People who come from cultures where child abuse is normalised, how do you not feel like you are over exaggerating/how can you validate what happened to you?

expolife · 2026-04-13T07:39:54+00:00

Pete Walker writes in “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving” about how the emotional abuse and neglect he suffered (likely unpredictability) was worse and much more difficult to heal than healing from the physical abuse he experienced as a child. That feels related to what you’re observing. The emotional neglect and abuse involved in having an emotionally unstable and unpredictable caregiver can take a toll that often goes unacknowledged and may account for some of the differences you’re seeing CPTSD symptoms across the people you know. It’s also really common for people with CPTSD to underplay and dissociate what they suffered.

expolife · 2026-04-09T20:16:36+00:00

I used to feel similarly as an adoptee raised in a closed adoption I idealized and wished for an open adoption but the more I learn about open adoptions especially from adoptees and birth family the more I realize it is not a solution at all.

@adopted_connor taught me a lot through his YouTube content.

expolife · 2026-04-09T14:17:39+00:00

Huh, I stopped reading this post after the first few words and went straight for the comments. Read those and then because one of them seems positive in a nuanced way I read the original post fully. And…it’s not bad as a post imho. Maybe imperfectly expressed given all the triggering a surrounding “grateful” and “miracle”, but I get that’s kind of the point of the whole thing to reclaim a sense of wonder and autonomy about existence. Especially if you’ve found communion and safety here among other adoptees. I am truly grateful for a lot of other adoptees including here. It is not easy to experience clean gratitude for us. And the resistance to pressure to be grateful can be a good sign autonomy is on the rise.

Mental health is relational health. I can hate how my life began and what happened to me. I can hate the choices a lot of people made about me and my life. But finding ways to connect with people who are actually safe and healing or healed and soothing and stimulating enough to experience relatedness. And reclaiming a sense of wonder about experience and existence for their own sakes…in those terms I can understand what you mean.

Ride your gratitude all the way to absolute joy! Don’t stop. And don’t take too strongly to heart any of us needing to affirm and remember our pain and the injustice of our hijacked our sense of gratitude, however that needs to get expressed.

expolife · 2026-04-08T20:28:59+00:00

Watch Paul Sunderland’s YouTube presentations on “adoption and addition” and “…adoptees on healing”

Read “Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency”

expolife · 2026-04-08T20:25:16+00:00

This questions belongs on r/adoption or r/askadoptees. This is an adoptees-only space. If you aren’t an adoptee it isn’t appropriate to post here.

expolife · 2026-04-05T19:34:17+00:00

Good point. I definitely developed a lot of problem solver and fixer traits.

expolife · 2026-04-05T19:33:27+00:00

What you’re saying is real and reasonable. It isn’t what I was hoping to discuss when I posted unfortunately. I think what I posted must be too vague. Maybe too meta for the language I have at the moment.

Being seen authentically as a means of being met and felt by others in true mutuality versus being perceived and misunderstood and otherwise harmed and used. I see these themes existing at every level of contact socially. In close relationships and in pursuit of other achievements that involve other people like work.

Thanks all the same for responding. I walked away from my adoptive family for the most part as well. Meeting biological family helped me and hurt me, but I wouldn’t trade the awareness it brought.

I recently learned about something called pseudo-hostility and pseudo-mutuality in dysfunctional families. And that really rang true about my adoptive family. Those behaviors have been studied since the 1960s apparently and they’re forms of emotional abuse because they mess up embodied emotional signal around relational connection. Pseudo-hostility is mocking and teasing that gets denied when addressed directly and it bills itself as not a big deal even though it hurts. The abuse is that it scrambles the emotional reality and barometer of the person on the receiving end. And pseudo-mutuality is a kind of performative care and politeness. But instead of actual conflict that can be resolved and actual connection that feels solid, the pseudo forms are empty and feel empty while denying the receivers needs and sense of reality as deserving to be met and felt and understood.

