We Can Wake up From Shame from Repression

          The more a child is not validated for his feelings, the more shame and guilt he will have about them, the more he will repress them and not be able to find himself. Us adoptees have a lot of this shame when we are not validated for our grief of losing our mother when we are babies, so a large part of us gets shut down- the sadness we experienced. The trauma feelings get played out over and over in our lives in order to get us to see and heal them, says Marion Rose speaks in her website. 

          The Continuum Concept by Jane Liedloff explains that a babies' first memories will be the base of his life- he will subconsciously build his life to look like that. What he has encountered is what he feels the nature of life to be.  "Each impression can only qualify, to a greater degree or lesser degree, the first impression, made when he had no previous data on the external world (Pg 36)." This is why people who have trauma in their first years, and do not get it validated and worked through, will subconsciously make life choices that reinforce that mindset of themselves. Such as young women who feel ugly and worthless and never seem to succeed in their job or holding down a healthy partner, because they do not feel they deserve it because of their first impression of the world, which affected their self-esteem. I hate when people guilt them for it, or they guilt themselves. It is not their fault. They just need to learn the shames source. Because if you can examine your thoughts and trace the source of them- your ingrained belief, you are free to stop them and veer a different course. We have choice of what to think!

            Good G-d what this means for me, being adopted and taken away from all that was familiar and loved and not given a thought of how it affected me. I still now feel that everything is just happening to me without my control, and I need to actively do something in order to feel like I am here. Otherwise, things feel like looking into a world without me participating in it. I get anxiety and urge to be seen, but at the same time I am embarrassed of myself, as I will explain later. 

            Tears and Tantrums by Aletha Stolter explains how tears have a big part in healing the pain of a trauma. In order to heal, a person needs to feel safe and understood by a loving caregiver that he feels won't abandon him, re experience the trauma to an extent, and be able to express himself with rage, laughter, crying, trembling or sweating while feeling safe at the same time (pg 106-109). I don't feel comfortable crying fully because it was never enforced to express pain and anger fully. Once when I did rage, my mother felt threatened by me and I got a mouthful off soap. I remember my intense hatred of her after that, because all I wanted was her attention. 

          When people cry, there are stress hormones released in the tears and they restore the balance of stress in the brain. Meaning, when one is worked up and the sympathetic nervous system is activated and adrenaline is pumping into the blood, they are prepared to act from the perceived danger. This was very helpful in ancient times to protect us from wild animals and trouble. However, when stress comes from feeling unsafe due to trauma symptoms from past terror that it's triggered by perceived threats, such as a baby experiencing over stimulation and feeling unsafe and that later affecting how he perceives crowds of people, because his stress hormones gets activated just as much as before due to the trauma not being resolved, the stress is imbalanced and he needs to get it out. This can be accomplished through moving energetically, either through tantrums or aggressive behavior, or if the kid is lucky, he will be able to have a good, relieving cry with a loving person that understands his pain (pg 13-22).

           Tears are healing, and the more a child is comfortable with crying the less he will repress his feelings later on in life. This promotes healthy, satisfying living, with optimum room for self actualization. The less inner shame the more room there is for self exploration and seeking to do self-loving actions (pg 23-25). Studies show that people who were more able to cry in their therapy sessions had higher performance in the gym afterwards than the ones who inhibited their emotions in therapy. Also, studies done on women with breast cancer showed that women who were comfortable with crying and did not repress themselves had better chances of living longer than those who didn't (pg 13-22).

          The more I was repressed from expression of my true feelings, the angrier and more self-doubt I felt. It accumulated, until all shows of my feelings where questioned and I felt embarrassed of any emotion I had, even when the time called for it. Such as speaking to people- I was shameful of my insecurity of feeling rejected, that it made me doubly closed off then just having nerves talking with new people. If I had just been validated in the beginning for my shame, anger, and sadness, I would not be so overly fearful of my feelings. Because it was NORMAL for a trauma survivor to be extra sensitive to rejection or other insecurities.

