[Jannyroo]

Nancy Verrier
Coming Home to Self - ISBN 0-9636480-1-2 $20.00 perhaps less on internet book sites
__________________________________________________ _____________________________

I would like to start a thread and review of this book as I think it is excellent and helps all sides of the triad being the follow on after The Primal Wound.

This is a VERY POWERFUL book and I would like to go through it carefully and move at a pace that isn't necessarily weekly or bi weekly, but goes at a pace participants can cope with, as when I first read it, I was staggered by the effect it had on me but in awe of what it released too.

Some of what the book promises to give insights into includes:

1. The role of trauma in our lives
2. How the fearful child may be ruling our lives
3. How to gain power by becoming accountable
4. How to improve our relationships
5. How to improve our reunions
6. How to better parent our children
7. What professionals need to know to help triad members

I anticipate starting Chapter 1 in February, so that gives those who wish to tackle the book chance to get a copy and perhaps by common agreement we can reach a point when we are ready to move on and along. For those not familiar with Verriers work, The Primal Wound and Coming Home to Self may be a little overwhelming. Please try her website Nancy Verrier to get bite sized chunks of her work, to be able to adjust emotionally, if that is most suitable for you at this moment in time.

__________________________________________________ _________________________________

PREFACE:

In it Verrier presents how she believes that being separated from the original mother is a trauma, the ultimate loss and rejection and the experience which has life long consequences for both mother and child. This trauma has been ignored because we as a society have deluded ourselves into believing that adoption has little or no effect on children and therefore does not have to be addressed as a way of understanding these children's feelings and behaviours.

As adoptees become adults, the problems, especially those dealing with relationships do not diminish. Fear of rejection (abandonment) affects intimacy with adoptees employing various distancing techniques to avoid the vulnerability of intimate relationships. These distancing manoeuvres bewilder parents, spouses and partners. They even bewilder the adoptees themselves..... They have felt shame for those feelings .. because of the altruistic view of adoption perpetuated by our society.

In the Primal Wound she attempts to validate adoptees feelings. She says that she makes it clear that it is not the feelings of the adoptees about the loss of their birth mothers, heritage and history that is abnormal, it is the experience of this separation and secrecy which is abnormal. In other words. THEY ARE AND HAVE BEEN REACTING NORMALLY TO AN ABNORMAL EXPERIENCE.

This does not mean that adoptees responses to that early trauma, which get triggered and re-enacted over and over in various relationships in the present are at all helpful to them. ... the belief system which keeps these responses going is false and hinders the normal progress and process of relationships. For this reason it is necessary to change certain behavioural patterns and integrate new, more positive experiences in order to re-examine and challenge the beliefs that have been HOLDING ADOPTEES HOSTAGE FOR SO LONG.

The intent of the book is to help adoptees to find the authentic Self, a self that has been distorted by living without genetic markers and mirroring (being reflected back) as they grew up in non-biologic families.The other is to help them go beyond the victimhood of their beginning of life and come into their own power and sense of responsibility. One step in that process is recognising that they have an impact on those around them and therefore must take responsibility for that impact. It is difficult to have a good relationship with a false self who does not take responsibility for his or her impact on those who love him/her.

The first chapter is about SEPARATION TRAUMA. It gives insight into the reasons for our attitudes, feelings and behaviours and gives HOPE FOR CHANGE.

I don't anticipate covering this book quickly. In fact chapter 1 has sufficient food for thought to keep going for some time. However, feel free to comment and kick off on the preface to the book. I have put it in this section of the forums so that everyone can comment, this is for all members of the triad to read, participate, comment on.

I hope that we can help each other by upbuilding comments and personal experiences that may help each other and uniting our understanding of all involved in adoption to the extent covered - adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents, grandparents, and possibly much more than I can convey here.

footnote: I've written to Verrier to ask for permission to reproduce some of her work, this thread continuing will be dependent on an affirmative as I don't wish to breach copyright

[Jannyroo]

Nancy Verrier
Coming Home to Self - ISBN 0-9636480-1-2 $20.00 perhaps less on internet book sites
__________________________________________________ _____________________________

I would like to start a thread and review of this book as I think it is excellent and helps all sides of the triad being the follow on after The Primal Wound.

