“Empathy is heartbreaking for the virtuous adoptive parent who has given all the love and care and hugs they can to a child that continues to struggle with anger management issues. Separation of a child from its mother increases the risk of various deep-rooted forms of psychopathology based on attachment theory; problems that may continue to manifest themselves in adolescence and continue through to adulthood.” Judith Land
“Our self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment and determines what we become. A belief in a positive self-image is the cornerstone of all the positive changes that take place in a person. Anger clouds our judgment and causes us to respond wildly based on our emotions. Anger is a negative emotion that is toxic to the body that interferes with its harmonious functioning and balances by negatively affecting our heart, immune system, digestion and hormone production. If you’re an adoptee who has experienced physical and psychological responses to anger that is disruptive to the natural flow of energy in your body, learn the principles of anger management to change the image of self to create a positive outlook and you will modify the personality, human behavior and the outcome.” Judith Land, Adoptee and Author of the book Adoption Detective
Every adopted child has feelings they can’t fully comprehend, including grief, denial, abandonment, low self-esteem and anger. There are a thousand reasons why adoption puts them in an irritable and irascible mood. Knowing that they were rejected by their parents and discarded by family torments them and no amount of external love can overcome this internal torture and humiliation. It’s almost impossible to emerge unscathed from any situation that makes a child available for adoption and every adopted child has experienced loss, or they wouldn’t be available for adoption. Their lives are complicated by painful backstories and gaps in their life’s story that causes emotional suffering. Traumatized by the experience many of them need help learning to understand their emotions—and eventually, how to deal with them. They are hurt by the adoption experience and confused by the lack of a true self-identity. They sense that something is intrinsically wrong without always knowing why. They are grieved by the difficulties they are forced to endure without ever understanding the reasons for the lifelong banishment they have received. A conscious awareness that their life’s journey has been coldly interrupted leaves many adoptees feeling overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness, annoyance, and displeasure triggered by a deep-seated internal fear of persecution, anger, and expressive behavior hostile to others.
They feel out of place when a true self-identity based on solid connections to the past is missing. They are angry knowing they were bartered for and given to strangers for a fee. They long to shed the label of a permanent child in need of lifelong supervision and protection and yearn for a curative breakthrough reality that will finally make sense out of their disrupted life stories. They view themselves as impassioned victims of an annoying maltreatment and emotional torture because they have been abandoned by family and antagonized by those in authority. With a teary eye, a broken heart and no end in sight, they become hapless victims of the unmerciful and cumulative psychological effects of adoption syndrome and post traumatic stress. They are forced to suffer a mental irritability characterized by a lack of sovereign control and heartbreaking social indignation. They endure the pain of the refugee, disconnected, abandoned and lied to about the reasons for the major deviation in their life’s trajectory. They feel disoriented, alone and autonomous, disengaged and isolated from their natural place in the world, geographic niche, social customs, and cultural group.
Lacking a true self-identity, feeling insecure, and existentially uncertain of their place in the world, many adoptees suffer low self-esteem, which is the single most important emotional gauge of future happiness, success, feelings of well being, confidence and positive assurances. The loss of a meaningful self identity and separation from their natural inherited place in the world leaves them in a frenzied mental state, disoriented and crazed with anxiety knowing that they were forced to accept new ethnic and cultural traditions, cuisine, religious faith and denomination, and the language assigned to them. When they eventually discover that social workers, lawyers, clergy, and adoptive parents acting in collaboration to conceal their real identity and the names of their parents have lied to them, and the government even refuses to acknowledge their frustration, they become increasingly incensed and bad tempered about what happened to them.
Judith Land
adopción | adoção | Annahme | 採用 | 양자 | pag-aampon | υιοθεσία | adopsjon
Adoption Detective: Memoir of an Adopted Child 
My niece is 12 this year and back to court we go for her to finally be told of allllll of the details. She has no idea we exist or how hard we tried and have never given up the fight. We barely survived it then and I just hope we all do for the next chapter that will divide our ” life’s timeline ” once again. Before court, during court, the aftermath of court …. oh Dear God …. I just close my eyes and shake my head.
Love isn’t measurable in weeks and months…
Pingback: Written by: Judith Land – (Thankfully) | LOVEFORGRACE.ORG
Lots of good points in this post Judith. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Reblogged this on One Woman's Choice and commented:
An author and an adoptee sharing her thoughts…
being rejected is NOT the most common reason for adoption. That is a stigma of adoption that needs to be eradicated.
Thanks for commenting…”being rejected is NOT the most common reason for adoption. That is a stigma of adoption that needs to be eradicated.” You raise two interesting points…
(1) Common reasons for an adoption: Adoption happens in a variety of forms for a diversity of reasons—including nefarious, forgivable, warranted, and praiseworthy. Many ethical issues arise in connection with the procurement of adoptable children, as well as their fair distribution. Should adoptees be treated like scarce commodities and luxuries and be distributed based on the adopted parents ability to pay? Should adoptive parents exhibiting destructive behavior, such as alcoholism and poor health, be penalized? Should married couples and the corporate leader receive priority over the recluse or individuals with alternative life-styles? What are the consequences of giving one race, religion, region, or nation favored status and preferential treatment? These are many of the questions that are raised by the relinquishment of a child by parents unable or unwilling to accept responsibility for their child and the generosity of strangers willing to exert leadership and authority.
(2) Eradication of the stigma of adoption: There has been a sigificant correction in the social pendulum and a societal change in the consciousness of right and wrong in recent years. The reduction in the negative stigmas of adoption, single parenting, premarital sex, contraception, abortion and other issues are worthy of attention, but the stigma of adoption certainly hasn’t disappeared entirely—I’m curious to know how other adoptees feel about the stigma of adoption because our emotional response to this topic and what it feels like to be an adoptee is ultimately what is at the core of our inner being that causes so many adoptees concern and frustration.
