There was an interesting discussion among several adopted people yesterday on facebook. As I was reading the replies to the question posed, I was thinking that any mother considering adoption for her unborn child should have to read it also. For you cannot go into a fully informed decision for adoption until you have learned about how that choice might possibly effect your child in the future.
The discussion was about the Psychology Today article
"10 Surprising Facts About Rejection". A question was posed asking if others who were adopted felt that #10 on the list ("10. There are ways to treat the psychological wounds rejection inflicts.")
was true for those who were adopted. Below is the question posed and some of the replies. I asked if it would be ok to post their discussion here ~ some preferred I use their names and some preferred to stay anonymous.
Thanks to all of you who allowed me to share this discussion!
The Question:
Adoptees, I would like you to share your thoughts on this article. We
all face rejection, and we all know it runs viral among the adopted. I
see myself in a lot of the traits posted in this column. I don't see #10
in the same light as the author. Thoughts?
When I began delving into adoption it was the same day as my discovery coming up on 8-years-ago. I was very surprised when I learned that rejection is an adopted person's hugest trigger. While everyone fears rejection, it is 10-fold among we adoptees. "The Primal Wound" details how relinquished babies experience a rejection as soon as we are removed from our mothers. It is a trauma we never overcome.
I cannot totally agree with #10. While there are treatments for feelings of rejection and abandonment, no one I know of has as of yet cured "the primal wound." If someone were to I know they would make millions. Have any of you cured the Primal Wound?
"Number
10 feels off to me, too. We may think we've gotten past feeling a
certain way, but something can send us down the rabbit hole where we
feel old stings anew. At least "I" do. I hesitate to say we, but I know
I've heard other express similar feelings over the years.
I
think the best I can do is learn to cope with my emotions and
everything that goes along with them better. For me, this is a lifelong
process of constantly tweaking my thinking and how I treat myself."
"I can't cure the Primal Wound, but sometimes I can slap a big enough bandaid on it so that I can cope."
"I don't feel we can *fix* the Primal Wound.... Only learn coping skills. Not a professional - but I have lived it."
"They
may not be taking into account trauma that occurs in infancy. There's
definitely a difference because the infant has no knowledge of it's self
before the trauma. Check out www.lifeworkscommunity.com for more about this. They also have a page on FB.
Paul Sunderland also has a video on YouTube, "Lecture on Adoption",
where he talks about this. He's from the UK and trained for many years
in addiction. He found such a strong link between adoption and addiction
that he began looking deeper into the effects of adoption (or
relinquishment, as he calls it). He talks extensively about PTSD. Very
interesting!"
"damn, just reading that article...makes me feel hurt."
"Very interesting, especially 7 and 9 for me"
Holly Carter:
"You
can't correct the Primal Wound. We don't have a self before the actual
wound. We can't go back to before because there is no before. We are
severed forever and will always carry that with us. While it can be put
in the closet and set on a shelf,
every so often, when entering the closet, it can jump off the shelf at
the most inappropriate times. Also, until society realizes that we have
this real pain with adoption and society allows us to grieve our loss,
there won't be a real healing of this rejection. I feel it is always
there, we just learn to live with it & put it aside & it will
erupt at any given time, weather we realize it or not. I'm pretty sure
that's why I can talk circles around people when I don't really want to
answer a question or discuss something. Hope this makes sense."
"I
can see how someone with an adoption rejection experience could find
him/herself with twice as much time as others just thinking and
anticipating a rejection before it even happens. It's like hiking 200
ft up a hill and back tracking 200 ft and going back up again....the
stress is at maximum"
"Holly states it very well…there is no cure for the Primal Wound……Before I
read that book, I also read Being Adopted the life long search for self
and between the two books…It was such an epiphany for me on how I
maneuvered my life…not to risk..not to trust….leave
a relationship before one can leave me….Divorce rate is higher among
adoptees as well according to a book I read…Our adoptee issues always
seems to be there…it is how we manage it all so it doesn't get too
overwhelming at one time or moment…"
"I
agree that there is no cure for the primal wound, & I've often
wondered if those of us that are adopted are so conditioned to it that
we subconsciously set ourselves up for more rejection by subtle things
like body language & facial expressions, especially to people who
tend to be human predators whose skills are honed to smell fear &
pounce on it."
From a natural mother: "The
saddest thing to me is how much I wanted my daughter. I wasn't looking
to abandon. I was told the biggest lie of coercion; If you love her
enough you will allow her to have the nuclear family she deserves. No
one told me she would feel abandoned or have any negative effects about
adoption. And that's why I do what I can to help young pregnant women
know the truth. My apology from all of your mothers."
