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I am a 29 year old female who was adopted at 4 days old. I have felt anger, sadness and disappointment and I have learned a sense of mistrust. I have tried to face this as best I could, but there are too many unanswered questions. I've read virtually every book out there on adoption. Research seems limited to my specific questions so I have decided to channel all my emotions to finding the answers by researching on my own. And that is what brought me to this forum to learn if I am truly alone and if connections and patterns exist in others as it does me.
I will give you a brief summary of my adoption story. I didn't have a great childhood although it could have been worse. My adoptive parents had a biological child after they adopted me. Growing up looking different and just having a different personality from my adoptive parents was difficult. I felt like no one in my family could relate to me. I always had questions about my birth family and my adoptive parents never had answers. But the truth is they did have the answers and lied to me about it. My adoption was very private (my birth mother is a friend of a 3rd cousin). My birth mothers mother basically wanted to know about me and she was given updates by the cousin yet I was told nothing. To make matters worse when I did finally meet my birth mother she wanted nothing to do with me. So feelings of worthlessness, pain, fear of abandonment become tattooed on my soul.
This has affected my ability to trust friends, boyfriends, anyone. Let me explain further. If I meet someone I like, I begin to sabotage the relationship pushing myself away because I already have it in my head that theyҒre going to leave, so I unconsciously try to speed up the process (years of therapy has given me insight on this one). Additionally, the other type of guy I date is the one that I know I can never have a future, because its safer to be with someone who I know I canҒt stay with so its ok if he leaves (these relationships have never been abusive....these guys were just too different from me; we just had different goals and different life aspirations). So I have never been in a relationship where the other person didnҒt leave me. But when they do leave the pain is so great it's like reliving the rejection from my mother. I know it has a lot to do with my fear of being abandoned, but I am wondering if I had a more positive upbringing and a more positive adoption experience, if I would be more willing to trust someone; to be more willing to love and to allow someone to love me.
So my question to anyone who reads my post, do you feel similar or share similar experiences when it comes to relationships, and if so did you also have a negative childhood, adoption experience, etc.? I am really interested in knowing if a solid connection between the two exists, if I am alone in my feeling scared and maybe knowing can keep my hope alive to someday have the ability to feel safe with someone.
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Just wanted to let you know you are not alone. I was adopted into a family that had their own biological children, and felt like an outcast, and was treated differently. I recommend that parents who adopt not to have children of their own, b/c they can not consciously keep from treating adopted children differently, maybe it's the under lining fear that they may lose the adopted child that keeps them from fully opening up and loving the adopted child. My adopted mother actually told me "How could I love you the same as my biological child, when there was the possibility of loosing you"..ouch..that hurt, couldn't believe she actually said that, but maybe she was trying to explain her feelings and reasons for treating me differently. I have struggled with fear of abandonment and trust issues all my life, and have read just about every adoption book out there. That's why I decided to do my senior thesis on fear of abandonment in adult adoptees...I posted a survey on this forum, if you don't mind filling it out, it would help a great deal. I'm hoping to be able to give all us adult adoptees further incite into the issues we deal with throughout our lives.
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Hi! I am a bMom, raised 3 daughters(one of which is disabled) & adopted a bi-racial son. I want you to know that I read each of your posts and my heart was literally breaking for all of you. The pain you all must endure. As a bMom, I am so sorry we hurt you and the insecurities you all feel; As a Mom, please understand that even in "normal" families these same feelings can abide. I, too, was raised in an hostile environment and have to have everyone's approval for my own self identification. As an aMom, I love my son as I do my "blood" kids (probably show him more since he is the baby (10)). The most healing thing you can do is talk about how you feel. You are all on the right track by coming here. Lots of hugs!
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Just joined b/c am seeking insight into my soon-to-be 18 yr old daughter's issues with adoption and life. After reading some of the feelings sited here and having read of late about the adoptee's primal depth of abandonment, I am so dismayed yet relieved to have some enlightenment.
