Adoption, ADHD, and EMDR - a personal journey on the path to self
“After most sessions, as challenging and painful as they were, I slowly shed the layers of trauma,” by Carole Dwelly
By Carole Dwelly
“I understand now that I’m not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, ‘For the same reason I laugh so often, because I’m paying attention’.”
Glennon Doyle Melton
At a particularly low point in my life, I was introduced to two unknown acronyms - one I didn’t think existed and the other I had never heard of before. Running concurrently, I had found myself juggling life-changing events and significant losses. I felt static, depleted, and numb.
It was as if the rest of the world continued spinning and mine had ground to a halt, with not even a brief global respite to honour and acknowledge how wonderful the people and animals who were no longer with us were. There was nothing to soften the blow, only the persistent waves of emotional grief that would arrive any time it liked.
From a ripple to a tsunami, and sometimes occurring in a very public place.
Even my partner began to show signs of gratuitous impatience. Off-the-cuff remarks enquiring why I was still grieving the loss of my mother (6 months on) and, ‘There must be something wrong with you,’
became her default comment, summarizing the insufferable time she had endured with me in seven words! Naturally, it should have set off alarm bells, but the numbness I was feeling overshadowed any hint of rational coherence in her caustic tone of voice. I simply didn’t have the energy to deal with further emotional turmoil and confrontation but instead made a mental note of the glaring red flag.
Denial heightened my myopic view of the bigger picture. To accept and believe that the person I chose to spend the rest of my days with, and fellow adoptee, would not understand my plight seemed grossly absurd.
As I stumbled through the fog of grief, there was another issue unfolding. The possibility that ‘there wasn’t anything wrong with me,’ only undiagnosed ADHD and an obstacle of denial, on my part, to break down.
They say truth can be stranger than fiction, and following the loss of my adopted mother, I thought things couldn’t get much lower. My mother had been the foundation stone that had held the rest of the misfit family in place. She was compassionate and kind and always brought us together, even as reluctant as I was at times I did so out of respect and the love I had for her. When she passed away, the whole dynamics of our dysfunctional family went, for want of a better expression, arse about face.
Utterly overwhelmed and under-supported for months following the loss of my adopted mother and a year later my long-time canine companion; when my relationship finally ended, I just remember feeling a slight flicker of relief. Even as I grappled with this incongruent emotion, my world, as I had known it, finally all came crashing down around me.
When the dust finally settled, I was left with one objective.
Healing and recovery.
I had always held a certain scepticism about the validity of ADHD (Attention, Deficit, Hyperactivity, Disorder), and I can’t fully explain the resistance. It ran deeper than struggling to recall the sequence of letters, let alone what they stood for! (It’s also, quite possibly, the worst description of all time!)
But that wasn’t the only reason. I also, as an adoptee, had a deep-rooted aversion to being different. Fitting in or blending in was all I yearned for growing up in a world that felt to me like I was anything but. My adoption had occurred last century, in the 1960s, when closed adoptions were the only legal option. Up until the Adoption Act in 1976, adoptees had no access to their birth certificates, and even adopted parents were often advised against sharing information about the adoption with the adopted child!
It was a puzzling time growing up, not seeing any traits, looks, or other similarities mirroring my own between myself and my family. At age 8, I was sat down and told I was different, I was special, and I had been chosen, as if that would make all of the niggling questions be answered and everything okay. Perhaps as a way of affirming their narrative, I’d also get told how much I looked like my dad. It didn’t, no matter how hard I tried, I just didn’t feel grateful for being special or chosen. And I had a bully for an elder brother (their biological son). It all just felt wrong. (In today’s world it would be called gaslighting.)
Unsurprisingly, I became the adoptee who acted out. I felt like I was always trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
In my formative years, I had struggled to understand my emotional limitations and fears of rejection, which had affected most of my intimate relationships, and subconsciously nurtured my resilience to remain tough to the outside world, yet remaining completely vulnerable within. All the accumulative trauma I had deposited in a place so deeply hidden, it would take the most expert navigator to even reach the securely fastened door. Right or wrong, it enabled me to move forward with my life and not be swamped by all the emotional trauma I wasn’t yet ready to deal with.
