Adoption/birth Trauma Anyone Have Information/experience?

[Echo]

@Hope4Now, it sounds as if we are very similar! Yes, the rebirthing helped at the time and wasn't retraumatising at all. I guess I was given the information I could handle at the time. I would definitely not do it now with the CPTSD.

Take it easy. Your soul and body are infinitely wise, as you know, and need to do it in the way they know best. My therapist actually told me that my desire to know it all so fast (my usual speed) was retraumatising me and could worsen the brain injury that is CPTSD. Lots of my usual healing methods and tools are not suitable for this process. It would all be fascinating if it weren't so painful! Maybe it is a chance for us to widen our practice and then use it all to help others in the future when we've recovered our balance.

 

[Hope4Now]

My therapist actually told me that my desire to know it all so fast (my usual speed) was retraumatising me and could worsen the brain injury that is CPTSD.

LOL, Echo, my therapist is telling me the same thing. Slow down. Take your time. Listen to your body. etc. This is sooo not how I work. But I am trying to trust him and the others (bodyworker and yoga therapist are saying the exact same thing). And the buddhist meditation stuff says the same thing...just be with what is without trying to change it or rush it, etc.

It would all be fascinating if it weren't so painful! Maybe it is a chance for us to widen our practice and then use it all to help others in the future when we've recovered our balance.

I agree about the fascinating part. There is actually a pretty active part of me that is fascinated by this whole experience. That sort of freaks me out because I wonder whether I'm dissociating from it. My therapist says that it is my heart/deep self being curious, and that is healthy. Hmmm. And yes, the hopeful part of me looks forward to a time when I have healed so that perhaps I can help others in the future. I would like that very much. I am in a helping career already but have this sense that this experience will shift how I work in the world (if I can manage to survive it!).

Lots of my usual healing methods and tools are not suitable for this process.

Same with me. Isn't that incredibly humbling? And I thought I had it all figured out.

 

[Echo]

@Hope4Now - yes to all you say! If this is not a lesson in BEING from the heart centre, which is what I was teaching prior to all this, I really don't know what it is. For me all the pain is centred on my heart. It is just the deepest heartbreak all round, but coupled with a sense of me needing to rise above other people's meanness and total selfishness in having done these things to me. I do believe we can survive it and not be corrupted by it, and the strength we will draw on will increasingly come from our own true sense of self, once we have thrown off all the lies we have imbibed from toxic parents and the like. This goes far beyone words; it is a real felt experience. I only get glimmers of it, before tumbling back down into the pain, but when I have less worse moments, I can get there. And it is mirrored back to me by my trauma therapist and the various alternative practitioners with whom I work.

 

[Hope4Now]

Took a big step today and contacted the organization from which I was adopted. Spoke with a social worker. Asked for my medical records and any details of my actual birth. Apparently, back then they didn't record much, but she said she'd send on what she had. Hoping to shed some light on what happened to me (if anything) between my birth and my adoption...at least where I was during that time. Also discovered that my biological half sister and my birth mother have tried to be in contact. Interesting.

 

[Seaotter]

I was adopted at the 6 month marker after being in foster care. My therapist is doing some somatic work with me and EMDR about some other stuff, and my body reverberates when working through some things...you are supposed to let your body shake or do whatever it wants. It is trying to heal you. You should be exhausted afterwards. I didn't buy in to the treatment but it seems to be working. My T has also got me researching attachment theory because I had three mothers within a year - it is very interesting especially the study by Mary Ainsworth it's on youtube.

 

[Hope4Now]

@Seaotter, thank you for sharing this. Three mothers within a year is intense. Do you remember anything? I don't. I'm exploring some of Ainsworth's stuff on the internet. I have not learned much about all this. The shaking stuff happens to me a lot...usually when I lie down to meditate, or sometimes when I am just sitting and not focused on something else. It is exhausting. The yoga-healer-person I see occasionally calls these kriyas, which are releases of energy. She too encouraged me to just let it happen. She said it can go on for a long time. I have never experimented, but the last time I had the time to let it go on, it went for almost 2 hours. All the symptoms go away gradually, when I'm able to get grounded and focus on other things.

 

[Seaotter]

I have no recollection. Three Moms - birth, foster care for 6 months and my adopted family. Ainsworth discusses attachment theory, her research is based on babies. Heller Poole is a modern day expert. Your reaction time seems intense and scary. There are some Ted Talks on neurobiology, mind and body. I'm seeing my therapist (trauma) on Tuesday and I'll ask her for more insight.

 

[Seaotter]

My T sent this for you - but I am unable to add the link.

Healing through your body….radio interview with Peter Levine

 

[Hope4Now]

Thanks, Seaotter! I'm familiar with Peter Levine, but I haven't heard the interview. I'll look for it online.

I have a lot of intense body stuff going on with no memory at all associated with it. It is very disturbing, but am working on it with my therapist who does somatic stuff along with the therapy. It's all rather new to me, this idea that the body has its own memory.

 

[Hashi]

Hi Hope4Now,

Among the many things Peter Levine says that I've found helpful, about how the body has natural mechanisms for healing, is "all we need to do is get out of the way".

