Understanding The Amygdala Helps Change -Nancy Verrier
I think my daughter needing me so much has taught me that true feelings will always come through. There is no point in pretending they are not there, trying to excuse them away and ignore them. She goes to my ex for three and a half days, for Passover, and comes back totally different. Her attitude to me shifts, she is uninterested and angry when he tries to leave her with me. She screams and shrieks when I pick her up, wanting to cry her feelings out. I watch and listen, knowing her pain. It is priceless, to be able to listen. I know I love her and she loves me, and that’s all that matters, and like clockwork she calms down and is the happiest she’s been before. Knowing I understand and still love her. Life is a breeze when I can be honest about how I am feelings and in line with it.
I was struggling so hard over the last three days to validate my pain. All kinds of feelings came up, most of them unworthiness and abandonment and pain from society. Not being understood. It’s the greatest gaslight to be adopted the way I was. To have to pretend all my life to be something else. It indeed felt like a prison, as Nancy Verrier put it in her book Coming Home to Self. I lost my desire to be myself, because the trauma happened before I was able to develop into a healthy, whole person, and since then I have been acting from a false self- being hyper vigilant and people pleasing- in order to survive. Since my true self was rejected, that is, I saw that they never accepted my feelings of anger and mistrust and resentment, I shut it down. Yes, I fought and struggled, but the outcome over the years was just giving up completely on having a self and others at the same time. As Teal Swan talked about in her video called Belonging... my struggle with feeling accepted made me think no one would accept me, and it was a coping pattern.
Nancy Verrier also talked about how the adoptee who is not accepted in who she is ends up shutting down and like she’s in “prison” with the adoptive family (Page 21). Yes, I always had different talents than them, I was more introspective and dreamy, while they were practical and instinctive as well as was my biological brother who also was adopted with me. So I felt like an “ugly duckling,” whom no one would ever appreciate. I critiqued myself a lot, and barely developed any talents of mine with pride. I have such low self confidence when it comes to my writing, or singing. My voice feels too light, my writing feels not polished enough. This is partly because I didn’t believe in myself to develop it.
I’m bringing out my true self to the open, because as Nancy Verrier says, neurosis can’t exist in the light. So what if the guy I spoke to for so long does not want me anymore? Maybe he doesn’t really like the true me, and that’s something I have been avoiding thinking of, as I pretended to be exciting and different for him to keep him staying. Adoptees tend to give in to the other person way too much in relationships because they want to be “rescued,” and then feel abandoned when the person cannot put up with their immature ways anymore (Page 103). I am trying to be more authentic, to save my life. I don’t want it passing by anymore without my choice in it. I see when I ignore my feelings, I am stressed and angry at my daughter and myself, because I resent not being heard. As Nancy Verrier says, emotionally abandoned people have a hard time taking control of their emotion, because “...the amygdala which often hijacks our best intentions before they even have a change to become thoughts (Siegel, 1999)... it is why ‘mind over matter’ seldom works for victims of trauma.” When there are traumatic events, like compulsion disorder and flashbacks, it can lead to destructive behavior, and “the reactions to these stimuli seem almost automatic” (Page 40).
So what if people call me selfish? If people mock my neediness and sadness- that’s a reflection on them and they are unhappy with their own self and want to control me. I am who I am, and I cannot pretend to be ahead of myself, or I’ll trip. I’m not the spiritual, flying high with happiness, person that I often push myself to be. These lower emotions of indignation and questioning my existence as real are there. I often don’t even feel real. As Nancy Verrier said- the therapist was telling the client “You are worthy” over and over again, and not listening for a “I know,” because the amygdala /implicit memory brain did not know it (Page 83). It was programmed not to think so, and the person needs reminders all the time that it’s not true so they can change their behavior patterns of attracting negative situations in their life.
