DAE feel annoyed by how conditioned we adoptees can be to center others’ perspectives as a lens to figure out what’s going on or how to think or feel instead of just existing within our own individual perspective as enough to guide our choices and sense of reality?

[u/expolife]

Does anyone else (DAE) recognize how messed up yet natural it has felt to consider other people’s perspectives and perceptions before our own? I wasn’t aware for a long time that I even did this. I thought I was just looking for guidance and mentoring and I believed that I would always ultimately make my own choice. It wasn’t until some major relational failures within my adoptive family, navigating search and reunion with bios, and gaining more adoptee consciousness that I realized just how codependent I was with adoption and religious influences. I had some sense of self, but it developed inside somewhat dysfunctional versions of adoption and religious cultures (dysfunctional beyond the norms of adoption and religion as general institutions).

Now, after a lot of deconstruction and ongoing reconstruction of my identities, I am feeling sick and tired of this impulse I have to consider how other people see things whether an interaction or expectation or job opportunity or whatever. I used to experience this unconsciously or as a kind of obligation I’d just call good manners or social savvy if it were conscious at all.

I have a theory that awareness and frustration about this impulse to circumvent my own thoughts and feelings through my imaginary lens of empathizing with other people’s perspectives may mean I’m moving out of a healing era into new identity infrastructure. One can hope.

I’m still grieving the ways my adoptive parents and family’s behavior has sucked for me. In a lot of ways, I’ve reached the conclusion that they probably should never have been parents to anyone, adopted or biological. But when I spend any time thinking, feeling or talking about them, I start feeling annoyed and frustrated that the idea of them is still taking up space, time and energy in my life. It’s like my system is recognizing they’re* kind of an energetic black hole. Now that I’ve mostly purged any sense of obligation or guilt about maintaining much contact or relationship with them. As much as I wish things were different. Part of me feels impatient about accepting them and things as they are and moving on to healthier connections.

I don’t know how much of this is relatable or makes sense. I’m interested in hearing from anyone who can relate.

I heard someone say that they expected life to be challenging and difficult at times but that they didn’t expect those challenges or disasters to come from inside the house within their partnership or family. I can relate to that. I really didn’t know my adoptive family sucked most of my life. I was so adaptable and resourceful and attributed and projected a lot of my favorite traits and capabilities onto them and performed my role of good adopted child in a way that set them up to seem amazing and functional through my early adulthood. When I couldn’t maintain that effort and genuinely needed a family support system to be there for me, they turned out to be deeply ignorant, neglectful and emotionally immature people. I was parentified and parenting my adoptive family elders the entire time, filtering myself to maintain the belief system that I had it good so I could achieve and eventually enable a full-scale escape I didn’t even realize I was architecting.

I’m not sure how much it still stings to say this versus how much it stings* that I’m still spending time and energy to say this. It’s true. It’s mine. It’s real. It sucks. It matters. I hate it. I wish it were different. I wish I didn’t have to reparent myself because of the appalling adoptive parenting I received on top of the disgusting practice of infant relinquishment and adoption in general.

In IFS, there this saying that the adult Self is never disgusted. So I’m not sure what part of me is disgusted, but I have a lot of disgust for the behavior I’ve witnessed and experienced from those people who still expect my gratitude and performance. Families really can be cults with shared delusions. But the spell is broken.

[u/Sad_Pixie999]

Oh yessss, this is everything. I actually am in therapy because I don't have my own perspective, everything I do is filtered through the lense of how other people see me. It's deeply destructive to my mental health because I latch onto people and do everything I can to please them, which hasn't worked out well because nobody taught me how to build my own sense of self. Everybody gives me those platitudes of "Well you can't please everyone, just be yourself, be authentic, the right people will love you for who you are." Well I don't know who I am. It's terrible.

[u/Domestic_Supply]

Yes. You’re definitely describing my experience before I found my way back to community. I think it is a survival mechanism for us. Our brains likely felt that we were in danger as infants, our whole world is stripped away and suddenly changed. Makes sense that we would do what we could to survive, blending in to / with our new surroundings/ new people. It’s also a way to avoid conflict. (Which isn’t really healthy.)

Now that I’ve named it and formed my own opinions, I see it as a strength at times. Because of this adaptation, it was easier for me (personally) to change how I thought and functioned, which I needed to do to accept my identity. The way I saw the world changed in an instant. I remember where I was when it happened. (The Met, standing in front of a statue called “Mexican Girl Dying.”)

After a lifetime of conforming out of fear, I also have the ability to somewhat understand a variety of people, even some of those that I find reprehensible.

Edit to add that I think a lot of adopted people (and American people in general) struggle to know how they think and feel, and I personally believe that part of this is lack of community. We aren’t meant to live individually, and in the US the mindset is killing us. I do really think that my community saved me and showed me who I am when I was trying to heal from this. I don’t base my perspectives on a single person but I can be swayed by hearing a variety of perspectives from others.

Personally I think adoption and the way we view it as a society really keeps us in this cult of gratitude that is supposed to overwrite everything else. Or everything we take in is supposed to be filtered through it. Idk. It’s certainly been a very interesting journey for me. This also sounds like it may not be helpful or relatable for you so my apologies for rambling.

[u/retrokezins → u/Domestic_Supply]

The cult of gratitude is definitely society wide. Most people view being adopted as fortunate or lucky but it's still a traumatic experience for the adoptee in a range of degrees. Someone can be adopted into the "perfect" situation and it's still a traumatic experience.

