#13 The Cycles of the Existential Denial of Existential Severance
forget, conform, perform, disappear.
The denial of existential severance is not a singular event, but a cycle – repeating, evolving, tightening its grip before loosening just enough to let us breathe, only to pull us under again. It is both an external force imposed upon us and an internal battle, one that does not end with awareness but instead loops back in new, more insidious ways.
Each phase in this cycle reinforces the one before it. Each stage is a variation of the same demand: forget, conform, perform, disappear. But severance does not forget, no matter how much denial attempts to bury it.
The Inception of the Lie
(The Original Severance)
There is a moment – unseen, unremembered – where we are cut from what was meant to be ours. This is the point at which identity fractures, where continuity dissolves.
- The mother’s voice, her scent, the familiarity of her heartbeat – gone.
- The body’s knowledge of its first home – erased.
- The name given at birth – discarded, overwritten.
But the trauma is not acknowledged. Instead, it is rewritten before we can speak before we can resist. We are told we have not lost anything at all. That this is normal, that this is good.
This is denial as a foundation – the first rewriting of reality.
The Performance of the New Self
(Forced Assimilation)
Denial now takes the form of expectation. We are given a new life, a new identity, and we are required to perform it convincingly. =
“You were chosen.”
“This is your family.”
“Aren’t you lucky?”
Any resistance is met with discomfort, with correction, with a quiet but firm reminder: be grateful.
And so, we play the role. We become what is needed of us, folding ourselves into a script we did not write. The existential severance remains, but now it must be hidden – even from ourselves.
This is denial as survival.
The First Fractures
(Dissonance & Unraveling)
For a time, the performance works. We learn how to mirror, how to belong in a place where we do not belong.
But cracks form.
- A question arises that cannot be answered.
- A name resurfaces that was meant to be forgotten.
- A feeling – deep in the gut – tells us something is missing, something has always been missing.
The body begins to betray the illusion. The falling sensation in dreams, the inexplicable panic, the way love and abandonment feel like the same thing. The unconscious remembers what was taken, even when the mind does not.
This is denial in conflict with truth.
The Reckoning
(The Rejection of the False Narrative)
The cycle breaks – at least for a moment. The truth, buried for so long, pushes through:
- We were not chosen – we were taken.
- We were not given a second chance – we were denied our first.
- We were not spared pain – our pain was simply ignored.
This is the moment of rupture – when the depth of existential severance becomes undeniable. The betrayal is no longer subtle. It is glaring, sharp, relentless.
And yet, here the cycle does something insidious: it pulls us back.
This is denial as backlash.
The External Pushback
(Gaslighting & Rejection)
When we finally speak, we are met with resistance . Society, family, even other adoptees still caught in the cycle push back against the truth.
- “But your adoptive parents love you.”
- “Why do you dwell on the past?”
- “You should be grateful – you could have had it worse.”
The denial reasserts itself through shame, through guilt, through accusations of ingratitude. The world demands that we retreat, that we shrink, that we abandon what we have uncovered.
Some of us do. Some of us, exhausted, return to the comfort of forgetting. Others fight, only to be exiled from the very spaces that were supposed to hold us.
This is denial as social enforcement.
The Fragmentation
(Living Between Two Realities)
For those who refuse to return to the lie, existence becomes a state of fracture.
We see the truth. We know what was done to us. But we also know that the world is not built to hold that truth. We are forced to live in two realities:
- The reality we experience – the one shaped by severance, by the unrelenting sense of exile from our own lives.
- The reality the world insists is true – that adoption is only love, that we should be whole, that our loss is not real.
This is where many adoptees remain – in a liminal space, oscillating between knowing and doubting, between speaking and silencing themselves, between remembering and forgetting.
This is denial as fragmentation.
The Liberation of the Unapologetic Truth
The only way out is through.
Some of us, after enough cycles, stop trying to make others understand. We stop seeking validation from those who will not give it. We stop asking permission to exist in our truth.
We begin to reclaim what was stolen – not physically, perhaps not even entirely emotionally, but existentially.
- We reclaim our right to grieve.
- We reclaim our names, our ancestry, our origins – even if only in whispers.
- We reclaim our voices, refusing to let silence rewrite us again.
We reject the cycle not because it stops spinning but because we choose to step outside of it.
This is denial confronted.
This is existence reclaimed.
Breaking the Cycle
Existential severance is not something we can undo. We cannot return to the lives we were meant to have. We cannot unwrite the separation, the loss, the erasure.
But we can refuse to participate in its denial.
The cycle of existential denial exists because our truth is inconvenient. It threatens the carefully curated narratives of adoption, of family, of belonging. It forces society to ask questions it would rather avoid.
But we, the severed, the exiled, the ones who fell before we even knew we were falling – we are remembering. We are speaking.
And no cycle can erase that.
Hello, my name is Shane Bouel,
I’m a retired, qualified designer, lecturer & e-learning specialist seeking true connection.
I am an adoptee of forced adoption, living in Bali — a place that, like me, holds the weight of displacement and the echoes of histories rewritten. My journey is one of systematic erasure, existential severance, and, ultimately, reclamation.
Adoption is often seen as an act of love, a new beginning, a gift. But beneath that narrative lies a deeper, often unspoken truth — one of loss, identity fracture, and the struggle to exist in a world that does not recognise what has been taken.
I have spent years unravelling my own story, uncovering what was erased, and reclaiming the self that was meant to disappear. It has been a journey through grief, awakening, and profound transformation. And now, I invite you to walk that path with me.
From here, we embark on a journey together.
