As a birth mother I want you to know this… I never gave anyone up! I placed my daughter for adoption when I was 19 years old and trusted my child to the grace of God! Please know from a birth mothers heart that adoption is not natural. Mothers naturally do everything possible to protect their children. 🙏🏻💛
@@ellenmoll9989It doesn't matter the birth mothers intentions, the baby does not and cannot understand why it is being removed from its mother and that leaves a deep and lasting wound. It's like, we don't take animals away from their parents until after a certain time or they die, why would it make sense for a much more complicated human being to be taken away from its birth parents with no trouble? It's a whole situation that needs a lot of discussion and reworking.
As an adoptee with the most utterly supportive adoptive parents anyone could imagine (helped with my homework every night; told me they loved me consistently; would never miss a sporting event etc.) I have to disagree with the notion of support making a major impact on an adoptee. It did not matter how much love and support they gave me. I had a humongous void that they could never fill even with the best intentions to. I do agree that reunion is not always the answer either. I have been in reunion and it actually made the pain more severe. The only way that I’ve found help is through mindfulness and meditation. This is just from my personal experience.
as an adoptee myself, i entirely agree with your statement....i also went through a ''reunion'' and the experience (over 20+ years) was a mixed bag of emotions and results... that ''void'' was/is the lifelong hangover as a result of the ''primal wound'' (mal-adapted emotional set points) that Nancy refers to, which is felt and formed pre and post natal development, due to a sudden and subsequent permanent disconnection from our biological mother...no amount of ''nurturing'' was ever going to rectify that until an individual does the work necessary (usually as an adult) to understand and overcome that loss and grief to the extent that they are capable, due to the multitude of variables involved.
@@groundcontroltomajornong8085 Right, and what about all the stress hormones and loss of serotonin in the developing fetus when our first mother was sent away, desperately lonely, shunned and shamed, maybe even beginning to hate the child within her as we represented the reason for all this suffering? This hormonal imbalance was present throughout our development in the womb. How can we NOT arrive malformed? Adoptees have much higher incidence of adrenal gland problems (the adrenal glands make the stress hormones including cortisol and adrenaline) throughout our lifetimes. Is this psychologist meaning to tell us that hearing a new narrative will change the very way we were wired as we were being made?
I also had very supportive adoptive parents who supported me with everything they could. Nevertheless I always felt something were missing, what I used to express with severe mood changes, anxiety, permanent grief, lack of self worth, etc.
I was adopted twice, 1st time at 6weeks old, it didn't last long and 2nd time it was finalised in court at 18 months old. My natural father fought against it but I was handed to a childless couple. I was brought up to believe I should be grateful and reminded quite often that my "parents" were carrying out a good and moral act and I was the consequence of immorality. If I questioned any of this, they got offended and I endured slapping sessions. They also resented my growing much taller than them, I'm 6ft2, having my own likes and dislikes, that was ridiculed. I can remember I didn't like them touching me from an early age. I joined the army at 18 and felt at home there, I'm 64 now. I was in touch with my real Mum, from the age of 25 until she died. Lastly I reverted to my original surname a long time ago, so my kids have that name too. All I can say is that adoption is not a natural process, It's little to do with the wellbeing of a child, it's to satisfy the desires of adults.
My adoptee perspective; - Adoption = (primal) wound = Cptsd. It is the wound that is the cause of the Cptsd. The Cptsd has coloured my life since that point. That 'wound' could also be caused by neglect, abuse, narc parents, depressed mother, violence, addiction, with or without adoption. Adopted people are not victims of 'bad attitudes' and 'bad administration' they are traumatised children/babies. For me - not having a clear narrative of my history is merely an addition to the wonderfully complex individual I am. P.S - I was a relinquished baby - well and truly and utterly and miserably 'given away' in every sense.
As a cross cultural adoptee I was adopted into an all white family who already had 5 children of their own - My adoptive parents loved me but I looked nothing like my family and the family were incredibly dysfunctional and my parents were too old - my mother was already 50 before I was 5. I grew up in denial of my ethnicity, an addict (Drugs, sex)and a compulsive and pathological liar. I had a reunion with my mother 4 years ago but I live the opposite side of the world. We are now distant emotionally and as I approach 50 (This year) I am more angry, resentful than ever, and feel my life has simply been an existence to please others, I am broken beyond words.
Hi. Thank you for sharing your heart and vulnerabilities. You are not alone. I hope you can join our community of adoptees here at one of our next support groups. You are welcome and belong here: celiacenter.org/events-calendar-support-groups/
I am so sorry for your pain. Thank you for expressing it here. As adoptees we all walk the same path but differently if that makes sense. You are important and you have purpose. Never forget that.
As a doctor and as a psychologist who works with early trauma and its healing i assure you that early trauma is the most major factor affecting later behavior and wellbeing or otherwise. Verriers primal wound is right on in her description on the dynamics of adoption. I may disagree with her on the necessity of re connection for healing to occur.
Sounds like an attempt to fight pre verbal trauma with word play . Reframing and re wording may help some but healing such a deep trauma requires much more than a shift of angle .sorry
it ''may'' go some way in filling in some gaps (re connection), yet is far from complete or comprehensive in it's positive ramifications and healing for the adoptee...for me, it was a definitive starting point for my healing journey, but not the magic bullet that i thought it might be at the tender age of 24 when i took my first steps...the risks are very real that the process can backfire, partially or substantially and in 5 minutes or 25 years of the initial reunion...thanks for your feedback and input m ha.
@@groundcontroltomajornong8085 I agree. He's trying to address the pre-verbal loss and early conclusion of the child that they are the only person on whom they can rely and that they must prove themselves "worth" keeping for the rest of their life. He's trying to address this by simply re-organizing the narrative of their life and telling the adoptee that they're seeing it all wrong, and that this is the problem. This doesn't address the tiny baby who couldn't process what was happening to them. This pain and suffering goes far beyond words. I don't doubt the story he tells of the woman whose eyes rained tears when he helped her realize her first mother did care for her and made a caring plan for her. I just don't believe this is still sufficient for her complete healing. My childhood as an adoptee was idyllic once I adjusted to my adoptive family. My mother always told me my first mother loved me very, very much, just couldn't take care of me by herself, and loved me enough to place me with a caring family. So my narrative wasn't all "wrong",. I believed her completely. Yet, I read Nancy Verrier's book and immediately it stunned me because it resonated so completely with me about why I am the way I am. All of a sudden I could understand why I seem so much more fragile than other people, so much more hypervigilant, why I "apologize too much", as people tell me, and there's more but I choose not to go into it here. Everything about my personality seems to conflate with the Verrier analysis to a "t". And also my adopted brother's who is the opposite of me but Verrier explains how this works. There's just no way that a simple rearrangement of the "narrative", while it will certainly be helpful and perhaps significantly so, can rearrange the person's personality aspects that have been shaped by that pre-verbal experience. I would love to hear this gentleman's response to this and to hear if his clients have said (or if he's noticed) their personalities completely shifting as a result of his reframing.
How can he ignore all the studies proving that newborns recognize their mothers from their in utero experience? Does he think newborns are tabla rasa? What does he think causes the Wound and why would that cease to be significant? Adoption IS trauma. I guess that's a simple truth he doesn't want to say to his hopeful adoptive parents.
I had a great and supportive family and still suffer greatly related to my adoption later in life. He is missing the unresolved trauma related from being separated at birth. Knowing my bio parents does not heal that. Having a supportive adoptive family does not heal that. I wish it did. Ignoring that trauma will cause a lot of issues later in life.
Hi Jodie, have you found any measure of healing and if so, could you share a bit about that? Is there anything your bio parents could have done/not done to help you heal. I know that these questions are deeply personal and I ask only if you’re comfortable with responding.
Well I was all in with the Dr. But I now realize you have work to do just as I do as an emotionally abandoned child. Thanks for sharing the other point of view.
100% Since when does talk therapy treat brain damage ? Honestly , it’s just lazy of these doctors and kills so many people who think they’re just failing at Therapy. I’m met my birthmother. It was very bad. My birthmotger and twin are both gone one three months after the other the same way. No rainbow here. Pre-verbal trauma causes brain damage. Always. Every time. Can we please start looking at the science of this? Why aren’t we starting with a stellate ganglion block the same way that we would start with a steroid shot for inflammation? What this man is saying, is so destructive
I didn't know I was adopted until I was 11, but it always felt like it was "their family" and then me. I have had extreme insomnia since I was an infant. As a small child I would stay up at night sobbing because I missed somebody so bad and I didn't even know who I missed. I was a pale a pasty blonde girl with a mom who was an immigrant from Panama with dark skin and jet black hair. My dad was white so I just assumed I took after him and my brother took after mom. She was so beautiful and I felt (and was told daily at school) that I was just ugly. When I was pregnant my Mom said that my birthmother tried to breastfeed me in the hospital. My mindset had always been if I found her to have no expectations, she may not want to hear from me. But that shifted my thoughts and then contributed heavily to my post partum depression. A friend took it upon herself to find my birthmother and within 2 hours we were on the phone for the first time. When I got off the phone my first words to my husband were, "I dodged a bullet!" After a few years of being in touch I felt ready to meet her, a few years after meeting I ended up flying across the country and moved her in with us. Not a day has gone by that I haven't been grateful that the woman didn't raise me. We have a good a relationship, but if she had raised me it is doubtful I would've maintained contact in adulthood. BTW.... at 28 years old.... my lifelong struggle with insomnia ended the night we first spoke on the phone!
As an adoptee from the Baby Scoop era, I feel that the biological trauma of separation was compounded by the lack of personal narrative, the job of fulfilling the parental dreams of my adoptive parents, the inferred scorn placed on my birth mother, & not being able to acknowledge & grieve the loss of my identity & connection with her. I recall my adoptive mother on a rare occasion asking me if I had any desire to find my birth mother. When I said maybe, she replied, “ You don’t get to call her Mother. That’s my name.” Her sense of ownership & control was felt as an additional violence, somehow. Very hard to articulate.
Though adoptees are four times more likely to attempt suicide in their lives, I’ve seen a lot of science that still puts more faith in the adoptive parents view of the situation than the kids. To me, this is reason number one we are not treating kids when they are younger. It is so dangerous to say that you can go back and heal a primal wound in anyway. You can’t do that anymore you can go back and heal brain damage from a motorcycle accident This is the most ridiculous notion I’ve ever seen people like this are why kids die This person’s idiot Romantic view of my situation, won’t change my situation
You get to choose as an adult how you want to call your birth mother. Thank you for sharing. Being with other adoptees is crucial for your healing process. This is a lifelong journey. You belong with other adoptees. You are not alone. Join our Free Support Groups here: Adult Adoptee Support Group- Virtual celia-center-adoption-constellation.mn.co/landing/plans/307068
A few years ago my heart was profoundly touched, followed immediately by a mind blowing ''realization'' when i observed a heavily pregnant female friend gently and lovingly interacting physically and verbally with her womb-bound baby...the playful to and fro of prodding feet and fingers, combined with the soothing tones of moms voice singing, laughing & talking to bubs was a sight to behold, causing a welling up that i could barely contain. when i had re composed myself i asked her if this was ''normal'' behaviour and she responded ''absolutely'' yes...she seemed a little surprised that i would ask such a question. she then added that she had done this with her previous 3 children in-utero, usually prompted by the incessant activity of movement and kicking in order to alleviate ''her'' discomfort...little did she know that my focus was on the baby's (dis)comfort and much more... As an adoptee, having read The Primal Wound and experienced the swings and roundabouts of reunion with both biological parents, my mind began to flood with questions about what i had just witnessed...foremost in my mind was ''did my own birth mother interact with me to any extent or at all in this manner?''.. and ''how prevalent was this behaviour amongst expectant mothers whom know from the early stages of pregnancy that they are going to relinquish their child?''...if it is indeed rare, then ''does this give the baby an impending ''sense'' or feeling of detachment or worse.. ''DOOM''??..i was desperately attempting to breach my memory bank in order to recall whether this had been covered in Nancy's book...perhaps not, yet expounded upon elsewhere in the literature...either way, given what has already been discovered on the subject i couldn't help but think this was compelling evidence of pre-natal in-utero development of emotional set points. After some ''gentle'' probing and prodding of my own, i managed to elicit an answer from my mother.. she ''couldn't recall'', but ''didn't think so,'' given her stressful circumstances.
