by Hartini van Rijssel, adopted from Indonesia to the Netherlands, a psychosocial therapist.
It’s 11 June 2025 and I’m finally taking off my winter coat. A coat that looks great on me but is no longer needed.
Last Friday I sold my house in the Netherlands. The house that felt like a haven for years, a place to get to myself. A place where I collected my music and my Indonesia. A place where I received my people. A house after the death of my last adopted parent.
Selling a house seems practical. My body knew: I was just not home there. What I am releasing now is a form that no longer fits my path forward. As I take off my coat, it feels like I’m shedding old skin, a deeper layer may finally reveal itself.
That brings me to a big impact of adoption. The epigenetics of adoption – how inner polarisation tears apart the body.
You can feel at home in your adopted family and in the country you grew up in. Nevertheless, the body can (in the long term) react to tension between origins and adaptations. This post is an exploration of how biological processes influenced by adoption can often unconsciously lead to inner polarisation and bodily disorder.
The body is made of the genetic material of two parents. You carry characteristics of both, not only in your appearance, but internally as well.
When adopted, you develop in a different environment than the one in which you are genetically rooted. Your body bears your origins but further forms in a context that may differ greatly from that. That causes tension, often invisible and deep in the body.
In the early years, the survival part is dominant. A child’s brain automatically adjusts to what is needed to stay connected to the environment. Behaviour, emotional expression, and bodily reactions develop on the basis of what works. In this process, the original layer, such as your physical self-recognition becomes necessary in the background.
Later, when you reconnect with your origins, this process can reverse. What was a safe adjustment, no longer feels fitting. The original part wants to be acknowledged. The risk arises that you then reject the survival parts of yourself.
This double rejection, of both your origins and your adaptations, causes internal polarisation. Self-rejection as a physical reality with additional psychological effects.
In biology, you see comparable processes in autoimmune reactions, where the body attacks its own cells. The result is a physical system in constant conflict with itself because it receives signals from two directions, without indication to the right destination.
References
Westra, H. (2022). The adopted man as a split creature. Magazine for Orthopedagogy.
McCrory, E. et al. (2010). The neurobiology and genetics of maltreatment and adversity.
Meaney, M. J. (2010). Epigenetics and the biological definition of gene × environment interactions.
Photo Credits: B. Wichers