I've just received confirmation from Nancy Verrier that I have her permission to quote from her book as long as its quoted in context. She is also very interested in how the review goes, so I think I will give her a link.

I look forward to reviewing this book, but have to admit, if any of you are as exhausted as I am in reunion, it could be a long journey!

footnote: I've written to Verrier to ask for permission to reproduce some of her work, this thread continuing will be dependent on an affirmative as I don't wish to breach copyright

[RavenSong]

Janny, I'm glad Nancy Verrier gave you her permission to use the quotes. I tried several times to contact her when the Book Club on the Adoptee Support Forum started reading The Primal Wound. She never even bothered writing me back ~ I felt like I let everybody down on that board. So I'm glad you were able to get a response from her.

[Jackiejdajda]

There is a thing called 'fair use'.. on terms of copywrite law..


Short quotations will usually be fair use, not copyright infringement. The Copyright Act says that "fair use...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

Jackie

[Jannyroo]

Originally Posted by Jackiejdajda

There is a thing called 'fair use'.. on terms of copywrite law..

Short quotations will usually be fair use, not copyright infringement. The Copyright Act says that "fair use...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

Jackie

Thanks Jackie, but I don't think with the amount of material being duplicated to kick off each chapter or part of, that it would be covered by the above, so I thought it best to ask her permission to use her work so that others could benefit and she was fine about it, so at least I have her permission for it, which to be honest, is a relief, as I don't want to get 'done' for copyright abuse!!! However, if the thread comes under the above quote you made, then thats good, but I have never done this before, so I just wanted to make sure. Thanks for your input.

[Jannyroo]

Hi all,

Everyone is welcome to post their thoughts or comment on what may have helped them. I know that Verrier has helped me considerably in my reunion and anyone following my posts will have seen how difficult it has been. I hope that my more recent comments would show the breakthroughs I've had - mainly August last year and more recently, this week.

CHAPTER 1 SEPARATION TRAUMA

I think what absolutely floored me when I read 'The Primal Wound' was that a baby would know that the person holding it, its adoptive mother, was not its mother. That the baby grew up with all kinds of defenses to offset that first loss. I'm more familiar with it now, particularly with the conversation I had recently with my son, who described such loss and I have to say, whilst he was describing it, I was in tears... Some mothers in reunion don't find their child talking about it, but mine did. My son remembers being a baby and my voice and the feeling of 'weightlessness' when I didn't come back and he was absolutely petrified. Has anyone else had that experience?

In Chapter 1, I think its fair to say that the first paragraph brings something to our attention that society has chosen to ignore.

Originally Posted by Janny quoting Verrier

"Although more and more attention is being paid to the effects of trauma on the human psyche, separation between mother and child is rarely recognised as a trauma. Authors have written about rape, incest, battering, the holocause, natural disasters and war, but not about perhaps the most devastating trauma of all; being separated from one's mother at the beginning of life. Yet when else in life is one so helpless and in need of the one person to whom one feels connected - the one who is still part of the Self? The fact that the mothers of these babies were discouraged from seeing, touching, or being available to their infants meant that no one paid attention to the babies crying and going into shock

perhaps that's why we (both mother and child) do battle or even go silent with the result of that trauma. I have had some really deep conversations with my son that have brought us closer together on this subject of separation trauma and it helps me understand why there are so many barriers in the way to his allowing me emotionally or even physically near him. The pain he suffered as described above and still suffers from, even though I am on the scene is heartbreaking. My trying to understanding the pain, with patience and insight has got to be the way forwards. For me, Verrier did it, particuarly this book 'Coming Back to Self'. I not only 'found' my son, I 'found' my Self too. I realise that I had similar defenses and traced it back to my childhood. The repercussions for the rest of my life I can now see clearly. Making changes is harder. I still want to close down on a friendship when there is a 'disappointment' that I see as a betrayal, I still want to blow people out of the window, if they do not come up to my standards. I recognise my double standards and its hard to change, but this book is helping me. I realise that I have been subject to manifestations of trauma as my son has been. Not a good combination when going into reunion, but we have survived and seem to doing well (always scared to say we are in case it changes, note my signature.... just as I was getting used to yesterday, along came today....).