My daughter and I have struggled since the get-go and she was adopted at 2 wks of age. When she was 16 we found the bmom. She is willing to meet but not bring my daughter into her life. This has been a very stressful time for us all as my daughter is extremely volatile about everything and understandably considering what's running deep in her psyche.
This self-sabotaging seems to be the enemy of our own relationship. I think the book advised about 'misery' will be helpful for me and perhaps my daughter will see some benefits to reading it herself. I walk a tenuous tight-rope with her. She looks at me as her worst enemy. It is so hard to live with her on-going angst and venom. It does make me want her to leave. The home has become a constant battle ground. I have heard that the mom/daughter relationship in adoption is beset with these turmultuous outbreaks (though thankfully for others there are exceptions.)
All this to say, I am so saddened to think that there is no hope and that one would always feel the sense of looming abandonment and/or rejection. Just as I have battled emotions of rejection from my daughter I know that there MUST be resolution in all this disappointment. God is bigger than adoption, rejection, betrayal. We all need an open forum to share our angles of hurt but we need not stay there. I keep thinking or that verse, "As a man/woman thinks in his heart, so is he/she."
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As a daughter and adoptee, I can identify with your daughter, but also (to an extent) with you. I'm now 28 and have put my mother thru hell over the years. I can see her love now, although our relationship still feels tenuous to me. I have resigned to the fact that we will never have a 'proper' mother/daughter relationship (nor will I with my birth mother), but I still love her very much. Unfortunately I'm unable to express that to her at the moment, but I hope one day I will find a way.
Don't give up on your daughter. She's afraid, lost, confused. I know it's incredibly hard, but she will grow out of it eventually. I believe 'love' is the only answer. Adoption is an appalling concept, but it's a reality - we have to make the best of a bad situation. If you remain by her side, support her, and do your best to understand (and help her to understand her feelings), you will come out the other end. It may not be the joy-filled, easy relationship a 'normal' family has, but it will have its own degree of special.
If she's anything like me, she needs to identify, understand and then learn to live with her pain. That took me 27 years (there about)... Patience is a virtue...
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Introvrtd
So my question to anyone who reads my post, do you feel similar or share similar experiences when it comes to relationships, and if so did you also have a negative childhood, adoption experience, etc.? I am really interested in knowing if a solid connection between the two exists, if I am alone in my feeling scared and maybe knowing can keep my hope alive to someday have the ability to feel safe with someone.
Not an adoptee but I did have a very negative childhood/teenage years experience. Don't look like anyone in my family, don't have same personality; don't share the same talents or interests and, to top it all, 2 really toxic parents who told me they couldn't wait for me to leave home. Heck, my father even told me to "go away" on his deathbed and that he only wanted to see my sister! So, I may not have been adopted (& yes, I do have my birth certificate that shows that I AM their child) but I may as well have been from the way that I felt for the 1st 21 years of my life.
Trust? Well, sorry folks, I am also one of those terrible "abandoning" bmoms. That screwed me up even further. Never wanted to part with my only child I ever had but was told not to be so selfish and, worse still, that if I didn't, they would take my baby from me and have me "committed"! Yes, that's how things were in the bad old days. Seems hard to blieve that it was only 30 odd years ago! WELL... that left me REALLY bad. Suffered PTSD for many many years following the adoption. Never trusted anyone. Found it hard to "attach" and stay with anyone. Heck, they too could abandon me to lonliness, homelessness and poverty with a kid to try and raise - or to have to make THAT "sacrifice" (that's what it was called back then &, for many of us, that's exactly what it was).
Fear of intimacy. Fear of abandonment. Lack of trust. Creating a "false self" so as to fit in and to hide the "monster" I am......
I have been married for 18 years now but I still do not trust my husband entirely. I should be able to do so, but I just can't. However, he (& only one other person in my life who, sadly, is now dead) is the nearest I have ever come to trusting someone since the day I was foolish enough to trust my "elders & betters" (parents) & to trust "the experts" (my family doctor, the doctors and nurses at the hospital and, worst of all, the adoption social workers). Even worse, I am in reunion with my lost child and I don't feel I can trust them (and yes, I actually do have good reasons for not trusting, sadly)!