I tend to agree with you. I wonder if even first mothers or some of them come to hate or be angry with the child within them as a focus, a "sideways-directed anger", of their pain and suffering. I wonder if we could even actually feel rejection while we were yet in the womb?
“Gave up the baby” is absolutely accurate. Why make the mom absent of responsibility? Are you kidding me? It’s not a power dynamic. Lots, in fact billions of women with zero power keep their children.
Adoptee here. I have reconnected with birth family I the last few years. My adoptive family is all I knew, and they are wonderful. They never hid it from me, and gave me the best info they could regarding the whole thing. I was a square peg in a round hole, however. I was dx'd as gifted, and adhd. I am given to anxiety attacks, and existential depression- plagued me my whole life. Untying those knots is hard, even if you were brought up in a loving, supportive, funny, close knit family like I was. But I'm learning, and my advice to others in similar situations to mine: you are not a victim in this, your circumstance is within your control once you are grown- if your family ( like mine ) refused to even entertain outside views that you were not blood ( huge ), then you were blessed. Face them thar demons, and rise
You cannot pull yourself up out of brain damage. As you said, not everyone’s experience is the same. I’m not a victim, I’m a patient Your personal views on what you think other peoples issues are are completely invalid , and suggesting that brain damage is somehow a failure on their part to do what you have It’s kind of disgusting.
@Bellab8759 On this thread, we are talking about the emotional issues adoptees face. If you have brain damage( which I am sorry for whatever happened ), then that is a medical issue-
@@jrosner6123we’re talking about a primal wound/CPTSD which is quite literally brain damage. Therapy can help cope with some of the symptoms, but is as useless against this type of trauma as it would be against a motorcycle accident.
I was adopted and I lived the primal wound my entire life. Healing didn't begin to occur for me until I found my parents and family. I never felt like I fit in with my adoptive family. I never felt like they were my family. I know not every reunion is successful but mine was/is. I hated being adopted.
@@Zarbon000 ...My paternal grandparents contacted the adoption agency when they found out about me and told them they wanted to raise me but the agency blew them off. My grandparents raised my older brother. It would have been preferable to the abusive adoptive home I was placed in.
Agree with the message that parental support for adoptees is imperative, but the Pollyanna attitude for the adoptee who was abandoned is so invalidating. It’s so similar to the message we’re force fed about adoption “your mother loved you so much she gave you up”. What an incredibly confusing and damaging message.
Wholeheartedly disagree with pretty much everything he has said here. My parents were open and honest with me about my adoption from as young as I could understand it. I was accepted by all my larger adopted family. I have been given every opportunity in life by my adoptive parents and from the outside if someone looked at me they would think I had everything a person could ever want from a “things” perspective. I have a good job, a nice house, a nice car and I don’t consider myself an unattractive person. I just turned 33 years old last month and pretty much had a mental breakdown last week due to the fact I’ve finally realised I’ve been grieving the loss of someone for the past 33 years. Someone I don’t know and have never met. I feel sad, angry, depressed, lost and as if I don’t know who I really am and have felt this way on and off for probably the past 15 years but have never faced up to it. Do not for one second tell me that there is no subconscious “wound” that I have not been dealing with.
I’m 53 and I met my birth mother when I was your age. Big mistake. She is a loud, uneducated, opinionated drunk. Did not do too much to “heal” me, but at least I know. We have ZERO contact, and that is fine with me. This world is fucked.
I'm so sorry. This psychologist appears to think the subconscious "wound" can be dissolved by only a reframing of the story of our lives. Naive, at best. But kudos for him for his efforts to take on the adoptee's pain and try to heal it. At least he's trying. But yes, falls far short. Congratulations upon the success you've made of your life with what you entered with! Really hope you have people around you who listen with kindness and not with objections.
I loved your statement about grieving the loss of someone I don't know and have never met. It almost sees like its not only the situation, the mother but also ourselves.
He has decent ideas. But his biological mother kept him. So he doesn't know the loss most of us experienced, lived with, and feel. So you have to understand, he doesn't have our perspective.
I think that the much wider point in concern is the literal brain damage that goes untreated and unrecognized in adoptees. Compounding, what was already a horrible trauma
As an adoptive, history before adoption is important, but is not the same for any two adoptees, information required can be different for each adoptee, but what is important for all adoptees is getting and (hopefully) understanding the history. What we do with that history after is our business only. My adopted parents were open with as much information as they had, this helped me during my early school years 1960's deal with taunts and barbs of those felt it necessary to point out I was a lesser person? History of yourself before adoption can help (if formatted correctly) in coping with life's roller coaster as we grow up.
Reunion saved my life. I'd be dead if I hadn't found my Mum. My life depnded on it. And I ended my adoption (reverted back to my REAL name) within months of finding my REAL Mum. I was 36 years of age at the time - and I lost my Mum at the age of 5 months......My mental health was restored due to identifying with REALITY. It took years, but to be clear, I was drinking myself to death pre-reunion. I now haven't needed the numbing agent of alcohol for over 5 years. And that's because my brain now works......Lying is wrong. Teaching children to lie/and that lying is normal is child abuse. Ending my adoption/relationship to delusion was the best decision I ever made. I can now sleep at night. And I finally feel like a real INDIVIDUAL human being that matters...............................This guy? The way he talks is so patronising to an adoptee like myself. The mental health implications of teaching children to lie (psychological abuse) is never addressed by anybody, which is why I'll be addressing it in my first book, along with the human right violation of destroying a childs authentic identity. From the outside looking in? Adopted children are set-up to fall. Adoption is a multi-milion pound industry. There's lot of £££ in the business of child relinquishment. And ppl should have a proper think about that very ugly fact! There is no reunion without pain, not if one is truly emotionally invested. But the pay off for myself was well worth it!!
Thank you for sharing your heart and your courage on this platform. I wish you well in your first book. Please let me know when it is complete at jeanette@yoffetherapy.com
How could you go back to the one who hurt your heart more than anyone else ever could? Serious. I am glad your life is better after reconnecting with the woman who gave birth to you.
Was this man adopted? I would be surprised to learn he was if he was. Reading through the comments, i see i am not alone. Us adoptees are not agreeing with him. I dont see what his rebuke on The Primal Wound Theory even is. I didn’t really hear a cohesive theory that contradicts. There is a reason The Primal Wound Theory speaks so loudly to adoptees. Learning of it is like finally understanding ourselves and why we are the way we are for the first time in our lives. It’s the embodiment of finally being understood in a way we didn’t even understand ourselves yet. As i could see by just reading the first few comments in addition to my own reaction to this video, one can see that us adoptees heard this and it didn’t resound in the way The Primal Wound did. Or else in the comments that would be reflected. I’m having a hard time putting into words what i want to say and how i feel. The point is, for myself and clearly many many other adoptees, the Primal Wound was an answer to a prayer we didn’t know we had made. There is a subconscious trauma that occurs at birth when we do not go home with the person we just grew inside. It’s unnatural from an evolutionary standpoint and our subconscious recognizes this immediately and there is irreparable damage done. Whether or not that adoptee is ever even aware of it. Whether or not they even know they were adopted. And until we understand this fully, there will be a dark chasm that we will try to fill our whole lives. Many of us use drugs or alcohol to fill it. Many of us have relationship problems. Fears of rejection, anxiety, depression, OCD, separation anxiety, attachment disorders and so so many more. When you combine Freud’s thoughts on trauma at different stages of our early lives with his views on our relationships with our parents, it becomes crystal clear. We suffered the greatest trauma a person can go through in that pivotal stage of development. The first few days or weeks of our lives. Anyone who thinks naively that we were too young to notice or realize what was going on; like has been the consensus on adoption in our culture for as long as one can remember, is reproachable in thought. The field of psychology has been aware of how critical our earliest moments in life are to the rest of our lives for over a century at least. I like to look at the impact of events and the amount we learn to be a logarithmic graph or in other terms the opposite of exponential. With the younger we are the more we are learning decreasing logarithmically over time. If you understand this logic, then something as traumatic as being ripped away from the womb and the person of whom is all you know, at said time, well, ill let you decide.
I appreciate your response to this video and sharing how difficult our experience is, lifelong. This is a theory from Dr. Grand. He is very compassionate towards the adoptee experience. He stayed with his mother, but not his father, which has similar core issues as adoptees. Our experience is traumatic, and unnatural. Please view a video I made helping the world understand our lack of genetic mirroring here: ruclips.net/video/QMBS0ASF4Uo/видео.html
I was born 6 weeks premature with opioids in system. At 1.5 my lungs collapsed from cocaine and Valium. Tossed around in foster homes and adopted at 6. Joined an Infantry Unit in the Army for 5.5 years and will finish my Masters Degree in 1 year. Still the hardest thing for me is making friendships and dating/trusting the women I am dating. If anyone has resources to help, please let me know.
This has much truth, but, there IS a primal wound and it is biological and cellular. it’s not only about filling in the blanks of our identity (though that is vital as well)
Yes our bodies remember our whole lives, we don't get over this, we are grief experts continuously, tirelessly moving through our experience. You will like some new videos I am making speaking more to our lifelong journey.
@@Jeanette-icallySpeaking Jeanette, do you then endorse Michael Grand's talk therapy-based approach, or are you refuting it and saying it's not sufficient? If it's not sufficient, it shouldn't be posted here, because it's maddening to adoptees and further gaslights us and diminishes our actual lived experience.
Unfortunately for some of us, we didn't matter. It wasn't them doing the best they could. It wasn't men who wouldn't stay. For some of us we just simply weren't wanted that's when reunion definitely doesn't go to plan.
I was adopted...I found out when I was in my 40s...it was the best thing to happen to me...my adopted mother and I hadn't spoken for years...she always so angry and abusive....and I was scared I would be like her..finding out I had none of her genes was almost healing. I have two grown children of my own who I have never laid a hand on...and they are the most wonderful people I know.
as an adoptee that was adopted at birth into a great white middle class family that loved me unconditionally, I am Hispanic, their unconditional love was nice, but I wasnt able to receive it, I never knew why I was so angry and suicidal, Nothing they did helped, I was in therapy for years, AA for 20 years being told i am a real alcoholic, even going through the 12 steps I knew it wasnt the root cause of my issues, Adoptioin rips your entire soul, being, identity, and stomps on your self esteem before you even become a conscious human being, I honestly do not know how I never killed myself, I tried, very close, but I do feel like there is ways to heal, Its all on yourself, for real, no one is coming to save you or help go deep into those dark, horribly painful parts of your being that you dont want to go into, but thats where I think the healing is, Mastering self, any way, anyhow, First off, it took me 38 years to even realize why I was so messed up was from my adoption, now its time to fix that part in me. Build a better version of me, and start living life.
