Is This 'right' Thinking?

[shimmerz]

a re-enactment to give you the opportunity to work through all this

Yes, absollutely @Eleanor, agreed. Thank you for the reminder. I hadn't put this experience into that box yet.

and trying to do one without the other... my mind goes TILT. I work on appreciating stuff about people I DON"T like

And first, I need to figure out if it is my filter that is messed or that I am reading things wrong. I like your idea of getting rid of the 'junk food'. Nice analogy.

I looked on the sites where people who were looking to adopt and these included failed adoptions....

I did this for a bit several years ago. It was so damaging to me at the time. I will never forget and felt tangibly the hatred spewed from the parents, the disgust and disdain for the children they had adopted, all the while on their soapbox labelled, 'I am terrific and selfless, I adopted this horrible monster, look at me, what a martyr', I seriously threw up for hours. It was worthwhile though because I was able to re-attach to how I felt post adoption. *shudders*. What did you get from reading the posts RS? Do you mind my asking?

 

[illusionist]

I can understand that shimmerz....I suppose I did it when I got to the stage where I was handling my emotions of the past, wasn't always like that. I had been through the counceling to get them out...I'd ran out of tears, so to speak, and knew the next stage for me had to be acceptance. I seemed to be stuck in thinking that I should have been ' special' because I 'should' have been wanted...why else bring a kid into your home? Those forums made me realize why....I could see it from their eyes for the very first time..how my foster parents did what they did to me and my brothers. Many of us come to adopted parents/ foster parents with a lots of problems. Mine was that I lost my adopted mum to cancer at 3, my adopted dad at four, and then spent a year in a children's home where abuses went on. By the time I got to the foster parents I was a very unhappy, lost kid. I used to cry....I can still see little me sobbing her heart out and my foster mum asking me why I was crying..said I didn't know, I didn't at that time, and she said she'd had enough of it and bent me over her knee, giving me a good hiding before telling me that I had something to cry for now...then thrown out the front door with such force I landed on the ground with bloodied knees and hands and the door was slammed shut on me. That was one of my first memories. Those forums made me realize that my foster mum didn't have the understanding, the skills, or the patience...so that's where our abuses stemmed from, their frustrations, lack of bonding as well as their own sick minds thrown in for good measure. That was my starting point to accepting. I won't go on but I hope you understand what I'm trying to illustrate. I broke a few things down like that by the words I read on those forums. To think those folks will never realise that by venting their frustrations etc they helped me on my journey.

 

[shimmerz]

she'd had enough of it and bent me over her knee, giving me a good hiding before telling me that I had something to cry for now

Yes. Just yes.

 

[illusionist]

So that very act did untold damage, I learned from that day not show my emotions outwardly out of fear.
My reaction to her actions told her that she had 'cured' me because I stopped sobbing in front of her.
.....see where I'm coming from? I changed my way of thinking. Before, when I thought of it, I would just see her as a nasty bitch blah blah ....but I turned it into an understanding of it.

 

[shimmerz]

@richter scale , interesting that the first thing that came to my mind when you spoke about understanding was 'I don't want to understand this, or I could be it.' I get what you are saying intellectually, but I feel like it is a slippery slope for me. Food for thought....thank you.

 

[illusionist]

I think I am only now thinking back with intensity of how I have come to where I am now ....lost my way a bit, so thank you for making me really think deeply and help me get back on track.

 

[Eleanor]

This may be a total tangent... I am coming to think, more and more, that retrospective moralizing is really really unhelpful. Bear with me here. I am NOT (absolutely not) saying that what abusers do is not morally wrong, or practically wrong or anything like that. What your foster mum did to you @richter scale was wrong on so very many levels that it is hard to know where to start. In a better world she would have known more, had more support been a better person. In a better world kid would get the emotional nurture and support they need to grow and heal and grow. In a better world horrible stuff would happen only in the rarest of circumstances or not at all. But for us, there is now and the future. What I AM trying to say is that there is a way in which blaming someone keeps us locked in. ANGER is not blaming. Simple anger is recognizing and committing to defense of one's own boundaries. That's the proper function of anger. When anger gets tangled up with needing the other person to be evil... (which is what I mean by blame, I guess) then it really is "like eating poison every day and hoping the other guy dies." Make no mistake, the abuser may well actually be some variety of evil (as sociopaths and psychopaths can be) but if I am committed to the necessity of the abuser as evil, that is a very different thing than the factual recognition that they are evil.