i can't promise to go at a rapid pace when going through this material. But I won't necessarily linger too long either, it will be personal choice, unless someone says there's something they particularly want to go to along the way. Its quite a life changing book and sometimes I feel woolly headed and can't continue. If that happens, I will call time out and hope you can bear with me, or even keep any momentum (if there is to be any) on this thread. This is powerful stuff and I'm still struggling to come to terms with what I've read and yet, NOW I have a much clearer picture of what the issues are for both my son and for myself.

I had to take time to heal myself so that I could move forwards with my son. He has responded to that. Despite his problems, he seems to have got stronger too, despite the fact that he neither reads, posts, or seeks adoption counselling, so SOMETHING must be happening, and I feel this book has given a clarity that I have to credit Verrier for.

[Jackiejdajda]

Janny quoting Verrier
"Although more and more attention is being paid to the effects of trauma on the human psyche, separation between mother and child is rarely recognised as a trauma. Authors have written about rape, incest, battering, the holocause, natural disasters and war, but not about perhaps the most devastating trauma of all; being separated from one's mother at the beginning of life. Yet when else in life is one so helpless and in need of the one person to whom one feels connected - the one who is still part of the Self? The fact that the mothers of these babies were discouraged from seeing, touching, or being available to their infants meant that no one paid attention to the babies crying and going into shock”


I can not speak to the issues of the primal wound on terms of the baby… but.. I can speak to what I went through..
What my bson went through is something I still to this day can not face.. and I honor that in myself..

But.. on terms of being a birthmom.. and giving a baby up and not seeing my son and being drugged for the birth.. I say.. the trauma on me.. at that time was something that stayed with me for a very very long time.. and the fact that I could not speak of it just made it worse..
There was no.. grief.. there was no mourning.. there was just silence.. and “The walls have ears.. Jackie”

I know that some women never told.. kept the secret when married and kept the secret when contacted..
Again a rejection.. of self..

Why they kept the secret is what I want to understand.. Why they did not just yell it out and say.. “This happened to me and I need help!”
I have a theory that some women married men that were emotionally distant.. this because the parents were emotionally distant at the time of the relinquishment.. and it became the norm.. and what they were comfortable with..

To have a husband that knew nothing about the relinquishment say.. “How could a person give a baby up?” must be devastating.. for a woman heading into reunion..

Jackie

[Jannyroo]

Originally Posted by Jackiejdajda

What my bson went through is something I still to this day can not face.. and I honor that in myself..

But.. on terms of being a birthmom.. and giving a baby up .. I say.. the trauma on me.. at that time was something that stayed with me for a very very long time.. and the fact that I could not speak of it just made it worse.. There was no.. grief.. there was no mourning.. there was just silence..

I know that some women never told.. kept the secret when married and kept the secret when contacted.. Again a rejection.. of self.. Why they kept the secret is what I want to understand.. Why they did not just yell it out and say.. “This happened to me and I need help!”

I have a theory that some women married men that were emotionally distant.. this because the parents were emotionally distant at the time of the relinquishment.. and it became the norm.. and what they were comfortable with..

Jackie

Why I was quieter than perhaps most? Bludgeoned into submission by a society that cared more for the traditional child raising. Being called a 'slut' by my boyfriend who was one of the first persons I tried to talk to about it years later? I don't know, I can't remember. So much I can't remember. He sulked for ages. So many reasons Jackie, the pain was so awful, I just could not believe it.... I went into emotional permafrost... when i did speak to anybody it was on pain of death... DONT TELL ANYONE! then i would go into a morbid sweat in case they did. Those whom I told gave poor reactions; 'you did the best thing' (abrupt halt to my efforts to talk..) 'how could you give away your baby', cruel things I can't repeat, because it hurts so much. I think I did a post somewhere along the line and it contains only so much the rest that won't come out is worse than a knife going through me. The day my son was adopted and I got the official letter confirming it, was the day I died emotionally.

