Chapter 43: Trauma, Abandonment & Adoption: A Look Through the Lens

Published Aug 2, 2024, 4:00 AM

Rachel sits down with Dr. Hillary Goldsher to dive into her adoption story and how all the emotions that come with the process have affected her life today.

This is Rachel gos Rogue. Welcome back to another episode of Rachel Goes Rogue with your host Rachel Savannah Lovis. Today we're going to expand on a recent episode, I opened up about my adoption story and I mentioned I wanted to bring on an expert to dive deeper into the ways adoption affects a person later in life, and today I'm excited to be able to do that. I have my own theories and opinions as to how my adoption story has affected me, and I'm excited to challenge those opinions and also learn even more from my guest. Today, I'm joined by doctor Hillary Goldscher. Doctor Hillary Golcher is a clinical psychologist whose goal is to guide her clients to manage complex feelings and issues with and compassion. She offers support, insight, and solutions to address the most taxing feelings, behaviors, and issues. In this episode, doctor Culture and I are aiming toward sharing a balanced view of adoption and that there are nuances with it. As we explore some of the feelings and identity issues with adoption, there's also such positives from that experience, and there's so much selflessness with the act of adopting a child and also giving a child up for adoption if you're not ready for parenthood yet. So let's get into this episode because I really want to dive deeper into the psychology behind the last episode I recorded. I'm opening up about my adoption story and i want to share more about it because I feel like it's a topic that maybe not as many people know about because adoption isn't as common as you know, just your normal standard lineage. So I'm happy to have you on and I would love to know if you could explain the difference between an open adoption and a closed adoption.

Yeah, I'm a really specific but critical nuance for people that have lived in the world of adoption, which is an open adoption allows for the kiddo involved to still have communication with birth parents or parents. The terms of that is usually pretty specified and concretized, but it allows for that communication to potentially occur from oftentimes from the moment of the adoption up until the kiddo is eighteen and beyond.

And a closed.

Adoption is the opposite of that, where there is an agreement to not have communication. That doesn't mean kiddos don't seek out affiliation with birth parents outside of that agreement when they get older or have the wherewithal to understand that's a possibility. But that is the agreed upon sort of legal situation and a closed adoption.

And just for your context, I've had an open adoption and it was an in family adoption, so my birth mom, my birth mom couldn't get pregnant, her sister got pregnant with me and then add me for her.

Yes, but your situation wasn't open.

It was open, yes, yes, except for I actually don't know my birth father so and I haven't tried to make contact. But yeah, it's it's kind of a unique situation.

Yeah, that is a detail that you don't normally hear in these contexts.

Yeah, do you see people with more issues in life with one type of adoption over the other or yes? Okay, so can you go into that.

I mean it's I don't know if there's a hard best rule, but conceptually, people that have a closed adoption have less options. It's just true. Yeah, they're just less options. There isn't an established communication line obviously between the kid and his birth parents, and so since that potential relationship or at least opportunity for understanding doesn't exist.

It can cause more.

Confusion if there isn't an opportunity to have answers, or there isn't an opportunity to have a dialogue, or if there isn't an opportunity to discuss and process complex feelings that come up inevitably from adoption. Even if the adoption is full of love and grace and openness, it's still tricky. It's still a really, really tricky situation. So a closed adoption by definition, almost always includes less opportunity to process and communicate. Open adoption, by contrast, allows for more of the complete narrative to start from the beginning. The adopted parents can have a really open discussion about this is your story, and these were your birth parents. Here are their names, here's their picture, here's an opportunity to meet them, and here's what happened, here's how you ended up with us.

A close adoption, you can.

Still offer that narrative, but you can't fill in all the blanks and all the details, which is such a pull for kids that most kids who have been adopted is to know and to understand their story.

I'm guessing there has to be like some sort of identity issues that come up with that and not quite knowing or not having the full story. And there's theories that there's this abandonment wound that gets created through adoption, and there's even a theory that there's an abandonment wound that gets created even from at birth adoptions. Are those things true?

Yes, I mean, there's a primitive edict that's pre verbal, nonverbal to be affiliated with your birth parent. It's a primitive edict. We all have it, and we may be able to directly feel it and articulate it or not, but it's a part of our humanity is to desire that affiliation. Most people, as I say this, will be able to identify the emotion that comes up when you think about your parents, your birth parent, your birth mom, your birth father, whether or not you were adopted or not. There is something that we have inside of us to feel loved, validated, approved, known by our birth parents, and nothing really changes that even if we're adopted at birth by loving, amazing parents. There may be some exceptions, so I want to allow for that possibility. There's folks that may have had a very different experience that don't have that desire because their birth parents aren't safe or aren't around, or they just don't feel that poll. But most people have that poll. And so no matter how the adoption goes down. While there may be protocols that make it easier or not, this wound of feeling abandonment or not known by someone so critical foundational in your existence is really hard to reconcile.