What I so so admire about your story @richter scale is that you can see your child self from her perspective, with all its limitations and complexities without (I hope!) minimizing or missing the extraordinary hurt and trauma of the young you. And you can also see the profound trauma and damage of that (only that!) particular episode. It seems to me that there is something profoundly valuable and even liberating in being able to recognize how all the pieces fit together to produce the outcome without getting stuck in the moralizing loop of "should have's." These loops are paralyzing, at least they are for me. If I deeply feel the world should not be as it self-evidently is, I find it impossible to go on. I just get... stuck. "The world is not right. It isn't. I can't participate any more. I'm picking up my marbles and going home." Except there is no place to go but here. The price of going on for me seems to me to be a kind of "yeah, that's the way it is, it totally sucks but there it is/was." Not that we don't take precautions and suitable actions to prevent future abuse and to mitigate injuries already incurred... but we don't waste a lot of energy BLAMING the perpetrator. They are what they are and we deal with that as best we can.

Maybe that's what "forgiveness" (a perennial topic here too) is rightly about.

Practical morality, I am coming to understand is best understood as the effort to close the gap between the person (situation) I am not, and the person (future situation) that would be better.

Don't want to derail the main thread... just ignore if this is incoherent... The time thing tho. I always get hung up on the TIME thing. Now, then, yet to be. PTSD, and SD are both kind of time travel. Being "out of time" in the anachronistic sense.

 

[shimmerz]

defense of one's own boundaries

Ahhhh ha! This is why I get stuck on this. Boundaries are coming to me, but still a bit to go on this one. I always get hung up on the 'but what if I am wrong?' issue on this right now. I will keep this in mind, thank you @Eleanor.

like eating poison every day and hoping the other guy dies

You mean I should ditch the package of arsenic in my cupboard???? This is a very true statement and realize intellectually I need to challenge this type of thought pattern. I start out in the imbibing rut and with a gentle nudge (thank you both) I am able to get back out again. Not certain I will be able to hang out on those boards though. Does that mean there is not enough distance or I just don't feel like rolling in the poison? idk.

just ignore if this is incoherent

Your posts? No. Never

Oh, and @richter scale , you have a way of challenging me too, you know! Jeez!

 

[Nam]

I understand what you are saying @Eleanor, but it's hard to just cut off that part of your life when your emotions are still there. Many of my flashbacks are emotions. In many ways, the physical abuse was much easier to handle. I can somewhat justify it. They were angry. Everyone gets angry. They were wrong to do that to me, but not everyone lashes out with anger like that for the rest of their lives. But the abandonment is something that just kills me. It still does. I was given up at age five and my sister was six. I have girls of my own that are close in age. When they arrived at the five and six mark, I tried really hard to understand what my mother was thinking. The conclusions I come to are very hard to swallow. Either our lives were so bad and she was too weak to protect us, or she didn't love us enough. In either case, it goes back on her. I understand there are circumstances, I get it, but as a kid who needs her mother to be there for her....it's devastating.

We adoptees have multiple traumas. Just being and adoptee has some issues. But most of us here have either been abused before or after (or both) the adoption and not given the psychological, emotional and physical help needed to process those abuses. We protected ourselves for most of our lives by either lashing out, hiding, dissociating, running away, or trying to make friends with our abusers. As an adult, I see these patterns, but as a kid? We didn't know. There was no way to know that we were being treated that much differently than other people. So, the conclusion would be that it must be our fault. Those kinds of coping mechanisms still are with us today as adults. They were never dealt with. So, yes, delving into the past, getting really agitated, angry, and all the other not so pleasant emotions is what we need to do. It's hard work. We understand that no one is going to come to the rescue but ourselves...the very person we have learned to hate.