What NOT to Say to a Birth Parent in Open Adoption

My trauma never left me. It only started to be really healed when my son contacted me 28 years later. I got in touch with The Post Adoption Centre London and the local County Council and I learned that there was help available.. now... (2006) but when I asked for help back when my son was 16yrs, (1994?) I got 4 counselling sessions .. and it blew my mind. I couldn't handle what was coming out. It was like an emotional Hiroshima. Sixteen years of suppression. I stopped the counselling. I could not handle anymore. They tried... they told me I was emotionally frozen and I agreed with them, I knew I was not mature for my age, I guess it was that little girl, bashed about by social workers, being told what to do, directed to adoption rather than being helped with a son with colic.... being transferred by social workers to a place out in the middle of nowhere... did they know something, that I would collapse with these ridiculous conditions in which I was expected to live? 1 mile from the nearest bus stop, 9 miles to the closest town? no car, no money, my son got colic... any mother knows how tough that is. I was a 21 wet behind the years scared mother.. I asked for help... I didn't get it. Not even family.

I was being promised help by my father.. it never came; being told by my grandmother that she would have dragged me to the abortion centre (!)... my brother's wife writing to me, "your kid is better off dead rather than grow up knowing his mother didnt' want him", it goes on and on..... thats all that my mind allows me to remember and it hurts jackie repeating it even now.

I tried along the way. Sometimes I could handle thinking about him. Other times I couldn't. Some times I would think of reuniting with him, other times I felt I wouldn't. Pain does funny things to the mind. 'Today is his birth day" another year "his birthday is next week' another year 'his birthday was two months ago'. Yes the mind went numb. To speak even to myself about it at times could not be tolerated, could not reach the archives. So much bitterness eating away inside of me, so much anger. People couldn't cope with aggression, so I tried to stifle it.

So silence. Yes for me it was silence. I went numb. I did not deserve anything. When I got 'ordinary' counselling she could not understand why there was so much anger in me. When I did get round to mentioning my son, she picked up on some stuff I guess, but I would blank out. That was only 3 years ago. I'm 51 now. I guess I blanked the world out Jackie.

And when anyone brought the subject up, it was if a knife had gone through my soul. It took many many years to get courage to talk about it and even then, I asked people to respect the fact that I could only talk about it if I raised the subject, not them. My niece laughed about the time in hospital after my son was born, where I'd scrubbed my .... so as to make breast feeding easier. I ran out of the house and had to be coaxed back. The pain was horrendous, and to be laughed at like that. Unbelievable. So insensitive. Trauma, reliving it everytime it came up or I saw something that would trigger it. My niece - she had had her first child adopted and yet she was able to talk about it. I couldn't. So different. It happened in different decades.

I remember seeing a baby in a store.. it was a newborn and it was crying, that special cry that only a newborn can make. I ran out of the store and I was in emotional convulsions. It took a lot of numbing before I could hold babies, but the pain was at the back of my mind. Screaming quietly whilst times and decades went by. Seeing the indignity (to me) of mothers being given homes to live in, benefits, welfare state, HELP when I knew nothing of these things and was told I couldn't have it. That could have been me... I could have kept my son... Sometimes I want to wake my mom up from death and say "it didn't work mum, you said I could get on with my life, but I couldn't, I didn't. I wanted her to talk to me.. console me.. but it was just: You did the right thing". So I learned to shut up.

The anger.. So much anger. I made sure that I had to have control over - everything. I research everything - and anything, to do with me. No one makes a fool out of me anymore, I make sure I control me, I'm not allowing anyone to control my life like that ever again, if I can help it.

