by deducing that I’d been donor conceived were fulfilled by getting to know my biological father. It’s been a wonderful and remedial experience, not only because he’s an incredibly kind and warm person, but also because learning about my genetic paternal origins has changed me for the better. After first spending time with him, I immediately felt a shift at my core. At age 37, that ineffable part of myself that had always felt missing finally appeared in its proper place. It felt as if something at the back of my mind was finally healing. There was both emotional relief and a physical sensation of calm — an unprecedented feeling of serenity and wholeness. I think my levels of oxytocin (the cuddle hormone) went through the roof during that trip, just from being with him. Before, I’d felt like a house with only half a foundation. Now, with a whole foundation, I feel complete and stronger than ever.

One of the clearest changes relates to how I deal with difficult people. In the past, when people were at odds with me in any way, my sense of self felt threatened, as I was easily thrown off balance. I avoided confrontation at almost all costs, with the exception of those rare occasions when I was completely confident about my position. I was afraid of being tongue-tied due to all the second-guessing and self-doubt, too easily believing others’ insulting statements or comments intended to correct my errors, at least until I later analyzed the situation. Speaking out usually wasn’t worth the risk, and I missed out on some important opportunities to stand my ground. I thought I’d always be that way, no matter how much therapy or self-development work I did. But now that I’m certain of who I am, my sense of self is tethered in place, allowing me to stand firmly when I’m challenged or mistreated. Or, if I really am wrong about something, I’m more comfortable accepting and admitting it, then moving on. This actually makes me more relatable and likable to others. While I try to choose my battles wisely and to be tactful, I’m no longer frightened by challenging conversations. For the first time, expressing myself is starting to feel completely natural and comfortable. I’m unafraid to be fully assertive, and even my professional confidence has improved. Putting myself out there isn’t so scary anymore. The self-consciousness and excessive self-inhibition have evaporated.

Not only were these changes instantaneous, but they’ve also been enduring and will likely last for the rest of my life. I’ll always be grateful for my biological father’s warm reception, alongside my upbringing by loving parents.Laura McMillian, PhD, CPC, ACC, is a certified professional coach who provides services to donor conceived individuals, donors, and parents. She lives in Hideout, Utah with her loving spouse Kevin and their 3 small dogs. Learn more about her practice here.