"It's harder to think about a bigger trauma than relinquishment" - Paul Sunderland on adoption
Adult Adoptee Movement webinar with adoptee ally Paul Sunderland
Paul Sunderland joined the adoptee community to talk about the effects of relinquishment on adopted people and why they are over-represented in addiciton, mental health, the prison system and suicide.
He also talked about a deliberate and systematic cover up by society and adoption agencies to deny that adoption is a trauma.
Organised by the Adult Adoptee Movement, Paul Sunderland spoke for 40 minutes followed by 20 minutes of Q&A.
Paul is an addiction psychotherapist with 35 years experience. Much of his talk centered around the effects of relinquishment on the autonomic nervous system. Paul talked about codependency as a manifestation of cptsd and said he has never met an adoptee that didn’t also have complex post-traumatic stress disorder (although he acknowledged that people self-refer to his clinic so he was cautious not to pathologise). He said that CPTSD should be called developmental trauma disorder. It happens over a period of time and nearly always during childhood development. It’s when our nervous system thinks the trauma is still happening.
““You were preparing to meet someone who wasn’t there.””
Paul talked about clinical implications of what it feels like to have possibly the biggest trauma there is which is to be separated from mother. “You were preparing to meet someone who wasn’t there and that was life threatening.” He said that those people who lost faith in other humans to help them regulate tend to become compulsively self reliant.
When our systems are disregulated and we feel threatened, we go into one or more of the four Fs: flight flight freeze faun. These responses are adaptive responses to stress and understandable in small doses in relevant situations, but they get locked in the ON position if you have CPTSD. We get locked in a state of protection rather than connection. We become hypervigilant. We cannot connect or be present while in this state.
He quoted Anna Freud: “The horrors of war pale beside the loss of a mother”.
Attachment theory says we need:
To be seen
To feel soothed
To feel safe
To feel secure
All traumas have two things in common:
Captivity
Powerlessness
Relinquishment and subsequent adoption has both these things. What it also has is a deliberate and systematic cover up by society and adoption agencies to deny that it is a trauma in order to satisfy the needs of the adults, including adoptive parents. “Yours is one of the few trauma that you’re supposed to be grateful for.” The lack of acknowledgment from society makes it hard to be seen. We need to call something by its proper name or we can’t get better.
When we have a so-called ‘disguised trauma’ where we are not seen and ours reality is questioned, all we can do is learn to self soothe. Addiction, for example, is a sensible adaptive self-soothing response that becomes maladaptive.
““Yours is one of the few trauma that you’re supposed to be grateful for.””
Relinquishment is an enormous trauma that cannot be recalled but is remembered. Clinicians say that ‘the issues are in the tissues’ which means the trauma lives in our bodies. Often relinquished babies have dermotological / gastrointestinal issues etc - the body expressing itself as babies cannot communicate any other way. This can lead to somatic issues.
Symptoms of CPTSD
Hypervigilance - we cannot be present, we are always on alert
Catastrophic thinking - there has been a catastrophe already so we expect another one
Binary thinking - trauma is about life and death. “Either I get it right or I get it wrong.”
“Unreliable witness” - Unless the other person is smiling and nodding they must hate me / their actions must have negative intentions. Unless I get my way, they win: no sense of co-creation.
Impaired self-care - The only part of self-care that may be attended to well is the sense of presentation or how we look to others.
Interpersonal problems
Retraumatisation - we put ourselves in harms way. Addition is one of these. We don’t know why people retraumatise.
Anxiety
Depression
Exhaustion and immune issues
Shame - there’s something wrong with me (it’s a defence against there’s something wrong with them! Who will look after me!) better to think self as there’s hope you can change and get better
Flashbacks / triggers - a neuroception that throws us into protect before we can even notice
There is a big overlap between ADD and CPTSD.
Codependency
When you are codependent, you are dependent on the anticipated or perceived reactions or responses of the other = it’s an addiction. It comes from two parts of the autonomic nervous system:
The fawn response - I manage my anxiety by putting you at ease
The fight response - I manage my anxiety by putting the other at unease and/or by making them wrong and moving the goal posts.
How can we help ourselves
Paul gave a few tips:
Train your nervous system as if you were training for a 10k!
