Adopted

           I used to think that if I couldn't be like everyone else, I was a waste of space. I used to think if I didn't excel at something, such as getting a college degree, or being in charge of a club, I was worthless. A lot of that was ingrained in me by the high school I went to, unfortunately. They picked the popular and confident kids to run the whole show, and in my group of friends, everyone was good at something, so my BEST FRIEND told me, "Hey, we are all good at something... but you... *insert sad face* are not special in any field." I full on agreed, seeing the proof in the pudding. I was just average at everything. So what if I could draw cartoon figure sticks of girls in 2 minutes and it come out looking really cool, or that I understood why people acted the way they did in a heartbeat, or I could tell right away how people vibe? If it wasn't something big, and concrete, it was basically nothing.          What a sad...

           Wondering what was missing in my marriage, it finally hit me like a cannonball. I always knew the concept of it in the back of my mind, but never did I experience it full force consciously, in 1D or 2D like Abby Miller talks about.           Yesterday, my husband and I went together to take our baby to mental health therapy to figure out what was wrong with her and in her psyche of emotions. We sat down with the therapist, and she candidly began to ask open questions to digest the situation. She asked what brought us there, in each of our own words. I answered with a lengthy description of my daughter's avoidance of bonding with me, and my intuition that it was happening despite all outer sources telling me it was nothing, and I am "just Projecting" my own childhood trauma of being adopted and not being able to bond, and it comes NATURALLY with biological mother and child, and it's there so no matter what I do I can't b...

            My baby is very sensitive and prone to overwhelming feelings when I leave her for a while to take care of stuff. I connected this to her traumatic birth of forceps, and overexposed to my ignoring or using control patterns for repressing her emotions. Control patterns are when a parent can't handle emotions of their children because of the extreme feelings it brings up in them, and so they use things to distract him. For me it was rocking her and giving her the pacifier to aid her in sleep because she was to anxious and nervous to sleep.             I did that until I found out about aware parenting, and saw how harmful it was. She basically got used to ignoring her feelings, and i read in Aletha Solter's book Tears and Tantrums that when we use control patterns to shut off releasing emotions, it is equivalent to the child as EMOTIONAL ABANDONMENT! Yes you heard me, it is emotional abuse to ignore your ...

        I wrote a virtual letter to my birth mother. It was extremely emotional, but held an empty hollowness to it. As If I was just seeing myself from third person point of view. I wrote that I couldn't feel emotions towards anyone, and when I look at my daughter crying, I feel hollow and I wish I can show her that I care but a part of me holds back because I believe that I am incapable of attachment.         I always needed the outside validation that I felt something. I know it's there, but I don't trust it. This makes me think of adoptees how they seem unattached to anyone, and are "self-possessed" meaning they don't need anyone. I read about that in Lost and Found by Betty Jean Lifton, that an adoptee who was searching and vaguely curious about her birth mother had an air of being so.         The scary thing is, I see it in my own daughter too- how she just doesn't seem to care if I leave or am here. But when when I ...

           The other day, I was thinking of how I need to be aware of when I am operating from a blind spot and not being able to see my child's emotions due to it. As much as I tried to rack, I could not think of any positive outlook on the situation, my daughter was depressed and I just could not bring myself to accept it. Voices in my head told me I'd never get to the root of her feelings; that I was doomed for failure as a parent.          I guess a blind spot for me is seeing my daughter inconsolable and it triggers my own feelings of never-ending depression, so I fall into bleakness and not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Therefore, I block seeing her feelings, thinking they are unmanageable and it's projection. Because, as Marion Rose says, your child will be okay if you just keep showing them that you can hear their feelings even once, but for me I feel hopeless of all change in this state, and so I give up any ef...

         I really do wonder what the deal is with self-love, and how far it goes. Abby Miller says that authentic self-love is to be able to love yourself in your darkest times, not only when you are flying high. If you cannot do that, then the love is synthetic.           We have been beaten down by so many outer expectations of what makes us good or bad, I feel it is nearly impossible for some of us to love ourselves. Because a child is molded by the way the adults in his life treat him, if he is given the message that he is bad over and over again, it will be very hard for him to believe in himself to do good. Children are extremely egotistic, and this just means that they have no logic skills to discern if what adults are saying is out of reason or not. They cannot think abstractly, as psychology has taught us, until the age of around 10-12. Therefore, everything goes straight into their emotions, and they take it how it is. So if ...

           When the parent has a blindspot  she is unable to be present for a certain feeling in herself and therefore cannot see it in her child and then the child will feel unsafe in that feeling and learn to repress it often through "control patterns"- repressing in a way that is taught by the parents. Such as through eating, or distracting themselves with the outside world.                          My daughter was always very screechy from day 1. She kicked a whole lot in the womb, like her muscles were tense and tight. I was terrified to find out I was Pregnant because deep down I knew I had horrible self-esteem and knew I could taint a child of mine's own personality by my inner critics, which mirrored on my perceptions on others flaws. And a child just copies the parent, so I'd see all my addictions and lack of self-worth in her. I cried and cried one night, and screamed to my hu...