Adoption Trauma

[BastardChild]

I’m really struggling here. I can’t keep denying the impact of being ripped away at birth. I’m sorry. I’m all over the place at the moment.

Looking for support, trying to be an advocate for others that are part of this mess but without the voice. All of the Roe v Wade stuff and "supply line of children". The pain of others on Twitter, the fact that I can't get therapy and support in the U.K. as Ofsted is in control for adopted children and adults. The trauma is being passed on in my family. I'm frozen to the spot while dirt and chaos pile up around us. Pain, tight chest, nightmares, brain fog. Adoption is trauma. Children as commodity.

Counselling also isn’t guaranteed to work. It may help but equally it may not and it’s a very, very expensive thing to undertake. It is often presented on here as a magic bullet but the reality is it’s often just an expensive way of talking.

My DH was adopted at 6 weeks old, his birth mother was a single woman who was Catholic. He was in a mother and baby home in the south east of England. His adopted Mother told me he had been breastfed to a strict 4 hour schedule and was starving when they got him. It breaks my heart to think of his poor Mother.
I don't think he realises how much it has affected him, he finds it difficult to show affection and is very self contained. His family are classic British stiff upper lip.

It’s tricky because how do you definitively separate the eating disorder from being adopted? I know that most of my emotional and behavioural difficulties over the years link back to feeling ‘not good enough’ having been relinquished.

The BACP recommend that all counsellors should ask if someone is adopted in the first session and if their issue may be linked to being adopted - if so they should be signposted elsewhere. If it comes up during therapy, the client should be informed about the legislation and offered the option to be referred on. The legislation varies around the UK - there is guidance for each nation on the BACP website.

This is the topic of my postgraduate dissertation so I’m quite vocal about the issues accessing therapy as an adoptee!

You are right it is trauma. I hear you and hope you find a way to accept your pain.

I'm so sorry that anyone has been stupid enough to say that you are lucky or should be grateful. Lucky, are the children who are born to parents who can and do look after them. Not the children who went through the trauma of not having that. It's mostly something people say when they don't know what else to say. Fortunately, being lucky and grateful are not concepts that adults I know would put on adopted and fostered children and so perhaps attitudes are changing.

I see other have made recommendations to you so hopefully me doing so would be OK. I read The Primal Wound and found it defined that initial trauma of baby and mother separation like no other resource had. There are also follow up videos on YouTube, look up 'what is the Primal Wound with Nancy Verrier' the channel owner is Jennettically Speaking.

I realise that books and videos are no substitute for actual support but perhaps the validation of your feelings will ease some of the intensity of them.

Bastardchild i too am adopted now 48 and although my mum and dad loved me like their own I always felt like a second hand prize like I was only their by default as if they could have had children naturally they would and my path of life would never have existed.

I also haunt myself with the knowledge that if my birth mother (not even feel comfortable saying that don't really know what fits) was pregnant nowadays I probably would have been aborted (I do not have anything against abortion BTW) and that fucks me up a bit.

I traced her and although we do not have a relationship she did offer some information about my birth as I had these first few weeks of my life no one knew a fuck about or really cared and I could have been anywhere with anyone. I also do not have a clue who fathered me and that is also fucking hard to accept but I have no choice too.

The recent thread in AIBU about the woman who was having difficulty trying to conceive naturally and was pissed off that everyone was telling her just to adopt ,again a second hand prize by people also telling her they could never love a child that was not blood so how the fuck does that make me feel !!!!

I feel everything you have described and understand your acute pain no one gets it unless you are in this club.

Don't get me wrong I loved my adopted mum and dad and had a happy childhood but I can't help but feel every bit of bad luck I have is due to the fact I shouldn't really have been born.

I am thinking about you

Sorry and although people mean well by saying 'ahh your special you were picked'ehh no I wasn't my mum and dad wanted a baby and I filled a need it could have been the one in the cot next to me.

As an adoptee myself I was able to get counselling to deal with other things or CBT to deal with anxiety, but not to look at the root cause issue of the adoption itself. This was two years ago, I think the theory is that people need special training to deal with that depth of trauma and loss and attachment issues, but WTF - a good therapist is already supposed to be trained to help with trauma and loss!

I was upset at the time but actually reading this thread I am now angry too.... because the net effect is to reduce availability of therapy to adoptees.