"in
reading number 10 I would say it falls along the line with PEER
therapy…releasing all the stored negative emotions that exist in the
body…self soothing only works so well and having other people soothe us
is not always realistic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3euHCetX34"
"my
birth mother was told the same set of lies. It took me awhile to fill
her in about my not-so-positive adoption experience and she was
devastated to find out things weren't all rosy as she was promised.
Young women in distress
are prone and want to believe the best case scenarios, especially if
those around them are all sending the same message. Adoption should be a
last resort, not looked at as the perfect solution."
Jodi Gibson Haywood: "#10
sounds kind of vague. Rejection definitely does not respond to reason
or logical thought, especially with adoption wounds. Decades after the
fact I discovered I wasn't actually given up, but taken in a family
abduction. That did nothing to ease the pain of rejection. The primal
wound is incurable. Some days the pain can be managed better than
others."
"I
think that the important part of #10 is, "To do so effectively we must
address each of our psychological wounds... " Because our emotions run
HOT it is very hard to stop long enough to calmly and coolly "address"
our wounds. Personal experience - I was
told by a cousin that I was not wanted. Not by my Mother or Father - No
one wanted me. My Mom and Dad felt sorry for me so they took me in.
Sound familiar?? Then when I was in grade school a classmate told me
that being adopted meant that my Mother was a prostitute!! Lovely, eh.
Well, my Mom (at this point - the 50s) was very forthcoming with what
she had been told (which proved to be true) so my wound was bandaged by
what she told me... BUT throughout my life I have heard the same crap
over and over about adoptees and/or why children are surrendered for
adoption. It is a very sore point with me. After two years of addressing
this point with a useless - USELESS - therapist (?) in my early 20s, I
talked to a neighbor who was a Psychiatrist and he asked me one simple
question (that I would never have heard or thought of in an emotional
fervor), "Did your cousin, schoolmate, or any of these people who say
that your or anyone else's Mothers didn't want them know the Mothers?"
Because of my own personal life situation at the time I was able to look
back at these situation and realize that all of these people (or their
parents who had planted the idea in their heads) were all talking out of
their asses. This was not the end of having to deal with feelings of
being "other" or not good enough But it was the beginning of awakening
and working for reform."
Wendy Blitzer Barkett: "T
ylenol???
Really??? Tylenol actually makes me feel the need to throw up, perhaps
now I know why. It's trying to fight with rejection, and rejection wins
out every time.
Someone mentioned the band aide and that I can relate to. I had no idea that I pushed
people to see how long it would take them to leave, to reject me, to
walk away. I knew I did it, I never knew why. It was when I pushed my
husband while we were engaged that the fear that he might actually leave
hit me. For the first time, I was pushing someone away that I didn't
want to leave, and so I stopped, for the most part.
Years later I read about rejection and abandonment and being an adoptee and how they all related to each other.
I don't think we can ever cure it, or heal it per say. Make it less painful, yes, for sure. Even tylenol will do that!
But
there are plenty of healthy, as well as rather unhealthy ways, to erase
the rejection feelings. Some refer to healing their inner child. I
can't relate to that. If there ever is a cure, or a clinical study, I'd
be sure to think about giving it a shot. Until then I just ignore it."
Jodi Gibson Haywood: "the
fact is that prolonged separation from your mother, as a baby or young
child, is automatically perceived as rejection because we're not capable
of understanding the circumstances behind it. Whether we
were abandoned, abducted, or orphaned in the true sense of the word, it
feels the same. It also makes us especially vulnerable to - and
traumatized by - subsequent rejections. My healing is coming from
acknowledging the primal wound while not allowing it to define me. Not
an easy thing to do, but less negative side effects than the
self-destructive stuff I did before."
"I do believe there is a way to address and treat our wounds. One way is to be aware of self defeating behavior that may elicit rejection and make changes in our imteractions with others. I have done this in my own life. Am I "cured"? Of all wounds? No. But the pain lessons with time. Like cully mentioned about those people who didn't know what they were talking about, sometimes logic can help me see that it isn't just me walking around wounded. Everyone has their baggage and fears rejection so I have learned not to take it as personal when it happens. Painful? Yes. But I can soothe my wounds by spending time with those who love me and have shown they won't reject me. (Of course this takes trust)."
"Just look in the animal kingdom at how mothers react when separated from their babies…they scream, cry and mourn and their babies if alive do the same…why do we think it should be different for human beings? I think that the loss is so understood by so many in the subconscious and for that reason no one really wants to talk about…it's unthinkable and yet is happens all the time. These are defenses we have and our mothers have, and the goal is SURVIVAL. It's so devastating, so horrible, so unfathomable that these defenses help us and our mothers survive them. I don't believe the primal wound can ever be completely healed, but I do think we can learn new coping skills…since we survived we can do anything!"