The most effective thing you can do is elongate the out breath (most of us shallow breath because we are in fight/flight)
Chanting
Singing
Somatic therapy such as cranial sacral therapy and equine psychotherapy
Only work with practitioners who acknowledge that being relinquished is ‘a thing’
Do the thing that never felt safe: put your trust in someone. Self-regulation doesn’t work without co-regulation. “We get better in relationship.”
Start to speak our truth in order to treat ourselves as valuable. That’s when things change.
Have choice and a voice = the opposite of captivity and powerlessness
Community peer support
Thank you Paul for pledging your support to our community. Thank you AAM for this brilliant webinar.
Watch the Paul Sunderland adoption webinar here
Further reading and resources:
Paul Sunderland letcure on adoption and addiction
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (who came up with cptsd as a term)
Study into lifelong impacts of adoption by Gillian Bruce
Exclusive: results of a recent study of UK adoptees into the lifelong impacts of adoption
Half of adoptees report significant life challenges, with a further third reporting medium-scale impact. Find out more about this brand new study into the lifelong impacts of adoption and the importance of adoptee wellbeing support...
Following the research project completed summer 2021 by Gillian Bruce of How To Be Adopted we can now reveal our findings on some of the potential lifelong impacts of adoption.
What did we do?
We devised our own questionnaire using opposing statements to explore 34 different areas of life where adoption was perceived to have had an effect, such a relationships, careers and parenting. We also researched existing research on the lifelong consequences of adoption.
What did we ask?
We asked a selection of UK adopted adults aged 21-70 about their lived experience of adoption from the rear-view mirror.
We asked about how being adopted had affected people in three areas of lived experience:
physically / biologically
socially-relationally-emotionally
psychologically
We asked about their age group; gender; age they were adopted; and whether or not they engaged with adopted adult support groups.
What did we find?
We found that:
Adoption creates a certain set of impacts across the three areas of lived experience.
Although adoption is complex and individual and no two adoptees will share the same effects, clear potential areas of impact can be identified.
Half of adoptees (around 50%) have experienced high-impact across many of the areas explored and had sought help to try and manage their lives.
This group had typically spent a significant amount of time and money on a range of support resources such as therapy, workshops, healing treatments, books, and spiritual avenues.
Around a third of adoptees (around 35%) were able to identify medium scale, significant impacts.
These impacts had made some key areas of life difficult across the three areas of lived experience, and the adoptees had sought help in some form to overcome them.
Some adoptees (approx. 15%) reported very little impact.
With a medium to high score in only one or two areas of the 34 explored.
Additional findings:
Current age – largely, the younger respondents seemed to have experienced more challenges. This may be because their adoption happened at an older age and involved time in the care system (or some other kind of disruption) prior to adoption. Whilst some of the older adoptees had been highly affected, their adoption situations were often more straightforward.
Gender – female participants reported slightly more disruption than males. However, cultural pressures on males to ‘tough it out’ may be part of this picture.
Age of adoption – it was clear that the later the adoption the more significant the impacts, although some people in the study who had been adopted between 0-6 months had experienced high impact too. Family attunement or the provision of a loving, affectionate environment seemed to be a likely factor involved in the level of difficulty with adoption.
Engagement with peer support – initially we had wondered if the engagement in an adopted adult community had any bearing on the level of impact experienced – however, this was not the case. Some adoptees in support groups reported low impact and some with high impact did not engage with any groups. However, it must be said that the prevalence of adult adoptee support groups is extremely patchy with many areas having no such provision. Many adoptees had never even heard of an adopted adult community or group in the UK and several reported joining US forums. It became clear that adoptees really valued sharing and learning from each other and experience a sense of belonging amongst others ‘who get it’. Watch this space!
Initial research into existing adoption research
We found that the most often quoted study was that of Silverstein and Kaplan (1982)* who reported ‘The Seven Lifelong Consequences of Adoption’:
Loss – adoption is a life-altering loss with no end, resulting in potential threat of future loss having a profound impact.
Rejection – from having been given away, resulting in a heightened sensitivity around any future hint of rejection.
Guilt and shame – guilt and shame around having been rejected, internalised as being ‘rejectable’ or not good enough.
Grief – loss needs a grieving process, but this is difficult when adoption is ‘sold’ to the child as a positive event that should be celebrated, should be joyful and that they should be thankful for. Grief becomes held back and stored in the body.