I do not like how Verrier seems to “yell” at adoptees to “stop doing that!” As in, saying they are a victim, because it hurts others. It doesn’t seem compassionate and understanding. She says just before that “a traumatic experience is recorded in the reptilian brain... this is the part of the brain which deals with self preservation or survival... Adrenalin is elevated. There is a sense of being in permanent alert....” and because it happened at the beginning of their life, adoptees “may not even know that it is not a normal state” (Page 13). It sort of irks me that she goes on to say that we have to change ourselves for the next over 300 pages of how. It is very overwhelming and flooding to my “baby” brain, because I was always taught to value what others said over what I feel, and so I feel I must read all of it at once and suddenly be better. The truth is, it’s a lot to handle and I am stressed now. I feel not good enough, just because I did not write down every single thing she said and applied it already. I get stressed when there is a lot of work to do, because of my ADD at not having my attunement needs met and my trying to regulate my emotions all on my own. If my needs of attunement and love are not met, I cannot be expected to apply logical concepts and reasoning to myself, as “Truana which occurs during the period of normal childhood amnesia, which includes immediate postnatal separation from mother, will be processed as implicit memory, affecting behavior and emotional responses, although remains in an unresolved, consolidated form. The danger here is, as Siegel says, ‘the implicit recollections are not usually subject to a process of self reflection, as in ‘why am I doing this or feeling this way?’ Individuals may sense these experiences as just defining who they are’” (Page 33).
I am proud of the fact that I am able to see this about myself, and give so much love to my daughter. I have always known emotional needs were important to get, and sensory. I have held her close to me after her birth and since then have looked out for her always, seeing her as part of me. Her happiness was as important as my own. I am happy that we have a strong bond, which I created with my own love and giving. “A successful relationship depends on attunement,” and brains are structured according to how connected the parent is to the child (Page 394-395). Of course it also helps that she’s genetically related to me, as I can read her well. I know that she needs me, and that gives me power to love her and give to her. It’s only because I know about the pain that a child goes through when the mother is not there, that I see how she feels hurt sometimes over how I’m absent or stressed out emotionally. I can listen to her cry and be angry, feeling in control because I know why she is upset. We also have genetic mirroring, so I understand how she feels and acts sometimes automatically at times. A non biological mother “cannot mirror the child the way his or her biological mother could have done” (Page 387). For example, when she stares off into space when I am not paying attention to her, I can tell she is using it as a coping method to cover her true feelings. I can redirect her by saying something she was just talking about, or act silly to counteract the tension she felt.
In addition, I can know when she feels trauma because I have the same genes as her so I can understand when she is being her true self or communicating pain, as adoptive mothers are often at a loss of knowing the difference (Page 386). I also know to have her father’s genetics in mind, and how his family all seem to struggle with ADD and regulating emotions, so that shows me why she would need an extra ear for attention and patience.
Knowing my own history is what holds me together, though. If not for reading all about how adoptees having a hard time “trusting natural order” because the most unnatural thing happened to them- their mother left when they were infants! (Page 19). It brings me relief, because I have always felt at odds with reality, like I never quite fit in to this universe. Beliefs of “not being enough” from the tapes in my childhood, prevent me from moving forward. Verrier says that even if the parents are no longer there, the belief patterns persist and prevent the adoptee from moving on (Page 83). I sometimes spiral from my work load and everything in my life feels worthless, like I am nothing. The baby in me feels helpless, in a flood of stress. “Psychological trauma can overwhelm affect regulation mechanisms, and various forms of adaptation may be required to maintain equilibrium. The flood of stress hormones can produce toxic effects on the development of brain systems responsible for self regulation.” (Page 143).
I hate feeling like I have no control of my world, and I’ve been trying to run from this feeling all my life. But it lingers in me, no matter how much I put on a false face that I am competent. Adoptees have a hard time with self regulation. When the loss is hidden from conscious awareness, and the grief is ignored, and the child can seem like they are unreal and do not have a sense of living, or seem to live in a trance. This is because they cannot have expectations of the future, and therefore cannot feel cause and affect of their actions, thereby do not live with consequences (Page 143). I feel this strongly at times, like nothing matters and I have no future. I get so down, as if nothing I do will be visible to anyone.
If someone is abandoned as a child, they do not have a pretruama self to make sense of it. Living with strangers only makes it harder to be their true selves, as well as the tendency of someone who was traumatized in the narcissistic stage of development to blame themselves when things go wrong, so they felt something was wrong with them. The compliant adopted child learns to hide their abandonment fears by acting in, and keeping others happy. It is not their true self, as she says, “No one is born born always needing to please others.” They even manage to convince their therapists to like this part of them, although it is not even real! (Page 157-158). I have always been this way, ashamed of my pain. Now that I know what it’s from, I can stop trying to hide myself to please others. This is exactly what makes me more open to see and accept all of my own child’s feelings, because I believe children need to be validated for the pain they go through, if we want them to have a healthy, wholesome self-esteem.