No, you don't need to be adopted to feel those kinds of things. You just need a set of unfortunate circumstances and a society that doesn't care.
Hope this is helpful to you.
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Hey Zora,
You can't force anyone to do anything. If he doesn't care to hear why you acted that way, then he is not caring about you the way you want. I mean, give him some space if he is still ackward about it, but if he still is unresponsive, the let it go i guess.
More importantly, try and get it straight in your head first. I dont know the details of the event, really examine what triggered you to act the way you did, what set you off and made u act the way you did. Try and explain the details, solid facts/information rather than feelings; then he can relate to a situation/logic rather than emotions, he may understand you better.
I hope that helps a little!
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feelinglost
is it because somewhere I knew my Bmom gave me up, or is it just life????
I was not adopted. However, I have shared the kinds of feelings that you are all talking about here.
Why? I had really "toxic" parents who, although they didn't physically abandon me or give me up (so as to have a better life), certainly made me feel abandoned and unloved. It started then....
It got worse after I had a baby and, reluctantly, relinquished my baby for adoption. Did I say worse? Actually it got so bad that I was incapable of forming any kind of close relationship - whether male-female or simply girlfriends.
I am not sure if adoption is to blame. It may be the "trauma" of adoption that does it, however.
I would urge anyone adopted who is facing this problem to read Nancy Verrier's 2nd book: "Coming Home to Self: the adopted child grows up", which explains a great deal about this kind of behaviour and possible ways to overcome it.
It may also be necessary to have some counselling/therapy because I don't feel it's something we can fix all by ourselves (because we don't know how to behave differently - this behaviour has become "set" for us).
Yes, first mothers also can suffer from this problem. It's not just adoptees. Of course, that can make things very hard when we try to have a reunion. That is why I feel it's very important to address this issue in particular before we even attempt one.
Do hope nobody minds my barging in here. Just trying to be helpful and give further insight.
I do hope that all of you who have posted on this thread will one day be able to love, to let yourselves be loved and find the happiness that all of us are seeking in our lives.
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:) Thank you for posting this thread. It has allowed me to see that I have some issues in my life which I had chalked up to me just not being a very good friend or not being very good at relationships. I have a good life. That's not the point. It's those things that are patterns in my life that exist without a real solid reason why. Why do I tend to push people away in my friendships? Why do I have fears about certain aspects of getting close to others? I will not allow myself any longer to just think, oh that's just how I am. Even though I cannot excuse myself, I can consciously do all I can to break my own habitual reactions. The first step is to recognise that there is a problem. Then start looking at it to see what the pattern of behavior is. How do I want my life to be instead? Will I allow my past or my self-destructive behaviors to dictate how I live the rest of my days or how I treat other people? Yes, I have a choice, and I can choose. That thought is empowering. A good thought. None of us is perfect. But we all have a choice of how we will choose to live & behave.
Thank you for posting on this, you've helped me. Even the rude comment was someone's honest experience, even though I quite agree it is not the best choice of words or attitude given the audience here. Perhaps things will change for the better if that young man will choose not to let his experience be an excuse to continue with that attitude until he finds he is bitter towards all the world... Or he could forgive and write a better ending by choice. No judgement here. Just hope we can all sort through and say we are improved by the sorting and considering of where we are at and where we would like to be if those two differ.
Leslie
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Your upbringing seems much more painful than mine.However,I want to know,is it common for us to struggle with relationships?Do we attatch too easily on one hand and have a great fear of rejection on the other?I don't have the answers.All I know is that I am unhappy and I would like to use the forum as a kind of therapy.
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Reading through this thread I see a definate common issue we are all dealing with. We all seem to have developed this emotional defense mechanism by which we must push others away, sabotage relationships, etc..