Identity – the lack of genetic, medical, historical and religious information leads adoptees to question who they are and where they belong. In later life adoptees are more likely to seek ‘belonging’ than their peers and are susceptible to the attraction of cults, gangs or anything that provides a strong sense of belonging, like the Armed Services.
Intimacy – due to all the above factors adoptees can build up a strong fear about experiencing another loss of intimate connection so can tend to avoid committed, intimate relationships.
Mastery / control – having had no choice about the most significant life relationships, with no say in early events, adoptees can engage in power struggles with parents or authority and have strong needs around autonomy.
Further research studies were found, these largely focused on a specific area such as educational attainments or mental health of adoptees.
Get access to all the data as well as insights from adoptees
If you would like to find out more about this fascinating project and get access to all the statistics and data as well as shared experiences from adoptees, please email: hello@howtobeadopted.com
Coming soon: Gillian Bruce we will give her conclusions and future ideas for how to improve adoptee wellbeing.
*We have not linked to further information on the Silverstein and Kaplan study as we do not want to endorse the websites where that information currently appears. If you have a more neutral source for the Silverstein and Kaplan study please let us know!
Photo by Leilani Angel on Unsplash
9 things I would give my sister for Christmas
Her own name, her own room and some goddamn support with attachment and adoption trauma.
Would her own name, her own bedroom and a hell of a lot of support around attachment have stopped my sister becoming what they call in the trade “a bad outcome”?
As thoughts turn to Christmas, I don’t know where my sister is – again. Even with all the therapy and mindfulness in the world, I can’t always stop my obsessive thoughts about how she was failed by so many along her journey, including me. (With the caveat that many have helped too, although often after much of the damage had already been done.)
With sensitivity to the fact that this is not my story to tell, and there are minors involved, here are nine things I wish for my sister:
1. Her own name
All the reasons we were given about her name being changed were logical and seemed to add up. We didn’t question it. Now I know from speaking to other adoptees that having your name changed can bring a lot of issues. If it had to be changed, could she have been given a middle name linking her to her first family?
2. Better understanding of attachment
My sister had some time without a primary care giver and I am wholly convinced it did irreparable damage. If we had understood this better we could have tried to support her more appropriately. Instead, we were all raised with the post-war “put up and shut up” model that my parents were comfortable with*.
3. Support at school
My sister had huge issues at school, but was assessed as “on the border” which they rounded down to “doesn’t need support”. If I had a time machine I would get her to take that test again and lose one goddamn point. She needed and deserved so much more than any teacher at any school gave her. She was treated as a “normal” pupil who could and should be expected to adhere to school policy.
Before I got back in my time machine, I would ask her teachers to read the stats around life outcomes for care experienced children who are excluded from school. And ask them to consider that exclusion is another rejection, another confirmation of unworthiness and dispensability.
4. Her own bedroom
Having your own space is important for developing a sense of identity, particularly in adolescence. Our house wasn’t huge and two of my siblings shared a room. This meant when my sister most needed her own space, she literally had none. I cannot add any more here except to say, I was selfish and I should have agreed to a ‘timeshare’ of my room.
5. A relationship with her birth mother
Although originally thought to be unsafe, her birth mother went on to have a large, happy family. I do not know why the ‘rules’ cannot be updated if a birth parent’s situation changes along the line. I believe they would have both benefitted from some form of contact, as is more the norm today.
6. A lifestory book
A lifestory book including photographs is something I would gift all us older adoptees, although I know many younger adoptees would say theirs are a load of rubbish. With more than one home before she came to us, the first few chapters of my sister’s life were blank. Without anything concrete, except a teddy with her original name, it may have felt that these chapters simply did not matter. It doesn’t take long for a traumatised brain to change that sentiment into “I don’t matter”.
7. A friend
As I now have some understanding of attachment I can see why she had difficulty forming and maintaining friendships. And I am ashamed to say we weren’t good friends growing up, particularly not when she most needed one in our early teens.
A good friend can be a lighthouse. If I could, I would gift my sister one good friend to understand her and see her through tough times.
8. A reunion with her birth mother
For reasons I cannot share, their reunion was thwarted and there won’t be another chance.