I was struggling so hard over the last three days to validate my pain. All kinds of feelings came up, most of them unworthiness and abandonment and pain from society. Not being understood. It’s the greatest gaslight to be adopted the way I was. To have to pretend all my life to be something else. It indeed felt like a prison, as Nancy Verrier put it in her book Coming Home to Self. I lost my desire to be myself, because the trauma happened before I was able to develop into a healthy, whole person, and since then I have been acting from a false self- being hyper vigilant and people pleasing- in order to survive. Since my true self was rejected, that is, I saw that they never accepted my feelings of anger and mistrust and resentment, I shut it down. Yes, I fought and struggled, but the outcome over the years was just giving up completely on having a self and others at the same time. As Teal Swan talked about in her video called Belonging... my struggle with feeling accepted made me think no one would accept me, and it was a coping pattern.
Nancy Verrier also talked about how the adoptee who is not accepted in who she is ends up shutting down and like she’s in “prison” with the adoptive family (Page 21). Yes, I always had different talents than them, I was more introspective and dreamy, while they were practical and instinctive as well as was my biological brother who also was adopted with me. So I felt like an “ugly duckling,” whom no one would ever appreciate. I critiqued myself a lot, and barely developed any talents of mine with pride. I have such low self confidence when it comes to my writing, or singing. My voice feels too light, my writing feels not polished enough. This is partly because I didn’t believe in myself to develop it.
I’m bringing out my true self to the open, because as Nancy Verrier says, neurosis can’t exist in the light. So what if the guy I spoke to for so long does not want me anymore? Maybe he doesn’t really like the true me, and that’s something I have been avoiding thinking of, as I pretended to be exciting and different for him to keep him staying. Adoptees tend to give in to the other person way too much in relationships because they want to be “rescued,” and then feel abandoned when the person cannot put up with their immature ways anymore (Page 103). I am trying to be more authentic, to save my life. I don’t want it passing by anymore without my choice in it. I see when I ignore my feelings, I am stressed and angry at my daughter and myself, because I resent not being heard. As Nancy Verrier says, emotionally abandoned people have a hard time taking control of their emotion, because “...the amygdala which often hijacks our best intentions before they even have a change to become thoughts (Siegel, 1999)... it is why ‘mind over matter’ seldom works for victims of trauma.” When there are traumatic events, like compulsion disorder and flashbacks, it can lead to destructive behavior, and “the reactions to these stimuli seem almost automatic” (Page 40).
So what if people call me selfish? If people mock my neediness and sadness- that’s a reflection on them and they are unhappy with their own self and want to control me. I am who I am, and I cannot pretend to be ahead of myself, or I’ll trip. I’m not the spiritual, flying high with happiness, person that I often push myself to be. These lower emotions of indignation and questioning my existence as real are there. I often don’t even feel real. As Nancy Verrier said- the therapist was telling the client “You are worthy” over and over again, and not listening for a “I know,” because the amygdala /implicit memory brain did not know it (Page 83). It was programmed not to think so, and the person needs reminders all the time that it’s not true so they can change their behavior patterns of attracting negative situations in their life.
I do not like how Verrier seems to “yell” at adoptees to “stop doing that!” As in, saying they are a victim, because it hurts others. It doesn’t seem compassionate and understanding. She says just before that “a traumatic experience is recorded in the reptilian brain... this is the part of the brain which deals with self preservation or survival... Adrenalin is elevated. There is a sense of being in permanent alert....” and because it happened at the beginning of their life, adoptees “may not even know that it is not a normal state” (Page 13). It sort of irks me that she goes on to say that we have to change ourselves for the next over 300 pages of how. It is very overwhelming and flooding to my “baby” brain, because I was always taught to value what others said over what I feel, and so I feel I must read all of it at once and suddenly be better. The truth is, it’s a lot to handle and I am stressed now. I feel not good enough, just because I did not write down every single thing she said and applied it already. I get stressed when there is a lot of work to do, because of my ADD at not having my attunement needs met and my trying to regulate my emotions all on my own. If my needs of attunement and love are not met, I cannot be expected to apply logical concepts and reasoning to myself, as “Truana which occurs during the period of normal childhood amnesia, which includes immediate postnatal separation from mother, will be processed as implicit memory, affecting behavior and emotional responses, although remains in an unresolved, consolidated form. The danger here is, as Siegel says, ‘the implicit recollections are not usually subject to a process of self reflection, as in ‘why am I doing this or feeling this way?’ Individuals may sense these experiences as just defining who they are’” (Page 33).