I was given up at birth by my mother and placed for adoption shortly afterward. There were no unusual events in my upbringing, be they physical or emotional that could be pointed to as having any profound impact on my emotional/social development. I never felt any real attachment to my afamily and left home for the military at 18 and never really looked back. In any personal relationship I always held people at a safe distance, never letting anyone to close and would simply draw away at any sign, real or perceived, that I might be abandoned.
I am 40 now and like feelinglost have been very fortunate to have found a mate that has given me unconditional support and allowed me to trust her. We have 3 great bchildren together. We have been married now for 14 years and going strong.
My bmother recently contacted me, we have met. Initially I wanted so much to get to know her, make up for all that lost time. Unfortunately, she was a bit more hesitant than I to develop the relationship. It didn't take long and my old defenses kicked in, now I find myself drawing away, keeping her at that safe distance, not allowing myself to be hurt anymore.
I just want you to know that somewhere out there is the one person you can trust and make a life with. When you find them it is so worth it and makes up for all the rest.
Be well.
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Hi all,
I was adopted when I was 4 mths after staying with foster parents while my birth mother decided if giving me up was a good decision. I beleive she made the right decision as I was raised by my loving, generous parents and am so grateful for them.
The issues that I am having is not knowing if my insecurities, fear, inability to trust and develope intimate relationships is a direst result of my being adopted. I come from a very reserved family who doesn't show a lot of emotion. I have a hard time talking to family members as it is not something that we do. I don't remember growing up, whenever my sister or brothers mentions something from when we were kids, I have no recollection of it and am not sure why. Even things from when I was a teen I can't seem to remember.
My relationship with my boyfriend is on the rocks. We've been together for 6 years and we finally have admitted to ourselves that we have never really connected. And I have no idea how to. I don't have many friends and none that I would consider to be close with so I don't really have any one to really talk to about this. I haven't really been able to maintain friendships and find that I am too reserved for people to get to know me.
I have had recurring dreams where I am in a dark building with many rooms and long hallways, and I can hear voices or see people I know going from room to room and as soon as I get to that room they go to another and eventually I can't find them. Very depressing dream.
I feel incredibly alone and am considering seeing a therapist, but was wondering if anyone else has similar feelings, or had them and was able to successfully build intimate relationships?
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I'm 28 and was adopted when I was 4mths by loving, generous parents who I am so grateful for. I believe my birth mother made the right decision and am also grateful for her although I have not attempted any kind of search yet.
But I have some relationship issues...
I can't seem to hold on to friendships. I don't think I am the one pushing away, my friends seem to just go away. Many have moved but not kept in touch. I really value relationships but find that my friends do not and don't understand why.
My relationship with my boyfriend is not good right now. After 6yrs we've seemed to just realize (or admit) that we haven't connected. And I have no idea how. I know that we get along tremedously which is why we've been able to be together for so long.
I was raised in a very reserved family and don't know if my inability to maintain intimate relationships are result of my upbringing or my adoption.
I am going to seek counselling to help me figure this out, but was wondering if anyone else has been able to successfully develop intimacy?
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If anyone hasn't read the book "The Primal Wound", I highly recommend it. You may also want to check out a website called Emofree
I am an adoptee, I was adopted at 1 month. I have found my biological parents. I still want to know more about where I was for the month between my birth and being given to my family.
I've also found that EMDR counseling has made a huge difference in my feelings of guilt and resposibility for the adoption. Best wishes to you all, may we all find healing.
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Introvrtd
I am a 29 year old female who was adopted at 4 days old. I have felt anger, sadness and disappointment and I have learned a sense of mistrust. I have tried to face this as best I could, but there are too many unanswered questions. I've read virtually every book out there on adoption. Research seems limited to my specific questions so I have decided to channel all my emotions to finding the answers by researching on my own. And that is what brought me to this forum to learn if I am truly alone and if connections and patterns exist in others as it does me.