I didn't keep the secret from my last boyfriend. He was great about it. He put his arm around me and comforted me. We split up later, but I was grateful for being treated like a human being instead of a reject. He was my last boyfriend and that was back in 1983. I haven't had a boyfriend since. Talk about numb! Talk about buried pain! Only wanting someone I couldn't have. He didn't feel the same. He was aloof and emotionally unavailable... to anyone. He continues to be like that 16 years on. So, I didn't marry and like 40-50% of mothers that lose their first born, I didnt' go on to have any more children either. Too paralysed I guess. In fact, I needed to come home to self (as Verriers' book's called) but I couldn't. I didn't know what was going on, why I was so hard to be around, great sometimes, blow people out of the water another. It was the trauma. No-one acknowledged the trauma of my being apart from my son. It cuts now. It cut listening to him this week ... describe his pain, he was petrified.. being left and I didn't come back. I'm just so grateful that I understand what he is going through, why he has feelings like that. How come only one woman, Verrier has been able to see these things? Has everyone else been deaf? blind? How come she sees things with such clarity? Well I don't care that much, I guess I'm just grateful that I do and that it draws me and my boy close, real close. He knows I understand.

Life only started for me (albeit pain pain pain of reunion and what it brought to my emotional doorstep...) when my son found me and its been hard, but worthwhile. I'm glad I've had these forums and Verriers books to help me. It has made the journey so worthwhile, such great people here. I am seeing results. Its hard to embark on a journey that is so terrifying when you know nothing of how to go about it. I was uninformed. Then I found these forums (google) then great people, great support, Verrier was mentioned... I'd never heard of her.

I knew so little then when I was 21, so pushed about, they said 'this is best' and I bought it, as many did. I knew what it was like not to have a daddy. Mine left when I was 11. My son has had a mommy and a daddy and a better home life than I ever had. But...

Any man I was after was always emotionally distant. I got hung up on one particular man for over 15 years. Unrequited and I told myself I deserved it because I was unlovable. I held on to this love at a distance because I didn't like myself. My son has shown me that I am lovable, he found me for goodness sake, so that spoke volumes to me. He came to my rescue I guess. But Jackie not everyone has it in them to cry out I NEED HELP. I know I did need help, but I had no idea on how to get it. Even finding this forum was stumbled across. A huge stroke of luck if ever....

Some thoughts, as to why some scream... HELP ME! and some, like me, go quiet. Not so now. My son has made me the woman I am today. My braveheart. He is facing soooo much, he is in pain, but we cradle each other's emotions, as should have happened 30 years ago... I"ve gone numb writing this. Its not anything I haven't written about before, but its trauma I guess. Got to leave it, talk another time. (((hugs))) Jackie, I know you have had a rough time too.

[Jannyroo]

p8 I found some of the references here quite interesting, because I'd initially read the book with the attempt to understanding what was going on with my son and why he was behaving the way he was in reunion. However, it soon became clear to me that I was not only reading about him but myself. In time, it became even clearer that I would have to work through some of my own issues that happened before he was even conceived and that meant charting through my own history.

I found it hard to read the book and see myself and the reasons why for at least 46 of my 51 years I was finding relationships with others very difficult indeed. At times, my responses were over the top in relation to the 'actual crime' committed as I saw it in others. One friend said to me, its as if one thing that most would shrug off, trips off some dominoes in you emotionally Janny and takes you way back to pain and hurt that has nothing to do with the event. Some of the following from Verrier made me sit up and take notice:

Originally Posted by janny quoting verrier

Symptoms of Traumatic Response
There are definite responses to trauma that help to differentiate traumatic events from ordinary difficult circumstances. One is the persistent intrusion of memories traces related to the trauma that often interfere with attending to other incoming information. ... if an emotion is sufficiently powerful, it can quash opposing networks so completely that their content becomes inaccessible (quote from General Theory of love). In other words, given a choice, our brains conjure up old responses to new events that bear even a slight resemblance to old painful experiences. The authors go on to say.. Because his mind comes outfitted with Hebbian memory (neurons that fire together wire together) and limbic attractors, a person's emotional experience of the world may not budge, even if the world around him changes dramatically'. This is the reason that even the best of adoptive mothers often cannot eliminate anxiety about abandonment in her children'.

