Powerlessness and control

For many adoptees, it is easy to fall into despair and feel powerless over circumstances that emotionally healthy people can overcome with relative ease. This is rooted in our separation experience, when we felt powerless, helpless and hopeless. Paradoxically, we can become obsessed with controlling other parts of our lives, those things and events that we can control. This is conflict waiting to happen.

Depression

Often, depression can come from the sheer exhaustion of maintaining pretense (being in denial). No matter how much love and care we are given, the truth is that we are (and will always be) someone else's children. Yet we exhaust ourselves emotionally, pretending otherwise because we believe it will ensure our survival and prevent another abandonment.

We also expend a lot of energy fantasizing about our natural mothers, and a lot of energy burying our authentic selves in favor of people-pleasing. All these things take a great deal of energy yet offer little reward -- fertile ground for depression.


Trust

One of our most common problems is that of trust. The original disintegration of the mother/child entity can literally destroy a baby's nascent sense of trust. Once lost, it can never be recovered. Only a tentative sense of trust can be painstakingly built by the adoptive family, yet it will always be difficult and sometimes impossible. Again paradoxically, we tend to casually trust anyone and everyone. It is when deep trust is required, as in intimacy, we tend to fall short.

Abandonment

Abandonment is the most common issue of the adoptee. Despite the true circumstances of the separation from our natural mothers, we experienced this emotionally as abandonment. Even with later knowledge of those circumstances, the early emotional experience of abandonment never leaves us. Relationship troubles abound. Other issues such as trust, identity, low self-esteem and control compound these troubles.

Many people have abandonment issues. For adoptees, however, abandonment is not just painful. It can feel like annihilation.

"Only eyes washed by tears can see clearly." - Louis Mann

Staying in denial, while it may be a refuge, hurts everyone involved. Although seeing the truth also hurts, don't parentless children deserve what they truly need? How can society continue pretending that the smiles are genuine simply because it is easier than acknowledging the underlying problems?

For those who genuinely care about these children and want to take that first step toward seeing clearly, start with one of Betty Jean Lifton's books, such as Journey of the Adopted Self or Nancy Verrier's The Primal Wound. They offer insight into the issues of adoptees, adoptive parents, and of mothers who have lost children to adoption. Such knowledge and understanding can open our minds and hearts to alternatives that are even better than adoption.

Smiling adoptees

Despite all these traumas and issues, adoptees smile. We smile to hide a world of hurt that neither we nor the rest of the world want to face. We smile because the world needs us to smile. They need to believe they are doing the right thing for us, to forget those silly "issues," and call us "happy." By smiling, we help them do that.

Next time you encounter a "happy" and "grateful" adoptee who had "wonderful" adoptive parents and a "wonderful" life, look a little closer. Play a game with yourself and see if you can recognize anything you've read here.