I will give you a brief summary of my adoption story. I didn't have a great childhood although it could have been worse. My adoptive parents had a biological child after they adopted me. Growing up looking different and just having a different personality from my adoptive parents was difficult. I felt like no one in my family could relate to me. I always had questions about my birth family and my adoptive parents never had answers. But the truth is they did have the answers and lied to me about it. My adoption was very private (my birth mother is a friend of a 3rd cousin). My birth mothers mother basically wanted to know about me and she was given updates by the cousin yet I was told nothing. To make matters worse when I did finally meet my birth mother she wanted nothing to do with me. So feelings of worthlessness, pain, fear of abandonment become tattooed on my soul.
This has affected my ability to trust friends, boyfriends, anyone. Let me explain further. If I meet someone I like, I begin to sabotage the relationship pushing myself away because I already have it in my head that theyҒre going to leave, so I unconsciously try to speed up the process (years of therapy has given me insight on this one). Additionally, the other type of guy I date is the one that I know I can never have a future, because its safer to be with someone who I know I canҒt stay with so its ok if he leaves (these relationships have never been abusive....these guys were just too different from me; we just had different goals and different life aspirations). So I have never been in a relationship where the other person didnҒt leave me. But when they do leave the pain is so great it's like reliving the rejection from my mother. I know it has a lot to do with my fear of being abandoned, but I am wondering if I had a more positive upbringing and a more positive adoption experience, if I would be more willing to trust someone; to be more willing to love and to allow someone to love me.
So my question to anyone who reads my post, do you feel similar or share similar experiences when it comes to relationships, and if so did you also have a negative childhood, adoption experience, etc.? I am really interested in knowing if a solid connection between the two exists, if I am alone in my feeling scared and maybe knowing can keep my hope alive to someday have the ability to feel safe with someone.
I'm brand new to this, (forums) so if I mess up. Sorry. My story isn't that different. I'm older than you but I've struggled with the whole rejection issue off and on since puberty I guess. My adopted parents had their own kids first, then adopted me and 5 years later my younger brother. Our household had a lot of problems, and I'm still dealing with the fallout. At age 25 I found my birth parents, who weren't thrilled to know me. It knocked the wind out of my sails for a long while. But what I've learned is this, our borth parents are humans with baggage and problems, that we can't understand. I tried to force my parents to understand how lost I was and they thought I was a whiner. They were hard nosed depression era folks and snobs to boot. My father is now a miserable old fart dealing with his choices.
You have to love yourself. Sometimes it's hard. I'm a Christian, (not a fundementalist) and when I feel the worst, I remember that God loves me. I hope not to offend but God loves you too. However you believe, fate, God, the universe, there is some sense to the world. Knowing other adoptees is probably helpful, but there are many people who aren't adopted who struggle as we do. Some parents who raise their own kids just don't do it right.
I'm 45 and I've been married for the 2nd time for 14 years. I still have trust issues with him and fear that he doesn't really love me (even though he just came in the office and kissed me) It's a battle, but I'm leaning heavily on faith to get me through. I just bought a book called Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyers. It's a Christian book, but for me it makes sense. It's powerful. I'm barely through a few chapters but it makes a lot of sense.
I feel for you and I hope that you are able trust and love yourself and protect yourself from people who aren't trustworthy, but know that many people are.
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I was adopted at 5 days. I had an idyllic childhood--until age 13 when my adad died. I was not close to my amom and felt my life had ended. I also had a lot of adoption questions but my amom was always very angry when I asked anything and claimed to know nothing (which now knowing what I know, I don't believe she was so clueless).
I spent my teen years self-medicating with alcohol and married the first guy who asked me. I was not afraid of abandonment...I just wanted to be with someone, to be taken care of, to be loved. I hadn't felt that since my adad had died. Sadly, the marriage was a terrible mistake and I never found the love I was looking for.
I am now 1 year post reunion with my bmom and she and I don't really click. I just met my bdad 3 months ago--he is sick with cancer and his chance are slim. He and his children are exactly like me--I finally fit. But his wife is not happy about my appearance so the relationship is strained.
However, I am 43 and after years of reading, counseling, and finally a string marriage and 3 wonderful kids...I am content with who I am.
It has been a very long struggle indeed.
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