I TURN 50 THIS YEAR. I HAVE GRIEF THAT POURS OUT OF ME ON A REGULAR BASIS. IT HAPPENS AT HOME AND OUT IN PUBLIC. WHEN IT HAPPENS....IT'S REALLY TRAGIC. THE MOST GUTWRENCHING DESPAIR. I DID INHERIT MENTAL ILLNESS FROM THE PATERNAL PARENT. THE DEPRESSION IS SO HARD!!!!!! ONE PHRASE THAT OFTEN COMES OUT OF MY MOUTH IS "I'M A FAILURE." STILL ALIVE! DEPRESSION BRINGS ME TO MY KNEES. MAKES AN AORDINARY DAY FEEL GOOD ENOUGH.
he is a kind and kindred soul. i agree that meeting the birth mother is not the ultimate solution but it would be nice to see any features or mannerisms mirrored. it’s not the facts or even fantasy that bothers me. it’s the unknown. the what could’ve been and the feelings of shame and imminent doom when a relationship ends. It’s something that is ignored by the greater public, but what he is saying about birth mother efforts are already known to us/ may actually be completely wrong. it generalizes the experience for them while weakening the experience for us. helpless babies who’s world has disappeared. Enjoyed the vid tho!!
Once again, I loved this video. In the last part, I rewind a dozen times while the tears flowed because as a birth mom it's the narrative that is often needed to be said on our behalf. Thank you so much 🙏
I'm an adoptee adult. I don't like adoption as a institution at all. You could also look at giving up as simply giving up their parental rights. It doesn't have to be all those other horrible sounding defeating things. Even if all those other things are true at the end of it she simply gave up her parental rights to the adoption system.
Thank you for sharing. Being with other adoptees is crucial for your healing process. This is a lifelong journey. Join our Free Support Groups here: Adult Adoptee Support Group- Virtual celia-center-adoption-constellation.mn.co/landing/plans/307068
Great interview, thanks for talking about changing the language used in adoption. Last year I discovered the Adoptees On podcast and it hit me how powerful words can be. Now I notice the difference in reaction when I share my story with language that suites reality. A little bit of this video felt a bit like the pep talk adoptees hear our whole life. But still good to hear some kind affirming words. Even in the best, most aware adoptive families the pain for the adoptee is still there. I feel like once adoptees become adults we can logically understand the reasons we were relinquished more clearly. For me I can still feel my hurt inner child who screams over the logic... When you are young and your brain is developing there is no way to understand the preverbal trauma you experienced. Adults need to guide us through it. Adoptive parents need to first work on their trauma, and accept their child’s trauma and be willing to grief with them. Never deny what your child needs to feel.
Raven, I agree with you. I’m a birth mother and my son’s adoptive parents decided to close the adoption 12 years ago, my son just turned 13. I recently reached out to him and he blocked me. It took me until last year to realize the adoptive mother’s grief of not being able to have children, my son’s adoptive mom has one biological child and always wanted more. As hard as it is, I’ve learned to accept this. I am able to move forward by grieving my son and I lost relationship, hopefully one day we’ll have a relationship. I’m working on myself and working on my inner child. I’ve learned to let go of the promises made by the adoptive parents and just be happy with me. Love is love and it starts with you.
@@katrinaa7581 I'm so sorry, Katrina. You are a very deeply beautiful person. I kind of wish you were my first mother! Because you're willing to work on "you", and mine has never resolved her own trauma and suffering enough to be able to accept communication from/with me. It's very sad to know she resides within a prison that she could get out of if only she could be courageous enough to face it. So, thank you, on behalf of all adoptees, for being so aware and so willing to look bravely at the pain and sorrow you carry and face it and work on it. I know for a face that by the time your son is ready to face you (if he ever is and I think it's likely), the reunion will be far better because of the wholeness you will be bringing to it.
@@cherwynambuter7873 thank you so much for your kind words. I’m so sorry to hear about your relationship with your mother. I understand not being about to communicate with mothers since mine does have some mental health issue and I cannot connect with her the way I would like to. This has helped me with my son’s adoptive mother since I know I won’t be able to have a good relationship with her, it hurts because it will makes for an uncomfortable relationship with my son and just awkward. I can admit I wasn’t great with the adoptive parents and I think being about to not make excuses and just admit that I was wrong will help the relationship with my son. Hopefully we can a reunion but in the meantime I’ll be the best person I can be. Thank you so much, I can’t wait to have more children.
This makes me miss in person adoption conferences so much!! I remember sitting in presentations by Michael Grand and being so moved by his insight, his articulation of issues and his honesty about adoption. I MISS THIS!!! But thankful for RUclips and videos like this being available. This is thought provoking, as Michael always is, and I love that it pushes me still (after doing this work all my life!) to think uniquely and differently about knowing and doing better. THANK YOU!
He has a very compassionate soul. Dr. Grand also has 2 more videos presented at our last conference here for you to enjoy as well: Adoption Constellation Defined: bit.ly/3uBuJa2 Are we victims: bit.ly/3q5PJCE
@@Jeanette-icallySpeaking Yes, I appreciate his willingness to undertake the complex psychological inner world of the adoptee, even if we have some strong disagreement. He has shown us we "matter", which is very kind.
He has some valuable thoughts but once again the birth mother is absolved because “she just did the best she could by giving you away”. This narrative is lacking and irresponsible and deflects the role she had in influencing a human being PERMANENTLY.
That is true, though the birth mother or first mother gets some absolution; but once again the birth father gets COMPLETE absolution. In nearly all of these discussions and videos the father of the adoptee is almost completely overlooked, just like in issues of the day concerning conception and “right to life”. It takes two people to create life. “Man gives life to woman and she gives it back again”
Many of my mother’s generation had no choice. Young & penniless, many were kicked out by their parents. With no way to support themselves they went to homes for “unwed mothers” that would only take them if they agreed to relinquish their infants. Many girls were also lied to - told they had no option. These women have lived subsequent lives of terrible emotional pain - never getting over the grief of the loss & guilt.
Thank you for this ♡ I am 28 and finally reaching for contact with my birth mom. Thank you so very very much . You make so much sense because I always knew she gave me up to give me a better life and she couldn't give that to me
The story about abounded baby on the stairs... it may be because it mattered or may be because the biological mother had morals. Really can't discuss things if you never lived through 'em. Its a big, bad, bad, wound.
The claim that early childhood trauma and future behavior have no link is DEAD WRONG. I don’t know what research this man has read but it goes directly against everything the world’s leading expert in early childhood trauma and brain development has always said. The first two months are the most critical to a person’s life. Also, it doesn’t sound like this guy is an adoptee so he’s gaslighting every adoptee, especially international adoptees.
This was a fascinating discussion. I'm reading the Primal Wound right now and the level of insight Verrier has into adoptee behaviour is truly impressive. I find myself thinking, 'oh, I really did feel like that in that situation.' It makes me feel seen in a way that I haven't been before, and I can see why it was such a revelation for many adoptees who read it, especially for older adoptees whose entire worlds were shrouded in shame and secrecy. But I can't help but wonder if we're mistakenly inferring that something is true because it makes us feel seen and acknowledged. The central thesis of the book doesn't seem to be well supported at all, not then (she herself doesn't really provide citations even when making explicit references to the-then recent psychological evidence) and not now (AFAIK, the evidence suggests the adoption process admits of a number of life events that can be considered traumatic (like having multiple caregivers, being institutionalized, being sexually or physically abused) but maternal separation by itself doesn't appear to be one of them). Not that this matters much for primal wound theory as it relies on causal relationships that are basically impossible to verify (maternal separation > imprinted on the unconscious mind > pathological coping mechanism). Verrier herself admits this is something to be believed or not rather than adjudicated through science, and that's precisely what I think it's doing for us -- it gives those of us who are in pain an origin story to provide some meaning to that pain. It's almost religious. Even so, if it were true that maternal separation alone -- something that is essential for every adoption -- is sufficient to produce such a trauma, then shouldn't we see a much higher incidence of mental and behavioural problems amongst adoptees? I understand that we're more likely to be diagnosed with mental and behavioural problems, but it's also true that the vast majority of adoptees are not diagnosed as such. Why are some adoptees so sensitive to this primal wound, and others not? (Verrier, for her part, asserts that adoptees who seem to be OK and don't take their adoption to be all that significant are repressing their trauma. I find this implausible. Can you call something traumatic for person X if person X doesn't recognize it as traumatic themselves? I don't think so...) It's seems a lot more plausible that the source of adoption trauma rests on some contingent feature of our adoptions, or some other childhood life event, etc., rather than the central causal story posited by primal wound theory. Anyway, thanks for the great discussion Jeanette, I really look forward to reading Dr. Grand's book.
Thank you for sharing and watching. Research is slowly addressing the mental health challenges for adoptees. For many years and still today people didn't believe adoptees have vulnerabilities and adoptees are just beginning to put into words their pre-verbal experience. The trauma of separation is still unacknowledged by society and ignored. Babies’ bodies remember the separation trauma as well as for the mothers. They can have traumatic grief reactions- after relinquishing their child their whole life. Research is showing, twelve to 14 percent of adopted children in the United States between the ages of 8 and 18 are diagnosed with a mental health disorder each year, and adopted children are almost twice as likely as children brought up with their biological parents to suffer from mood disorders, anxiety, depression, and behavioral challenges as well as eating disorders, OD, ADHD, related to the post-traumatic stress reactions, grief and loss and attachment challenges. Adopted children in the United States constitute only 2% to 3% of the U.S population. Nevertheless, they comprise approximately 16.5% of the population in residential treatment centers. ADOPTEES are 4x more likely to attempt suicide than non-adoptees.
This is a good synopsis of Primal Wound which I found (as it's assumptive title suggests) it's cracked the code of how it feels to be an adoptee although written by an author who isn't themselves. I found it negative and wrong on so many levels. I couldn't relate to it or match it to other adoptees I know. It labelled so many issues on a dotted line back to being adopted just to 'prove' the mantra or as you say it's almost religious adherence.
A Sense of Belonging was a Biggie for me. I hurt my folk's that raised me. Looking back I would of never of found my Biological Parent's. It Hurt my Parents and Especially My Wonderful Mother. I Love my Parents that Raised me. "It's as simple as that". 💖
I only half-listened to this, but he seems to be overlooking the subconscious trauma. If the adoptive family is not supportive, this will compound the problem; if they are supportive and generally do everything right, this will of course help, but will not ultimately resolve a trauma so deeply rooted in the depths of the psyche. I find it bemusing that the general consensus held that adoption shortly after birth would not result in psychological problems. How any thinking person with some understanding of psychology and the human condition, least of academics and supposed experts in the field, could believe this is truly beyond my comprehension. The insights of psychoanalysis, even to a layman, should have been more than enough to generate an expectation of subconscious trauma. Even just biology itself! Truly bizarre. Perhaps there was some sort of vested interest that prevented the truth from becoming publicly known. I was adopted shortly after birth by responsible parents who did their best and were in many ways model parents, but in my teenage years I became delinquent and nihilistic. A fairly normal childhood was proceeded by years of dysfunction and drug addiction. Now I'm in my thirties and I've become very much self-aware of the the trauma involved. I always knew this from a relatively young age but as I've become older, I've realised just now disordered I am as a result. I have an anti-social schizoid-avoidant personality type, unable to hold down proper employment for years and prone to subconscious self-sabotage. On the plus side, early childhood trauma does convey certain psychological gifts...by which I mean acccess to the subconscious mind and the concomitent depth of perspective into a world unseen and unsensed by the rest of society. But this in itself isn't necessarily a benefit in terms of being functional, productive and well-adjusted. Try working some shitty job in admin or customer service with such a disposition...not fun. The only real comfort I have now is the warm embrace of heroin, a symbolic return to the womb after reaching the point where I can't deal with the existential horror of such a detached and dysfunctional existence. I don't blame anyone for this predicament. I see people blaming either sets of parents, but this is pointless: my birth mother was only a teenager and apparently a genuinely kind person who did what she thought was best while my adoptive parents were also genuinely nice people. And yet I turned out totally f*cked up. Ultimately there no-one to blame other than the hand of fate. Understand this and you will at least be liberated from hatred and negative emotion.
