Childhood Foster Care Or Adopted?

[shimmerz]

I thank you all for your responses. I think that it is true, this is an unlikely audience to find healthy attachment styles.
I missed that golden opportunity of attaching properly. I have been a 'seeker' all of my life - looking for that golden relationship, that realistically, is only available in infancy.

I find is horrifying that a quarter of a century later, the foster system is the same old, same old. Stick a child in a home and that is good enough. They have done their jobs. I am so sorry for the pain you all have suffered through your experiences.

 

[Chava]

Agree with bit on this not being most likely crowd for healthy attachments. And the negative ones set us up more easily for PTSD vs trauma that we somehow resolve (like trying to kill myself after assault vs feel like I could talk to someone...how all following traumas played out and sucked me down).

Anyway, I was not adopted but often had the orphan feeling. I was hospitalized for several weeks at birth because I couldn't breathe. Major mistakes in my even being born. Hospitalized again in early childhood. Parents visited a little but they didn't stay with me. Also my mom was pretty ill herself, raging (dissociative, I believe, in these states), abusive, and had her own trauma history. I had nightmares about her....and cartoon characters saved me. So...where does that get you as you grow up? Also, she was just cold and neglectful. I wasn't really a person in her life...more like tried to stay out of the way because I felt her constant stress and disgust.

I think the main connection here is I am easily triggered into feeling like I'm dying and/or nobody will care about me unless it's an emergency. And the people I ultimately am drawn to and trust to take care of me (because they have to) are emergency room nurses and docs. Doesn't matter if we have no relationship or I never see them again. I want that human safety, and also the security of the machines. I don't have to fear I can't make it on my own.

I don't MEAN to end up in ER so often, but I used to end up in ER 5-10 times a year. Now I'm down to 1-2 times. I manage to get myself into a state that requires it (or I feel like I really am dying), and I feel safe there. Hooked up to machines and monitors and stuff...so even if the people are gone the machines are keeping me safe. Latest bout was extreme intoxication and burning the skin off my arm. Then I reached out to a friend, but only to get a ride to ER instead of calling an ambulance. My friend came and later asked why I couldn't ask for help sooner. I said because it usually doesn't feel like it makes sense.

I'm working at trying to reach out more, trusting people to care, before ER. That's painfully challenging.

 

[Mit]

Thanks for the insightful thread @shimmerz

I was adopted at age 5. Prior to that I was in care, hospital and fostered.

I started having surgery regularly from age 3, until I was 16, several times each year and usually stayed in for two to three week periods.

I have very vague memories of being in hospital at a very young age probably before I was adopted, but no other pre-adoption memories.

I spent most of my adult life not connecting adoption and attachment issues with other psychological problems. It's only over the past five years my eyes have been opened.

My experience is very similar to @Simply Simon

I was a very compliant child and always sought to please. I never complained or fought back, I always did exactly what was asked and expected of me. It's one of the reasons why I willingly excepted my adoptive parents (and mother in particular) continued 'personal care' (of me and my body) particularly in connection with my medical problems, far in excess of what would be considered 'age appropriate'.

My mum always told me I was 'lucky' to be adopted. I always agreed, but deep down I never felt lucky.

I've never stopped wanting to be liked by everyone, being desperate to please, and dismissing my own self worth.

However as others have clearly illustrated, a child doesn't need to be separated from parents/carers to experience abandonment, isolation and neglect.

Three years ago, age 50 I decided to try and get my records, to understand the circumstances that led to my being given up for adoption. Unfortunately social services have been useless, so three years later I am no further forward, and I felt neglected again (but typically I didn't speak out). But I met with a new social worker this week who has promised he will try to help.

I'm not sure why after all these years it's become important to me, apart from being able to tell my own children something. I think it might help me gain a better sense of myself, and fill a void.

 

[MCCS]

I am wondering how many of you had a childhood that involved foster care, an interrupted bonding experi...

I've wondered this same thing for a while now. I was taken away from my bio Mom at birth, cared for by CAS for 5 days then placed in a foster home. I was adopted by the foster family when I was 3yrs old. I've always known and always felt like I've been missing something, like I don't fit in. My counsellor recently said that it sounds like I've never felt safe and I wonder if I've always had PTSD and/or trauma due to the separation from my bio Mom..

