Weekend of healing
10/09/05 14:23
After reading a couple other adoption issues books this week, I am hunkering down on my boat today to go through the "Adoption Healing" text by Joe Soll. After the first chapter, I can tell it is going to be an emotional roller coaster. He is going to force me to look deeply at exactly the issues I have suffered from and run away from my whole life. Then he has exercises to get through them. No walk in the park this book.
Hopefully, I will get through this and emerge a more complete person. Either that or I will just crumble completely. Frankly, I am a bit scared, as well as a bit excited. If you don't hear from me for a while, you should just figure I am hiding from the world while I get through this stuff.
I learned some interesting stuff this week. Like why I hate birthdays (it is also the day I was torn from my mother). I found a link to a site that has a complete listing of adopted people who are famous for something or other.
Click here to see it. It's amazing. Some of my most favored icons and most of those I have admired my entire life are on this list. Aristotle, Steve Jobs, John Hancock, the list is amazing. I have a pretty interesting extended family!
A good friend has informed me I may have been giving too much credence to Lisa last rant. He thinks Lisa merely triggered my original abandonment issue. He also figures she kept me in a more or less constant state of acute abandonment fear for many years. Eeek. I figure he is about right. I am still in the anger stage on that one, and enjoying it thoroughly I might add.
It is a beautiful day here today, I'm going up on deck to begin my book. Oops. It is now 3 hours later. Marinas are unbelievably social places for those that don't know. I didn't even make it on deck, or get this posted before I was interrupted to go socialize with the neighbors. Ah, it is the life! OK, so I will NOT try to read on deck so as to remain better hidden.
7pm - I have read a few chapters, done a bit of crying, completed some healing exercises, and here are some interesting quotes I wrote down. In his book, Joe Soll says,
"During the ages of six to eight... the child's running internal tape will be, 'If she REALLY loved me she would have kept me. I must be defective and my defect is that I am not lovable.'... This playing of the tape (and the resultant feelings of unlovability) as the third trauma (first is abandonment, second is finding out he is adopted) and what I call fracturing of the personality... The individual feelings of pain, anger, and sadness get woven together into one enormous but indistinguishable emotion which you might call the 'loss of mother' emotion. This emotion must be repressed for the child to survive. As a result, the child is likely to repress other parts of her childhood along with this interwoven 'emotion' as she cannot repress the emotions without substantially losing some of the memories of this time of her life."
"Any time an adoptee experiences any sort of loss, it is likely to touch upon the pain of losing her mother at the beginning of life. If this pain is not acknowledged or resolved, each loss will compound the pain of that original loss, so the adoptee feels an overwhelming feeling of pain even if the trigger is minor. It is common for an adoptee experiencing a break up in a relationship to feel as though she will actually die as a result of the loss. As stated earlier, this feeling relates back to the loss of her birthmother, which is why the rejection of a lover feels more devastatingly painful than one might expect."
"The apprehension related to developing intimate relationships is also linked to the fear that someone will see a defect in her. This fear, often unconscious, is due to the adoptees firm belief, formed just before the fracture (age 6-8), that there must have been a defect that caused her to be given up at birth. Often, adoptees feel that they do not deserve to be loved because there must be something inherently wrong with them if their own birth mother did not want to keep them."
"...adoptees often end up in relationships that are abusive to varying degrees. They feel that they do not deserve anything better, and that this may be an appropriate 'punishment' for the defect which they surely possess."
"As is often the case in abusive relationships, the abusive partner is emotionally unavailable to the partner being abused. Adoptees are attracted to these individuals because it coincides with the adoptee's desire to find an individual who truly represents her birth mother, who is the epitome of unavailability... This means that an adoptee will actually find individuals who are sure to leave."
OUCH! OK, it feels kind of frightening to be following a known script so closely. Nice to know I pick really observant and intelligent friends though. I do indeed have no memories before the age of about eight. I always thought this was weird. My shrink John used to query me about this time a lot and I always came up blank (to which he always said "abandonment issues" to which I always said, "Nah, can't be," - bugger, I can sure remember his shaking his head and smug look!)
And Lisa, well. So I am completely predictable (just read this book!). And completely screwed up too. Ah, but I have not spent the past 20 years spinning my wheels. I have recognized and worked very hard on many of these individual symptoms, and now dealing with the underlying cause is the natural conclusion (and I have the tools and knowledge to accomplish it). I am doing the book's exercises, and while they are emotionally draining, I am feeling some really powerful changes already. Knowledge is power, and I am getting stronger than ever!
I was going to go out dancing tonight, and socializing with pretty girls would likely be very pleasant after all this emotional turmoil - but frankly I am completely drained. I just made some soup and ate some lovely hummus, pita and oil soaked black olives with it. I think I will just go up on deck with a beer and look at some stars, birds and dolphins before hitting the sack. Tomorrow is another day...