So here I was, many moons later and on the cusp of realizing my brain was wired differently, my long term relationship defunct, my best canine friend deceased, and my mother gone, brought about something that could only be described as a sh*tstorm. My mooring brutally broken, I found myself adrift in a rapidly, uninviting, and unpredictable ocean. The stored trauma inside seemed to be rising like a spring tide as I instinctively tapped into the calmer waters of my brain as I had done in the past during my sailing
adventures. I usually became calm and quick thinking in an emergency event on board, and I would be able to think with clarity, abating rising panic that would usually affect other crew members. I drew from those strengths and walked towards what some may call the dark night of the soul to seek answers, solutions, and direction.
The dark night increased to days, nights, and weeks, of soul-searching and processing. I spent night after night in monologues with myself. As insane as it sounds, it was a bizarre mix of self critique on one side and praise and encouragement on the other. The encouragement monologue gradually began to gain traction as I continued the self-talk into the hot and sticky nights during the waning summer. The darkness and the clear Milky Way hovering above, seemingly close enough to touch, setting my mind on an immeasurable journey into the cosmic past while I tried to sort out my present predicament. The first step seemed clear – obtain a diagnosis.
As anyone with ADHD, or who knows anyone with the condition, getting a diagnosis can be an arduous and possibly expensive task, or both. I felt my problem-solving skills were really being challenged to the hilt as this particular journey commenced. As
I made a snail’s progress in one department, the door was firmly slammed in another. I swiftly realized getting a diagnosis wasn’t going to be as straightforward as I first imagined. After exhausting all the contact numbers I had collated, mainly therapists and psychiatrists, it appeared the only way forward through the health system was starting with a GP appointment.
That seemed easy enough, but soon enough I found my patience tested when I had to watch the GP use one finger to type up some forms to start the ball rolling. After what seemed like an eternity, the forms were for a series of blood tests. I can’t recall if I used an expletive at this stage, but the GP seemed to take great pleasure in informing me of the protocol involved and something about how long the whole process could take. But I didn’t want to wait. Feeling a little dejected and devoid of focus, halting the impulse to screw the pages up, I asked a simple question that, unbeknown to me, would lead me to fruition.
“So, is there a private clinic that is able to carry out the diagnosis?” (Keeping the rising frustration from my voice).
The answer made me undecided whether I should include a second expletive here or shake his hand. According to his knowledge, I could enquire at the
private health clinic that was a 15 minute drive from my house! Like me, I guess one does tend to wonder why this information wasn’t proffered at the beginning of the consultation, and like so many other rhetorical moments, I thought it best to leave the health centre with haste while I was ahead.
I know others who are still on a waiting list face huge delays, sometimes years before they can get diagnosed. I felt exceedingly grateful for discovering the local, private clinic (I have no health insurance), and the fact that I was able to afford the consultancy fee to finally get a clinical diagnosis was a huge validating relief for me. (Where I live, in Portugal, for now, it’s actually very affordable).
It basically highlights that all the online sites advertising assessments at inflated costs (not recommended) and the broken health care system in the UK, which has been helpless in the face of greedy politics, have allowed profit to surpass the importance of mental health care. The
neurodivergent population deserves better. It should be a basic human right to obtain the care
and attention that they need to be able to have the validation of a diagnosis and, more importantly, access to much-needed medication for those who require it.
It was the same psychiatrist who carried out my ADHD assessment suggested I may benefit from EMDR therapy. Divulging a small percent of who I am and my past seemed to be enough for the doc to suggest I had C-PTSD (I actually had to ask what the C stood for). And on my way out of the clinic, I had already booked my first consultation with the next doc to begin my EMDR treatment, even though I didn’t know the first thing about it. And so my first experience on my healing journey with the help of the other acronym was about to begin.
