I am a much-loved adopted child. Both my adoptive parents died several years ago. I was told that my birth mother apparently loved me so much that she could not bear to touch me or hold me before giving me away. How could that be an expression of love? I understand her choice intellectually but it’s hard to face up to the anger I feel. So now I think I’ve turned all of that anger on to myself.
I can’t tolerate intimacy, and I think that may have been caused by that choice at my birth. I have thought for a while that it is the equivalent of having been deprived of oxygen – the damage is permanent. I have been unable to sustain intimate relationships and it seems as though the more I love someone the more intolerable for them my love becomes – more than one person has ultimately told me that I’m too needy. The terrible irony is that this only happens after I’ve finally relaxed my defences enough to allow myself to love them.
I’ve been married and had a turbulent divorce. I then had a couple of relationships where I was distant, but then I fell deeply in love with someone who broke my heart.
As much as I now understand the trauma of my history, I feel that it is so integral to me that I will never be able to heal. I try to think of it as something I will have to live with, but how can I move forward if I have to constantly protect anyone else I fall for from my damage?
I have had so much therapy over my lifetime and read so much – I have tried to be compassionate with myself and empathic to others – but what I really want is to love someone unselfconsciously, without restraint or fear that they will discard me when it gets too much. How can I achieve this?
I’m sorry for all the loss you’ve suffered. Sometimes all the reading and talking helps you understand a situation but still can’t unstick you from it.
I went to UKCP-registered psychotherapist Anthea Benjamin, who has extensive experience working with adopted children and adults, for ideas to help you move on. Perhaps not surprisingly, what you express is something she has heard a lot; I think we are only now really understanding, and perhaps admitting, the trauma some adoptees may feel.
Benjamin says: “You’re not alone in your massive fear of intimacy, and wanting to be able to ‘just’ love without being triggered about your past. Even without adoption wounds, anyone who enters a relationship can have these triggers, which go back to our attachment, those early relationships, and lay a blueprint for how we are.”
Anger is a healthy emotion if it’s appropriate and you are allowed to be angry at your birth mother, however much you “understand” her decisions. When we don’t allow ourselves to really feel those big emotions like anger, as you’ve seen, we can then turn them against ourselves. Adoptees often feel they have to make it alright for everyone else, for fear of further rejection, but in so doing, they often don’t focus on how things aren’t alright for them.
“It’s hard enough to make sense of why your birth mother could not hold you,” says Benjamin. “It may have been her way of coping with such a difficult decision – having to give up her baby. It’s perhaps even harder for you to hear that you were not held by her. Now you’re wondering how you can love without someone ‘dropping’ you? But the work is in how you now hold yourself – that inner child who still feels abandoned.”
You’ve had lots of therapy but Benjamin wonders if you’d consider trying what’s called “bottom up” body therapy. “Somatic experiencing is body psychotherapy, it works on trauma in the body. You can have cognitive understanding of what’s happened to you but if you haven’t processed it via the reptilian part of your brain, your nervous system can get activated very quickly.” There are qualified practitioners who can provide this therapy.
I have the impression that you’ve overdeveloped your adult self with all the therapy and analysis you’ve done, in an attempt to understand what’s happened to you. We sometimes do this, subconsciously, to distance ourselves from painful emotions. You’ve learned a lot but in so doing you’re even further away from the hurt child inside. Perhaps it’s time to get back in touch with her, allow her to have her voice back, and listen to what she has to say.
• Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to ask.annalisa@theguardian.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.
• Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure the discussion remains on the topics raised by the article. Please be aware that there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.
• The latest series of Annalisa’s podcast is available here.