Another response is the tendency to compulsively expose oneself to situations reminiscent of the original trauma (called repetition compulsion) juxtaposed to this compulsion is the avoidance of any situation which might evoke the emotions of the original traumatic event. This usually results in the numbing of emotions. Because there are elevated levels of adrenaline and cortisol in the body, one loses the ability to utilise the bodily signals as a means of modulating one's physiological responses to stress: in other words, the fight or flight signal is always on, so that one can't rely on it to tell if danger is actually present. (Herman, vadn der Kolk et al).

These symptoms can result in behaviour which is often result in behaviour which is often interpreted as personality changes... aggression against self/and others, dissociative problems, somatisation and an altered relationship with self and others * The problem for adoptees (discussed later in the book) is that there is no 'pre trauma self' to which they can refer. This lends itself to even more to the belief that the post traumatic coping behaviour is representative of the personality

* please see section in book for full references and details not entirely covered here.

My father last year said to me "what happened to the intelligent, loving, happy child I once knew". He was actually asking this now I'm 51 and our relationship has been one of attraction and repulsion. I'm frightened to let myself relax with him since he and mother divorced when I was 11yrs old, as he would come back, disappear again. This cycle was repeated many times over in the 40 odd years since the family life disintegrated and my coping strategies have obviously been in place since. Since we have addressed this head on and I've told him all the trauma that happened since that one big trauma - losing him entirely, he figured so little in my life, appearing more like 'guest star appearances' once every six years or even more, it became clear to me that I was not only dealing with my son's pain in losing me at such a young age, but I had my own traumas to address.

The loss of my son to a system that addressed only married couples in those days, made me close down or go numb. I could not cope with reliving the memories of both losses, so I would try to find friends that could give me back that sense of loss. I would try to find a father figure or I would invest heavily into other peoples childrens, only to feel pain when as adolescents, they had no need of me anymore.

Whenever I felt they were backing off from me or about to dump me, the emotionally haemorrhaging began and I would react violently in that I would dump them before they could dump me or be aggressive in the way I dealt with them. This caused many people to back off. This heightened sense of awareness of loss was so great that I found it virtually impossible to hang on to friendships for many years because i would push them away and it was only when I found others that were as emotionally damaged as I was, that I felt I could hold them. I became the nurse to all others ills, I could not relate to people that had 'normal' lives and I resented the fact they could interact 'normally' and had no idea how excruciating it was for me to just achieve a semblance of this 'normality' that would frequently escape from me. Aggression ruled ok.

Now that I am changing emotionally, my friends and my perception of them is changing constantly. My son is finding the same. Now that he is growing in confidence in this reunion, he has (up until now) realised that he doesn't need a disparaging bully of a friend that would encourage the drugs scene and is changing direction. The anchor is the need for family, to reflect his true Self. This has been the same for me. I have settled so much better in this reunion since my father and I have battled it out, faced the ugliness of what emotional baggage we have both been carrying, discharged it, let it go and moved on to a happier connection of interchanges.

It has made a BIG difference to my life to have both my father and my son responding so well to my being in their lives and vice versa. An anchoring of sorts has happened, but it has been extremely painful for all concerned. I'm just glad that insight is really such a wonderful thing and I've been able to respond appropriately to both my father's, my son's emotions and even myself. I credit this wonderful book in that journey, which is why I want to review it over time (as and when emotionally possible for me).

My son recalled over a week ago the feelings he had as a baby. It was an amazing journey (and deeply upsetting too for us both, but it had to come out) and I'm glad he can see that he needs to face those feelings, as excruciating and fearful as they are, because as he says, he has to do that before he can return to me. I am doing my level best to support him emotionally through this, and with remarks from both myself and his grandfather, email him every few days to give him that support, with no expectation of return (correspondence or phone call). This is to give him the space he needs.

I have actually needed that space myself, after putting him first for the best part of 18 months and for 5 weeks over December/January, I had to return to base camp - i.e. me and work through some of my own emotions that being in touch with my father and coming to terms with my loss as a child and then returning to my son with a new strength so that he could feel that strength and reassurance that I was not about to leave him (even though I felt I would over and over, something stronger has taken over and I'm glad I faced it rather than run away from it, as the bond my son and I are forging is nothing short of amazing). I now know that I will never go. Its taken quite something, to process my emotions to release me to that realisation.