When the reunion was first mooted, I could have got on a train to chaperone and support her. I didn’t. This makes me feel really shitty. I’m so sorry, sis. At the same time, there is not enough support in the UK for adoptees and care leavers undertaking delicate reunions. I believe the system that separated mother and child has a duty to support them during reunion and beyond.
9. A hug over a hot chocolate
I miss you sis, you crazy fool. Please hang in there wherever you are and don’t you dare go anywhere before I get to say all this to your face over a hot chocolate. (Definitely not a cup of tea; your teas are minging!) x
* Every time I mention my parents in a blog I literally seize up. I have written about the fear before, and it belies my age by about three decades! But I promised myself when I started this blog that I would not excessively compliment my parents in order to sugar-coat some of the challenges. None of my blogs are the whole story so please do not assume anything about my relationship with my family from reading a few blog posts.
Dear dearest adoption, a backward impossible paradox
“…the weights are tipped I’m sad to say and hopeful love and best intentions are often drowned.”
I’m honoured to feature Sarah Meadows, director of the play YOU, as my first guest post.
Here is her piece:
Dear adoption,
You are a concept, an ideology, A policy but YOU are impossible to put into words. But we try.
You’re full of blind corners and unliftable weights.
You’re a stop start traffic pile up.
Dear dearest adoption... You are the “rich” (and bereaved) taking from the poor.
You are planes with babies and children confused by a foreign land. You are do gooders with agendas that stink of shit.
You are the hopeful hearts of lonely souls you fill them up and its pollution.
You are a teacher a huge social teacher that is still struggling to find its authority and may quit if we’re not careful. Pay HER better. Care for HER better. Give HER a better pension. Give HER a union why don’t you.
Mothers and children. Mothers and children. The most vulnerable in every story. The ones they let off the sinking ship first. The ones used as emotional blackmail when trying to stop a war.
The ones who are the abused and traumatised. There’s no other way of putting it adoption I’m afraid. I wish there was.
A backward impossible paradox. A dark fairytale. An industry. An economy.
Shattered lives and jigsawed hope and always love. Of course. Always love. But the weights are tipped I’m sad to say and hopeful love and best intentions are often drowned.
Listen up.
Hear the unbearable.
Accept the unacceptable and perhaps then YOU may be possible.
To speak plainly adoption.
You’ve got a lot to learn.
You need to listen to your children.
The ones you most ignore.
Sarah is on Twitter: @SarahMeadows1
Watch the trailer for the play YOU
If this format resonates with you, you must check out the amazing Dear Adoption website and Dear Adoption Twitter.
Sorry these seats are taken: a short reflection on adoption reunion
A short reflection on adoption reunion and how it’s felt since coming out of the fog…
As some of you will know my reunion hit a bit of a stumbling block earlier this year after being fairly rosy for a good number of years. I’ll go into this in more detail when I’m done processing everything as it’s all still pretty fresh. It has a lot to do with coming out of the fog, I think.
In the meantime, this is just a short reflection that came to me after journaling the other evening before bed.
Imagine being invited to a small party and when you arrive the host greets you warmly but doesn’t offer to take your coat. Confusing, huh? This is how reunion felt to me.
Imagine you arrive to meet friends in the pub and they don’t shift up to make room for you at the table. They seem pleased to see you; they are smiling. But no one offers to make room for you. Afterwards you realise they were only smiling with their mouths.
I really wanted them to shimmy up to make room for me at the table, even if someone’s bum cheek was hanging off the edge of the bench. Reunion felt like the whole table just shrugged and said it’s lovely to see you but these seats are taken.
I would love to hear about your experiences with reunion, and if you have found journaling to be useful in managing the feelings around adoption. It’s great to be able to share what’s in our toolkits.
Friendship, goodbyes & holidays: adoption triggers part two
Even adoptees who have only ever lived with one family can struggle with attachment on a day-to-day basis, or when a big life event occurs...
Even adoptees who have only ever lived with one family can struggle with attachment on a day-to-day basis, or when a big life event occurs...
Thinking about the situations in which I struggled as a child, and sometimes still struggle with now, it's clear to see I have some issues with attachment. It's a relief to know there's a reason behind it all, but it was never noticed and/or acknowledged, much less supported as a child. I am from the "blank slate" era where what a baby didn't know couldn't hurt them.