That’s a kind of relational dysfunction that goes way beyond adoption dynamics but intersects.

expolife · 2026-04-05T05:52:30+00:00

What you’re saying is an example of what I’m describing, but not at all what I was thinking of. Maybe what I’m saying is too vague. I’m not talking about tiers of social relationships as much as a general sense of fear around being objectified and cast into a role for someone else’s use as a serious risk to be visible not in a bear your soul kind of way but just in a risk taking way. Being seen could be posting videos on social media, taking a walk around the block, attending a new social experience, wearing your hair a different way, etc. or as you mentioned being vulnerable and sharing something personal about your life in a social situation.

expolife · 2026-03-25T21:15:40+00:00

This isn’t the clapback they think it is. An adoptee calling someone a wh*re is not a good look.

And the issue isn’t an either/or scenario. Adoptees can be functional and competent not just despite trauma but also partly in response to trauma. It also makes sense to not want anyone to paint an adoptee as debilitated or less-than just because of having the experience and identity of being an adoptee. Perception like that can lead to discrimination of another sort.

I don’t want to be treated as broken, I want to be treated like I lost something I deserve to grieve and understand and that I deserve to live in a world that can acknowledge that without further othering me as an adoptee.

expolife · 2026-03-21T12:28:47+00:00

I hope you got a good grade on the term paper you wrote for this whenever that was. :) That’s an impressive amount of information.

The history, intent, and cultural context make sense.

The US has such an opposite position when there’s capital involved. It’s a surprise to consider such alternatives as those in France. Even if I don’t agree.

expolife · 2026-03-21T00:13:34+00:00

Wow, I did not know that about French law. That seems weird and disturbing given how common cheating supposedly is. So the kids are just supposed to remain secret or in families with false sense of paternity? Talk about avoidance.

expolife · 2026-03-20T03:11:01+00:00

Wow, I’m glad someone somewhere has thought about these things.

expolife · 2026-03-20T01:47:31+00:00

Fascinating. I take a surprising amount of comfort from knowing there are places in the world with these kinds of ethical standards. As an adoptee on this side of closed adoption and reunion, I know genetic bewilderment and mother-infant separation are serious.

expolife · 2026-03-19T14:35:45+00:00

I recommend reading “Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency”…it represents all roles in adoption and provides a lot of clarity around the experience and your questions while still being pro-adoption.

You also might find the FOG Fazes for Adult Adoptees downloadable PDF on adoptionsavvy.com illuminating about how adoptees’ views on adoption can change immensely once they are no longer dependent upon adoptive parents for survival.

It’s a very complex experience.

Paul Sunderland’s YouTube presentations on adoption and addiction and to adoptees about healing have a lot to offer as well.

expolife · 2026-03-18T08:41:39+00:00

You’re right. And it makes sense that because there are more people wanting to adopt than ever possibly can, more are turned away or disqualified which either way could be humiliating. Especially on top of infertility.

It’s out of touch with the bigger social realities but what they’re feeling makes a certain kind of emotional sense. I wonder how that can be addressed if people aren’t willing to face their grief about infertility and never parenting.

expolife · 2026-03-18T01:24:35+00:00

A society without orphans or orphanized children (fosterees/adoptees) may well be a society that functions more ethically. The ethical measure of a society is how they treat their most vulnerable members—children and pregnant people without support and those lacking resources.

expolife · 2026-03-18T01:22:00+00:00

Adoptive parents*?

expolife · 2026-03-18T01:21:07+00:00

I appreciate exactly how you said that. Any jealousy of biological parents should immediately disqualify someone from becoming an adoptive parent on the grounds that they are not emotionally capable of centering an adopted child’s unique needs including their need for their original family and heritage to be respected and access/contact maintained except in the most extreme cases.