Well said many adolescent homes are full of very damaged youngsters as it now deemed better to keep babies with birth mothers despite the circumstances to the detriment of the baby
Love and support are necessary. That’s a given. But with some adoptees, all the love and support cannot fill in the gaps. These mysterious gaps make it impossible for the adoptee to truly understand who they really are. The mystery becomes worse than knowing hard truths. And, its possible to overcome hard truths, but not a never-ending mystery. -adopted @ 3 months
Jennifer I’m an adoptive mother living in france. Abandonment may or may not be the word used prior to adoption. More common is the word « confier » which is more akin to « relinquishment ». The more I learn about the primal wound the more I wish no child ever had to endure such a trauma.
Hi Tim. Thank you for your comment. Yes we have. Every first mother's experience is different and there are so many circumstances which lead to separation trauma. I know Micheal is referencing the child welfare system, and how many mothers and fathers just can't fight the fight. It is hard when a system doesn't support mothers/fathers staying with their children. I think you would like this documentary film which speaks to the solution for us all and helping mitigate this factor for future generations: www.onlifesterms.org/
Read these 2 articles for you: Reunion Tips celiacenter.org/roadmap-to-reunion-8-pactsnational-adoption-conference/ What Adoptees Want Birth Parents to Know: celiacenter.org/ten-things-adoptees-want-their-birth-parents-to-know-about-reunion-by-ross-john-martin/ Join our First Birth Mother support group online for free so you can talk with other mothers who are also in reunion. You need a village: celia-center-adoption-constellation.mn.co/landing/plans/320088
Im an adoptee from Russia. I do consider myself to have won the lottery being brought here to the US at the age of 9months. I had all kinds of emotional issues growing up and blah blah blah. Tonight for the first night ever had a thought and emotional reaction to me being adopted hearing my mom and dad talk about birthing my sister whos 34 and there biological child. This brought me down this rabbit hole. Honestly this is all self pity party BS in my opinion get over it. I know I am. I work as a FF/EMT and have been the past 6 years. Ive seen enough crap out there at this point to realize birth mothers have PLENTY of capacity to do horrendous things to there biological children. So if you have good or even decent adoptive parents probably should just get over yourself. I know thats what Im doing. Ill deal with the moments of hatred and anger through meditation and self reflection and appreciation of the way the universe has laid out this path for me.
My parents also had another biological child - my true sister, and my mother went on to have other children. I was the only one adopted. I wish you well. If I had the choice - I would have chosen to be brought up by the family who eventually adopted me (like you perhaps).
I think it’s possible to be grateful for an adoption but also recognize the biological trauma of birth separation. In fact it seems the healthiest approach. Gratitude & grief can exist together.
I agree the importance of 'mastering to someone' however it is sadly not the experience of adoptees. The value of mirroring is important too. Also the limbic system stuck from the early relinquishment. So yes a strong support system that values you will definitely 'lessen' the pain but it does not heal the deep wound. Yes reunion does not solve it all and that was not the intention of the reunion, but understanding that genetic piece is valuable. I think some of the Original Primal Wound book is being mis-represented. Just a new narrative is helpful but not the whole story... just my thoughts. So some great insights and some pieces a little off... at least for me:p
My birth mother despised me so much she bound her stomach and deformed my ankles and wrists. I disagree with this man. These women get rid of their helpless babies because it was inconvenient. They did have a choice., but were too gutless and weak to look after what they created. Women who kill or desert their own babies are vile .
I wonder for adoptees adopted at an older age and who were originally with their biological parent(s) and were removed for reasons of neglect or abuse that they would not have the experience of the primal wound. I would think so. Which isn’t to mean that their trauma isn’t monumental. It is, only different.
If they’re in an unhealthy, unstable environment for the first two months and then live in a stable, healthy environment for the next 12 years, they’ll have much worse outcomes than someone who was in a healthy, stable environment for their first two months and then lived in an unstable, unhealthy environment for the next 12 years.
Hi, sorry thankfully I have never found myself in these cases, neither as an adoptive nor as a woman to choose to give away her child because she does not have the possibility of being able to raise it so she decides to give to parents who unfortunately for nature could not, maybe they are wrong for this choice, maybe a woman is better than a girl who decides to interrupt the pregnancy instead? To avoid these problems and trauma to the child you are expecting?
Thank you so much for sharing. I second you're opinion that the "primal wound is every " adoptees Bible " it mirrored every detail of my life . Could you please tell me whether there are any therapists that specialise in adoption only. ? Would anyone know ?
Joe Soll is wonderful. He is an adoptee and works exclusively with adoptees and natural mothers. It is essential for adoptees to have therapy with someone who is also adopted and specializes in adoption.
There is also this group. "This directory includes licensed U.S. mental health professionals who identify as adoptees & work with adoptees/adoptive families in a variety of public & private settings." www.growbeyondwords.com/adoptee-therapist-directory/
As an adoptee i think people are too soft sometimes. It's annoying when i say i was given up for adoption, and other people get all butt hurt. People always trying to impose their definition of things on other peoples situations.
Yes it's not always Mary Poppins as my Biological Father's side hung up the phone on me. I seeked ONLY to find out background on who I was. Japanese side was another issue but Once again "Infidelity" is Bad News All Around. Why do Married Couples Play Around? I don't get it!
Hi Mary Ann, he stayed with his birth mother and was adopted by another father, whom he discovered late in life. Dr. Grand has great respect and regard for the adoption community. He has done amazing work in Canada- opening records for all Adoptees. Check out his 2nd interview here: bit.ly/3fRI3B6
I also challenge his assumption that adoption provides a better long-term outcome for a relinquished child. It doesn't- just a different one. It most certainly doesn't for the mother. The ambiguous loss of maternal/child separation is a death sentence.
Wow. Can he be any more shaming and dismissive of birth fathers, their importance and their lack of rights? Anecdotally, I've heard of many more mothers rejecting reunion than fathers.
Ok. My twin sister and I were put up for adoption My 19 year old mother , although my grandparents had had 100% custody of us, and taken care of us for an entire year (since birth,) decided she did not want us around at all, and apparently thought this would be a good way to get back at her mother. I am not making this up. We ended up in a horribly violent home My twin sister got close with my birth mother after reconnecting in our 20s It was incredibly toxic- too much to say in this post , and both of them died the same way within three months of each other about 10 years ago. The last time I saw my birth mother was at my twins funeral It did not go well The fact that anybody would simplify this subject to this degree is laughable You cannot reconnect an arm 20 years after it’s been cut off The stump scabbed over ugly or beautiful. What kind of idiot writes a book about that ?? Seriously it is so dangerous. Such high expectations put on such a uncertain result Asking someone to hinge their mental well-being on a person that has already shown that they don’t want to be responsible What is this person talking about?
Thank you for sharing your pain openly. Being with other adoptees is crucial for your healing process. This is a lifelong journey. You belong with other adoptees who have similar experiences. You are not alone. Join our Free Support Groups here: Adult Adoptee Support Group- Virtual celia-center-adoption-constellation.mn.co/landing/plans/307068
@@Jeanette-icallySpeaking I would LOVE to see a book written analyzing the lives of Moses and Samuel with regard to their having been adoptees, in light of the understanding of the primal wound. I hope someone writes that book someday.
1. people often forget that *all* children separate from their parents, a process psychoanalysts call individualization. adoption is one form on a spectrum of biological processes of differentiation & loss & potential gain. 2. this discussion alas confuses “primal,” “biological,” “origins,” “loss,” “story,” “narrative,” & several other concepts. this is all very compassionate, which is lovely. but the discussion is far too messy to advance or critique Verrier. 3. his corrective is just liberal discourse v. “genetic bewilderment” caricature from 1950’s. 4. Verrier didn’t invent this framework; she just reiterated it. i don’t see how her book or phrase “primal wound” is distinct from previous discussions by activists & writers, notably BJ Lifton. 5. people pushing back by defending a primal indelible wound just give the opposite simplification, as in the “adoption = trauma” family preservation line. both sides of the either/or need texture.
As a birth mother I want you to know this… I never gave anyone up! I placed my daughter for adoption when I was 19 years old and trusted my child to the grace of God! Please know from a birth mothers heart that adoption is not natural. Mothers naturally do everything possible to protect their children. 🙏🏻💛
It’s abandonment
I understand.
@@ellenmoll9989It doesn't matter the birth mothers intentions, the baby does not and cannot understand why it is being removed from its mother and that leaves a deep and lasting wound.
It's like, we don't take animals away from their parents until after a certain time or they die, why would it make sense for a much more complicated human being to be taken away from its birth parents with no trouble?
It's a whole situation that needs a lot of discussion and reworking.
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven. ❤
Word how you want ! You gave up and then placed and then abandoned the child.
As an adoptee with the most utterly supportive adoptive parents anyone could imagine (helped with my homework every night; told me they loved me consistently; would never miss a sporting event etc.) I have to disagree with the notion of support making a major impact on an adoptee. It did not matter how much love and support they gave me. I had a humongous void that they could never fill even with the best intentions to. I do agree that reunion is not always the answer either. I have been in reunion and it actually made the pain more severe. The only way that I’ve found help is through mindfulness and meditation. This is just from my personal experience.
as an adoptee myself, i entirely agree with your statement....i also went through a ''reunion'' and the experience (over 20+ years) was a mixed bag of emotions and results... that ''void'' was/is the lifelong hangover as a result of the ''primal wound'' (mal-adapted emotional set points) that Nancy refers to, which is felt and formed pre and post natal development, due to a sudden and subsequent permanent disconnection from our biological mother...no amount of ''nurturing'' was ever going to rectify that until an individual does the work necessary (usually as an adult) to understand and overcome that loss and grief to the extent that they are capable, due to the multitude of variables involved.
@@groundcontroltomajornong8085 Right, and what about all the stress hormones and loss of serotonin in the developing fetus when our first mother was sent away, desperately lonely, shunned and shamed, maybe even beginning to hate the child within her as we represented the reason for all this suffering? This hormonal imbalance was present throughout our development in the womb. How can we NOT arrive malformed? Adoptees have much higher incidence of adrenal gland problems (the adrenal glands make the stress hormones including cortisol and adrenaline) throughout our lifetimes. Is this psychologist meaning to tell us that hearing a new narrative will change the very way we were wired as we were being made?
