Befriending Our Adaptations

A few months ago, I was sitting in my amazing therapist’s office when, almost as an aside, she said that most of our behaviors are adaptations.

Mind. Blown.

I did not receive that information gracefully. In fact, I had a visceral reaction to it. Most of our behaviors are adaptations? That bothered me. No, actually, it made me feel a little sick. It was unsettling in my body, like a truth I did not want but somehow recognized anyway.

In my infinite wisdom—and let’s be real, who has infinite wisdom?—I let it go for the moment and tried to focus on the therapeutic matter at hand. But the idea stayed with me. It has been honey-like in my brain ever since.

Adaptations. What even are they?

Essentially, they are ways we learn to respond to our environments, often to protect ourselves, preserve connection, or create a sense of safety. Sometimes that looks like zoning out and checking TikTok when a conversation gets uncomfortable. Sometimes it looks like testing a loved one to see if they really care. Sometimes criticism comes out instead of a vulnerable request. Some people stonewall. Others become passive-aggressive. Some over-explain, over-function, over-accommodate, or disappear into silence.

Us human beings are incredibly creative when it comes to protecting ourselves.

When we are operating from less secure attachment patterns, getting to I am safe can become the goal beneath the goal—the need beneath the behavior. When secure attachment is more available to us, there is a deeper internal knowing that we are okay. That we can survive discomfort. That conflict does not automatically mean abandonment. That another person’s reaction is not necessarily a verdict on our worth.

That does not mean securely attached people do not have strong emotions. It means they are often better able to put space between the feeling and the response. There can be more grounding, more curiosity, more ability to stay present, and more room to respond instead of react.

And that is where this idea about adaptations really started opening up for me. Because if so many of our behaviors are adaptations, then a lot of what we judge most harshly in ourselves may not actually be random, irrational, or proof that something is wrong with us. It may simply be evidence that some part of us learned how to survive.

That part matters.

For someone with anxious attachment tendencies, an adaptation might look like overthinking, reassurance-seeking, people-pleasing, or constantly scanning for signs of distance. For someone with dismissive-avoidant tendencies, it might look like emotional withdrawal, minimizing needs, or becoming fiercely self-reliant. For someone with fearful-avoidant patterns, it might look like deeply wanting closeness and then panicking when it arrives.

These are not rigid categories or diagnoses, and many of us can recognize ourselves in more than one pattern. Different adaptations, similar underlying logic: protection.

At some point, these responses probably made sense. They may have helped preserve connection, reduce conflict, maintain belonging, or protect us in environments where being fully ourselves did not feel safe. The problem is not that we developed them. The problem is that an adaptation created for an older version of our life can keep making decisions for the person we are trying to become.

What once protected us can begin to limit us.

We may silence a need before anyone has the opportunity to reject it. We may pull away before someone gets too close. We may become “easy,” agreeable, chill, low-maintenance, endlessly understanding—without ever asking whether any of that actually feels true. We may confuse familiarity with safety and keep choosing dynamics that require us to abandon ourselves in order to belong.

That is where the work shifts. Not toward shaming the adaptation. Not toward muscling past it. Not toward wondering why we are not “over it” already. But toward getting curious about it.

What is this behavior trying to do for me? What is it protecting me from? What does it believe would happen if I did something different? What kind of safety or reassurance is it reaching for?

Those questions create space, and space matters. Because once we can notice an adaptation, we are no longer completely fused with it. We can begin to recognize, Oh, this is the part of me that wants to shut down. This is the part of me that wants to appease. This is the part of me that wants to test, avoid, over-function, or disappear.

Awareness does not solve everything instantly, but it changes the relationship. Instead of asking, Why am I like this? we can ask, What happened that made this response feel necessary? Instead of, I need to stop doing this, we can ask, What would help me feel safe enough to choose differently?

That is a very different posture. A gentler one. And, in my experience, a much more transformational one.

I can see this most clearly when I look at my own coming-out story—and at the life I built before I could consciously name what I wanted. For more than a decade, I joked about having girl crushes on celebrities and said it would probably be easier to be a lesbian than to date men.

At the time, I did not fully understand that there was an alternative to the compulsory heterosexuality—or comphet—I was living within. Some part of me understood that pursuing a straight relationship and the proverbial picket fence was the path of least resistance.

The more I heard that niggling voice in my head, the more I pushed back. Eventually, that voice had to become loud enough for my scared parts to recognize that the price of staying stagnant had become too high.

For me, pursuing the expected straight life was an adaptation. It offered belonging, familiarity, and the path of least resistance, even as it moved me further away from my next iteration. Did realizing that suddenly make everything easy? Absolutely not. I felt like I no longer fit inside my own skin or my own life. I had to work through internalized homophobia, expectations, identity, grief, and the reality of coming out later in life.

The visible part of that process may have taken three or four years. The truth? Maybe it took twenty.

And that, too, has taught me something about adaptations.

Growth is not about becoming someone who no longer has them. It is about becoming someone who can recognize them without automatically obeying them. Someone who can thank an old strategy for trying to help and still choose something more aligned. Someone who can stay connected without self-abandoning, honor fear without handing it the steering wheel, and build enough safety inside themselves to respond from the present instead of continually reenacting the past.

That is part of what moving toward secure attachment asks of us. Not perfection, fearlessness, or transcendence. Just a little more awareness, a little more compassion, and a little more choice.

So maybe the question is not, How do I get rid of this part of me? Maybe the question is: What happens when I stop treating my adaptations like enemies?

Because sometimes the behaviors we most want to judge are the ones that first need understanding. And often, that understanding is what finally makes change possible.

This week, notice one behavior you usually criticize. Before trying to change it, ask: What is this trying to protect?

If one of your own adaptations came to mind while reading this, spend a little time getting curious about it—not to fix it, but to understand what it has been trying to do for you.

At Empowered Lotus Coaching, this is part of the work: understanding the attachment patterns and protective strategies that once helped us feel safe, then creating enough space to choose what fits the person we are becoming.

Growth does not require rejecting the old version of you. Sometimes it starts by understanding why she needed those protections in the first place—and letting her know she does not have to make every decision anymore.

Find your light. Then give yourself permission to follow it.