You raise an excellent point. To stigmatize adoption is a negative way of shaming, embarrassing, and spoiling the reputation of others. A stigma is a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person. When someone feels shame symptoms consist of blushing, confusion of mind, downward cast eyes, slack posture, and lowered head; noted observations of shame affect that are observed in human populations worldwide. A condition of shame may also be communicated externally for the purpose of exposing, dishonoring, humiliating, and disgracing others. We have seen the stigma of treating unwanted pregnancy as a deplorable act largely recede from the public consciousness in recent decades. A newfound respect for single parenting has surfaced and unmarried pregnant women are no longer shrouded in so much secrecy but disrespect and disapproval for behavior viewed by some elements of society as disreputable will likely never completely disappear. Making judgments about single parenting and adoption and other complicated social and personal circumstances that are self-inflicted doesn’t carry the same degree of humiliation it once did but vestiges of prejudice and loathing still exist in all societies. When an individual judges others and intentionally shames and hurts them by dragging their reputations through the mud it carries the same stigma and degree of hatred, disrespect, consciousness of wrong, culpability, and humiliation that it always has. As with any social pendulum, adoption stigmas are declining but in the words of “themermaidstale” and supported by the opinions of the majority, it is a social stigma that needs to be eradicated.
Pingback: They Said…. | The Life Of Von
Reblogged this on Bleeding Hearts: Uprooted and Transplanted by Adoption.
Anger was a forbidden emotion in my adoptive home, it was repressed…..to explode in physical wildness and risk taking away from the home……but repressed and anxious in the home.
Having lost my birth mother at an age before words, and thanks to the culture of “They’ll forget about It! “, combined with the omnipotence of a 2 year old, I was afraid to be angry with anyone or ‘they might die too.’ As in, disappear. Not helped by father dying a year later, and 3 older sisters shipped to New Zealand, which might as well have been Heaven, for all I understood either.
“It must be MY fault! ”
Ultimately, repressed anger can morph into clinical depression, and eventually anxiety too, possibly stemming from the autonomy and disengagement. You write in the third person, but I can only respond as an I, and inevitably some of your concepts don’t “fit”….ermmmmm….. I could go on!
I will read more of your blogs, and look out for your book….Thanks!
I witnessed uncontrolled anger in my home as a child. My adoptive father yelled and screamed at my mother and I for the slightest transgressions or deviations from protocols. If he didn’t like the food she cooked for dinner, he would toss his entire plate of food at the dining room wall and break the fine china. When leaving the church parking lot on Sunday morning he would honk loudly and express his annoyance with everyone blocking his way. Clerks, waitresses, contractors and customers all felt the wrath of his ill temper. Anger was never suppressed, whether in public or private. It always amazed me that he would recover quickly, calm down, and then be nice again after his emotional outbursts.
Anger is a reactionary emotion that is usually covering something else up. Most people claim to never get angry whether from old repressed childhood trauma or living in overly stressed conditions today. The normal emotional response to anger is to attack. Anger is a way of empowering ourselves to overcome weakness and feelings of helplessness. Anger is aggressive, expansive, and explosive and manifested by being confrontational with others. Fear wants to flee, disgust to reject, and acceptance to incorporate, but when our expectations aren’t met and we’re full of disappointments our frustrations overflow and then we get angry. When we repress anger we don’t always respond to reason. It’s as pointless to tell someone with anger issues to calm down as it is to tell someone with acrophobia to enjoy the view of the canyon from the edge of a cliff when they have a primal fear of heights. The emotion of anger is inherently natural in human evolution but anger is discouraged in polite society and when it is repressed anger will wreak havoc on your happiness, your relationships, and your overall life. It’s far better to scream into your pillow or in your car, to see how fast you can run, and toss a big rock in a ditch than attempt to suppress feelings that are congenital and naturally inbred. Judith
I am an adoptee, I was born June 7,1967,I did dna to find out who family was,I found my real Birth Father whom died in August and I was also rejected by his kids, my half siblings because of what he did fooled around with my Birthmother, making triplets, worked as a NYPD Officer, was or had been married, had a few like kids and he either knew or didn’t know my BM had triplets and one died at birth. My Bm had 11-16 kids all adopted from NY Foundling, I did did DNA to find them and tell them I love them, I grew up in a good home,I had a good life but I won’t let the rejection define who I am, Ever.
Read through most of the comments. I go on emotional roller coasters around the adoption of my birth son, natural ones. Is he alive or no? (I pray yes) Happy childhood or no? (I dream yes) Dating as a middle age woman, I’ve come across adopted men, with chips on their shoulders about either their birth or adoptive parents & it frightens me to the core. I try to have a discussion, perhaps to get some personal insight from the other side, and am usually cut short. I have few outlets, very few understand, even fewer want to speak of it. I want to search, I’m afraid of the results. I’m afraid to not try, I’m afraid of being too late. The issue that hurts/offends me the most is when uneducated persons say “adoption is the easy way out” It’s far from the easy way. I’ve spent 40 years praying/hoping I made the right decision for him & myself, never knowing for sure. Keeping him in my mind & how I may have done him wrong in doing so, raising two other children always thinking of him at similar stages. Keeping him in mind as I disciplined my children, was I doing right? Was he done right by? I’ve always Loved him, does he hate me? My heart is torn. My fears magnified. 4 decades & I still cry.
“I have few outlets, very few understand, even fewer want to speak of it.” Have you heard of Bravelove.org? It’s a webpage/support page for birth mothers.
Marcie, I pray you find answers which will hopefully bring you peace.