Many paths lead to healing. We each must find our way. Join me for a Journey to the Primal Wound Self-Psychology here: amzn.to/3sJsSnb
My relinquished son had a supposed perfect adoptive family/life. That didn't stop him from taking his life at 27 yo.
I also had very supportive adoptive parents who supported me with everything they could. Nevertheless I always felt something were missing, what I used to express with severe mood changes, anxiety, permanent grief, lack of self worth, etc.
I was adopted twice, 1st time at 6weeks old, it didn't last long and 2nd time it was finalised in court at 18 months old. My natural father fought against it but I was handed to a childless couple. I was brought up to believe I should be grateful and reminded quite often that my "parents" were carrying out a good and moral act and I was the consequence of immorality. If I questioned any of this, they got offended and I endured slapping sessions. They also resented my growing much taller than them, I'm 6ft2, having my own likes and dislikes, that was ridiculed. I can remember I didn't like them touching me from an early age. I joined the army at 18 and felt at home there, I'm 64 now. I was in touch with my real Mum, from the age of 25 until she died. Lastly I reverted to my original surname a long time ago, so my kids have that name too. All I can say is that adoption is not a natural process, It's little to do with the wellbeing of a child, it's to satisfy the desires of adults.
My adoptee perspective; - Adoption = (primal) wound = Cptsd. It is the wound that is the cause of the Cptsd. The Cptsd has coloured my life since that point. That 'wound' could also be caused by neglect, abuse, narc parents, depressed mother, violence, addiction, with or without adoption. Adopted people are not victims of 'bad attitudes' and 'bad administration' they are traumatised children/babies. For me - not having a clear narrative of my history is merely an addition to the wonderfully complex individual I am. P.S - I was a relinquished baby - well and truly and utterly and miserably 'given away' in every sense.
As a cross cultural adoptee I was adopted into an all white family who already had 5 children of their own - My adoptive parents loved me but I looked nothing like my family and the family were incredibly dysfunctional and my parents were too old - my mother was already 50 before I was 5. I grew up in denial of my ethnicity, an addict (Drugs, sex)and a compulsive and pathological liar. I had a reunion with my mother 4 years ago but I live the opposite side of the world. We are now distant emotionally and as I approach 50 (This year) I am more angry, resentful than ever, and feel my life has simply been an existence to please others, I am broken beyond words.
Hi. Thank you for sharing your heart and vulnerabilities. You are not alone. I hope you can join our community of adoptees here at one of our next support groups. You are welcome and belong here: celiacenter.org/events-calendar-support-groups/
I am so sorry for your pain. Thank you for expressing it here. As adoptees we all walk the same path but differently if that makes sense. You are important and you have purpose. Never forget that.
As a doctor and as a psychologist who works with early trauma and its healing i assure you that early trauma is the most major factor affecting later behavior and wellbeing or otherwise. Verriers primal wound is right on in her description on the dynamics of adoption. I may disagree with her on the necessity of re connection for healing to occur.
Sounds like an attempt to fight pre verbal trauma with word play . Reframing and re wording may help some but healing such a deep trauma requires much more than a shift of angle .sorry
Check this other video out: bit.ly/3tPfIku
it ''may'' go some way in filling in some gaps (re connection), yet is far from complete or comprehensive in it's positive ramifications and healing for the adoptee...for me, it was a definitive starting point for my healing journey, but not the magic bullet that i thought it might be at the tender age of 24 when i took my first steps...the risks are very real that the process can backfire, partially or substantially and in 5 minutes or 25 years of the initial reunion...thanks for your feedback and input m ha.
@@groundcontroltomajornong8085 I agree. He's trying to address the pre-verbal loss and early conclusion of the child that they are the only person on whom they can rely and that they must prove themselves "worth" keeping for the rest of their life. He's trying to address this by simply re-organizing the narrative of their life and telling the adoptee that they're seeing it all wrong, and that this is the problem. This doesn't address the tiny baby who couldn't process what was happening to them. This pain and suffering goes far beyond words. I don't doubt the story he tells of the woman whose eyes rained tears when he helped her realize her first mother did care for her and made a caring plan for her. I just don't believe this is still sufficient for her complete healing.
My childhood as an adoptee was idyllic once I adjusted to my adoptive family. My mother always told me my first mother loved me very, very much, just couldn't take care of me by herself, and loved me enough to place me with a caring family. So my narrative wasn't all "wrong",. I believed her completely. Yet, I read Nancy Verrier's book and immediately it stunned me because it resonated so completely with me about why I am the way I am. All of a sudden I could understand why I seem so much more fragile than other people, so much more hypervigilant, why I "apologize too much", as people tell me, and there's more but I choose not to go into it here. Everything about my personality seems to conflate with the Verrier analysis to a "t". And also my adopted brother's who is the opposite of me but Verrier explains how this works. There's just no way that a simple rearrangement of the "narrative", while it will certainly be helpful and perhaps significantly so, can rearrange the person's personality aspects that have been shaped by that pre-verbal experience. I would love to hear this gentleman's response to this and to hear if his clients have said (or if he's noticed) their personalities completely shifting as a result of his reframing.
How can he ignore all the studies proving that newborns recognize their mothers from their in utero experience? Does he think newborns are tabla rasa? What does he think causes the Wound and why would that cease to be significant? Adoption IS trauma. I guess that's a simple truth he doesn't want to say to his hopeful adoptive parents.
I had a great and supportive family and still suffer greatly related to my adoption later in life. He is missing the unresolved trauma related from being separated at birth. Knowing my bio parents does not heal that. Having a supportive adoptive family does not heal that. I wish it did. Ignoring that trauma will cause a lot of issues later in life.
Thank you for sharing. Please join me at a class coming up if you are interested to support your healing: www.jeanetteyoffe.com/book-online
He wasn't separated at birth. He doesn't know that pain. I share in that pain with you. I hope your life is going okay!
Hi Jodie, have you found any measure of healing and if so, could you share a bit about that? Is there anything your bio parents could have done/not done to help you heal. I know that these questions are deeply personal and I ask only if you’re comfortable with responding.
Well I was all in with the Dr. But I now realize you have work to do just as I do as an emotionally abandoned child. Thanks for sharing the other point of view.
100%
Since when does talk therapy treat brain damage ?
Honestly , it’s just lazy of these doctors and kills so many people who think they’re just failing at Therapy.
I’m met my birthmother. It was very bad. My birthmotger and twin are both gone one three months after the other the same way.
No rainbow here.
Pre-verbal trauma causes brain damage. Always. Every time.
Can we please start looking at the science of this?
Why aren’t we starting with a stellate ganglion block the same way that we would start with a steroid shot for inflammation?
What this man is saying, is so destructive
I didn't know I was adopted until I was 11, but it always felt like it was "their family" and then me. I have had extreme insomnia since I was an infant. As a small child I would stay up at night sobbing because I missed somebody so bad and I didn't even know who I missed. I was a pale a pasty blonde girl with a mom who was an immigrant from Panama with dark skin and jet black hair. My dad was white so I just assumed I took after him and my brother took after mom. She was so beautiful and I felt (and was told daily at school) that I was just ugly.
When I was pregnant my Mom said that my birthmother tried to breastfeed me in the hospital. My mindset had always been if I found her to have no expectations, she may not want to hear from me. But that shifted my thoughts and then contributed heavily to my post partum depression. A friend took it upon herself to find my birthmother and within 2 hours we were on the phone for the first time.
When I got off the phone my first words to my husband were, "I dodged a bullet!" After a few years of being in touch I felt ready to meet her, a few years after meeting I ended up flying across the country and moved her in with us. Not a day has gone by that I haven't been grateful that the woman didn't raise me. We have a good a relationship, but if she had raised me it is doubtful I would've maintained contact in adulthood.
BTW.... at 28 years old.... my lifelong struggle with insomnia ended the night we first spoke on the phone!
Thank you for sharing your story. Amazing I’m so glad you found your birth mother. ❤️ and feeling better today.
I love your story.
@@adimeter thank you!
@@chrish564 You welcome.
As an adoptee from the Baby Scoop era, I feel that the biological trauma of separation was compounded by the lack of personal narrative, the job of fulfilling the parental dreams of my adoptive parents, the inferred scorn placed on my birth mother, & not being able to acknowledge & grieve the loss of my identity & connection with her. I recall my adoptive mother on a rare occasion asking me if I had any desire to find my birth mother. When I said maybe, she replied, “ You don’t get to call her Mother. That’s my name.” Her sense of ownership & control was felt as an additional violence, somehow. Very hard to articulate.
Though adoptees are four times more likely to attempt suicide in their lives, I’ve seen a lot of science that still puts more faith in the adoptive parents view of the situation than the kids.
To me, this is reason number one we are not treating kids when they are younger.
It is so dangerous to say that you can go back and heal a primal wound in anyway.
You can’t do that anymore you can go back and heal brain damage from a motorcycle accident
This is the most ridiculous notion I’ve ever seen people like this are why kids die
This person’s idiot Romantic view of my situation, won’t change my situation
You get to choose as an adult how you want to call your birth mother.
Thank you for sharing. Being with other adoptees is crucial for your healing process. This is a lifelong journey. You belong with other adoptees. You are not alone. Join our Free Support Groups here: Adult Adoptee Support Group- Virtual
celia-center-adoption-constellation.mn.co/landing/plans/307068
A few years ago my heart was profoundly touched, followed immediately by a mind blowing ''realization'' when i observed a heavily pregnant female friend gently and lovingly interacting physically and verbally with her womb-bound baby...the playful to and fro of prodding feet and fingers, combined with the soothing tones of moms voice singing, laughing & talking to bubs was a sight to behold, causing a welling up that i could barely contain. when i had re composed myself i asked her if this was ''normal'' behaviour and she responded ''absolutely'' yes...she seemed a little surprised that i would ask such a question. she then added that she had done this with her previous 3 children in-utero, usually prompted by the incessant activity of movement and kicking in order to alleviate ''her'' discomfort...little did she know that my focus was on the baby's (dis)comfort and much more...
As an adoptee, having read The Primal Wound and experienced the swings and roundabouts of reunion with both biological parents, my mind began to flood with questions about what i had just witnessed...foremost in my mind was ''did my own birth mother interact with me to any extent or at all in this manner?''.. and ''how prevalent was this behaviour amongst expectant mothers whom know from the early stages of pregnancy that they are going to relinquish their child?''...if it is indeed rare, then ''does this give the baby an impending ''sense'' or feeling of detachment or worse.. ''DOOM''??..i was desperately attempting to breach my memory bank in order to recall whether this had been covered in Nancy's book...perhaps not, yet expounded upon elsewhere in the literature...either way, given what has already been discovered on the subject i couldn't help but think this was compelling evidence of pre-natal in-utero development of emotional set points. After some ''gentle'' probing and prodding of my own, i managed to elicit an answer from my mother.. she ''couldn't recall'', but ''didn't think so,'' given her stressful circumstances.
I tend to agree with you. I wonder if even first mothers or some of them come to hate or be angry with the child within them as a focus, a "sideways-directed anger", of their pain and suffering. I wonder if we could even actually feel rejection while we were yet in the womb?
Love the point re “giving up for adoption”. In French we say “confier” which is more like “entrust” to adoption. I am an adoptive mother.
It’s giving up. The baby doesn’t want it. It feels like abandonment.
Just understand that and you’ll know your child better.
“Gave up the baby” is absolutely accurate. Why make the mom absent of responsibility? Are you kidding me?
It’s not a power dynamic. Lots, in fact billions of women with zero power keep their children.