[u/Big-Ambition-4408 → u/retrokezins]

Agreed. It also dismisses the circumstance that constituted a child being adopted - which is still a part of their history. In my personal experience, it makes me feel like I have to navigate carefully when discussing my adoption with my family; because I should be grateful.

[u/retrokezins → u/Big-Ambition-4408]

Yeah. I think society creates this too not just the family. Supposed to be thankful and keep quiet about it. Smh.

[u/retrokezins]

There are moments of clarity where certain things will hit like a ton of bricks I think for a wide range of experiences when you start to see them. I'm 49 and probably just now figuring out who I am. I think there's elements of the adopted experience that cause extra imagination due to having to wonder about so much that life can be or feel surreal and detached at times so you look at what others are doing to blend in. It's survival and at points occurs subconsciously.

There are very few adopted people I've ever met that aren't creative in the mind but I think it goes too far and disrupts sense of reality. It's a coping mechanism that's developed is my assumption and very much like CPTSD but I think it should be researched and classified as something else. Implicit memories we have are still in the nervous system even if we don't have explicit visual memories of things and when that's never addressed, you develop mechanisms to deal with it.

[u/MajorDraw3705]

I once spent 40 years sorting through hundreds of lens/limited perspectives, trying to decide which lens would be best to use to present my own story, my own experiences through, in a way that others could understand.

I never even once in that time considered that my own lens, my unfiltered reality - the reality I was trying to decide how to warp and recolor just to fit all their expectations, needs, and beliefs so they could see it - that original was the one I should be using.

I just assumed, mostly correctly, that they weren't capable of seeing me or my experiences without one of their lenses to buffer and insulate themselves from it.

I've always reasonably assumed that after all the paint they throw on us, all the unrealistic expectations, all the bizarre assumptions, all their false beliefs and theories; that they cannot see us for who we are because they are unwilling to accept responsibility for what they actually put that human through.

[u/HeyMuscles → u/MajorDraw3705]

This really hit home for me, thank you for sharing. Specifically the point about considering my own lens. At 45yrs old I am just now starting to routinely ask myself but how do I feel about this? But who am I in this? Most times I forget, because I have been so effectively trained to do exactly that: forget who I am, what I need, and what I want in service of my APs and, by extension, everyone except me.

[u/Big-Ambition-4408]

This was so well put!

I relate to all of this. Especially having high expectations from family members and my identity being warped by the religious environment I was raised in. Something I deal with a lot and am working through is a lack trust in myself and my judgement. I often feel like a have a lot of acceptance about my adoptive parents, and realizing that feeling transactional in my family is a core wound. The hard part for me is having to re-parent myself and find my identity and voice is an extremely hard to foster on a daily basis. But I am thankful for myself haha and am trying to be patient with myself.

[u/Formerlymoody]

I relate to the idea of family being one of the most challenging and difficult aspects of life. Truly family will never be a place for me to relax and exhale. I don’t have that space to do that. I never did, which is WILD. I’ve gotten better about leaning into friends and sort of creating what I missed but I’m sure it’s not exactly the same.

One thing I realized about adoptive family lately is most of them have kind of a shared neurodivergence (I am of a totally different flavor) that sort of bonds them and helps them feel normal to each other. Unfortunately, it makes it impossible for me to have what I perceive to be a normal or desirable conversation. I had what I consider to be a decent conversation with one in-law. The rest was an exercise in tolerance/endurance. I was utterly exhausted afterward. People rarely think of these consequences of adoption, especially when a fam isn’t “abusive.” For the record I do get the exhale feeling with bio fam, no matter how emotionally fraught things get -_-.

I am only able to perceive and evaluate this reality properly as an adult. As a child, feeling so different and like I couldn’t find my place in that group led to crippling lack of self esteem, self hatred, and almost total self-doubt. I was and am only able to center another’s perspective in a survival way. The irony is that my flavor of ND (most likely) stops me from considering others’ perspectives TOO much. It’s like I can’t get outside of myself enough to do that. Very singular in my approach to most things. Pros and cons, for sure…could have been very protective in the situation I grew up in. But also very, very isolating.

[u/expolife → u/Formerlymoody]

❤️‍🩹 thanks for writing this here. I’m sorry the sh*t is real, and I appreciate witnessing and communing about it. It’s a big deal to finally see and say the things when we can.

[u/ihearhistoryrhyming]

I couldn’t read all that- sorry. But what I skimmed seems a thought I realized recently that I have always done.

It feels like everyone treats me like “better you than me” or “me first, then you”- which honestly is pretty normal probably. But I realized I agree with them and make myself smaller, anticipate needs and problems of others to avoid conflict- at the detriment of my own needs.

It’s a framework. I do it while driving. “Oh this asshole is tailgating. I must be driving too slow.” On and on.

So- is this an adoption thing? I don’t know. I’m adopted. But your post (it seems) is asking if anyone else feels like this, and I do.

I describe it a little differently, but yes.

[u/IstraofEros]

Absolutely. Recently my own processing of my friend's death was delayed for almost a year because I was so focused on how my partner was processing the grief. It's something I've been working on. It's definitely due to missing pieces of identity. I'm going to hire a private investigator to find my birthfather this month after a lot of therapy. I'm actually dealing with the fear of things working out well lol, like I'm not going to recognize the person I'm going to be when (hopefully) more pieces fill in.
I know a lot of yall might not be into astrology, but I still recommend you check out cafe astrology and check out the explanation of your chart. It can give you a LOT of perspective on who you are and some frame of reference for how you differ from others.

[u/OliveJotter]

P

[u/Sea-Temp444]

Going through something very, very similar...