What Drives My Continued Dysfunction (Cont'd)
That is not to say that they didn’t cause the event. Certainly they did and they will always be responsible for that. It would be nice if they and society in general had some compassion for what it is like for adoptees but that seems to be in short supply. The very word adoption hides the issue. The issue is not being taken in by another family; it is being relinquished by our first family.
My favorite saying is “Mind is cause, experience is effect.” Unfortunately this is true for adoptees, too.
Paul Sunderland, has a very good youtube talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3pX4C-mtiI ). He talks about adoptees having PTSD. When we have a life threatening event our brain can be rewired. This seems to be especially true for the Limbic System of the brain. It controls our fight, flee, or freeze response. It tries to keep us safe. Since it supports our very survival, it responds quickly and forcefully. The part of our brain that does reasoning and logic is the cerebellum. It takes awhile to analyze, so is not nearly as fast to respond. Our initial response life’s situations is driven by the limbic system.
When we experienced separation from our mothers it was traumatic. We had no sense of self separate from her. We felt ripped apart and from this trauma we formed a set of beliefs. I suspect that we hold these beliefs in our limbic brain.
Some thoughts:
1 Before we had a concept of self and other, we were ripped apart.
2 Because of 1 we are afraid to trust.
3 Because of 2 we don’t let others be close to us.
4 Because of 3 we are on our own – if we are lucky we find a therapist
or spouse that helps us see ourselves. Sometimes we let other adoptees see
us and that can help, too.
5 Our trauma occurred preverbal, so the beliefs formed are hard to get at.
I have uncovered a few of the beliefs that I formed with my adoption trauma.
A “Feelings hurt. Don’t”
I shut down my feelings for about 50 years. Recently I heard an interview with Bessel Van der Kolk, who is an expert on trauma. One of the things he said is that trauma often causes a disassociation between body and mind. This felt so validating. I have no memory of trauma, so it is easy for me to minimize the effect it has had on me.
B “I am a mistake.”
Toxic shame – not that I made a mistake – I am the mistake.
C “If you see me then you will throw me away.”
Why I have always been reluctant to let people get close.
D “I am not lovable.”
This affects my ability to feel loved. I am handicapped. I may be loved and suspect I am, but it is hard to let it in. This is devastating.
I feel sure there are other beliefs of the same ilk floating around in my subconscious. Even those that I am aware of are still there in a weakened state.
The problem of discovering these beliefs is that they were written in a language without words and the translation does not come easily.
So, as I see it, what drives my continuing dysfunction is me and my beliefs.
A study of WWII vets showed that the memory response over time of vets who had PTSD and those who did not was significantly different. Those who did not have PTSD moderated their memories over the years. Those with PTSD kept their vivid memory descriptions constant.
We search and search for something to make us whole, or at least stop the pain. We want to fit in somewhere. For some finding our birth families may help, but it seems to me that I don’t really fit there either. There always seems to be a hole, something is missing, we are somehow incomplete. This may be our PTSD frozen memory of being one with our mother. A place we can never go back to.