That’s exactly what it is @AMBE123 . I’m a counsellor and so many of us really really want to help but the training is rarely run and the information is scarce. It’s crap to have so much knowledge and training on trauma and attachment already, but to have to tell someone crying out for help that it is against the law for us to work with them. Adoptees and other people affected by adoption in this way have been horrendously let down by the systems which claim to protect them.

@bastardchild
Firstly, please change your username 😭, you were a perfect baby and child. Why were babies even called that, hardly their fault if their parents weren't married!

Secondly, sorry for long post, this obviously triggered me a little!

I recognise your pain. I was adopted, not wanted by my 18 year old birth "mother", neglected and she turned against other family members who tried to help look after me. Her and my father had married and were living with her parents so it's not like she had no support. A year in foster care - I saw photos later of the foster mum's own kids with me and I recognised their faces and had a rush of love, I was settled there.
Then picked up and taken home by another branch of family. Raised by an adoptive mother who actually just wanted her own kids and had been talked into taking the 'unwanted kid'. She could not show emotion, with more related females who moved onto the house who were excessively controlling and picked on me constantly, undermined and criticised me. Dad was fine but VERY strict, but played and showed affection....but was under the thumb of the 3 women.

Anyway....yes was told I was lucky and when I met biological mother in my case I do have to agree! She vindictively did more damage to me as an adult so if I'd stayed with her I'd be truly screwed.....

But the point is being adopted is a massive trauma, nothing is more traumatic than being ripped away from your mother. Even if staying with the mother would be horrendous and getting away from that situation is a lucky escape, nothing is lucky about having the mother / baby bond disrupted. Necessary, maybe. But not lucky.
Or a baby being finally settled and happy at 10 mths old and then ripped away from a foster home where it is happy.

And nobody acknowledged it....just say 'oh you were a baby, you didn't know anything'. Well, yes we do know. And it makes it worse because it is before conscious memory....how do you tap into and deal with something you can't consciously remember and discuss? But the point is we emotionally remember.

I recognised my biological mother's voice when I met her. I recognised my foster mum's sons who I last saw at 10 mths.

I lived 50+ years with a hole, a feeling that anyone I got close to would vanish so better not get close. I had zero trust in women....which was especially difficult because I'm a lesbian...so I tried to stay straight rather than take the risk of emotionally trusting a woman. (In the end I took the risk and am very happy)

I can't watch any film where children and mothers are separated.

You are right to be angry OP, it is outrageous that nobody recognised or acknowledged the impact. It is even more outrageous when it was women who wanted to keep their babies and just needed some support or even just acceptance, and they were ripped away from them. I have children - now adults - and if they had been taken I think I'd have died on the spot, I cannot imagine the trauma for those mother's.

OP I think everything you are describing is a form of PTSD....please get help for the unhealthy coping mechanisms because that is just making things worse. Keep looking for an adoption therapist, tap into some of the resources people have mentioned.

I found a course of CBT was very useful, I thought it would be a sticking plaster but it taught a lot of useful techniques for managing anxiety and worry levels, they should have taught this stuff at school!

I wish you well OP. I thought nothing could resolve my adoption issues but I got there....took 50+ years but I got there. The pain doesn't go away but it is folded up neatly and kept in a much smaller box in my heart.

Sorry to hear you're struggling, therapy and support is shite across the board so although it shouldn't be the way it's not surprising sadly this extends to this.

DH was adopted but really his life would have been immeasurably worse living with an addict who allowed their various partners to beat her children- his sibling was shaken as a baby and suffered his whole life because of it. His fate at facing some sort of trauma was sealed as soon as his mother got pregnant, but in his mind the thoughts around being 'taken away' are lesser than the life he would have inevitably led if he stayed there. Of course absolutely not always the case and sadly many children were taken for much lesser reasons where the child wouldn't have been harmed. But yeah I suppose its not always the case that it's a bad thing, he does feel grateful. That's okay, as is not feeling like you should feel a certain way and just crack on- there should be support.

Adoption, in itself, is trauma for the child and the mother.

The needs and ethics of safeguarding against real danger vs adoption forced by societal mores vs international adoption and pipelines of babies for commercial gain vs the ethics of "providing babies for worthy childless couples" can be discussed as infinitum as to whether the childhood would have "better" outcomes than had they been raised within their birth family.

But these are separate issues.

The fact remains: adoption is trauma

No matter how "wanted" the child is/ was. No matter how dangerous the circumstances they were taken from. No matter how sincere and loving the adoptive parents.

