Believing in One's Inner Boundaries

If we don't have boundaries within our family we won't be able to have boundaries in the public too. I am seeing that this is essential to living healthily. I have a hard time with inner boundaries, so I have a hard time knowing where I start and end with others.

I was talking to my adoptee friend about eating addiction and he told me if I have issues with controlling my food intake I should fast in order to get it straight. I agree and I tried to do it at least for the mornings. It helps clear my head and see what I want.

I also read Anne Heffron's book called You Don't Look Adopted, and got a lot of insights from it. She said she always wanted to get a man who would be perfect and make her feel better about herself, but realized that she couldn't attract that because she felt ugly inside so she attracted men who felt worthless too. At the end she realized that she wanted love inside to share to others outside. And she got support from her friends after she shared her voice. This is exactly what I am trying to do, and hopefully gain my own support of friends that get me.

I saw that my daughter just needs to feel loved to be herself, and not controlled by what I tell her she should be, and then she will develop good boundaries because she'll know that she is important. I am just worried that I am not doing that enough. Because sometimes I force her to cry it out when I see that she is stressed, and although she needs to, maybe she begins to feel like she has no choice and gets hurt. Anne Heffron said she wished her mother would have held her when she asked for her birth mother at age 7 and not ran away crying. She said it would have helped her so much had her mother held her through her crying and screaming that she hated her and trying to escape because of her fear of being abandoned first from ptsd of adoption. She said she would have been so much better off if she got to mourn with her mother about being adopted and they got close because of that.

I don't feel that at all about my adoptive mother, I don't even love her consciously because she never really tried to bond with me. I guess I have anger. She is a huge faker and pretends to be a perfect mother, because she knows deep down that she is cold and incapable of emotions. She just feels that everyone is against her and she has no choice, but that she "tries." It made me become a cold and untrusting person myself, that has to pander to gain other's approval and affection but has a hard time believing it. I have to keep retraining my brain to believe that I am okay and can be loved.

The thing is, because I don't feel worthy of love, I feel like I have to manipulate others and then feel angry when they don't comply. It is very bad, but if I train myself to accept love and feel I do deserve it, that there is no shame in needing it, I can believe it. And so the more I accept adoption as trauma in my life, the more I accept my strange behavior and so called manipulation tactics. I can give myself what I need to feel good.

I realized that the more we know our inner boundaries, the less we blame others and think the fault is theirs for our shortcomings. Because we can take responsibility for our behavior and not feel like the victim.