What also made the treatment so appealing was that it was a practice leaning more towards interactive psychotherapy as opposed to the talking therapy I had only previously had experience with. I had already lived decades with undiagnosed ADHD, the challenges I experienced I took for the long term effects of childhood/early adult abandonment trauma, I know I hadn’t fully dealt with. It all merged together in the murky, traumatic waters of time. It was impossible to separate one adopted emotion from an ADHD one. Presented as a work of art, the piece would have resembled a web spun by a spider on caffeine. In a word, chaotic. (We’ve all seen the images, right?!)
Directly after my ADHD diagnosis, the psychiatrist promptly wrote a prescription for medication that I was reluctant to take.
I needed an organic healing process to formulate, and the idea of taking a pill to supposedly improve my ADHD struggles just seemed like a ludicrous cop-out and a win for big Pharma. After all, I had made it this far having lived my entire life with ADHD, so I wasn’t about to start now. To appease the psychiatrist, I took one tablet, reluctantly, and endured a sleepless night. It was all I needed to confirm what I instinctively knew all along, and I’m sure my told-you-so attitude was picked up by the specialist.
(While I can safely say my views, opinions, and experiences are uniquely mine, I do not wish to undermine others who rely on and thrive off ADHD medication.)
Famed for her abundant idioms, my adopted mother regularly recited, I drew comfort from her words:
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and, no time like the present, I set to making the EMDR therapy my lightsaber in confronting and conquering the final ‘chapter’ to reclaim my psychological liberation and healing.
Years previously I had been gifted the book, The Primal Wound, written by the amazing Nancy Verrier. Barely had I made any headway into the book when I found myself in floods of tears after reading the following sentence, ‘Dear Mum, please come and get me.’ This was in reply to the question Nancy had asked a group of adoptees: if you could write to your birth mother, what would you say? The sentence evoked something primal within me. A visceral and almost indescribable pain that I only wanted to flee from. Each time I picked up the book, the repeated emotion would rise to the surface, and each time I would place the book back in the bookshelf, choosing the next bookshelf up, to place it further from my reach, as if by doing so I could distance myself from my own emotional reaction.
Eventually, and after countless attempts, I successfully read the book, bought the sequel Coming Home to Self, and devoured that in the process. I was relieved that I had finally managed to finish both publications, and my gratitude, holding no bounds, reached out to the author, praising her for her life-changing work.
There is no doubt in my mind the mental and physical impact being adopted has sometimes overshadowed and affected my life, but there was one event that I wanted to address and pen to my birth mother, not to be posted as I had no forwarding address or knew if she was still alive. It was more about an instinctual urge, yearning to transcribe all those suppressed emotions.
Fresh from the encouragement and empowerment I’d gained after reading the books, I set to to write that long-awaited letter I had promised to myself.
I will spare you the amount of false starts that I notched up. When I did manage to get the words flowing, they got angrier and angrier and angrier, and the momentum and articulation were lost in the rage. It left me feeling defeated and stuck.
_________________________
My first, introductory consultation for the EMDR treatment instantly put my frenetic mind to rest, as my psychotherapist was one of the most empathetic professionals I had ever met. The instant rapport was reflected in my effortless ability to talk nonstop. It was as if I had been passed the key, albeit rusty, to unlocking the door to all of my traumatic memories I had kept hidden within my body and mind.
After a handful of sessions, the power of the EMDR therapy allowed me to visit that memory from my early 20s, the second and most devastating rejection from my birth mother, threatening me with legal action if I stepped one foot closer into her world.
With the flow of the lateral beam of light in front of my view, my safe location at hand in my imagination, the deep breathing and the light, the soothing and sometimes exhausting light, and the constant support and care from my psychotherapist, Inês, (pronounced Inesh), I edged closer to my goal.