 

[Kintsugi]

@MCCS My T validated that that was my earliest trauma.

 

[MCCS]

@MCCS My T validated that that was my earliest trauma.

May I ask if you have done any recovery on that trauma? Is there any research to prove that it is or can be traumatizing? My Mom and I actually had an argument over the possibility of trauma due to being separated from a bio mom. She stood her ground in saying that it's not possible, that as a baby you don't know what's happening so it doesn't affect you. Yet at the same time she's the one who told me I've had night terrors since I could talk.. how she wondered how a baby who has never had bad experiences know about the things I was going through in my night terrors..

 

[Kintsugi]

I did my own research and found that it was recognized as a traumatic experience, then brought it to therapy as a question.

There is already plenty of research that has emerged over the last many years to say that babies do recognize their mothers immediately and intrinsically prefer them over every other human.

 

[Anarchy]

Boarding school is another scenario where kids go through the same emotional problems.

I spent 7 years in one, age 11 to 18
My brother spent about 4 years there. We had a sort of conversation about trauma and attachment a few days ago

He's currently worried about a school friend who has dropped off the radar this last year. the third member of that little trio of trouble, hung himself when he was about 20.

A lot of kids who ended up in that boarding school, were there either because their parents wanted them out of the way - or the kids thought that they did.

even within that population, people who had been adopted, stood out as being less well adjusted and less resilient.

there were also people who had been sent to boarding school as a cheaper option than trying to cope with them in "local authority care"
One of them was there after being tied up in the back yard while his father murdered his mother. he really was screwed up. My brother is fairly certain that he very quickly ended up as a 1980s AIDS statistic

The last we heard of him, he was a very small, homeless, gay, self destructive and abuse seeking druggy in mid 1980s Edinburgh - the then AIDS capital of Europe.

R, the guy I had my first relationship with, had been in the prepschool of the place that was established to be rougher and tougher than Eton, Rugby, Harrow and the other big name hell holes - since he was 6 or 7 years old.

superficially, he appeared very mature and capable. With almost 4 decades of hindsight and an increasing knowledge of trauma, I now think that that appearance was more like what Cleckly described as "The mask of Sanity" shown by psychopaths.

 

[Anarchy]

Is there any research to prove that it is or can be traumatizing?

The limbic system - the unconscious part of the brain that deals with fear and fight flight freeze responses is up and running, and learning from about 6 months from conception.

Research on neonates has shown that they recognise and respond to their mother's smell, and voice, when compared to controls of other new mums that weren't their biological parents.

 

[Kintsugi]

Yeah, chiming in with what @Anarchy is saying, I really think my very first downfall was that I'm pretty sure my biological mother had PTSD (raped at 9 by a step father, homeless teen, abusive relationships, extreme poverty), and I know she didn't want to give me up, so the stress from that probably affected me before I was even birthed.

 

[Anarchy]

the stress from that probably affected me before I was even birthed.

almost certainly
one of the academic papers about a year ago, had demonstrated that even stressing a male rat, then removing him from the experiment after mating, resulted in more stress susceptible pups.

all through the process of reproduction and pregnancy, there are a lot of genes being switched on and off to match the baby with the level of danger in the world it will be being born into.

In the Netherlands, there has been continuous monitoring of the people who were in the last 3 months of gestation during the "Dutch Hunger Winter" of 1944, when the retreating Axis forces took all food from the Dutch population. There are a whole raft of mental and physical problems that those people and in turn their offspring suffer, when compared to people born just outside of that range

 

[Mit]

There' is a book, The Primal Wound, by Nancy Verrier that apparently argues separation at birth is traumatic, regardless of how early and well adoption is handled. It was written in 1993 so might not reflect current research. I haven't read it but I think I will. I think the author is a psychologist, adoptee and adopter, so well qualified to write about it.

From the reviews I read many people separated at birth found they could relate to the contents, but some adoptive parents didn't agree with the view that birth separation causes life long trauma regardless of how well the adopted child is parented and supported.

I am certain being adopted has caused me problems.