My Adoption Story part 12
November 21, 2019
Out of the fog - Connecting dots - One Mistake Is All It Takes
Continuing the theme of connecting dots and understanding my own behavior, in this piece I’m addressing the ease with which I have cut people out throughout life. I have mentioned in previous blog posts that I have literally broken up with numerous friends throughout the years.
One Mistake Is All it Takes
When I say break up, I mean a full on break up, as in “I can’t have you as my friend anymore. Have a nice life.”
I have even surprised myself in the ease with which I have gone from being close to someone, to acting and even feeling as though I am totally fine without them. Even with a close relationship and friendship, there was no attachment, and life just goes on. In general, I have never had a problem with cutting people out and off, never to look back again. It is all or nothing with me, and you get one chance.
Recently, in an adoptee-centered facebook-group, a fellow adoptee brought up how she holds people to really (almost unreasonably) high standards and how she has found herself cutting people and friends out time after time. I resonated with me and I replied. Let me share with you what I wrote in response:
“I can relate a lot. I have been told that I hold people to very high standards and that I should be more forgiving. Throughout the years and in different situations, I have cut one person after another out that I have felt has done me wrong or has failed me, one way or another. I have broken up with friends and moved on as if I never knew them in the first place. I can look back now, and see that I did this as the friendships or relationships were becoming close enough that it would be time to “open up” and show the real me, and I never knew who that was, so it seemed safer to find a reason or capitalize on a mistake done by a friend, to cut them out and go on in my “safe” space behind my wall of protection. I have heard this from many adoptees. The scariest thing is opening up and showing who we really are, if we even know. So, we avoid it… and end up alone. I have also moved a lot and that has made it easier to naturally lose touch with people instead of deepening the friendship. I do have some people in my life that I trust and that I can be true with, but they are a small circle… they do mean the world to me though, and I have been picky in my choosing of them. Bottom line, you are not alone at all… Xo”
and
“I also think it has a lot to do with not allowing myself to make mistakes. I have lived a life in survival mode and part of that has been keeping myself in check, and always being compliant in any situation. So, when others are human and make even small mistakes, they fail in my eyes. I realize that is not always true, but it disappoints me that I am the only one working so hard to keep the peace and never do wrong, so when others don’t try as hard, they lose me. I guess… And it makes me feel unsafe. And unsafe is worse than anything. So, if you cause me to feel unsafe, I can’t have you around. I lost my safety once before when I lost my mother, I can’t risk that happening ever again.”
That safety, I have understood, is more important than anything. Living in constant survival mode, safety has become crucial. Having lost my number on safety as a child, it is everything now and if it’s not a guarantee, I can’t invest fully. Not my thoughts, not my emotions, not myself. When I feel safe, you have ALL of me. As a friend, lover, acquaintance, in any way. But the second I don’t feel safe I have to get rid of you. I cannot have you in my life or close to me.
This is where the survival instinct kicks in again. What seems like a mere mistake to someone else, that could be easily forgiven, becomes either a way out before having to open up and be my true self, as would be expected as a friendship or relationship grows closer and deeper, or a way to stay clear of the danger of not feeling emotionally safe with a person.
In a previous blog post, more specifically Part 5 of My Adoption Story to be exact, I wrote the following:
“I felt guilty for not feeling bad when moving and losing touch with people who I did really care about but still was able to leave behind without feeling overwhelmingly sad about it. I felt selfish and cold-hearted for not crying at goodbyes, for being able to cut people out (who I felt had wronged me) and move on like I had never known them, and for being able to be close friends with someone, and still keep them at arm’s length.”
You can find the whole post and read it HERE.
The lack of attachment that for me has become a survival mechanism, a defense mechanism, and a way of protecting myself from being rejected, abandoned, and left traumatized again has run rampant throughout my life. I can see it now. I can make sense of it now. I can feel a little less shame and guilt over it now.
One thing that I am starting to understand is the importance of labeling these things correctly. They are not just ways that I protect myself, but I suspect they are actual trauma responses. A lack of emotional safety makes a situation dangerous to me because at one point it probably was. At one point my lack of safety may have actually been life-threatening.
If I remember one thing from my Psychology class in college, a class that I struggled with (both times that I took it), it is the following phrase: “NEURONS THAT FIRE TOGETHER, WIRE TOGETHER”. And so, in my mind, that is how things were programmed at one point and they have not been re-programmed since.
This means that my adoptee brain, with a heavy underlying fear of rejection, will raise all flags, and sound every alarm, when someone shows the slightest possibility of rejecting or abandoning me, or not providing complete safety. Even when this is done in the form of a mistake that others would find okay to forgive.
It means I often protect myself by not even letting a relationship become deep enough to endanger myself. It means that after all friends who have made a mistake have been cut out, after most people have never even been allowed in at all, and after a lifetime of keeping my adoptive family on the other side of my high protective wall, I don’t really know how to let someone in all the way.
But, cutting one person out after another, not letting the majority in at all, and keeping everyone who does get to stay at arm’s length, means I run the risk of ending up very alone.
So, I am working on it, little by little…
I thank you from the bottom of my heart, for spending this time with me, reading my story.
If you would like to share your story, I would love to connect with you and help you share it here alongside mine.
Own your story, share your story, write your story.
All my love to all of you.
– Amanda Medina
PS. We are all in this together!
End of Article
Amanda Medina
I was adopted from Medellin, Colombia to Sweden in 1985. I was about a year and a half when I started my life as an adoptee, and it would take 32 years until I was ready to face what that means, what that has always meant, and what that will always mean.
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