When I started out on this journey I felt very frustrated at not knowing and not understanding things, and I had a belief that if I didn't know I couldn't know myself and couldn't heal. Some time and a lot of healing later, my view on that has changed completely.

I'm going to have to work on childhood and early childhood trauma soon. I no longer want to remember more, because I understand from working on adult trauma that I don't have to remember something in order to heal from it. I'm actually hoping I don't have to remember much more about it. All those things to do with the adult trauma that I did eventually remember, were almost unbearable to know. I certainly couldn't have handled them earlier in the process, it would have been destabilising.

In my view, if something isn't coming up naturally to be worked on then what we need to work on is skills, strength and stability - I don't mean grounding by counting colours, I mean a very high level of managing ourselves and our consciousness. I think it's also a time for learning the "language" we need for working with ourselves.

For example, I started using art to express things when I decided to make a collage about my frustration at not remembering. Then I made a collage about my birth, then about not knowing who I really was (due to selective amnesia). And then... I was making collages, and I continued to make them as more memories finally came back. Collage has become one of the key ways for me to process trauma. But I wouldn't have understood how powerful it was for me, and how to manage it without getting overwhelmed, if I hadn't started off working with what I had (lack of memories) instead of waiting to have memories to work on.

I did this with other things too - in my case, writing and metaphor exercises, working with archetypes and symbolic rituals. For other people it might be different things, but my point is that we all need to find the things that will guide and support us. I agree with not rushing the memories but personally I think the time is still for doing work. The work at this point being safety, containment and ways of expression - at a higher level that before. And also to work on the meaning of where we are now, in its own right, rather than feeling we're missing something else.

 

[Hope4Now]

The work at this point being safety, containment and ways of expression - at a higher level that before. And also to work on the meaning of where we are now, in its own right, rather than feeling we're missing something else.

These are wise words, indeed, @Hashi. Thank you. Sometimes I think I'm getting to that point of working with what I have now. I simply don't know what it means to be "safe." I don't think I have ever felt safe in my life, because the everpresent danger comes from within myself (except those times that my inability to say no/my desire for new and exciting experiences leads me to do things that are far out of my comfort zone...like sailing small boats long distances on the open sea with attendant storms, for example).

I don't mean grounding by counting colours, I mean a very high level of managing ourselves and our consciousness.

Which leads me to this line which made me laugh knowingly because I do count colors and name objects and remind myself that I am 50 years old, married with 2 kids and a dog, am fairly successful (at least in the intellectual world if not the financial) in my profession, etc. I can do basic grounding with moderate success...except for days like yesterday when I literally felt like the fragments of myself were floating off into the ether. I need to learn the high level stuff. Am working on it via some basic yoga. It is very hard to manage consciousness, when one's physical self is so demanding and persistent in its involuntary movements. I dearly wish I could find someone who could help me integrate all this. My "yoga lady" as I call her (who is highly skilled) seems to feel that I should just allow my body to express the energy and keep focused on my breath--that it is a natural process of releasing blocked energy. I've been doing this for months and it is getting more complicated and intense and I am now less able to contain it when I need to (e.g., chairing a meeting, or attending a dinner). I'm thinking I should tell people I have Tourettes Syndrome as a simple answer. My therapist feels that in order to manage my consciousness and stabilize, I need to attune to these energies because they are manifestations of one or more parts of myself from which I have dissociated. Both instruct me to just be with the energies and be open-hearted to "listen" to what they're telling me. I really have no idea, after all this time, what they're telling me. All I know is that I scare myself. I am working on being patient, and balanced, and more gentle with myself. Perhaps that's all I can do right now. I do miss the "together" person I used to be though.

But I wouldn't have understood how powerful it was for me, and how to manage it without getting overwhelmed, if I hadn't started off working with what I had (lack of memories) instead of waiting to have memories to work on.

I like the collage idea, and the approach to to creating from the empty spaces instead of waiting for something to fill them. I think creating art is a key for me, but it is also extremely complicated due to overlaps between my past trauma and my artistic expression. Am easily triggered if I'm not careful, and being careful and creative is a paradox. But I'm trying. Have started writing poetry again, and it feels good. Have not had the courage to paint yet.

Thank you for your input on all this. I'd like to hear more from you about what you mean by managing consciousness.

 

[Hashi]

My therapist feels that in order to manage my consciousness and stabilize, I need to attune to these energies because they are manifestations of one or more parts of myself from which I have dissociated. Both instruct me to just be with the energies and be open-hearted to "listen" to what they're telling me.

I wonder about always listening. Do you ever talk to these energies in return? Is it a two way communication?

dearly wish I could find someone who could help me integrate all this.

Um... I think you are the someone who can integrate all this.

I get the impression you've been working with a number of different types of therapist/healers. I'm impressed at you finding the right people!

I don't get much sense of how you manage things yourself. Who suggests the pace and direction of what you do, and who decides it? Where does the decision come from? What goes on internally for you, in terms of guidance and insight - how do you access those within yourself?

I hope you don't mind me asking questions. Obviously, don't answer if you don't want to.