My long term friends (of up to 20 years or more, yeh, suprises me to even think of it, I have thought of myself as such a dead loss for many many years) have said that they are not surprised I was so 'needy' over the years. It turns out that its the hole in my heart with having no father and no son. Big losses indeed. One of my friends said she could now understand why I had this 'neediness' with my friendship with her, as she only learned about my son when I was into reunion. She was so enthusiastic about it, that warmed my heart, but thats another story....

I'm realising myself that my inability to react the right way to people, a high level of anger, and all that I have already explained, were due to my own trauma as a child. Clearly, this was going to make me needy in reunion if I was not careful and put unbearable pressure on my son who could only go at his pace and respond to a mother in adult mode rather than child mode. I think this is important, as if I'd have carried on remaining in child mode, I think reunion could well have failed.

My son now sees that I am stronger (although I have intermittently gone to child/adult as he has, but we have gone with the flow on it) and it gives him a feeling of well being. Despite the assault on my senses that he has put me through and the agonising emotional discharges, I can now see why he needed to do this.

Things have certainly improved since I worked on my own angst and childhood losses and things seem to be falling nicely into place. The roller coaster seems to be losing its steam (and thank goodness for that!) - well for the time being anyway.

All my life since 11yrs old and even now at 51, I still suffer the fight or flight syndrome. For me it is FIGHT. I am perpetually on red alert which again, for me, means aggression. I am not exactly a shrinking violet and I still struggle with this. Although to be fair, since my son has come back into my life, BOTH our anger levels have dropped considerably. Its as if we were always fighting with life and everyone in it. Now that we are attempting to forge a bond and relationship, everything is now making sense and I feel fulfilled, very fulfilled having my son back in my life and so does he.

This has kept me going when the going has indeed gotten so tough, that I have indulged in the thought of jumping ship. I have found that I'm made of different stuff than I envisaged myself to be and its been intensely satisfying. I guess I'm proving myself. Hard, but I've arrived. Its a good feeling. So I am still in there and things are now getting past the 'being tested' stage (for the time being anyway ... or my favourite line... its great for now.. until the next time...)

So most of my life people have known me to be confrontational and aggressive. I could win hands down in most situations.. but it also left me losing job after job, as I would not put up with 'rubbish' or situations that didn't meet my criteria for what was good and fair. For the past two years I haven't worked at all because of health problems, but to be honest, I am happier being here than facing people when I have for the best part of 50 years been a handful and a forceful personality. This belies the 'shutting down' and going 'numb' that I experienced with relinquishment. It seems a paradox that the numbing had the effect of making me aggressive.

When that adoption order went through, a knife went through my heart, I shut down and for the next 28 years it had been incredibly hard to talk about it. Even in reunion I went into meltdown at the thought of letting people know and I felt my son was feeling I was ashamed to talk about him. Nothing could be further from the truth, but 28 years of pain, silence, stigma, burned worse than a fire brand on a horses rump.

Originally Posted by janny quoting verrier

Hyperarousal
Furthering the difficulties for victims of trauma is their inability to regulate their arousal levels. There is a restlessness, a perceived need to be constantly on the alert, although in the case of early trauma, the victim seldom knows what the danger is.... hypervigilance and hyperarousal are manifestations of separation trauma.

I have found this to be the case in my entire life after father left home. It became worse when I lived and continue to live on a welfare state estate for the past 14 years, where the types of individuals (even now) manage to raise my arousal levels so that at the slightest noise, I'm up and ready to take on anybody or anything.

When my son went abroad away from the UK last year, I was in such a state. Compounded by a famous rally driver and his six year old son dying in a helicopter crash - I was in such a state that my counsellor phoned me to gently ask, is it possible that you are feeling that you've lost your little boy all over again, are you are feeling the same loss as you did when you 'handed him over'.

I went to pieces and sobbed for hours, in fact I went to pieces for the next few weeks. It took some time to adjust to, but at least I knew what was going on. It was indeed exactly how it felt. My son will never know that all he did was visit a friend in Europe and I was revisiting the time when I handed him over and the incumbent feelings and emotions that that brought and it wreaked havoc in me, with my feeling clingy and wanting reassurance from him. He did not respond to it, he had his own stuff to deal with.