Wow, And I'm not saying that it's because of my adoption or anything, but just after talking to you and that saying, like the feeling of wanting to be known, that is something that I've felt in my soul for a very long time. And yeah, it's just interesting knowing that.

When you don't have the eyes of your birth parent on you, there's an almost wordless whole deficit leak, you know, that can't exactly be filled no matter how much amazing wonderful things and connection and community you have. That doesn't mean adopted kids and adults are not okay and whole and certainly can't be, but it is a very specific and tricky dynamic to navigate. And like I said, not everyone feels this way, but I think many people who faced these kinds of challenges feel that, And I think it's useful to have that set out loud because it hits almost like a primitive part, like, yes, I have that, I experienced that, and I can't quite fill that up. And even if it can't be filled up by your birth parent, given your story, it can be filled up by self love and communication around tricky feelings and beginning to understand and kind of offer yourself grace and healing in that like and not painful space.

How does someone work through processing emotions of feeling abandonment when it comes to their adoption.

Yeah, I think there's I mean, I'm overly simplifying this, but I like to think about it in sort of two bockets. I mean, the first is sort of knowing your story is a very helpful thing when there's trauma. In the world of trauma, there's something called narrative therapy, which is essentially telling your story sort of over and over and over again until it's more palpable, more digestible, until your body is not responding to it with a fight or flight response, until your body can feel it and hear it and live with it and integrate it. So telling your story both telling people that are trusted others, whether it's friends, family, significant other, a therapist, on telling yourself in various ways in context so your story feels owned and known, and some of that comes from the narrating of it, and some of that comes from cultivating information around it, and so kind of circling back to what we've talked about initially, that those with open adoptions often or usually have more opportunity to have a specifics, you know, to comprotize what happened, and those with closed adoptions are often seeking that and can or can't fill in the gaps. So that's a first, more concrete part is telling your story in various ways, in various contexts and in various stations in your life. How you feel about adoption when you're five versus ten, versus twenty, versus thirty versus fifty changes, so you have to keep telling your story to understand how it shifts and changes for you. And then the second piece, and perhaps the more complex one, is processing the trauma, is dealing with the trauma. And as we talked about, if the of the trauma is not having eyes on you through the woman or the mom and dad that gave birth to you, there isn't a quick fix to this, you feel that, and it can show up in different ways at different times. And so I really look at it, as I said, through a trauma lens and talking about it and putting words and feelings to how hard it is, how confusing it is, how difficult it is to reconcile it.

It's a huge part of healing from it.

With trauma, our tendency can be to suppress, and suppression usually leads to symptoms. The more we keep stuff stuck in our body, the more our body tries to communicate with us like this doesn't feel good, I need some help, And so that stuff shows up in our body through anxiety, through depressive feelings, through physical symptoms like a stomach ache or a headache, through panic attacks. Body works really hard to tell us I need you to pay attention to my pain points, and so symptoms, irritability. There's so many that can come up if you aren't really working hard to talk about what hurts associated with trauma.

Yeah, I guess there are those underlying issues that someone may not realize are present in their life that could be tied to their adoption.

Interesting, Yes, I mean we can speculate from the conceptualization of adoption, and I can offer you know, kind of anecdotal clinical information. All this to say, when one deals with a feeling of like primitive abandonment, then abandonment can often become thematic in Luan's life. Right, So you move through relationship with a certain insecurity and vulnerability and what we call in my business, you know, insecure attachment, right, And how that shows up is kind of typically through a hypervigilance. We're scanning the environment for science that you're about to be left or excluded or abandoned. And that kind of hypervigilance comes in a lot of different packages.

You know.

It can come through a level of sort of neediness, a level of anger and irritability, pushing people away before you get pushed away, right, Becoming overly dependent on someone with an eye towards holding on to them and ensuring that you're not going to lose them.

It really can.

