Living With Feelings That Are Too Big (Pt. I)
Living and managing big and heavy feelings are things that are too familiar for us adoptees. People will say that they understand what we go through but I’m afraid unless you’ve lived and been in our shoes it's nearly impossible.
“We should never be the ones to tell adoptees how to feel. Angry, sad, grateful, hurt, or none of them all. Because until you’ve lived their exact story you will never know the loss and gain, they have endured” ~Ella Flowers
When babies are born, they have feelings such as when they are hungry or uncomfortable and they cry for their parent's attention so that their needs are met. Unfortunately, this is not the case for all babies though. Quite often things go wrong due to the parents not being attuned to a baby's needs and psychologically not being present. There are lots of reasons why parents are unable to care for their children in a normal and healthy environment and nearly all the time it’s due to the parents having significant problems of their own that they are just about managing to cope with looking after themselves let alone another human being. This is very sad but unfortunately, this is what happens as part of our society.
I would say that when I arrived at my family at 3 ½ years old, I was in a way pre-moulded in the sense of my ideas, character and what I thought of the situation and world. From that moment when I arrived at my family, I was angry, I became resistant, in a way I didn’t want to be there and retaliated. That my way of coping from being separated from my birth mother and later adopted.
For me, as an adoptee growing up honesty was a big thing and still to this day it remains something that is very important to me. I say this because adoption was not spoken about in the home with me but when my parents introduced me to their friends, clients or at school they always mentioned the adoption word and that I was adopted. During that time, it felt like a bomb had been dropped on me and that gave me a lot of anxiety but also put me in a state of panic when I knew nothing about myself or my life and that was all I wanted to know and have.
Throughout my life, I have always been suspicious of others and I was not fully happy due to my past and my feelings which was an overload to what a child should handle even though I was in a loving family. I did this as I didn’t trust others.
I was hyper-vigilant so I created a wall around myself to protect me and to stop others from being close so they wouldn’t harm me. I did this as I didn’t know what was good or what was bad so I pushed everyone out. This stops interaction with others. I did this because during my formative years all I knew were adults and children harming me so I did my utmost to protect myself so I would not get hurt or be vulnerable anymore.
Due to my difficult start in life, it made me difficult to trust others so to protect myself I would create a wall for myself. Once you are in that frame of mind and way of thinking it’s difficult to change your ideas to positive thoughts when all you’ve known is people hurting you in one way or another.
Our brain is a very complex thing and there is part of the brain called the amygdala which is there to protect us when we are in danger and that’s when the reaction of flight, fight, freeze, and fawn comes into place. Due to adverse childhood experiences, this led me to be in a state of hypervigilance and always on alert for something to happen. I never managed to switch off this response/reaction and to be in a state of calmness. Little things used to set me off like sound, smells, light, colours, places etc and this was due to somatic memory. What one is experiencing and living through today something might happen like a sound, a smell, or being in a particular place may send us in tilt and the amygdala will think we are in danger. The body reacts extraordinarily! For the most part of my growing up but even when I embarked on the reunion journey I felt that my emotions were out of control and all over the place which left me feeling confused and in despair.
“The traumatized child is drowning in a sea of fragmented and overwhelming emotions, sensations and frightening thoughts.” ~Louis Cozolino
Throughout my life, my parents have helped me the best they could but sometimes as a kid, I didn’t see it like that or feel it was the best way. What I mean by this is when I was younger, I underwent many assessments and appointments with medical professionals to try and help me out and find out what was causing my problems such as hearing tests, speech and language therapy, screening for things like dyslexia (which I never had), adoption assessments (PAC-UK) which involved psychiatrists and counsellors and later on the Tomatis method when I was 10 years old which was ear training therapy. I remember very vividly all of these assessments and hating them all, especially the Tomatis due to having to do exercises and I felt forced to do it for around two years. As a child and throughout my youth in my teenage years, I didn’t see this as a positive thing I saw this as my family wanting to ‘fix’ me when all I wanted was to be me. Throughout my youth, I questioned the Tomatis appointments because in myself I knew I could hear but I heard my parents say to the school and the psychologist in charge of this ear training therapy that I had a difficulty which caused me to be very confused. What I learnt last year was my hearing was normal but certain frequencies of sound I had difficulty which caused problems in classroom discussions and conversations with others. I was angry when I found out and my mother could see it but I have never admitted it outright. Regardless of the way I felt growing up I’m sure there were reasons for all of this and I have no doubt it has contributed to where I am today, especially the ear training therapy but it caused a lot of anxiety, pressure and questions.
When I was at school I panicked and for me, school didn’t feel like a safe place when in theory it should be because that’s where we spend most of our lives (15 years to be precise). I never voiced my feelings, thoughts or wishes instead I buried them deep down and never asked for help because I thought that it wouldn’t change or make my problems go away but also, I found it too of a tremendous task to say out loud to another person even my parents that I was living with what I was going through and battling. I felt scared to tell things to them and getting something out of me took ages. Schools didn’t understand and schools just threw labels at me when that just made my confidence, and self-esteem drop tremendously. Tasks such as group discussions or timed activities were not for me but I had to battle through them on my own regardless of the heavy feelings which drowned me…