How to Protect Your Heart in Difficult Relationships
Armour up bishes!
Just kidding - but seriously - if you’ve been through a dna surprise you know better than anyone the emotional armour that is called for.
Which relationships become difficult? MANY.
Why? 1. because our primary relationship always begins with the relationship we have with ourself; and now, we are frought with identity issues and the push-pull of meeting our own needs at the expense of others. (At least that’s how it feels.) 2. because people are often ignorant about trauma, and the effects of having an MPE - this includes, maybe especially, the people who raised us.
Society at large does not recognize or validate this particular branch of loss and trauma.
So we armour up, shut down, don’t make waves, sacrifice our own needs, keep the peace (sort of). We often enter into a long term state of freeze, because nowhere and no one feels safe anymore.
Our hearts have been broken and invalidated. We feel betrayed and ashamed of our feelings. We feel frustrated with ourselves for our inability to “move on”.
We often needs support in relearning how to be embodied because to shut down feels much much safer. Our body is supposed to give us accurate information about our safety, when we shut down due to trauma, we can become disconnected from it. We start to default to trusting no one… or sometimes people go to the other extreme trusting everyone.
We need to relearn how to notice our bodies signals, about safety, because living in armour is a lonely life. Many activities can help restore our connection with our body, if we engage with intention: yoga, pottery, qigong, forest therapy, dance, drumming, swimming, guided meditations that include movement or body scans. Perhaps you can think of additional strategies for becoming embodied.
We can also engage in safe spaces such as: therapy, NPE support groups or social media pages,listen to NPE podcasts, read NPE memoirs, or attend recovery retreats.
As we become more acquainted with our bodies, we’ll begin to notice the signals it sends us: butterflies, racing heart, pit in the stomach, lump in the throat, the sense of dread when we have betrayed ourself. This takes practice and time.
Our relationships will become places where we try. We try to show up whole, we try to share, we try to dance the dynamic dance, but our tolerance for disharmony or being misunderstood or invalidated often becomes quite small. And so sometimes even if our interaction only hints of such things, our tendency will be to shut down and distance, understandably. But we keep at it.
I think that before discovery, I was actually a pretty open person. After discovery, I was very open with others about what I was going through. But that was short-lived, as I quickly learned that most people could not relate. They didn’t know how to access a place inside of them that was soft, or that could admit that this thing I was going through was bigger than they could understand. And so I stopped talking about it with most people. I went through a period of intense loneliness, hesitant about engaging in friendships. My social interactions became focused on enjoying shared activities, or on supporting them, and I kept this thing - that was the biggest thing in my life and in my heart - very much to myself. Perhaps you can relate.
Slowly, as I began to get to know myself better, I developed more ability for self reflection in a higher tolerance for being uncomfortable. I did this by engaging in embodied practices I mentioned earlier. These activities left me alone with my thoughts, my emotions, my breath. All of these things helped me to connect with my body and the messages coming from my body. I started to learn that some people could be safe to be in genuine relationship with. And that, even if the relationship was healthy, it would probably still feel scary to me. I needed to tolerate the risk until I had a proper read on the situations - and engage carefully - while paying attention to my body.
Sometimes I would share with someone and I would notice that my ears started ringing or I would get very hot and sweaty or I might feel a little dizzy and faint or nauseated, sometimes I would have a complete panic attack and need to leave.
Sometimes I would later realize that my body’s reaction had nothing to do with the other person, and had a whole lot more to do with me and my trauma. My fear and trauma was causing my body to send signals that I was unsafe, when possibly what I needed was a break, or to go slower. (Sometimes it was that the other person wasn’t safe. So it’s always good to get some space and reflect.)
One by one I started developing genuine, safe friendships, most of these developed after discovery. I stayed close to maybe only two of my close friends from before discovery. I also spent a lot more time alone and started to really appreciate that time. For many years after discovery, a lot of my focus and energy went into the concept of family. It went into trying to find my bio family, assessing my safety with them, and whether they were people I wanted in my life in an ongoing way. I also tried to navigate things with the family that I had grown up with. My heart was cautiously engaged.
(Stream of consciousness musing incoming, buckle up…)
I think I was very self focussed for a bit, and then came therapy and support groups and self-expression. When I began meditating and writing I think I started to expand my idea of the concept of family. I empowered myself to curate my chosen family - it’s an cliche for a reason.
My concept of ancestors and who I consider to be my ancestors also expanded. I came across a few speakers who explained ancestors as being everyone who came before us, not just our genetic relatives, and in these talks they really invited a person to meditate on who was everyone that came before us. It made me wonder who lived in my house before me. How many families? My house is 100 years old… who built the house? I started to wonder… is it even “my” house? someone else will be here after me, and my time will have been a blip in its history. It will outlive me. I started to reflect on things like trees, how many trees in the place that I live will outlive me? they were here long before me and they’ll be here long after, are they too, my ancestors? All of these kinds contemplations brought me closer to feeling safe in the world.
(Detour over)
To summarize:
Engage in a variety of embodiment practices
Notice what discomfort feels like and how it feels to stick it out
Validate that it is perfectly reasonable to keep your heart on lockdown - engage cautiously and within your capacity
Find safe NPE spaces to engage in
Try to be open to new friendships
Work with a trauma or NPE/adoptee competent therapist or coach
Take space from the people who raised you if their response hasn’t been what you need. It is not your job to keep the peace or spare them from guilt at this time. It is your job to take care of this wound. You can choose to repair with them later, when and if you feel the need/ability to safely.
In time, you’ll learn that your heart doesn’t need to be on full lockdown - you can feel safe in the world and in relationships once again.
Finding out that one or both of our parents are not who we grew up believing them to be is shocking and traumatic and can’t help but make us feel like the world is upside down. But I can tell you from experience it doesn’t have to stay that way. It’s become a much more common experience in the last 10 to 15 years, but it also happened before at-home DNA tests. It’s not much talked about but these kinds of things have always happened - throughout history - and somehow people do find their way through. So even as I write, because I want to make the community a better place, and I wanna share what I’ve learned along the way in the last 11 years, I’m also aware that I don’t have all the answers, and that even if no one was guiding you I have faith you would find your way, because people are amazing. You are amazing. And resilient. And brilliant. And your body is full of wisdom that will get you through this. With love.M.