The fact remains: adoption is trauma

Yes the implication was immediately obvious when OP expanded on the OFSTED reference a few posts into the thread. Horrifying.

Obviously, any adult human with a brain can see what the practical effect of adoption counselling falling under the remit of OFSTED is. Individual posters pretending to misunderstand OP or going into “explaining” mode don’t help at all. Despite her distress, OP outlined it all too clearly. If practitioners are bound by their code of practice by to deal with adoption trauma unless specifically registered for that purpose, it brings all post adoption therapeutic support under the control of a single body, which also deals with looked after children etc, and the potential conflicts of interest are glaring, not to mention “supply”issues.

I had never heard of this, despite an SGO in the family.

@Sortilege its not a code of practice issue, it’s the law.

@AMBE123

Thanks for your story. I hear you.

I am not able to see myself as that innocent baby. Only as something damaged, surplus, second best (at best!). There were birth defects that have manifested throughout my life, that I have to constantly explain to others, not really sure of the actual circumstances as those records pre birth / in utero are not available to me (as you probably know). Then there's every medical appointment or insurance form... "any family history of...?"

BASTARDCHILD is a name I feel that I can own, as my first one was taken away from me, my apologies to anyone who finds it upsetting, but I hope that I've been able to go some way to explaining it.

I'm adopted too and I agree.

That “supply of infants” reference from the States - and powerful people in the States at that - was bone-chilling. It’s stayed with me all week.

I can’t properly imagine what that is like to hear in your position. I’m really sorry OP.

We hear from adopters a lot, and even birth parents a bit, but I wonder if, as a society, we only want to hear “good” and (your word) “grateful” adoptees, because we don’t hear many first hand accounts of adoption trauma, and all experiences and feelings should be legitimate. I really admire you for being brave enough to post, and wanted you to know that you’ve really made at least one person think quite deeply this morning. I hope it gets easier for you. 💐

By LAW only OFSTED-approved counsellors/therapies can treat adult adoptees with trauma? Is that governed by adoption law? Is this England & Wales then? I’m genuinely really shocked. Couldn’t they at least have devolved this to an independent agency?

Yes it is, as is staying with parents who cannot provide a safe environment.

If I (who never deliberately seeks out adoption threads specifically) can recognise more than 2 adoptive parents on this thread by their usernames, and see them getting involved in the pushback, then there’s probably 10 of you here.

I don’t think that’s a good look for adoption, quite honestly. If what OP has to say feels like a personal affront, it might be better to hide the thread than arguing with her, “explaining” things she already understands to her and generally trying to spin the thread back at her.

@Sortilege it was a 2010 amendment to the Adoption and Childrens Act (2002).

This isn’t me, but explains it well: www.counselling-directory.org.uk/adoption.html?fbclid=IwAR3p4zF4IYJuoulz5fblnC30XpQgkR1Zl0fV5OtnVqPZlThIIHt_Tki4T-M

Hi,
I understand re the name and if you feel you can own that, keep it, I just hate to think that's how you feel about yourself. Shitty things happen TO people, but it's sad when they internalise the shit.

My birth name was changed on adoption but I never liked the new one so I chose a totally new name as an adult and changed it by deed poll. It was empowering to be able to redefine myself and lose the internalised stigma my old name gave me.

The medical record thing is frustrating. Somehow, all my medical records before the legal adoption, those in my original name, were 'lost'. I've asked for searches under both names....nothing. No early history to maybe explain certain things!

Do we know if anyone is challenging this? Any practical action to be taken to try to get this changed?

Thanks @MajesticWol

@Trafficblight

You are correct in what you say. I have not hit out at adoptive parents here.

"Yes it is, as is staying with parents who cannot provide a safe environment"

That's not denied in my post. But it does not trump the statement at the core of all of this. Adoptive parents are not, unfortunately able to "fix" the children that are given to them as what is minimised so often, it's that to the adoptee, they are central to the problem given the complex and hugely conflicting emotions around "gratitude"
and the rest of it.

This is a difficulty that I've experienced first hand. Adoptive parents that view themselves as saviours or adopted to fulfil their needs rather than the childrens often go on the attack when faced with these realities.

I'd ask anyone that finds that difficult to look deep within yourselves and be honest about what you find before coming back on that one. The mothering instinct is strong, you are not being blamed, but is the child really at the centre, or your need & desire to be a parent?