Couch 237: Social Rules

I was adopted when I was one week old. Obviously I can't remember anything from that age, but I wonder how it's affected me. I spent 9 months inside another person and then I was born and likely taken from her immediately. This was the 70's at a home for unwed mothers and I'm assuming they separated the babies and mothers after birth, although I was told she was allowed to dress me when my parents came to pick me up and she took a while. I love both my parents and I wouldn't change them being my parents, but I don't view adoption as this 100% rosy thing that people seem to view it as. There has always been a wound there. Something was taken from me. I felt rejected and abandoned. Other kids were cruel when they told me that my mother didn't love me because she gave me up or made comments about my "real" parents. My parents are my real parents. When I was older and found the papers with what they paid the adoption agency, I felt like a commodity, a used car purchased off the lot. I wonder if she remembers me on my birthday. Anyway, your comment made me think of all this.

I'm sorry you had that experience, NP. I can't imagine effectively having a 'receipt' for your existence.

P rarely shut up about the notion of pre-verbal trauma in my early experiences. Whilst I may have some, that certainly wasn't what brought me to her office. I think she was just looking for something she felt half capable of helping with.

I have fallen on both ends of this spectrum, often feeling both things at once. There was a point in my therapy when I really needed him to say that I have PTSD because I needed the validation that what I went through was real/mattered. It also felt like if I didn't have that diagnosis, then I was a fraud and I couldn't talk to people about what happened. Who the hell am I to say he abused me? I'm also very afraid to claim for myself PTSD because I don't want someone to think I'm attention seeking or trying to claim what I went through was awful when maybe it wasn't that bad.

This Johnny Depp thing has really been triggering me around this whole concept. Some Iraq veteran tweeted that living with Depp must be worse than being in Iraq because some psychologist said on the stand she had very bad PTSD. I even hemmed and hawed with my therapist when I brought this up. I told him that living with my ex may not be as bad as war but it sure wasn't a walk in the park. I told him I'm not claiming I do or have ever had a PTSD diagnosis (because he's never been 100% clear on that point and I have such shameful feelings around the topic that I can't clearly ask him), but that this tweet still bugged me. He did tell me that at some point he changed what he bills my insurance as from depression to PTSD, so I guess there's that.

I am confused. Can all adverse experiences be classified as trauma? Relational trauma still entails some events which we would reasonably define as trauma, doesn't it? It's difficult to talk about classification without getting into a useless leader board approach where some traumas are understood to be worse than others, but at the same time trauma has a meaning and it is a particular kind of experience. The concept of "little" traumas sounds like being a bit pregnant. I am not commenting on anyone's personal experiences of trauma or adversity, trying to think through my own understanding of trauma.

I should also add that it's also okay if you now or later feels like "trauma" fits.

I don't understand "big t vs little t" with regards to trauma, and trauma or distressing event, folks deserve to have the support they need.

For example, grief is extremely painful and often for years.

I took a self-defense class in college where the guy teaching the class said that there's nothing lesser about "date rape" because a person who is sexually assaulted in a dark parking lot by a stranger learns to fear dark parking lots and strangers, but a person who is sexually assaulted in a relationship learns to fear being close to people. I was stunned by how much sense that made. (This was also when I banished that phrase from my vocabulary.)

Lately I am becoming much more interested in the effects of adverse/overwhelming events on the nervous system and the body. I am trying to learn how to feel things in my body and to check in with my body when I am reacting in an emotional way. (And I have certainly been through upsetting or sad events where my body doesn't react in that way in the moment or afterward.) I think there is something important to the idea of the body keeping the score, so my personal definition of trauma would involve some aspect of that. It helps to take the "what is real trauma?/is this bad enough?" factor out of it. At the end of the day, I think it's more useful to consider the impact the event had on the person, rather than the specific circumstances of the event.

I agree that it is the impact of our experiences which matters, that's the business of what we are trying to figure out after all. However, the words we use to describe our experiences matter. People seem to be being misled or confused by therapists who describe their experiences as traumatic when they don't feel that the term fits their circumstances. That doesn't seem useful or accurate or client centred.

That's fair. I don't think anybody should ever be asked to adopt a word to describe themselves or their experience that doesn't feel right to them, even if other people might argue that it's accurate.

Sending you love kit.

How are you feeling now?

NP i remember listening to Les brown give a talk -he was also adopted.

His friend told him that as a woman grows a child inside her it’s instinctive she will love him or her but he was given away with love. To give him a chance.
of a better life hen his own birth mother could provide.

I’m dropping therapy with Matthew and have a session with a “spiritual healer” booked for the 17th of june. Maybe one day i’ll stop all of my trying. M didn’t do anything wrong just that the last session had bad internet connection.

First day back at the gym.

There’s other stuff going on but I don’t have the energy to go into it.

Thanks, Lemoncake. I'm not feeling great but I think I am a little better than yesterday.

Nice to see you around, Lemoncake.

I hope you can get some well deserved rest. Are you at work or home at the moment?

Are you still having a lot of suicidal thoughts? Is your T in the loop.

I forgot to mention this earlier but Happy Pride Month, I'm an Asexual and proud to be one.

I think I am finally starting to consider myself part of LGBT+ community.

Hugs to all who want/need.

I am working at the moment. My Pdoc and I discussed this yesterday and we both agreed that it likely would have been a good idea for me to have taken time off last month when my friend died, but that is easier to see in hindsight. But it would have prevented me from being very symptomatic at work and word vomiting all over my boss (twice) and thinking that people/coworkers were after me. EEK. Not my best week at work. Luckily my boss sort of overlooked my craziness! I say craziness because I don't have a better word even though I don't like that word much.

This week and next week our big bosses are here from NY. I was supposed to have my mammogram next week but one of my bosses kind of freaked out that I was going to be gone from work for 2 hours while they were here. So I rearranged my schedule (and luckily the mammogram place had a cancellation for the following week). But I do have the 17th off as a vacation day. My sister is coming into town on the 16th so we will be able to spend the day together. So that is something to look forward to.

I am not having as many suicidal thoughts as previously but I am still having them. I talked to T about it and she didn't seem overly concerned, neither did Pdoc. I kind of think I should have done that residential treatment program that I looked at earlier this year but oh well. T said we could talk this weekend if we need to (my parents will be gone and I don't tend to do well when they go away) so she is trying to be helpful. She is also going to try to help me address my dependence/attachment to my parents. So that will probably be good. Occasionally I think i should go to the hospital but I have managed to stay out of the hospital since October last year. I'm going through a medication change at the moment so we will see how this goes.

Thanks for checking on me. You are a dear.

I will take one! Hugs to you as well, Artie!

Summer school starts next week. I think this may be my last year of teaching in the summer - I want to be off camping instead

I am in the process of losing another friend to cancer (no hugs or thanks or anything - this is not my tragedy) and we have been musing about women centered groups and health and such. In my little group of friends - 4 out of the original 10 have died/are dying of cancer. Reading what men write about women in convents etc is appalling and I am having trouble finding women centered studies by women. Still interesting info on some parts of it.

You've piqued my curiosity. What do men write about women in convents?

My (former, short term) old male gyno told me (when i said i lived like a nun) that nuns have more gyno issues because they dont go in for checkups as often as other none-nun women.

Dont go getting gored by a bison.

Tomorrow manages to be both the one-month anniversary of my mother’s death and four weeks to the day since her funeral.

I am in a really terrible place.

Hugs, if wanted, @@.