Become uncontained and a source of dysregulation if it's not taken on and kind of like over and over again, right, we really seek there's something called repetition compulsion where we continue to seek out situations that replay our trauma over and over and over again, attempting unconsciously to get a different outcome, like this time, I'll make sure that they don't abandon me. But all your actions end up often pushing the people away. So really being able to do very deliberate specific work around, well, how do I show up when I feel triggered? And how do I show up when I feel abandoned? How can I interrupt my natural inclination to engage in hypervigilants and use new tools to show up in like a more grounded, communicative, vulnerable way. It is heavy emotional lifting. The way I'm saying it makes it sound like it could be easy. It's years and years and years of dedicated work because this is a primitive trauma, pre verbal trauma. Those are the stickiest.

And pre verbal, you mean, before being able to speak. And then what about for the kids under eighteen that have been adopted, that you know, maybe have been in foster care or even in an orphanage or went through some life altering circumstance where their parents weren't able to take care of them anymore, and that's like post verbal. Yeah, I'm guessing it still affects them in a certain way because there's that their own type of trauma that they've had to deal with and that's shaped them in their early childhood.

Absolutely, I'm preverbal is just a feature that describes infants that are adopted, of course before they can speak. So yes, that's literally what I mean preverbal. And the complication in that scenario is just that that the trauma occurs before words are available or the ability to think, which we call mentalizing, is available, and so excavating that trauma has its own particular kind of complexity because of that. But someone that is adopted post verbal, which isn't really a.

Term, but it should be now that you've meant.

It, has a same, similar, or even greater in some circumstances level of trauma as well. Right, it doesn't thwart trauma if you're able to put words to it.

It's just a nuance.

That is true for kiddos that have been adopted before they have words. But right, I mean kids that have had a lifetime of abandonment and being exchanged from family to family and sometimes enduring abuse and neglect and eventually getting adopted or not have their own really specific kind of devastating trauma that is prolonged and chronic and occurs at different stages of their journey towards adulthood, and you know, can really interrupt a sense of stable self. So it has its own intense complications for kids that go through a dynamic like that.

Yeah, and also to those listening, this is also like the psychology behind it and the reality of the situation, and all of this can affect different people at a different level. And I don't know, I just feel like this conversation is maybe a little bit more negative. But I'm so grateful for my adoption. You know, my parents really did. They wanted a child so bad and they were ready for one, and the way I was raised and nurtured and cared for, I really feel like it was the best possible situation for me. So, you know, it's I just feel like maybe the conversation is a little bit more heavy right now.

Well, I'm so glad you're saying this, because two things can be true at the same time. And while adoption can have some like heavy emotional residues pociated with it, it also can be a worthlessly incredible, amazing gift, right that the child who's adopted by a family feels chosen and part of a community and oftentimes rescued for a scenario from a scenario that wouldn't have served them.

And so.

The level of connection and family and affiliation and safety and security that occurs for kids that have been adopted is incredible. I mean, when you think about a family making that decision and bringing in a child as their own that becomes their own, it's an amazing choice to make. And oftentimes kids are adopted walk around feeling that sense of being chosen and thought of and taken care of and rescued and sae. So I'm so glad you brought that up. It's one of my favorite sayings that two things are true at the same time. There can be super tricky feelings about adoption and there can be amazing parts of it that can be lifting and expansive. And there are plenty of folks who've been adopted who don't feel the things that we're talking about, who feel like they're in the family that they were supposed to be in and don't have a lot of space or whole to think about and process their birth parents that really look at it as a small part of their.

Story and who they are.

So I'm glad you're talking about this, And I hope your listeners aren't taking our initial.

Conversation as negative, because to me, tricky feelings aren't really negative.

They're just feelings, right, And they're just feelings, And so if they're feelings of sadness or frustration or confusion, they are just feelings, and they're important ones to think about it and talk about and not be labeled as scary or unwanted percent or just feelings. And some of them, people who were adopted have felt and will feel and some people say like I just never felt that way. To me, it just felt like exactly where I meant to be. We absolutely in this conversation want to allow for the spectrum of experiences that people have around adoption. So I'm glad you're raising that to your listener's attention.

Yeah. Yeah, And as you were talking, I also had like a visual. I've known some people who have adopted children recently and they're from a different socioeconomic background or different race, and I'm sure that can be confusing for the child, especially in bringing where it's prominently one type of race and you're being brought up knowing that your parents look different than you and your peers look different than you. I'm sure that can mess with your identity. But then also knowing I think later on that you're blessed in many ways because the parents that adopted you were ready to have a child and wanted you. And that must be, like, you know, a hard thing to.

