i guess we don't know what your time was like in the hospital. we don't know how much time the nurses were able to spend holding you and soothing you and touching you and stuff like that. i guess it would have been a bit distressing 'cause babies show preferences for their mothers right then, so i guess you would have known that the different nurses were different... when a baby cries it also tends to set off other babies. don't know how many other babies were in the nursery and whether some of them (or whether you) cried a lot... i'm not sure how much of an impact that would have had... not bonding particularly well with your adoptive mother would have been hard... and that would have affected the quality of the attachment etc etc etc...

i think that a baby can feel distressed before it has words for its distress and before it knows precisely what the problem is. that distress... is a brain circuit, basically. a hebbian learning principle is that 'neurones that fire together wire together'. if you spend a lot of time in a distressed state that isn't adequately regulated (by (m)others) then that distress circuit is strengthening... and one can surely experience that later in life.

thats kind of how i conceptualise what is wrong with me. part of the story at any rate. between the ages of 7 and 14 and beyond... i had that distress circuit running every night when i was trying to get off to sleep. it would start up during the day too. often i didn't know what i was distressed about. didn't know what was wrong. but didn't know how to feel better and nobody was there to help me soothe it.

how does one change?

my current theory... is that feeling the distress (a little) in the presence of a benovelent and soothing other (ones therapist)... helps. then when that distress occurs to you when she isn't there... you try and remember her soothing words / actions / gestures / face... and manage to soothe it that way. time sweetie... takes some time for the neurones that disrupt the circuit to wire together...