I'm skipping straight to F, G and H for this next instalment of events and situations that I, as an adoptee, have struggled with. I wonder if some of these resonate with you?
Friendship
When I was eight I made my best friend join an official club stating we were each other’s best friends. We had a badge, a motto and a password. So far, so normal. Only my friend was forbidden to have any other friends. Let's just say it didn't end well. If I'm honest, I still struggle to “share” friends now, although I’m a lot better than I was!
As you can imagine, now I’m a parent, being at the school gates everyday is a big reminder of my anxiety around making (and keeping) friends. My main goal is to avoid projecting any of this on to my children. As Monica from Friends would say, "I'm breezy!" Wish me luck with this.
Goodbyes
No surprise that I have separation anxiety and a deep-seated fear of rejection. Three of my close friends live abroad and it’s fair to say I didn’t take the news well when they left. My reaction to being told someone I love is leaving is somewhere between:
– total shutdown where I feel cold all over and immediately and methodically set about cutting them out of my life, and
– clinging on to their ankles like a tiny desperate terrier doing full-on dog weeping
In my more rational moments I have said to them, "I love you and I want you to be happy". But I still feel like beating my fists and shouting “How could you leave me?”
Holidays
Of course I have anxiety about travelling to and from my holiday destination and making sure I have all my bookings confirmed; I'm a 'perfect' compliant adoptee after all. This is a given for me, and I honestly can’t imagine a holiday without it. But the issue is more serious than that. My mind starts to spin when I think about the people I am leaving behind. How can I be sure I won't be forgotten and/or replaced while I am away? This feeling has faded a lot since I married and now have my own young family, but when I was younger it was debilitating.
I still shudder to remember my first time away from home at Girl Guide camp. I was so homesick and subconsciously may have been reliving my early abandonment. In a town far from home I hallucinated I saw my mum and I started following her down the street. Never did it cross my mind to tell the Guide leader I was struggling, and ask her to call my mum for me. Never did it occur that I could ask to go home.
And when I started going on holiday in my teens, I was the sad sack queuing for the resort payphone on my one-week holiday clutching ten-pence pieces in my sweaty hand. While backpacking in my 20s I wrote, addressed, stamped and posted 20 birthday cards before I went. I chose to sit in horrible internet cafes emailing home rather than experiencing the new countries, cultures and people. I struggle so much with being in the moment on holiday, so it’s no surprise that mindfulness has been a tough concept to get on board with! (I do heartily recommend trying it though.)
Let me know if you've experienced any of these attachment-related issues. You can comment below or contact me. It helps to know we are not alone, and as I heard on the Adoptees On podcast recently: these are normal reactions to an abnormal situation.
I've also blogged about my struggles with ageing, birthdays and Christmas.
What does it take to love an adoptee?
Do you have endless patience, nerves of steel and the ability to withstand constant attempts to push you away?
Do you have endless patience, nerves of steel and the ability to withstand constant attempts to push you away? Congratulations, you may apply to be the spouse* of an adoptee!
Being an adoptee is difficult, as I’ve outlined in my blogs about the adoptee fog and adoption triggers. Spare a thought, however, for the partner of an adoptee. Falling in love with an adoptee is no easy ride, as Anne Heffron hilariously relates in her book You Don’t Look Adopted. Most of us have more baggage than Heathrow Terminal 5 on the August Bank Holiday, yet what we crave most is unrelenting, unflinching, unconditional love. And reader, I think I’ve found it…
So what does it take to love and support an adoptee? When I asked my husband, he said: patience, nerves of steel and the ability to withstand frequent attempts to push you away. Despite all my defensive (and offensive) actions, which often come out of nowhere, he has yet to turn around and said, “Yes you’re right, you ARE unloveable and I’m walking out – just as you always thought I would.”
How to be an awesome partner to an adoptee:
1. Never play games
After we met via friends on a night out, he texted me the next morning asking me out. No ‘four-day rule’, no games. He’s never made me wait for a text or an email and whenever we’re holding hands and I give his a squeeze, he always squeezes back. Not nearly always. Every. Single. Time.
