Finding My Way Out Of The Adoption Fog - guest post by Gilli Bruce

Sometimes fog is thick and dark and cloying, and you know fine well that you are in it. Sometimes it is invisible – as in the kind of fog that can wrap itself in and around adoptees. 

The term ‘being in the fog’ is often used to describe the way adoptees feel, think, operate and relate before they come out of the denial, conditioning and ignorance that cloaks the impacts of adoption. When we don’t realise that the emotional pain, and many other difficulties that arise, are a result of being adopted, we blunder around in the fog not understanding what’s going on or why. We grope around in our lives, feeling somewhat lost, trying different directions but unable to find our way. Feeling alone in our situation – because no one else can see our fog or even knows it exists. 

The impacts of adoption are at best unknown and at worst denied. But thanks to new understanding around childhood trauma and neuroscience, what many of us have experienced is now being acknowledged, understood and validated.

We each have our own experience of adoption – some seem to manage to come out of it completely unscathed, some deny the impacts whilst wondering why they are alone, addicted, co-dependent, over-weight, angry, fearful, or overwhelmed with shame. Some come to realise that their patterns of disastrous relationships, their pull towards adrenalin-inducing danger, their whole life strategy in fact – stems from the early wounding. Often it is not until adoptees reach mid-life or beyond that the patterns can be seen, and the denial no longer works. This is when the fog comes into focus – sometimes all at once and sometimes a bit at a time.

My realisations came out a bit at a time – so my journey out of the fog happened at a snail’s pace, in stages and with periods of inertia as I came to terms with the latest insight or realisation. There are still little things coming to light. Here’s how I crept out of the adoption fog…

I was lucky enough aged 34 onwards to work for a company that invested in its people and working in the 1990s was a great time to be provided with personal growth and development training – there were still budgets for that kind of thing! We were exposed to personal growth work that showed me aspects of myself that were hidden in the ‘blind spot’ – that were unknown to me - yet were plain as day to those who knew me well. We used a model called ‘Johari’s Window’ where some of my blind spots were revealed to me and my self-perception was shaken up. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was manageable. 

We were given book suggestions and workshop recommendations and, armed with a new curiosity and a will to learn, I embarked on a period of self-discovery. The timing was right too, had this all occurred ten years earlier I would not have had any patterns visible enough to be noticed yet. 

As I began to come out of the adoption fog, I learned that:

• I was not authentic, I manoeuvred and manipulated things instead (to risk being ‘real’ was too risky)

• I led my life on the run, to sit still for a minute might mean feeling the pain

• I was frazzled with anxiety - but I hid it from myself with denial

• I could not say ‘No’ to anyone for anything; I was a people-pleaser

• I was a serial monogamist jumping from one relationship to the next in the search for attachment, and much more

Initially I DID NOT attribute any of these aspects of myself to adoption, but a start at clearing some of the fog symptoms had been made. 

So, I read some more and went on retreats and made some headway during my 30s and early 40s. With a dear friend I went to retreats at Cortijo Romero (a retreat centre in Spain), attended local workshops and national events and learned more about the human condition, growth and coming to a place of peace.

• I learned about co-dependency and what that means and that I was co-dependent (still working that one). I vividly recall reading Co-Dependent No More by Melody Beattie with horror and shock as I saw my own behaviour described in her pages.

• I read Women Who love Too Much by Robin Norwood in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down and was compelled to finish it as I was in those pages too.

• I learned that I had a very fragile sense of self. I was pervaded by a feeling of being ‘a leaf on the breeze’, with no ancestral lineage I knew of, no sense of ‘roots’ and a fractured identity – not knowing who I was, not knowing which bits were the ‘real me’ and which were the bits I thought I ought to be.

• I learned that I wore an upbeat, jolly persona as a shield from negative emotions through learning about The Enneagram. The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Riso & Russ Hudson has become my bible.

• I took a two-year NLP Master Practitioner programme and learned about all my unconscious drivers and how much I was filled with fear.

I attended spiritual workshops with Tony Robbins, Louise L Hay and Brandon Bays and learned that underneath all of this lived a shiny, joyful heart that I could access and grow. 

I still did not quite understand that my need for all this learning and activity was driven by the childhood trauma that is adoption – but the fog was loosening its hold on me and I was getting stronger and clearer.

Being made redundant and becoming a self-employed training consultant and coach really helped me to grow into myself as I had to become more solid; more real and more self-reliant. It was super scary and shaky at first, but after a few years I had developed enough inner strength to consider finding my birth family. I was 46 and realising that if I didn’t act soon it might be too late.

It took two traumatic years to find and meet all my birth family and that’s a huge, different story – but the expectations that I would be transformed into a pain-free version of my former self due to being re-united, were soon corrected. It wasn’t to be as easy as that. Still, I underestimated the impact of adoption. I was somewhat out of the fog, on my way through – but it was still misty.

In my early 50s, I added a few more onto the string of failed relationships, having lost my Dad, now I lost my Mum and – in a desperately lonely place – moved to a new house for a new start. 

A concerned friend asked if I would try online dating to find a new relationship and my answer from the gut was ‘No! There’s no point!’ – this visceral reaction was a turning point, a key question at the right time. I pondered on the question and the response – what was wrong with me? After all the damn work I’d done on myself, why could I not do what everyone else seems to do without too much trouble? It couldn’t be THAT could it? I didn’t want it to be THAT; that adoption thing. With my resistance to there being any problem in being adopted acknowledged, I decided to meet it head on. I rolled my sleeves up and got stuck into this psychological skeleton that I’d stuffed right at the back of the emotional cupboard.

Sitting with a cup of tea, munching biscuits and searching the internet for anything about adoption (I’d got to 53 having never looked at this before) I found a You Tube film entitled A Lecture On Adoption with Paul Sunderland. It was like being hit about the head by a very large mattress! Within 30 minutes the fog was revealed, blown away and the truth revealed. Adoption IS A PROBLEM!! It messes you up – you’re not weird after all. You’re adopted – and this is what it can do. Wow. A strange mixture of relief, elation and dread swept through me. I felt like a little mole who’d been tunnelling away underground – popping out into bright day light as I learned about the impacts of adoption for the first time. Within a further few minutes, I knew I needed to work with this man who knew, and could explain and help. 

I know now that you cannot really come out of the adoption fog, or indeed anywhere – unless you know where you are to start with. The missing piece in my growth journey had been the insights about the impacts of adoption and the work I did in therapy to clear that fog away.

Over three years I worked with Paul Sunderland (an addictions psychotherapist) and attended 12 Step programmes. The work entailed doing lots of healing work I didn’t want to do (and that’s another huge story). I resisted, denied and went emotionally kicking and screaming into dark places amongst the truth – to become aware, clear eyed and sane, with a solid sense of self. Now I’m out of the fog, although there are a few wisps still hanging around, but I can spot them and manage them! 

I share this journey in the hope that any adoptee reading this will take a shortcut and have a faster recovery than I did in my 20-year journey. God speed.