A horizontal metre-long tube with LED lights sits on a tripod at eye level, allowing the lights to move laterally and also at different speeds when required. Keeping your head static and only your eyes to follow the light, it stimulates areas of the brain we typically use during REM sleep. (Also where we process new memories). It also lights up the frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of the brain that can override the amygdala, the flight-or fight response to a given traumatic event or a current situation. It also reconnects the left and right sides of the brain, helping our memories to become unstuck, allowing a peaceful resolution for the memories to slowly manifest.
After most sessions, as challenging and painful as they were, I slowly shed the layers of trauma, and after being advised to do nothing for the duration of the day, I drove myself straight home, knowing that I would capitulate to the rapid wave of exhaustion that would find me already relaxing on the sofa. Never having experienced anything quite like it, I was pleasantly surprised, upon awakening, how refreshed and calmer I felt.
I wondered how I will know when I’m healed. How will it present itself? Will it be a eureka moment, or will I just wake up to a different me? The answer for me was more subtle and gradual. Our brains are amazing and incredibly resilient, and for me, the moment presented itself when I found I was able to finally let go and forgive my birth mother and, more importantly, forgive myself. It’s not just voicing the words, it’s a profound, all-tangible, physical, and mental state of knowing. Sensing the shift, a transformation. A response as opposed to a reaction.
Revisiting those old memories will occur time by time but the huge difference is there’s no snowball effect. That’s all but melted away. My nervous system isn’t triggered as before. I can express the emotions in a more rational and liberating way, and knowing that they won’t send me into an emotional free fall is enough to bring a tear to the eye! It’s also about acknowledging that there is also strength in sensitivity, emotion and empathy, not weakness. To know that I am enough is really more than enough!
The significant triumph was prevailing and penning ‘that letter’ (it became an epic, 7 A4 pages long). Something that I never before thought possible. With poise, articulation, and empathy, I was able to pen my whole experience and explain how her actions had impacted my life. It was cathartic and allowed me to reach a sense of closure, even though I had known for decades that I would never sit face-to-face with my birth mother or know that her eyes would never absorb my words. To quote a few lines from the seven-page missive:
‘Perhaps there will always be things left unwritten or unsaid for the time that has passed is a lifetime, and we all must have our say, directly or not; time to let go, time to have closure, even if it is not played out the way we would have wished. Not craving for what-ifs and should-haves, but embracing peace and love. To be understood by the ones that matter is enough and to leave all the heartache from the ones that were never able to feel empathy behind. Not to forget, but to forgive.’
It’s been a life-changing process for me to find something resembling peace and more of a balance within myself. I am grateful I took the necessary steps and allowed the rest to unfold. From the burnout and overwhelm prior to my ADHD diagnosis, it’s been an evolutionary process in moving forward in a more mindful way, allowing gratitude into my world, nurturing self-care and love while the guilt, shame, and blame diminished. I’m at ease with the person who I always knew I was, the masks long since discarded, not defined by my pre-verbal trauma, adoption, ADHD, and someone who was repeatedly told in the past, you’re too sensitive and too emotional or too angry, yadda, yadda. More importantly, it’s about how we see ourselves and accepting and embracing everything that makes us, us. We are all beautiful souls, warts and battle scars and all!
In retrospect, I always believed that if I could overcome my physical fears, everything else would be okay. It would create a foundation of strength and resilience. I thrived off a life of excitement and living on the edge, feeding hungrily off the adrenaline. Pushing myself to the absolute edge, especially during my time sailing and delivering boats. I did overcome my physical fears while facing the harsh and unpredictable elements of the sea, oceans, and weather.
The irony wasn’t lost on me as I was finally able to acknowledge and deal with facing the far greater challenge that my emotional fears and everything else encompassed.
There exists a real sense of accomplishment now, plus not only realizing one of my favourite mottos but also being able to say with conviction I was the woman who felt the emotional fear and did it anyway!
by Carole Dwelly
https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/
While I can only account for my personal experience with EMDR, in general, this form of therapy has extremely positive results. However, the process I have heard can also be very testing for some, evoking and reliving the traumatic events during the treatment. I would welcome and be very interested to hear of other people’s experiences with regard to this psychotherapeutic treatment. Please feel free to get in touch via the email below.