Never underestimate how important trust is to an adoptee. I’ve found from experience that any sniff of lying or cheating and the relationship is dead in the water. Once trust is gone, it can never be rebuilt. Knowing in my bones that he loves me frees up my mind to focus on other things. My hyper vigilance can take a well-deserved break.
2. Help me understand my triggers
My previous long-term relationship ended with my ex shouting, “Good luck finding someone to put up with your shit!” Oops. I don’t think either of us realised how much I was supressing that was leaking out in other ways. Now I think I know almost all of my triggers, so I can either avoid them or put strategies in place to cope with the fallout. This level of self-awareness is partly because my husband sits with me as I painstakingly sift though events, trace causes and find patterns.
3. Accept my non-traditional family
Because of adoption and my subsequent reunions I have three families. I also have an additional strand due to contemporary adoption and kinship care. It’s complicated, and we’ve found that a whiteboard comes in very handy when explaining who everyone is and how they all link up!
When I told him my family was estranged from my sister, but I was powering on, I think he loved the idea of my compassion and loyalty. I know that since then he has despaired with my single-mindedness, bordering co-dependency and superhero complex where I just can’t give up on her. He’s urged me to look after myself and put my mental health and our children’s needs at the forefront, but at the same time, he’s travelled the width of the country for visits, two of which were in prisons, and helped me support her financially. And all of this with absolutely no judgement about her situation and choices.
4. Encourage me to look after myself
Sometimes I just don’t think I’m worth looking after. In fact, most of the time. I fill up my diary, don’t go to bed early enough, and eat like a penniless student. This man doesn’t tell me off; he fills the fridge, runs me a bath, and places me in bed with a hot water bottle and some earplugs.
5. Support me through pregnancy and birth
After a traumatic first birth followed by post-natal depression, I was terrified when I became pregnant second time around. I think I was in the process of emerging from the fog, and suddenly – finally – realising how massive it was to have been given away as a baby and to have to bond with a new mother to ensure my survival.
Because I was so anxious, he agreed we could use our savings to hire an independent midwife to get me through the second pregnancy. It meant I didn’t have to start from scratch building trust and rapport with every new midwife, and could focus on staying calm and bonding with the baby.
6. Help me emerge from the fog
What a journey it’s been coming out of the fog. I’ve been mentally quite absent as I’ve submerged myself in podcasts, books, blogs, conferences and a lot of social media. There have been tears of sorrow, howls of rage and very tentative baby steps into being authentic with those I love. He’s supported me through the delayed bereavement as I finally mourned the loss of my birth parents, extended families, bloodline and identity. He was there for me after one of the hardest conversations I had, where I told my mum that adoption had caused trauma even though I came straight from the hospital into her waiting arms.
7. Indulge me when it comes to family resemblances
If you ask me, both my children have my eyes, ears, mouth and nose. They also walk and talk like me. My daughter even sleeps like me and wakes up like me. I am obsessive about this stuff; I love it so much. I clap my hands like a seal when I discover another expression or gesture we share, and never once has he said, “Oh no, actually I think that’s from my side of the family.” He lets me have every single one, because he knows how much it means to me.
8. Be open-minded about what makes a family (clue: not blood)
My husband is from a traditional family but there is no judgement applied to my higgledy piggledy assortment of relatives. He earnestly learned my preferred labels and corrects others when necessary, so for example that’s first names for birth parents, and definitely no use of the words “real” or “natural”.
Yes, he criticises my family if they’ve been a bit rubbish, but no more and no less than he does his own. When we recently made our wills and had to consider guardians for our children, my siblings were considered as equally as his, despite them not being blood relations.
9. Back me on parenting deal-breakers
Controlled crying and ‘crying it out’ were absolute no-nos for me when we had our babies. I just couldn’t stand the thought of them feeling abandoned for even one second. He supported me on this, despite pressure from family members and many, many (many!) months of broken sleep.
In all honesty, I know I have a problem setting boundaries because I am probably, deep down, afraid of rejection from my kids. I know this isn’t ideal for a parent. I am working on it every single day to be the best parent I can be. Amazing resources I have tried include (adoption-competent) therapy, books such as The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary and Brené Brown's wholehearted parenting course.
10. Rub my back until I fall asleep
Some nights (most nights), my mind is racing with all the things I’ve said to potentially offend people, or all the things I’ve forgotten to do to make sure people still love me. It’s a belt-and-braces approach to friendships and relationships.