Adoptee here. I have reconnected with birth family I the last few years. My adoptive family is all I knew, and they are wonderful. They never hid it from me, and gave me the best info they could regarding the whole thing. I was a square peg in a round hole, however. I was dx'd as gifted, and adhd. I am given to anxiety attacks, and existential depression- plagued me my whole life. Untying those knots is hard, even if you were brought up in a loving, supportive, funny, close knit family like I was. But I'm learning, and my advice to others in similar situations to mine: you are not a victim in this, your circumstance is within your control once you are grown- if your family ( like mine ) refused to even entertain outside views that you were not blood ( huge ), then you were blessed. Face them thar demons, and rise
You cannot pull yourself up out of brain damage. As you said, not everyone’s experience is the same.
I’m not a victim, I’m a patient
Your personal views on what you think other peoples issues are are completely invalid , and suggesting that brain damage is somehow a failure on their part to do what you have It’s kind of disgusting.
You’ll kill people with this idiot
@Bellab8759 On this thread, we are talking about the emotional issues adoptees face. If you have brain damage( which I am sorry for whatever happened ), then that is a medical issue-
@@jrosner6123we’re talking about a primal wound/CPTSD which is quite literally brain damage.
Therapy can help cope with some of the symptoms, but is as useless against this type of trauma as it would be against a motorcycle accident.
@@jrosner6123 educate yourself before you start telling everyone if they just thought of it a different way they could be as good as you.
Gross
I was adopted and I lived the primal wound my entire life. Healing didn't begin to occur for me until I found my parents and family. I never felt like I fit in with my adoptive family. I never felt like they were my family. I know not every reunion is successful but mine was/is. I hated being adopted.
What was the alternative to your being adopted?
@@Zarbon000 ...My paternal grandparents contacted the adoption agency when they found out about me and told them they wanted to raise me but the agency blew them off. My grandparents raised my older brother. It would have been preferable to the abusive adoptive home I was placed in.
@@lorenefairchild7616 I am sorry your childhood was filled with the worst things one can go through. I hope you are doing okay in life now.
Agree with the message that parental support for adoptees is imperative, but the Pollyanna attitude for the adoptee who was abandoned is so invalidating. It’s so similar to the message we’re force fed about adoption “your mother loved you so much she gave you up”. What an incredibly confusing and damaging message.
Absolutely. Best comment here. Thanks
Wholeheartedly disagree with pretty much everything he has said here. My parents were open and honest with me about my adoption from as young as I could understand it. I was accepted by all my larger adopted family. I have been given every opportunity in life by my adoptive parents and from the outside if someone looked at me they would think I had everything a person could ever want from a “things” perspective. I have a good job, a nice house, a nice car and I don’t consider myself an unattractive person. I just turned 33 years old last month and pretty much had a mental breakdown last week due to the fact I’ve finally realised I’ve been grieving the loss of someone for the past 33 years. Someone I don’t know and have never met. I feel sad, angry, depressed, lost and as if I don’t know who I really am and have felt this way on and off for probably the past 15 years but have never faced up to it. Do not for one second tell me that there is no subconscious “wound” that I have not been dealing with.
I’m 53 and I met my birth mother when I was your age. Big mistake. She is a loud, uneducated, opinionated drunk. Did not do too much to “heal” me, but at least I know. We have ZERO contact, and that is fine with me. This world is fucked.
I'm so sorry. This psychologist appears to think the subconscious "wound" can be dissolved by only a reframing of the story of our lives. Naive, at best. But kudos for him for his efforts to take on the adoptee's pain and try to heal it. At least he's trying. But yes, falls far short. Congratulations upon the success you've made of your life with what you entered with! Really hope you have people around you who listen with kindness and not with objections.
I loved your statement about grieving the loss of someone I don't know and have never met. It almost sees like its not only the situation, the mother but also ourselves.
He has decent ideas. But his biological mother kept him. So he doesn't know the loss most of us experienced, lived with, and feel. So you have to understand, he doesn't have our perspective.
@@vipermad358 same
I think that the much wider point in concern is the literal brain damage that goes untreated and unrecognized in adoptees. Compounding, what was already a horrible trauma
As an adoptive, history before adoption is important, but is not the same for any two adoptees, information required can be different for each adoptee, but what is important for all adoptees is getting and (hopefully) understanding the history. What we do with that history after is our business only.
My adopted parents were open with as much information as they had, this helped me during my early school years 1960's deal with taunts and barbs of those felt it necessary to point out I was a lesser person? History of yourself before adoption can help (if formatted correctly) in coping with life's roller coaster as we grow up.
Reunion saved my life. I'd be dead if I hadn't found my Mum. My life depnded on it. And I ended my adoption (reverted back to my REAL name) within months of finding my REAL Mum. I was 36 years of age at the time - and I lost my Mum at the age of 5 months......My mental health was restored due to identifying with REALITY. It took years, but to be clear, I was drinking myself to death pre-reunion. I now haven't needed the numbing agent of alcohol for over 5 years. And that's because my brain now works......Lying is wrong. Teaching children to lie/and that lying is normal is child abuse. Ending my adoption/relationship to delusion was the best decision I ever made. I can now sleep at night. And I finally feel like a real INDIVIDUAL human being that matters...............................This guy? The way he talks is so patronising to an adoptee like myself. The mental health implications of teaching children to lie (psychological abuse) is never addressed by anybody, which is why I'll be addressing it in my first book, along with the human right violation of destroying a childs authentic identity. From the outside looking in? Adopted children are set-up to fall. Adoption is a multi-milion pound industry. There's lot of £££ in the business of child relinquishment. And ppl should have a proper think about that very ugly fact! There is no reunion without pain, not if one is truly emotionally invested. But the pay off for myself was well worth it!!
Thank you for sharing your heart and your courage on this platform. I wish you well in your first book. Please let me know when it is complete at jeanette@yoffetherapy.com
How could you go back to the one who hurt your heart more than anyone else ever could?
Serious.
I am glad your life is better after reconnecting with the woman who gave birth to you.
Was this man adopted? I would be surprised to learn he was if he was. Reading through the comments, i see i am not alone. Us adoptees are not agreeing with him. I dont see what his rebuke on The Primal Wound Theory even is. I didn’t really hear a cohesive theory that contradicts. There is a reason The Primal Wound Theory speaks so loudly to adoptees. Learning of it is like finally understanding ourselves and why we are the way we are for the first time in our lives. It’s the embodiment of finally being understood in a way we didn’t even understand ourselves yet. As i could see by just reading the first few comments in addition to my own reaction to this video, one can see that us adoptees heard this and it didn’t resound in the way The Primal Wound did. Or else in the comments that would be reflected. I’m having a hard time putting into words what i want to say and how i feel. The point is, for myself and clearly many many other adoptees, the Primal Wound was an answer to a prayer we didn’t know we had made. There is a subconscious trauma that occurs at birth when we do not go home with the person we just grew inside. It’s unnatural from an evolutionary standpoint and our subconscious recognizes this immediately and there is irreparable damage done. Whether or not that adoptee is ever even aware of it. Whether or not they even know they were adopted. And until we understand this fully, there will be a dark chasm that we will try to fill our whole lives. Many of us use drugs or alcohol to fill it. Many of us have relationship problems. Fears of rejection, anxiety, depression, OCD, separation anxiety, attachment disorders and so so many more. When you combine Freud’s thoughts on trauma at different stages of our early lives with his views on our relationships with our parents, it becomes crystal clear. We suffered the greatest trauma a person can go through in that pivotal stage of development. The first few days or weeks of our lives. Anyone who thinks naively that we were too young to notice or realize what was going on; like has been the consensus on adoption in our culture for as long as one can remember, is reproachable in thought. The field of psychology has been aware of how critical our earliest moments in life are to the rest of our lives for over a century at least. I like to look at the impact of events and the amount we learn to be a logarithmic graph or in other terms the opposite of exponential. With the younger we are the more we are learning decreasing logarithmically over time. If you understand this logic, then something as traumatic as being ripped away from the womb and the person of whom is all you know, at said time, well, ill let you decide.
Thank you for your well-written response. It spoke to me. I agree with you on every level.
I appreciate your response to this video and sharing how difficult our experience is, lifelong. This is a theory from Dr. Grand. He is very compassionate towards the adoptee experience. He stayed with his mother, but not his father, which has similar core issues as adoptees. Our experience is traumatic, and unnatural. Please view a video I made helping the world understand our lack of genetic mirroring here: ruclips.net/video/QMBS0ASF4Uo/видео.html
Agreed. He hasn’t a clue. As if propaganda solves a child’s confusion. No
I was born 6 weeks premature with opioids in system. At 1.5 my lungs collapsed from cocaine and Valium. Tossed around in foster homes and adopted at 6. Joined an Infantry Unit in the Army for 5.5 years and will finish my Masters Degree in 1 year. Still the hardest thing for me is making friendships and dating/trusting the women I am dating. If anyone has resources to help, please let me know.
I also have major trust issues
This has much truth, but, there IS a primal wound and it is biological and cellular. it’s not only about filling in the blanks of our identity (though that is vital as well)
Yes our bodies remember our whole lives, we don't get over this, we are grief experts continuously, tirelessly moving through our experience. You will like some new videos I am making speaking more to our lifelong journey.
@@Jeanette-icallySpeaking “we are grief experts, continuously and tirelessly...” is perfectly said. Looking forward to the new content!
Who knows...maybe we can get over ut
@@Jeanette-icallySpeaking Jeanette, do you then endorse Michael Grand's talk therapy-based approach, or are you refuting it and saying it's not sufficient? If it's not sufficient, it shouldn't be posted here, because it's maddening to adoptees and further gaslights us and diminishes our actual lived experience.
Unfortunately for some of us, we didn't matter. It wasn't them doing the best they could. It wasn't men who wouldn't stay. For some of us we just simply weren't wanted that's when reunion definitely doesn't go to plan.
Well said
I was adopted...I found out when I was in my 40s...it was the best thing to happen to me...my adopted mother and I hadn't spoken for years...she always so angry and abusive....and I was scared I would be like her..finding out I had none of her genes was almost healing. I have two grown children of my own who I have never laid a hand on...and they are the most wonderful people I know.
as an adoptee that was adopted at birth into a great white middle class family that loved me unconditionally, I am Hispanic, their unconditional love was nice, but I wasnt able to receive it, I never knew why I was so angry and suicidal, Nothing they did helped, I was in therapy for years, AA for 20 years being told i am a real alcoholic, even going through the 12 steps I knew it wasnt the root cause of my issues, Adoptioin rips your entire soul, being, identity, and stomps on your self esteem before you even become a conscious human being, I honestly do not know how I never killed myself, I tried, very close, but I do feel like there is ways to heal, Its all on yourself, for real, no one is coming to save you or help go deep into those dark, horribly painful parts of your being that you dont want to go into, but thats where I think the healing is, Mastering self, any way, anyhow, First off, it took me 38 years to even realize why I was so messed up was from my adoption, now its time to fix that part in me. Build a better version of me, and start living life.