          People have found that helping their children cry to let our emotions did wonders on their personalities, making them calmer and more cooperative. They also slept longer and more easily. One mother who used to be scared of her daughter's cries, thinking it was a call for her to "do something!" would get triggered because she felt helpless. Many parents feel helpless when children cry because it triggers feeling manipulated by their own parents to stop their crying. So they perceive their child as trying to control them. The truth is babies just need love and compassion when they cry. After reading Aletha Solter's book, The Aware Baby, she realized that her baby was crying to heal and she felt less responsible and more able to be empathetic and supportive. This helped her relax, and her child feel comfortable crying it out on her lap for 40 minutes and then feel happy and serene (pg 128-129). Another woman said her 8 week old barely cried, but was eating every hour. When she took to listening to him cry, he burst into loud tears for 20 minutes, all the while watching her trustingly. Afterwards he was alert and smiley. She likened it to the calm one feels after a spiritual meditation, and felt this book could  achieve what spiritual seekers find- the individualism process and spiritual development before the psychological scars that most adults have to work through to get to. She feels liberated in knowing that the hurts they may accidentally cause their son can be healed through tears (pg 127).  

           My Mom feels uncomfortable with babies crying and walks around shushing them when it happens. This is why I did that too when my baby cried for hours in the beginning, not realizing that the sadness was healthy and normal for her to express. We are conditioned to stop the sadness because it reminds us of our own sadness and feeling out of control when it was felt. What we don't realize is that we CAN float in the feelings and we will be okay. 

          I had my daughter cry in my arms after reading all this, and I didn't get anxious that I had to DO something to help. I was just present. She cried and cried for 40 minutes, and then more when I walked back and forth to put her to sleep (I am slowly getting rid of the control patterns, but I told the pacifier away so I am not ready to stop the rocking to sleep just yet). She cried more, and i just put my hand on her cheek and watched. Eventually, she stopped and fell into a deep, comfortable sleep, and woke up as usual during the night, but NOT as usual, fell back asleep without me or crying!! Yay.

          When children are not used to having their emotions heard, they can become aggressive to the parent. This is because they see the parent as good or bad, depending on how they treat them. It is very important that the parent understand the feelings behind it, and not punish the kid severely, because it causes a kid to feel rejected for their feelings. She says it is important to validate, and then help the child get out their feelings by crying while feeling safe. When a kid shows violence it often means that the child feels unresolved anger, fear, frustrations, and resentments. They need to know that the bond with the parent is stronger than their rage (pg 97-103).

            Anger was bad in our house, when a child got angry they were punished severely, let alone listened to compassionately. I lost trust in mother and knew she'd never understand my pain, let alone anger. She tried to talk to me about my  "strange" infantile behavior in school, but it brought up tons of anger in me, because I was embarrassed of myself, but felt I couldn't help acting that way. Shame and feeling like I was crazy made me resent her bringing it up, I felt like she was embarrassing me by bringing it up. So I raged and threw things, to which she did not know what to do and kept questioning, "Why are you being this way? Why don't you want to talk to me?" If only she could have seen beyond her frustrations of feeling like her kid was rejecting her, and hugged and showed love to her child despite my acting out. She was not being loving and understanding at all, and I didn't feel safe to cry to her. 

           I believe my take of the world as a baby was that it was sad and full of loss, so this was the theme my life. Before it got resolved at all I was drawn to rejection and feeling isolated. Sad music gives me a high, and quiet stillness is where I find myself. Other person cause me anxiety and fear of rejection, as I try to figure out their motives of talking to me and how and when they will reject and sidestep it.

           I noticed my hyper-vigilance with an acquaintance, how I was questioning every word I uttered and trying remain myself. I felt victorious because for first time I didn't get swallowed by my insecurities and actually sat with my uncomfortable-ness. And kudos to her for not openly rejecting me as I stared awkwardly at a bowl on the side, trying to figure out my thoughts of what I wanted convey during an awkwardly long pause. It was beautiful, because instead of the usual back and forth of inserting the "appropriate" line, I was being MYSELF and letting my mouth speak my brain. She seemed very interested in what I had to say, and I realized that it was due to my having a unique story, and not just following the stereotypical white-girl/young mother of a struggling infant. 

          And that's how I like it. Living through OWN version of life and desires, because everyone is different. And once we fall into routine we forget that, and the excitement in our uniqueness. I feel alive and happy with myself, and time slowly begins to bare the fruits of my knowledge and application of new beliefs of the ability to live freely and with unconditional love for everything and everyone.

         I can't wait for what's next. There  no more squandering my emotions of love and interests for the sake of living "properly" and as expected by societal norms. No, ma'am, I am not just a sheep following the  crowd, I live for MYSELF. Every action I do is questioned, where is this coming from, a good place or bad. How do I REALLY FEEL? Do I need to protect my inner child from this? What makes me fly? And I do that more.

          Love, 
          A Crazy, Loving, and Non-apologetic Adoptee