Adopted

My anger and hurt at my ex in laws and ex husband was eating me up inside. I felt disgraced, and had to push back. My ego was threatened- the same way I was never allowed my feelings in childhood. I was fighting for survival, because I felt threatened. They don’t understand me and then I feel like I’m nothing if people don’t understand me. It’s triggering. They called me worthless and and bad, something I was toxically shamed to feel all my life. I’m trying to stop letting myself feel this way. To not let others get me down, over my will again and again. Maybe it’s because it was never developed at all... John Bradshaw says in Healing the Shame That Binds You that the interpersonal bridge “Trust is fostered by the fact that we can come to expect and rely on the mortality of response” between parent and child... “emotional bond is formed” which “allows the child to risk venturing out to explore the world. ... we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in that we allow ourselves to need the

When people are not done with their own ego development, they cannot love their child fully. If they do not know what they are lacking in their ego development, they will not be able to understand and support their child in that stage. For example, if a person did not get the chance to explore as a child, and be innocent and curious as children need, and he is unaware of this need of his, he will suppress it in his child. People do onto others what they do onto themselves, and the only way one can love others is if he loves himself. John Bradshaw says in Healing the Shame that Binds You , toxic shame is where a person has grandiosity, and cannot see himself as human. It  is either being either good or bad; “appear as narcissistic self-enlargement or wormlike helplessness.” It results from the “human will being disabled.” This happens through “the shaming of the emotions.” Emotions are meant to be discharged after an event triggers them, and then the intellect can make sense of it. Wh

There is nothing without love. Life starts within the mother’s womb, where she and her child are one. She is all he knows, and he needs her to develop his emotional brain, until he can become an autonomous self. Therefore, why are the role of women so inferior in society? They basically make up a human’s development of skills, true self-worth (that they are loved by another person), and growth potential.  Nancy Verrier says in Coming Home to Self that the experiences we have during the first three years of life “play a big part in our overall attitudes and beliefs” (Page 382). Personally I felt beaten down a lot, in my emotional body and ability to use my strengths of giving love. I feel like a shadow of a person, in this world, my skills and worth invisible to myself and to everyone else. This has to do with my suffering from the primal wound of being relinquished from my biological mother, and then adopted when I was a few months old. Verrier states, “Severing of the bond with th

My daughter was trying to get my attention. She was under the covers playing hiding with me, wanting to be close. I pretended to make my hand come in- I guess I was enacting what I felt was going on- that I wasn’t listening to her enough and she was hurt by me, so she was scared of the hand. She was yelping that it’s a monster trying to get her. She laughed so much, with all her pent up stress. It was fun for me too. Soon the hand switched to being her friend, and she pretended to invite it in to her under-the-blanket house, with my “knocking.” She then wanted me to ask her what she did, like a song we sing about the family fingers... and then I played back and asked her if I can go to sleep because I was tired. She said yes, and I rested my hand on her, wherever she felt comfortable. If she didn’t want me to touch her, I lay my hand down on my body. It went on for a while, until I started watching my thoughts as I realized I was in pain and stressed. I felt angry at myself. I recogniz

“Be grateful for being adopted- you got a chance to live!” It’s not true living when you are not connected to the one who gave you life. You live constantly in a state of confusion and feelings of having been abandoned- as if you’re not worthy of life. That’s not life. True life is being emotionally connected and loved for who you are. Adoptees get neither. Their adoptive mothers are not connected to them, as they do not acknowledge their pain. They are not loved for who they are, because their traits are not mirrored back to them and so they have to fake being something else to be accepted. Nancy Verrier says in Coming Home to Self , “The lack of genetic markers is difficult for adoptive mothers as well as for the adoptee. Both are trying to figure out how to be together. The mother.... keeps trying to figure it out. She cannot mirror the child the way his or her biological mother could have done. The child does not feel reflected, and is constantly hypervigilant, trying to understand

I get scared a lot that I project my emotions on my daughter, and to what extent is she feeling loved? I often get stressed out about everything in life, but I repress myself to meet her needs. It’s an instinct I have that I was raised with, hyper vigilance as a baby to meet my adoptive parent’s needs of me, so that I disowned my true self. Nancy Verrier in Coming Home To Self states, “hyper vigilance and hyperarousal are manifestations of separation trauma (Page 9). “A human baby is no more primed to be separated from his mother than any other mammal. ... it feels wrong... to both the baby and mother. Neither completely recovers from this abomination of nature” (Page 347). I constantly worry that my kid feels unloved. I have to remind myself that she is not adopted, and is genetically mine. It’s weird how all my life nobody accepted my reality of not having my biological parents in life, and acted like my adoptive parents was all I had and I was made to feel normal. It messes with

She wouldn’t look me in the eye. I felt insecure. I guess if I don’t have a handle over my own emotional regulation.... It’s just so crazy- all day she was distracted. And I thought I was loving, but I guess I am more distracted most of the time too. I told her, Mommy is sad. She said she is sad too. I felt soo bad but I can’t help feeling sad and helpless. I prayed but not very fervently, and I realized if I want help I have to truly believe there’s no other help but G-d. Sometimes I rely on food for comfort- but it’s a substitute for intimate relationship, and that never helps things. It’s not real. In Scattered by Gabor Mate, he says that ADD is, “...a lack of inhibition, a chronic under activity of the prefrontal cortex. The cerebral cortex in the frontal lobe is not able to do its job of prioritizing, selection and inhibition.” Therefore the brain cannot focus, too flooded with information (Page 41). This is exactly what I see in my daughter and I. Try as I might, I cannot foc