I TURN 50 THIS YEAR. I HAVE GRIEF THAT POURS OUT OF ME ON A REGULAR BASIS. IT HAPPENS AT HOME AND OUT IN PUBLIC. WHEN IT HAPPENS....IT'S REALLY TRAGIC. THE MOST GUTWRENCHING DESPAIR. I DID INHERIT MENTAL ILLNESS FROM THE PATERNAL PARENT. THE DEPRESSION IS SO HARD!!!!!! ONE PHRASE THAT OFTEN COMES OUT OF MY MOUTH IS "I'M A FAILURE." STILL ALIVE! DEPRESSION BRINGS ME TO MY KNEES. MAKES AN AORDINARY DAY FEEL GOOD ENOUGH.
he is a kind and kindred soul. i agree that meeting the birth mother is not the ultimate solution but it would be nice to see any features or mannerisms mirrored. it’s not the facts or even fantasy that bothers me. it’s the unknown. the what could’ve been and the feelings of shame and imminent doom when a relationship ends. It’s something that is ignored by the greater public, but what he is saying about birth mother efforts are already known to us/ may actually be completely wrong. it generalizes the experience for them while weakening the experience for us. helpless babies who’s world has disappeared. Enjoyed the vid tho!!
Once again, I loved this video. In the last part, I rewind a dozen times while the tears flowed because as a birth mom it's the narrative that is often needed to be said on our behalf.
Thank you so much 🙏
Thanks for sharing!!
I'm an adoptee adult. I don't like adoption as a institution at all.
You could also look at giving up as simply giving up their parental rights. It doesn't have to be all those other horrible sounding defeating things.
Even if all those other things are true at the end of it she simply gave up her parental rights to the adoption system.
Thank you for sharing. Being with other adoptees is crucial for your healing process. This is a lifelong journey. Join our Free Support Groups here: Adult Adoptee Support Group- Virtual
celia-center-adoption-constellation.mn.co/landing/plans/307068
Great interview, thanks for talking about changing the language used in adoption. Last year I discovered the Adoptees On podcast and it hit me how powerful words can be. Now I notice the difference in reaction when I share my story with language that suites reality.
A little bit of this video felt a bit like the pep talk adoptees hear our whole life. But still good to hear some kind affirming words. Even in the best, most aware adoptive families the pain for the adoptee is still there. I feel like once adoptees become adults we can logically understand the reasons we were relinquished more clearly. For me I can still feel my hurt inner child who screams over the logic... When you are young and your brain is developing there is no way to understand the preverbal trauma you experienced. Adults need to guide us through it. Adoptive parents need to first work on their trauma, and accept their child’s trauma and be willing to grief with them. Never deny what your child needs to feel.
Raven, I agree with you.
I’m a birth mother and my son’s adoptive parents decided to close the adoption 12 years ago, my son just turned 13. I recently reached out to him and he blocked me.
It took me until last year to realize the adoptive mother’s grief of not being able to have children, my son’s adoptive mom has one biological child and always wanted more. As hard as it is, I’ve learned to accept this.
I am able to move forward by grieving my son and I lost relationship, hopefully one day we’ll have a relationship. I’m working on myself and working on my inner child. I’ve learned to let go of the promises made by the adoptive parents and just be happy with me.
Love is love and it starts with you.
I so wanted that my parents could listen this....
Beautifully expressed, Raven! 🌻
@@katrinaa7581 I'm so sorry, Katrina. You are a very deeply beautiful person. I kind of wish you were my first mother! Because you're willing to work on "you", and mine has never resolved her own trauma and suffering enough to be able to accept communication from/with me. It's very sad to know she resides within a prison that she could get out of if only she could be courageous enough to face it. So, thank you, on behalf of all adoptees, for being so aware and so willing to look bravely at the pain and sorrow you carry and face it and work on it. I know for a face that by the time your son is ready to face you (if he ever is and I think it's likely), the reunion will be far better because of the wholeness you will be bringing to it.
@@cherwynambuter7873 thank you so much for your kind words.
I’m so sorry to hear about your relationship with your mother. I understand not being about to communicate with mothers since mine does have some mental health issue and I cannot connect with her the way I would like to. This has helped me with my son’s adoptive mother since I know I won’t be able to have a good relationship with her, it hurts because it will makes for an uncomfortable relationship with my son and just awkward.
I can admit I wasn’t great with the adoptive parents and I think being about to not make excuses and just admit that I was wrong will help the relationship with my son. Hopefully we can a reunion but in the meantime I’ll be the best person I can be.
Thank you so much, I can’t wait to have more children.
This makes me miss in person adoption conferences so much!! I remember sitting in presentations by Michael Grand and being so moved by his insight, his articulation of issues and his honesty about adoption. I MISS THIS!!! But thankful for RUclips and videos like this being available. This is thought provoking, as Michael always is, and I love that it pushes me still (after doing this work all my life!) to think uniquely and differently about knowing and doing better. THANK YOU!
He has a very compassionate soul. Dr. Grand also has 2 more videos presented at our last conference here for you to enjoy as well:
Adoption Constellation Defined: bit.ly/3uBuJa2
Are we victims: bit.ly/3q5PJCE
@@Jeanette-icallySpeaking Yes, I appreciate his willingness to undertake the complex psychological inner world of the adoptee, even if we have some strong disagreement. He has shown us we "matter", which is very kind.
He has some valuable thoughts but once again the birth mother is absolved because “she just did the best she could by giving you away”. This narrative is lacking and irresponsible and deflects the role she had in influencing a human being PERMANENTLY.
That is true, though the birth mother or first mother gets some absolution; but once again the birth father gets COMPLETE absolution. In nearly all of these discussions and videos the father of the adoptee is almost completely overlooked, just like in issues of the day concerning conception and “right to life”. It takes two people to create life. “Man gives life to woman and she gives it back again”
@@iwant2pantsyou true , and people ask “are you going to search for the mother?” Hardly ever ask same about father.
His birth mother kept him. So you have to understand his life story is not like the majority of us here.
Many of my mother’s generation had no choice. Young & penniless, many were kicked out by their parents. With no way to support themselves they went to homes for “unwed mothers” that would only take them if they agreed to relinquish their infants. Many girls were also lied to - told they had no option. These women have lived subsequent lives of terrible emotional pain - never getting over the grief of the loss & guilt.
True
Thank you for this ♡ I am 28 and finally reaching for contact with my birth mom. Thank you so very very much . You make so much sense because I always knew she gave me up to give me a better life and she couldn't give that to me
The story about abounded baby on the stairs... it may be because it mattered or may be because the biological mother had morals. Really can't discuss things if you never lived through 'em. Its a big, bad, bad, wound.
The claim that early childhood trauma and future behavior have no link is DEAD WRONG. I don’t know what research this man has read but it goes directly against everything the world’s leading expert in early childhood trauma and brain development has always said. The first two months are the most critical to a person’s life. Also, it doesn’t sound like this guy is an adoptee so he’s gaslighting every adoptee, especially international adoptees.
This was a fascinating discussion. I'm reading the Primal Wound right now and the level of insight Verrier has into adoptee behaviour is truly impressive. I find myself thinking, 'oh, I really did feel like that in that situation.' It makes me feel seen in a way that I haven't been before, and I can see why it was such a revelation for many adoptees who read it, especially for older adoptees whose entire worlds were shrouded in shame and secrecy.
But I can't help but wonder if we're mistakenly inferring that something is true because it makes us feel seen and acknowledged. The central thesis of the book doesn't seem to be well supported at all, not then (she herself doesn't really provide citations even when making explicit references to the-then recent psychological evidence) and not now (AFAIK, the evidence suggests the adoption process admits of a number of life events that can be considered traumatic (like having multiple caregivers, being institutionalized, being sexually or physically abused) but maternal separation by itself doesn't appear to be one of them). Not that this matters much for primal wound theory as it relies on causal relationships that are basically impossible to verify (maternal separation > imprinted on the unconscious mind > pathological coping mechanism). Verrier herself admits this is something to be believed or not rather than adjudicated through science, and that's precisely what I think it's doing for us -- it gives those of us who are in pain an origin story to provide some meaning to that pain. It's almost religious.
Even so, if it were true that maternal separation alone -- something that is essential for every adoption -- is sufficient to produce such a trauma, then shouldn't we see a much higher incidence of mental and behavioural problems amongst adoptees? I understand that we're more likely to be diagnosed with mental and behavioural problems, but it's also true that the vast majority of adoptees are not diagnosed as such. Why are some adoptees so sensitive to this primal wound, and others not? (Verrier, for her part, asserts that adoptees who seem to be OK and don't take their adoption to be all that significant are repressing their trauma. I find this implausible. Can you call something traumatic for person X if person X doesn't recognize it as traumatic themselves? I don't think so...) It's seems a lot more plausible that the source of adoption trauma rests on some contingent feature of our adoptions, or some other childhood life event, etc., rather than the central causal story posited by primal wound theory.
Anyway, thanks for the great discussion Jeanette, I really look forward to reading Dr. Grand's book.
Thank you for sharing and watching. Research is slowly addressing the mental health challenges for adoptees. For many years and still today people didn't believe adoptees have vulnerabilities and adoptees are just beginning to put into words their pre-verbal experience. The trauma of separation is still unacknowledged by society and ignored. Babies’ bodies remember the separation trauma as well as for the mothers. They can have traumatic grief reactions- after relinquishing their child their whole life.
Research is showing, twelve to 14 percent of adopted children in the United States between the ages of 8 and 18 are diagnosed with a mental health disorder each year, and adopted children are almost twice as likely as children brought up with their biological parents to suffer from mood disorders, anxiety, depression, and behavioral challenges as well as eating disorders, OD, ADHD, related to the post-traumatic stress reactions, grief and loss and attachment challenges. Adopted children in the United States constitute only 2% to 3% of the U.S population. Nevertheless, they comprise approximately 16.5% of the population in residential treatment centers. ADOPTEES are 4x more likely to attempt suicide than non-adoptees.
This is a good synopsis of Primal Wound which I found (as it's assumptive title suggests) it's cracked the code of how it feels to be an adoptee although written by an author who isn't themselves. I found it negative and wrong on so many levels. I couldn't relate to it or match it to other adoptees I know. It labelled so many issues on a dotted line back to being adopted just to 'prove' the mantra or as you say it's almost religious adherence.
A Sense of Belonging was a Biggie for me. I hurt my folk's that raised me. Looking back I would of never of found my Biological Parent's. It Hurt my Parents and Especially My Wonderful Mother. I Love my Parents that Raised me. "It's as simple as that". 💖
I only half-listened to this, but he seems to be overlooking the subconscious trauma. If the adoptive family is not supportive, this will compound the problem; if they are supportive and generally do everything right, this will of course help, but will not ultimately resolve a trauma so deeply rooted in the depths of the psyche. I find it bemusing that the general consensus held that adoption shortly after birth would not result in psychological problems. How any thinking person with some understanding of psychology and the human condition, least of academics and supposed experts in the field, could believe this is truly beyond my comprehension. The insights of psychoanalysis, even to a layman, should have been more than enough to generate an expectation of subconscious trauma. Even just biology itself! Truly bizarre. Perhaps there was some sort of vested interest that prevented the truth from becoming publicly known. I was adopted shortly after birth by responsible parents who did their best and were in many ways model parents, but in my teenage years I became delinquent and nihilistic. A fairly normal childhood was proceeded by years of dysfunction and drug addiction. Now I'm in my thirties and I've become very much self-aware of the the trauma involved. I always knew this from a relatively young age but as I've become older, I've realised just now disordered I am as a result. I have an anti-social schizoid-avoidant personality type, unable to hold down proper employment for years and prone to subconscious self-sabotage. On the plus side, early childhood trauma does convey certain psychological gifts...by which I mean acccess to the subconscious mind and the concomitent depth of perspective into a world unseen and unsensed by the rest of society. But this in itself isn't necessarily a benefit in terms of being functional, productive and well-adjusted. Try working some shitty job in admin or customer service with such a disposition...not fun. The only real comfort I have now is the warm embrace of heroin, a symbolic return to the womb after reaching the point where I can't deal with the existential horror of such a detached and dysfunctional existence. I don't blame anyone for this predicament. I see people blaming either sets of parents, but this is pointless: my birth mother was only a teenager and apparently a genuinely kind person who did what she thought was best while my adoptive parents were also genuinely nice people. And yet I turned out totally f*cked up. Ultimately there no-one to blame other than the hand of fate. Understand this and you will at least be liberated from hatred and negative emotion.