This can range from sending an email to the school PTA, to forgetting to send a birthday card, to offending a next-door neighbour. I am hyper-hyper vigilant, and sometimes – like a baby – I need help calming down and soothing to sleep. If you find someone who wants to rub your back until you fall asleep for the next 50 years, marry them quick.
*Of course, much of this applies to parents and close friends of adoptees too. And one day, if I'm brave enough I'd like to explore what it means to be the child of an adoptee.
Six things I've learned since coming out of the adoption fog
Since I had my children I’ve been slowly emerging from the adoptee “fog”. It’s been a hell of a ride, with new revelations coming thick and fast. Here’s what I now know…
Wow it’s been a tough year. Coming out of the fog started slowly in my early thirties, then it accelerated massively when I had children. If you don’t know what the fog is, it’s a term used to describe how you feel about being adopted.
Here are six things I’ve learned since coming out of the fog:
1. I’ve been lying all my life
But I didn’t know I was lying – at least not consciously. Every time I told someone I didn’t feel any different, or agreed with them that as I was adopted as a baby it “didn’t count”, I was lying.
If you had asked me at any point up until my early thirties how I felt about being adopted I would have said “absolutely fine!” then gone out and drank three bottles of wine and slept with a random.
Even post-reunion I was still in the fog. Yep. It’s pretty foggy in there.
2. You can’t force anyone out of the fog
The first rule of adoptee fog club is: people only come out when they’re ready. You cannot force another adoptee out of the fog, however gently.
My own journey out of the adoption fog went something like this:
have my own children
read the Primal Wound
start listening to Adoptees On and other podcasts
join a local support group for adoptees
wake up one day shouting “Holy sh*t!”
At the point everything hit home, I wanted to gather all other adoptees in my arms for a communal cry and a big cuddle. But it doesn’t work that way; people are only ready when they’re ready.
3. I hold adoption trauma in my body
What are you talking about? What trauma? You were adopted as a baby! Even I subscribed to this attitude until recently, but now that I know differently I can literally feel it. And it’s always been there.
My adrenal system has always worked overtime but I didn’t know why or how to calm it down (apart from the aforementioned wine and bad sex).
The burden of being adopted weighs heavy. I hold it in my heart, but also in my hips and my throat. It may never go away, but things that have worked for me include:
yoga
massage
therapy
meditation
Things still to try include:
reiki
Anne Heffron has talked about the vagus nerve with some tips on what worked for her. I’d love to hear about what worked for you.
4. Being adopted has made everything harder
As much as my close friends joke that I have ‘special needs’ because I’m adopted, I really do. From what I know about the way adoption is currently supported in the UK, adopted children do now have a protected status at school and can access additional support. (If this is not the case, please get in touch so I can amend my article!)
Because this wasn’t in place when I was growing up, I struggle to allow myself any additional concessions, when actually sometimes I need to give myself a break, or ask others to be more sensitive and/or supportive. I know there is a school of thought that says by being brought up this way I’m now more resilient, but I’m starting to disagree.
5. Being adopted doesn’t get better with age
I wish with all my heart I could say it did, but I’ve found these ‘middle years’ so far the hardest. That’s not to say it just gets progressively worse, it definitely fluctuates and I hope I’m simply in a trough rather than a peak right now due to my recent emergence from the fog. Did I mention the fog? Man it’s good to be out, but I do sometimes miss that comfy blanket of ignorance.
I do however know that being an adoptee is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life, rather than something that eases off and eventually vanishes.
6. The adoptee community is awesome!
Oh how I wish I’d found them sooner. But better late than never. The online adoptee community is fantastic, so supportive of one another and encouraging us in our baby steps to speak out and cope with the daily strains of adoption, search and reunion, etc. Thank you so much to you all.
And the support group I attend has been so powerful for me in my journey. There are adoptees from many walks of life, with different stories to tell but one fundamental thing in common. I look into their faces and I see acknowledgment of the primal wound, and that is something I didn’t know I needed so badly. I heartily recommend other adoptees to seek out an adoption support group near you, or start one of your own!
There are some people doing incredible work both online and IRL including:
Six-word adoption memoir project
Anne Heffron's blog and book You Don't Look Adopted