Responsibility in Retrospect
The response was swift, cutting and caught me completely off guard. My conversations with other adoptees on how I have been affected and the pain that adoption trauma causes was seen by members of my biological family on social media. They were angry and they were hurt. But never did they ask me why I felt the way I did. Instead they chose to attack me.
It was completely about them. It was not about me.
As a child I was trained to modify my behavior in order to be tolerated by others. That had been the message since before I could verbalize. This is also why I have anxiety issues. The constant hyper-arousal is an unfortunate byproduct of neglect, emotional abuse and lack of attachment. It is also why I can’t do conflict and is why I need to shut down when conflict does arise.
My therapist is stressing responsibility. Not for me, as I tend to hold myself responsible for everyone else’s feelings — but the responsibility she wants me to understand is that others make choices, and they own those choices. I did not cause their choices. That has been one of the hardest things I’ve found to work through. I am deeply conditioned to blame myself.
In being confronted by this relative, I found I was not willing to defend myself. The lack of a trusting relationship set off my warning alarms. I felt that any defense I proposed would not be beneficial nor healing, but rather used against me. I shut the door, yet this time I did not shut down but turned to safe people and asked for support. That support came and buoyed me in a way that I didn’t realize possible.
Baby steps forward — yet forward nonetheless. The work is not easy nor comfortable, but when you see results it encourages you to continue on. When our ways of coping stop working, we truly have a choice. We can dig deep and chose healing or we can trade our dysfunction for another unsustainable mechanism.
For me, asking for support was a huge step. I suspect it won’t be the last time.