Tackle, yes, and that falls under that category of two things can page at the same time. Yet that seems like such a simple concept on the face of it, but it's like a complex one to lean into, you know, But that is true in this scenario that you just describe in such a significant way, that like, right, the idea that this family wanted me and took me as I am, and I'm part of this community and my family, and I feel affiliated and included and identified and safe and fortunate. And yet sometimes occasionally, once in a while, well whatever fits. I notice my difference, and I notice that I don't have faces that look like mine around me, and I feel that I feel different.

I feel conspicuous.

I feel desirous of having more of my culture represented in my day to day world, and I don't get that in the way that I might have had I stayed with my birth family. And again that doesn't negate any of the things that we said at the beginning that I feel.

Fortunate and lucky and affiliated and loved.

It's just a truth that sits alongside of it, and so being able to put words to it, to process it, and thus, in some cases to seek that kind of affiliation outside of the family if that feels right, right to seek more exposure to one's culture is a potential outcome of thinking about that and talking about that and bringing it to one's own attention. So that to me, that's quite's so important to talk about tricky feelings knowing that it doesn't take away from all.

The amazing feelings they just live alongside it.

And what ways can adoption impact an individual's approach to attachment and relationships both romantically and platonically.

Well, we sort of touched on this before, and we can talk about it more expansively. And first the disclaimer that we were just talking about for some people, it doesn't. For some people, they feel incredibly secure with their adopted family and feel chosen, taken care of, affiliated, identified with, and go on to be able to apply that secure attachment to friendships and romantic relationships. So when I move into the potential complexities I want to make sure that we're allowing for that truth, which is true for so many. And there are folks that have been adopted that feel that sense of abandonment and feel that sense of disaffiliation. And that's some primitive, unconscious level fear being left or fear they're not worthy of being chosen or kept, so to speak. And so if that becomes a core wound for a person but adopted or not, but a core wound for a person who was adopted, since that's the context that we're talking about, of course, that can show up in romantic relationships, in our friendships, or in the work environment, and like we were talking about before, often what it leads to is this intense hypervigilance. Did I just do something that's going to push this person away? Did I do something that is going to make them see me as having last value? Did I do something that's going to make them go away? And so overthinking how they show up and move through that relationship. So it can look like over accommodation, or it can look like irritability and frustration or even anger, because that intense sphere around abandonment gets a person to oftentimes show up in a way that's like dysregulated, that's especially sensitive to dynamics, that's always looking for signs that they're being excluded, and they might express it through anger or impatience or disconnection or you know, kind of punishment to the person they perceived wounded them, And so it can get tricky if you're I like to talk about the difference between between being in the feeling or outside of the feeling. So if you're in the feeling, it's really hard to identify, like, Oh, I'm behaving in a way that's having an impact on the people that I care about, that's not working, that's causing distance in friction, not affiliation. It's really hard to notice that because you're just in the feeling and sort of acting out, so to speak. And we build up a muscle to be outside of the feeling. Ooh, I'm like feeling this. What's this about? I just said something in a way that I don't feel good about. What's going on? What do I think this is connected to? Let me take a moment in self soothe and how that I want to show up in a way that's different, that encourages a feeling of increased stability inside of me. And affiliation outside of me. Again, when I'm saying these things, it is very complicated. In some cases, it's hard to stand outside our feelings when we're triggered and there's trauma. But that's the goal, is to be able to stand outside the feeling and make choices that are different than the ones we execute when we're inside the feeling and feeling flooded and overwhelmed.

Yeah, and what you're talking about could be applicable to any human, whether you're adopted or not. And what I'm hearing you say, the hypervigilance can almost manifest or form as an anxious attachment style in relationships, like always being anxious about your partner or think overthinking like oh what are they? What are they thinking about me? Am I being accepted in this group? All of that like anxious energy. I could see that. And then also how you were saying the oversensitivity and the frustration and acting out could be like an avoidant attachment style too, where you're subconsciously pushing people away because you feel like you're going to be abandoned in the end.

Anyway, it's perfectly put. That's exactly right, and that's and really important way you.

Highlighted, which is this hypervigilance is not exclusive to people who have been adopted, right. All sorts of traumas and expertsperiences can lead to this.

Families where you're with your.

Birth parents, but there is emotional distance or emotional neglect, difficult romantic relationships that are abusive or unkind right, bullying at school that left you feeling ostracized or disaffiliated.

There's all sorts of.