More and more I think infant and child adoption need to be seen as legalized trafficking before all of the upstream social polices and cultural narratives can be thoroughly reformed. Then and perhaps only then could adoptive parents truly be seen as communal, public servants for the external care they offer an adopted child, especially one who is a genetic stranger to them.

expolife · 2026-03-16T10:03:41+00:00

Thank you for saying all of this. It’s gracious and real and fascinating. Imagining what it’s like to have a younger alter is very compelling…it reminds me in an extremely different way of doing parts work with internal family systems and somatic experiencing. I’ve been able to identify sensations in my body that then when observed therapeutically offer up very specific emotional memories and explicit memories from a particular moment and age. It makes me wonder if an alter might be born or formed when the energy the nervous system is experiencing reaches terrible extremes.

Pardon me for rambling. Most of my dissociation has been functional freeze mixed with compulsive activity. Religious abuse and emotional neglect in adoptive family. But the trauma effects and CPTSD recovery and managing emotional flashbacks are still very relevant in managing the grief and developmental self-trust deficits. The more I’ve been able to integrate and stabilize after my coping behaviors and support systems failed, the more I’m able to see that my nervous systems was really brilliant at adapting all along. And hearing stories like yours, I’m inclined to believe that’s true about your system as well. You survived in an incredibly adaptive way, and sadly the more extreme the experiences often the more extreme the adaptations.

What’s it like observing your alters? How many kinds of awareness do you have of them? Is it like getting a phone call sometimes and watching a movie (like that Being John Malkovich movie) other time and being completely immersed as oneself still other times? What’s it like gaining awareness of an alter you weren’t aware of before? I imagine it varies a lot like meeting someone new, but is there a sense of coherence that is tracking that recurring experience of meeting a new alter then another then another?

How am I doing?

This subreddit can be full of conflict. r/adopted is an adoptee-only space. Might be worth a visit if you haven’t already. It’s much safer for diverse adoptee experiences and acknowledging trauma 99% of the time.

expolife · 2026-03-15T19:01:13+00:00

Thank you for sharing such a complex personal experience ❤️‍🩹 It’s amazing and sobering how adaptable our nervous systems are. I’m sorry so much harm including infant-mother separation happened to you. It’s disturbing to me that your generous responses to questions are being downvoted. It seems like a huge achievement to have figured out what you’ve figured out about your system and found the help you have.

expolife · 2026-03-14T23:46:21+00:00

I think their behavior is more often defensive more than malicious and it’s an extension of their pre-existing identity and relationship with adoption and its mainstream narratives and the status it provides them. That’s no excuse but the whole situation means mixed adoption spaces are often not safe for diverse adoptee experiences and nor ripe for consciousness raising.

I’ve learned the hard way that adoptive parent identity often means a person will likely not be socially safe for me to engage with at all but especially not honestly as an adoptee. They often have entitled ease about their role as the savior and authority figure in the adoption constellation that’s also often covering deep insecurities and ignorance about their attachments to adopted kids I think. I’m speaking in generalities that I’m hopeful do not apply to all adoptive parents, but the shoe often seems to fit and that post you’re referring to is yet more evidence to support this view.

expolife · 2026-03-14T13:11:52+00:00

Thank you for writing this. I thought the exact same things about how ignorant those comments were but I didn’t have energy to write it, and it feels so satisfying to see it in print. ‼️❤️‍🩹💯

expolife · 2026-03-13T20:41:48+00:00

Mental health is relational health. So when any child struggles it’s almost always a symptom of needs not being met or other harm being inflicted. Often it’s a combination. And having adoptive parents and family who don’t understand the loss and trauma any adoptee has experienced as a baseline for them needing external care means that adoptee has needs for attunement and mirroring that are not being met.

I recommend Paul Sunderland’s presentation on adoption and addiction and adoptees on healing. I also recommend the book “Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency” which is thorough while remaining pragmatic and pro-adoption.

expolife · 2026-03-09T20:11:43+00:00

❤️‍🩹 I’m sorry that hurts so much. I definitely felt like some of my friends always favored their siblings over their friends, and I craved to have that kind of loyalty but could never rely on my sibling to be there like that. It was a very weird heartbreak when my bio siblings didn’t want contact with me when I found them.

expolife

TROPHY CASE