Even now, I carry my cell phone with me at all times, and sometimes, inexplicably, I will leave it on all night just in case.... the one time he phoned me to say that he'd been in hospital with a reaction to ecstasy and how well he'd coped with it... well I went into meltdown. I cannot explain to this day the utter fear and how my body felt as if it melted inside me with fear, abject fear. He had no idea that his taking drugs was to me like telling me that this time he would go, he would die, and I would never see him again. That episode (twice now) is the cruellest thing that has ever happened in our reunion. The first time I went quiet, the second time I exploded with rage. I just can't remember whether it was alone, with him, email him or on the phone. The first time I was acquiesent and I didn't give him the reaction he wanted.. the second time, I think I did...

Originally Posted by janny quoting verrier

Adoptees can attest to their constant need for vigilance. There is a prevailing feeling of dread, a need to be on the alert for disaster. Because this hypervigilance is continuous, the world is seen as an unsafe place... the continued anticipation of overwhelming threat seems to cause difficulties with attention and concentration. This is evident in adoptees problems with focusing (especially in school). They are easily distracted and have difficulty with stimulus discrimination... the various stimuli constantly occurring in the environment means that adoptees, as well as other trauma victims, have difficulty sorting out relevant from irrevelant stimuli

My son talks about this constant feeling of dread, it has accompanied him his whole life. He has spoken to me many times of the feelings that have led him to fail at school, college, university. He was distracted and more akin to trying to please others than being able to focus on the job at hand. Even now his parents are attempting to encourage him to focus on a degree, but the sadness of it is, that they don't see the mechanisms in play that he must first work through.

Jobs, careers etc must take second place until he can find his 'Self' and work through the awful feelings he's described which include some of the above. He feels that he is a 'loser'. I'm not having any of it, he is a braveheart and that is my nickname for him, amongst others. I too feel as if I've failed in life, as my trauma and loss of father has left me rudderless. I know I am supposed to be bright, ability etc, but it was lost whilst the trauma engulfed me, one after another first father, (and my mother introduced plenty more, she was trauma on legs, sorry to say it, but she brought so much into my life, life was one big effort at survival - she too had trauma, and oh my, round and round we go.....) then son, then the rest, then whatever I created. One long life of trauma... laid to rest in reunion.. for a new one to start... my, we have to be brave and gutsy to keep going you know....

My university assigned tutor (back in 1978 when T was born) said that I was so used to trauma that I was not comfortable with anything else, so if there wasn't any in my life, I would create it to feel I was where I felt I belonged. His observation was astute. He was the one that visited me in hospital after I gave birth and he was one of the kindest episodes in this sad and tragic voyage, brought to an end when son was brave enough to go search for me. Me.

This wretch of a birth mother that felt she'd done the worst thing possible - given up her child. Red alert? yeh, and mental permafrost. A peculiar combination. Don't be surprised when mothers can't retrace their steps or forget 'important' information. I was so traumatised by losing my son to adoption that I went into emotional permafrost. The irony was, that even when I was aggressive, responding to past hurts through present stimuli, I could not see it. I just could not see it.

About six months before my son traced and made contact with me, I was watching Bleak House, a BBC adaptation to a Charles Dickens novel and when the child, now a young lady, found by circumstances who her real mother was, she then lost her, she died in her arms after their first and last meeting together, due to the shame back then of an illegitimate child and the high ranking situation she had risen to and kept.

I wept buckets for days and days and yet EVEN THEN I could not piece together the link that later became obvious to me. I was grieving for my son. I had ALWAYS been grieving for my son. It took for him to find me to realise this.

[Jackiejdajda]

Janny I have not been on line because of winter storms over here in Canada.. We got a lot of snow last nite and more is coming..
I am going to catch up on the messages if my connection does not freeze up and then read your words in this thread slowly..and reply..

Good for you that you are opening up.. and telling what it was like.. good for you..

Jackie