My adoptive parents were very cold, never said I love yous or hugs. They were the kind of people that said the past is the past. Leave it there. They didn't let me talk about it. When I did, they told me it wasn't true. I so wish they would have inquired and wrote down what I said. I want to know what that little five year old said. Over the course of the rest of my childhood, I tried with earnest to get the emotional attachment that I wanted. I was called selfish, whiny, childish, all kinds of words. When I moved out of the house to go to college, my parents said I was never to come back and live there again. I can go on and on. But what I'm saying is that each one of these instances need to be dealt with. When we do, the flashback for that particular emotion or situation won't be as bad the next time.

The key to this kind of anger is to be angry at the person they were to the child. That doesn't mean they are same people today. I know this. My adoptive parents have taken great care of my own children...but they bonded. I'm not jealous anymore. I was....but now I realize how healing it is to see my mom hug my kids. It also gives me great joy to know that this abuse stops with me. I'm not the perfect parent. But I'm good enough. Isn't that all we wanted our parents to be?

 

[Eleanor]

it's hard to just cut off that part of your life when your emotions are still there. Many of my flashbacks are emotions.

I didn't at all mean to imply that one should "cut off" anything, or that the emotions (then and now) should be disregarded or disowned. Quite the contrary, as you very eloquently explain in the rest of the post. The "accepting" although I like "recognizing" a little better bit comes after, or maybe along the way. '

You bring up a good point about relating to the person then and the person now in their current states. And then when we throw in the "Me then" and "Me now" permutations... actual time travel seems simple and easy by comparison.
:grumpy:

but as a kid who needs her mother to be there for her....it's devastating.

It is. It just is. And children can't possible understand why the adults in their lives fail them. They just.. can't. It is unreasonable to think they can or should. And I think you are right, physical abuse is easier, in some way, to understand. Neglect. That is tricky as hell. And it is hard to even see it in its most pernicious forms. Starve a kid of food and it is obvious you are doing something wrong. Starve a kid of empathy, but feed, house and clothe them... and now... "what are you complaining about?" When it is not what DID happen that was harmful, but what DIDN'T happen... that's hard to even see.

Particularly when we have such poor parenting models in general.

 

[shimmerz]

When they arrived at the five and six mark, I tried really hard to understand what my mother was thinking.

This really hits home. I held both of my grandchildren this past year, when they were 4 days old. They were so peaceful, just as I should have had the right to be at that age. I can't imagine the chaos of my 4 year old self but I think the distinction lies in the energy of it all.

Dwelling on what should have been - well, there is nowhere to go with that and the idea is keeping the energy moving, not getting stuck. I agree with you @Nam is it brutal stuff. I just don't want it to make an impact that damages me this many years later. I feel like there should be a different word than forgiveness. Forgiveness is not want I want to do. That implies that it was all okay and it is not, which is what I think you are trying to articulate.....I cannot speak for you though.

 

[Nam]

No, it's not forgiveness. It's not letting it have power over me anymore. With that, I have to accept certain things, learn to take care of myself, and use the tools I've learned in order to live my life as well as I can. When I realize that the past has snuck into my present day life, I do what I can to minimize the damage it can cause in my present day. Recently, I had one that involved my youngest getting shots. I could not take her for fear that it would set me back a few weeks of dissociation. But knowing that I could not be there for her when she was hurt KILLED me. I equated that to my mother abandoning me. I didn't think of it at the time, but that's exactly what that was about. She came back and was fine, really handled it well. But I was a mess. My thoughts were all jumbled, I jumped at sounds, I was spacing out constantly, couldn't even see. It wasn't until I dug into the emotion of why I felt this way that I knew why. Once I acknowledged this feeling, where it came from, and implemented self care in response, did I finally come out of the funk. It's like resetting a bone that didn't heal right. It got broken way long time ago, but it didn't get the help it needed to heal correctly. When it finally bothers me enough, it needed to be rebroken and set correctly. Does it hurt? Absolutely. But, it shouldn't bother me any longer if I took care of it well enough. Well, that's my hope.