After studying and researching everything I could find on ADHD, the natural path led me to becoming an ADHD coach, accredited through the Association for Coaching, and I now spend my time helping fellow ADHD brains navigate through their own challenges. You can contact me at: coachingwithadhd@gmail.com
Photo: Javardh on Unsplash
A letter to... my little sister who has been missing for a year
My piece about my little sister published anonymously in the Guardian, Christmas 2015
Christmas is coming again and we don’t know where you are. You haven’t contacted me since January and your mobile is dead. I know you’ve been back to prison because some of your paperwork was sent here. I suppose it’s a good thing you know my address off by heart, but you haven’t used it since.
January was the first time I refused to give you money. I didn’t realise it would lead to not hearing from you for almost a year. I tortured myself for days for not sending the cash when it was below freezing outside, but I’d already sent so much and my husband was sceptical about what it was really for. I suppose I just got tired of being taken for a mug and resented being spun stories about why you needed a relatively small amount of cash in a hurry. Particularly as you barely included a cursory “how are you?” in your text. I suppose I realised how one-sided it all was. I’d travelled miles to visit you in prison, but you hadn’t remembered my birthday in over a decade.
I’m not sure you got the message that I was expecting another baby. Your niece was born in July. I’d like you to meet her, but I worry it would make you think of your own babies, who you lost. I’m still in touch with them, you know. They’re doing well, so big now. I wish you would write to them, but you said you wouldn’t know where to start and how to explain. You said it gets harder as each year passes, but it gets harder for them too.
Did you feel like an outsider from the start or did we make you feel like that gradually, day by day?
Your daughter called in tears last week asking for your phone number. For the first time I had to say I don’t have any way of contacting you. No address and no phone number. You’ve never used the email I set up for you and you’re not on Facebook. That stung. I felt ashamed, as though I’d let you slip through my fingers, although everyone else let you slip away years ago. As a consolation I said I’d send her some photos. I don’t have anything recent, but I thought some photos of you as a child would be nice. You were so cute; I loved having a little sister. Those classic 80s pictures of us in our matching pyjamas and goofy fringes. We look happy. But I stare at them, wondering when it all went wrong. Did you feel like an outsider from the start or did we make you feel like that gradually, day by day, until you no longer fitted at all?
Dad won’t talk about you. He says he’s protecting Mum, but I think he’s closed himself off because he was hurting so much. It’s what men of that generation do. I’m still not sure it was right to “uninvite” you to my wedding but Dad got himself so worked up about seeing you that it seemed the easiest thing to do. Well, easier than having an EastEnders showdown on my wedding day. Selfish, I know.
Are you still clean? I hope so, but if not I can see why and I don’t blame you. I phoned one of your old hostels and they said they’d keep an eye out for you. They spoke almost fondly of you, and I wonder if you’ll ever know or believe deep down that you’re likable. I’m so sorry if anything I said or did contributed to your lack of self-esteem.
Now that I’m a mum myself I’m sorry I didn’t realise how much you were struggling. It’s so bloody hard, I can’t imagine doing it by myself, miles from home with no money coming in.
Christmas is a time for family, so I wonder if you dread it. You’ve lost more than your fair share of family members, it’s true, but, other than your birth mother who tragically passed away weeks before you were due to reunite, we’re all still alive. Bridges could be mended if you’d just pick up the phone.
I hope you won’t be alone on Christmas Day. I’ll be with my in-laws this year, but I’ll spend all day hoping for a text from an unknown number: “Happy Xmas, babe.”
Sis xxx
This letter appeared in the Guardian weekend on 5th December 2015 and all submissions are usually kept anonymous. When I saw my letter had been published I was shaking. It gave me the boost to start this blog a few years later.