Life experiences that can cause this kind of hypervigilance. And yes, really inform our attachment style and thus really inform all of our relationships, not just the romantic ones, but friendships and family, extended family, work, slash, colleagues, And so it's such important work if it's applicable to figure out your attachment style and how you're impacting people around you and be able to begin to unpack it if it's impacting those you love in a way that doesn't doesn't feel good to you or them.

Yeah, I mean this is more of a personal anecdote, and I wanted to just get your expertise because when I spent the three months at the recovery center that I went to, we did a from birth to eighteen childhood timeline where we went through every major trauma that we could remember and work through that and process through it. And I didn't realize that my birth in itself was a traumatic event for me. So my birth mom had to have an emergency c section, and I was a premium baby. The umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck and I was losing oxygen to my brain, so they had to go in there very quickly and take me out. I guess I was blue and and I had to take time in the nick you and I didn't consider that as a trauma because when you're born, you don't remember any of that. Is that something that does affect you?

Potentially?

Yes, again potentially yes. It doesn't mean it does for everyone that had a complex birth story. But we uh in the businesses I said before, often call infancy right after birth, like the fourth trimester.

People might have already heard this.

We're the only like species that are born without the ability to like do anything really right. We can't like walk or talk or move. We're totally dependent on our caregivers. And there's often discussions around like we come out to early, they're not ready babies like so sensitive to all of the environmental factors, and so when you come into the world in a way that's extra difficult, it adds to that sort of shock transition between the comfy womb where it's like warm and all your nutrients are available twenty four to seven, and you know you're particularly when you're in the nicu, you're not necessarily being touched all the time, you're not getting nutrients twenty four to seven.

And your way into the world.

Was medically traumatic. That's just a factual truth, and so it can. It doesn't always result in a tricky journey for an infant, but it sometimes does. Babies that have more traumatic bursts can sometimes be a bit morecolicy, a bit more difficult to soothe, and a bit trickier to regulate, both as infants and as they get older through toddlerhood, etc. Again, not always true, but can be true. And when you think about the difference between coming into the world that way and coming into the world in a more quote traditional, easier way where you get to just be with your birth parent, fed and cozy, it can make a difference to your emotional center and whether or not that trauma is marked internally and contributes to your ability to self soothe as an infant or throughout your adult life. The story around it has meaning to the person telling it or hearing it or understanding it. I'm sure as you think about it you're telling it now, you first heard it, you had feelings about it. That was you, this small, helpless, little infant coming into the world in that sort of shocking way, and not having a birth mama that stayed with you the whole way through after that, I'm not sure how quickly you were adopted out, But to not stay with the original person that witnessed that trauma is also a difficult part of that story. So it's important to not just try to identify, well, is.

That dramatic for an infant.

But also to just understand the meaning you make of it internally, how it makes you feel in your body and in your heart and your mind when you tell that story, so you can integrate it in a way that feels accurate.

Yeah. I just wanted to say a few words to someone that's listening that's considering giving their baby up for adoption. I think that it's a really great option because if you're not ready fully to have a child, child and to be a parent. There are other people in the world that like that is their one dream in life right now, and I think it's so important to like be ready to be a parent, Otherwise there's risk of neglect in the childhood that can affect the child long term. And obviously, no childhood is going to be perfect. We all experience trauma. That's part of life. But setting your child up for success is so important. And adoption is such a beautiful thing. Oh yes, So I just wanted to say that and then to all of those who have adopted a child, like that is such a selfless act of love, and I I think it's such a beautiful thing. And I just wanted to send you some love your way and some words of encouragement because raising a child is difficult. I'm sure. I don't know, because I'm just like nurturing my inner child right now and that's all I can handle at this moment. But adopting a child is such a beautiful thing. You're giving this child, you know, a new opportunity at life.

Yeah.

I really just want to echo your sentiments because we didn't spend any time talking about it in this podcast, but people, mamas that make the decision to give up their child for adoption are heroes, right. I mean, that is an impossible decision. Words can't even underscore the gravity of coming to that conclusion and how painful it is and how ultimately selfless it is. Understanding that the resources you have internally or externally aren't sufficient or safe is an incredible act of giving, and so I just really want to make sure that my sentiments around that are known as well. And you're also right that families that make the decision to take on a kiddo from a birth mother or a family it can create the most amazing kind of family and affiliation and sense of healing. So I'm really glad we're creating space with that, because this is about all the thing's associated with adoption, not just the tricky things.

Yeah, it's always such a pleasure talking to you, doctor Culture. Thank you so much for coming on today's podcast and sharing your knowledge on this sensitive topic.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

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