I am proud of the fact that I am able to see this about myself, and give so much love to my daughter. I have always known emotional needs were important to get, and sensory. I have held her close to me after her birth and since then have looked out for her always, seeing her as part of me. Her happiness was as important as my own. I am happy that we have a strong bond, which I created with my own love and giving. “A successful relationship depends on attunement,” and brains are structured according to how connected the parent is to the child (Page 394-395). Of course it also helps that she’s genetically related to me, as I can read her well. I know that she needs me, and that gives me power to love her and give to her. It’s only because I know about the pain that a child goes through when the mother is not there, that I see how she feels hurt sometimes over how I’m absent or stressed out emotionally. I can listen to her cry and be angry, feeling in control because I know why she is upset. We also have genetic mirroring, so I understand how she feels and acts sometimes automatically at times. A non biological mother “cannot mirror the child the way his or her biological mother could have done” (Page 387). For example, when she stares off into space when I am not paying attention to her, I can tell she is using it as a coping method to cover her true feelings. I can redirect her by saying something she was just talking about, or act silly to counteract the tension she felt.
In addition, I can know when she feels trauma because I have the same genes as her so I can understand when she is being her true self or communicating pain, as adoptive mothers are often at a loss of knowing the difference (Page 386). I also know to have her father’s genetics in mind, and how his family all seem to struggle with ADD and regulating emotions, so that shows me why she would need an extra ear for attention and patience.
Knowing my own history is what holds me together, though. If not for reading all about how adoptees having a hard time “trusting natural order” because the most unnatural thing happened to them- their mother left when they were infants! (Page 19). It brings me relief, because I have always felt at odds with reality, like I never quite fit in to this universe. Beliefs of “not being enough” from the tapes in my childhood, prevent me from moving forward. Verrier says that even if the parents are no longer there, the belief patterns persist and prevent the adoptee from moving on (Page 83). I sometimes spiral from my work load and everything in my life feels worthless, like I am nothing. The baby in me feels helpless, in a flood of stress. “Psychological trauma can overwhelm affect regulation mechanisms, and various forms of adaptation may be required to maintain equilibrium. The flood of stress hormones can produce toxic effects on the development of brain systems responsible for self regulation.” (Page 143).
I hate feeling like I have no control of my world, and I’ve been trying to run from this feeling all my life. But it lingers in me, no matter how much I put on a false face that I am competent. Adoptees have a hard time with self regulation. When the loss is hidden from conscious awareness, and the grief is ignored, and the child can seem like they are unreal and do not have a sense of living, or seem to live in a trance. This is because they cannot have expectations of the future, and therefore cannot feel cause and affect of their actions, thereby do not live with consequences (Page 143). I feel this strongly at times, like nothing matters and I have no future. I get so down, as if nothing I do will be visible to anyone.
If someone is abandoned as a child, they do not have a pretruama self to make sense of it. Living with strangers only makes it harder to be their true selves, as well as the tendency of someone who was traumatized in the narcissistic stage of development to blame themselves when things go wrong, so they felt something was wrong with them. The compliant adopted child learns to hide their abandonment fears by acting in, and keeping others happy. It is not their true self, as she says, “No one is born born always needing to please others.” They even manage to convince their therapists to like this part of them, although it is not even real! (Page 157-158). I have always been this way, ashamed of my pain. Now that I know what it’s from, I can stop trying to hide myself to please others. This is exactly what makes me more open to see and accept all of my own child’s feelings, because I believe children need to be validated for the pain they go through, if we want them to have a healthy, wholesome self-esteem.
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