Realizing How Disassociated I have been all my Life, and Taking Back Identity

           It all hit me when reading Coming Home To Self by Nancy Verrier. The adoptee when he is relinquished by his mother feels to blame for it, and feels that who he is is shameful- just as sexual abuse victims feels it is their fault.

          She says on page 102:

Abandonment and neglect are reported to be the two most devastating experiences that children endure- even more devastating than sexual or physical abuse. 

           And also:

People with narcissistic injuries are concerned for the most part only about themselves. This may be very deceptive because there is often a perception that they are interested only in others... This is often a projection: 'I need rescuing, therefore I will rescue.'... The question is: Is he doing it for others or is he doing it because he needs others to like him?

         I am always like this- it is caused by my "coping" personality, as she says. And:

         This doesn't mean that the person doesn't have empathy or is not interested in other people. It just means that the overriding concern is to have one's needs met. It is built into the timing of the wounding. It is no one's fault!! If you were traumatized when you were an infant, then you automatically have a narcissistic wound.

          She further says on page 163-164 that when baby/child is rejected for certain actions, he represses them putting them in a "bag," as Robert Blys explains, and no longer identifies with it. This happens further when he grows up and learns what his peers think and which parts he needs to "put in the bag" to be accepted. She says that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that when the bag is sealed, the shadow side that is forbidden to the person will be projected onto others, in his book called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The adoptee often vacillates between the two states, the defiant and compliant child, or the defiant child and the true adult self. So true for me.

        I enjoyed how she said that when you have great envy for someone, it is because you have
those aspects in you and have not yet developed them for some reason. She says when we retrieve those parts of us that were sealed in the "bag" and repressed, we are a more whole and interesting person. On page 160, she says that growing up with a family that was not biological to you made you learn how to "be" and it is exhausting to keep up that role, because you are not being your true self. It is called the "compliant" or  defiant "coping" self. I see that when we are aware of this shadow side, we learn how to embrace life more fully and have our whole selves in it more. I am starting to find myself more, and am open about my shadow side, no longer ashamed and hiding it. I don't care what others say, I protect who I am and don't let myself get down because others do not respect me. She says that behind every adoptee's coping mechanisms, she is delighted to find a vulnerable, authentic self.

            Depending on how terrified you were of being abandoned, you buried various aspects of your true genetic personality in favor of the false self that fit in more with what you assumed was expected of you in your non-biological family.

            This is so true for me,  even when I was acting out and being defiant I was still not being my true self, and my adoptive family never noticed. They thought that who I was being was who I was. I felt very stuck to being that false self, and did not know how to be "myself." The "bad" behavior predominated, and it felt real. But it was not the real me. She says that:

Many of you [adoptees] convinced many therapists that the false self was the true you, and their goal was to get you to like that false self.

         Definitely, that was why my therapists never really understood me and I often felt more confused when I left, even when we had a so-called successful session.

         She says about the adoptive family, when the adoptee was trying to figure out how to be and it took up a lot of energy to be the chameleon, that they did not know what was happening because they themselves were not aware that we were suffering loss. It was a hard dance that each side was trying to figure out- especially when in unfamiliar biological territory and not being mirrored at all in expression, body language etc. The adoptee often feels that he will only be "himself" when he leaves home, but finds that it is built in his system so much to "figure out how to be" that he acts this way around strangers, too.

          Gosh same.

         I realized that even with my daughter, I have not been acting like my true, happy, and silly self because I am so busy trying to be perfect for her. Duh. I watched a hilarious YouTuber, Mr. Arturo Trejo, and he cracked me up so much by how natural he acted with his kid, and his sarcasm and TRUENESS was really fun and relieving to see. We just have to be ourselves for our kids, they want us in our realness, and not hiding our shadow sides. Kids are just lovely and truthful, and so they want to see us being truthful. This goes back to the importance of being flexible with your child and them understanding that you are authentic and not merely being a martyr, that Aletha Solter The Aware Baby talks about. Nancy Verrier also says this, that children will be fine with you meeting your own needs, as long as you validate and understand them, over being a martyr.