What should replace adoption if it is so traumatizing to the adoptee?
Well said many adolescent homes are full of very damaged youngsters as it now deemed better to keep babies with birth mothers despite the circumstances to the detriment of the baby
Love and support are necessary. That’s a given. But with some adoptees, all the love and support cannot fill in the gaps. These mysterious gaps make it impossible for the adoptee to truly understand who they really are. The mystery becomes worse than knowing hard truths. And, its possible to overcome hard truths, but not a never-ending mystery.
-adopted @ 3 months
Thank you for such a powerful piece!
Thanks for listening
If you think the term "giving up for adoption" is bad, in French they use the word "abandonner" which means "to abandon."
Jennifer I’m an adoptive mother living in france. Abandonment may or may not be the word used prior to adoption. More common is the word « confier » which is more akin to « relinquishment ». The more I learn about the primal wound the more I wish no child ever had to endure such a trauma.
Too apologetic to the birth parents. We adoptees essentially sacrificed our own selves so the birth parents could live their lives more conveniently.
Hi Tim. Thank you for your comment. Yes we have. Every first mother's experience is different and there are so many circumstances which lead to separation trauma. I know Micheal is referencing the child welfare system, and how many mothers and fathers just can't fight the fight. It is hard when a system doesn't support mothers/fathers staying with their children. I think you would like this documentary film which speaks to the solution for us all and helping mitigate this factor for future generations: www.onlifesterms.org/
@@Jeanette-icallySpeaking OK, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. 😊
@@Jeanette-icallySpeaking Thank you Jeanette for graciously responding to all of my comments!
I am the SECOND child my drunk, irresponsible mother put up for adoption. People like her are worse than worthless.
@@vipermad358 not good. Not good at all.
I just reached out to my daughter I placed at birth 15years ago. I need help
Read these 2 articles for you:
Reunion Tips
celiacenter.org/roadmap-to-reunion-8-pactsnational-adoption-conference/
What Adoptees Want Birth Parents to Know:
celiacenter.org/ten-things-adoptees-want-their-birth-parents-to-know-about-reunion-by-ross-john-martin/
Join our First Birth Mother support group online for free so you can talk with other mothers who are also in reunion. You need a village:
celia-center-adoption-constellation.mn.co/landing/plans/320088
Im an adoptee from Russia. I do consider myself to have won the lottery being brought here to the US at the age of 9months. I had all kinds of emotional issues growing up and blah blah blah. Tonight for the first night ever had a thought and emotional reaction to me being adopted hearing my mom and dad talk about birthing my sister whos 34 and there biological child. This brought me down this rabbit hole. Honestly this is all self pity party BS in my opinion get over it. I know I am. I work as a FF/EMT and have been the past 6 years. Ive seen enough crap out there at this point to realize birth mothers have PLENTY of capacity to do horrendous things to there biological children. So if you have good or even decent adoptive parents probably should just get over yourself. I know thats what Im doing. Ill deal with the moments of hatred and anger through meditation and self reflection and appreciation of the way the universe has laid out this path for me.
My parents also had another biological child - my true sister, and my mother went on to have other children. I was the only one adopted. I wish you well. If I had the choice - I would have chosen to be brought up by the family who eventually adopted me (like you perhaps).
I think it’s possible to be grateful for an adoption but also recognize the biological trauma of birth separation. In fact it seems the healthiest approach. Gratitude & grief can exist together.
Mattering is Huge and focused 📌 point of Accuracy
I agree the importance of 'mastering to someone' however it is sadly not the experience of adoptees.
The value of mirroring is important too. Also the limbic system stuck from the early relinquishment.
So yes a strong support system that values you will definitely 'lessen' the pain but it does not heal the deep wound.
Yes reunion does not solve it all and that was not the intention of the reunion, but understanding that genetic piece is valuable.
I think some of the Original Primal Wound book is being mis-represented.
Just a new narrative is helpful but not the whole story... just my thoughts.
So some great insights and some pieces a little off... at least for me:p
Children are Brilliant and Believe me they sense and know when Mommy and Daddy aren't "IN LOVE". 💔
I put it down without finishing the first chapter. It basically says all adoptees are messed up. I disagree.
You should have read the whole big to make an informed decision.
Are there any books that deals with the effects adoption has on children of adopted people?
Good question! Not that I know of, that is a road not traveled yet. Possibly this book: amzn.to/3XxJM5g
Would love to hear more on this topic.
You can read his book here: tinyurl.com/a3pvvcna
My birth mother despised me so much she bound her stomach and deformed my ankles and wrists.
I disagree with this man.
These women get rid of their helpless babies because it was inconvenient.
They did have a choice., but were too gutless and weak to look after what they created.
Women who kill or desert their own babies are vile .
What is the title and author of this book? Thanks in advance
Hi. Here it is: The Adoption Constellation by Michael Phillip Grand: amzn.to/3MyjtUd
Was Michael Grand raised by his biological mother?
Yes. What do you think about that?
I wonder for adoptees adopted at an older age and who were originally with their biological parent(s) and were removed for reasons of neglect or abuse that they would not have the experience of the primal wound. I would think so. Which isn’t to mean that their trauma isn’t monumental. It is, only different.
A primal wound is a childhood trauma at any age that left a fracture or wound on the mind or the body.
If they’re in an unhealthy, unstable environment for the first two months and then live in a stable, healthy environment for the next 12 years, they’ll have much worse outcomes than someone who was in a healthy, stable environment for their first two months and then lived in an unstable, unhealthy environment for the next 12 years.
Hi, sorry thankfully I have never found myself in these cases, neither as an adoptive nor as a woman to choose to give away her child because she does not have the possibility of being able to raise it so she decides to give to parents who unfortunately for nature could not, maybe they are wrong for this choice, maybe a woman is better than a girl who decides to interrupt the pregnancy instead? To avoid these problems and trauma to the child you are expecting?
Thank you so much for sharing. I second you're opinion that the "primal wound is every " adoptees Bible " it mirrored every detail of my life . Could you please tell me whether there are any therapists that specialise in adoption only. ? Would anyone know ?
Joe Soll is wonderful. He is an adoptee and works exclusively with adoptees and natural mothers. It is essential for adoptees to have therapy with someone who is also adopted and specializes in adoption.
There is also this group. "This directory includes licensed U.S. mental health professionals who identify as adoptees & work with adoptees/adoptive families in a variety of public & private settings." www.growbeyondwords.com/adoptee-therapist-directory/
@@missmaex3 Thank you so much !
@@cherwynambuter7873 Thank you so much !
@@saralee6818 You're welcome and best wishes to you!
As an adoptee i think people are too soft sometimes. It's annoying when i say i was given up for adoption, and other people get all butt hurt. People always trying to impose their definition of things on other peoples situations.
Yes micro aggressions, check this video out which speaks more to this: ruclips.net/video/DyLTZ7c7Mk4/видео.html
I'm confused by your comment. You mean non adoptees are too weak? Or they shouldn't react sadly when you tell them you were adopted?
@@Zarbon000 He means other people get "butt hurt" because they think the wording of "given up" has negative connotations.
Please do not say Primal wound is every "adoptees Bible" because it is not. Everyone is different.
Thank you for your kind words. I appreciate you watching!
I'm a man, and I felt mansplained by him.
Yes, absolutely! THANK YOU for saying this!
Yes it's not always Mary Poppins as my Biological Father's side hung up the phone on me. I seeked ONLY to find out background on who I was. Japanese side was another issue but Once again "Infidelity" is Bad News All Around. Why do Married Couples Play Around? I don't get it!
Is he a member of the triad himself?? If so, which corner(s?)
Hi Mary Ann, he stayed with his birth mother and was adopted by another father, whom he discovered late in life. Dr. Grand has great respect and regard for the adoption community. He has done amazing work in Canada- opening records for all Adoptees. Check out his 2nd interview here: bit.ly/3fRI3B6
I question his assumption that relinquishment stories told to adoptees are fact. More often than not, they are fiction and/or lies of omission.
I also challenge his assumption that adoption provides a better long-term outcome for a relinquished child. It doesn't- just a different one.
It most certainly doesn't for the mother. The ambiguous loss of maternal/child separation is a death sentence.
Wow. Can he be any more shaming and dismissive of birth fathers, their importance and their lack of rights?
Anecdotally, I've heard of many more mothers rejecting reunion than fathers.
Ok.
My twin sister and I were put up for adoption
My 19 year old mother , although my grandparents had had 100% custody of us, and taken care of us for an entire year (since birth,) decided she did not want us around at all, and apparently thought this would be a good way to get back at her mother. I am not making this up.
We ended up in a horribly violent home
My twin sister got close with my birth mother after reconnecting in our 20s
It was incredibly toxic- too much to say in this post , and both of them died the same way within three months of each other about 10 years ago.
The last time I saw my birth mother was at my twins funeral
It did not go well
The fact that anybody would simplify this subject to this degree is laughable
You cannot reconnect an arm 20 years after it’s been cut off
The stump scabbed over ugly or beautiful.
What kind of idiot writes a book about that ?? Seriously it is so dangerous. Such high expectations put on such a uncertain result
Asking someone to hinge their mental well-being on a person that has already shown that they don’t want to be responsible
What is this person talking about?
Thank you for sharing your pain openly. Being with other adoptees is crucial for your healing process. This is a lifelong journey. You belong with other adoptees who have similar experiences. You are not alone. Join our Free Support Groups here: Adult Adoptee Support Group- Virtual
celia-center-adoption-constellation.mn.co/landing/plans/307068
This man is kind of insensitive with the way he says certain things 😢
Are there two "The Primal Wound" Books?
Yes the second book is Coming Home to Self here: amzn.to/3qx954I
@@Jeanette-icallySpeaking I would LOVE to see a book written analyzing the lives of Moses and Samuel with regard to their having been adoptees, in light of the understanding of the primal wound. I hope someone writes that book someday.
OMG Stop feeding the victim narrative.
1. people often forget that *all* children separate from their parents, a process psychoanalysts call individualization. adoption is one form on a spectrum of biological processes of differentiation & loss & potential gain.
2. this discussion alas confuses “primal,” “biological,” “origins,” “loss,” “story,” “narrative,” & several other concepts. this is all very compassionate, which is lovely. but the discussion is far too messy to advance or critique Verrier.
3. his corrective is just liberal discourse v. “genetic bewilderment” caricature from 1950’s.
4. Verrier didn’t invent this framework; she just reiterated it. i don’t see how her book or phrase “primal wound” is distinct from previous discussions by activists & writers, notably BJ Lifton.
5. people pushing back by defending a primal indelible wound just give the opposite simplification, as in the “adoption = trauma” family preservation line. both sides of the either/or need texture.