Paul Sunderland – Remembered not Recalled

– edited transcript

Life works lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3pX4C-mtiI

There's something about PowerPoint or anything overhead that somehow divides the attention and it
seems to me that the issue of adoption is all about divided attention. It's all about two sets of families
it's all about the conflicting feelings of wanting to belong and yet fearing belonging.

The first thing to tell you about adoption, is it's a pretty weird word because it's about the only
condition that doesn't really describe what's happened, if somebody has a bipolar disorder we don't
talk about them as who are trying to get a bit stable. What I want to suggest to you is that actually
talking about adoption is a denial for starters, it is a denial of relinquishment because that is the
wound. What I propose to talk to you about is that I believe that the relinquishment wound can be
seen as a post-traumatic stress disorder a developmental post-traumatic stress disorder that is the
wound not what happens.

Now the problem is the word adoption is quite a cover-up, they're actually adoptive when we think
about the adoption triangle we think about the three parties in adoption there is the adopted child
the relinquished child there are the birth or natural parents and there is the adoptive parent the
adoptive family this triangle.
I am going to talk mostly about the adopted child and particularly about the adopted child who also
has the co-occurring disorder of addiction or addictive disorder.

I became interested in this subject because actually adoptees are over-represented in treatment, they
are massively over represented and we have to start thinking why is that the point is that want to
make is it actually there is no adoption, there's no relinquishment without trauma.

What i want to hold in mind is there is no adoption without drama there's no relinquishment without
drama, there is an enormous grief it's the grief of a child or a baby who has been waiting nine months
to meet somebody who set up to bond and then doesn’t. About the enormous grief of the mother
sometimes father as well but the mother who cannot live with having a child very often young, very
often influenced by parents & patriarchal society who are saying that you can't do this, which goes
against her biology and it's about the enormous grief of a group who can't live without having a child,
very often adoptive parents who come into the adoption field come with an enormous grief that
they've been unable to have a child and actually this is the problem.

I find with this word adoption because it's sort of covers up their grief so very often we think in terms
of people who are adopted is as actually having been chosen that somehow they've been selected but
actually very often it's about somebody who enters into a family that doesn't genetically fit for them,
it's about someone entering a family with an impossible job description, the job description of having
to be somebody that they can never actually be, to fix a wound of infertility with its’ enormous
disappointment. We couple in the expectation that if we have sex we're going to have kids it’s part of
the couples contract either consciously or unconsciously so there's an enormous grief when that can't
happen and there's an enormous disappointment to the feelings people who get married. I think very
often has got has got covered up.

I'm going to be talking to you about an experience of working with adoptees who were adopted 30 40
50 years ago it's very different today and people are more prepared for this but the people that are
turning up in our consulting rooms that start to get as interested in what on earth is going on here
these are people who often come they come to the adoptive family with no no idea of their history
sometimes they're not allowed to find out, one who didn't find out she was adopted until she was
about to get married and discovered that her birth certificate was different.

What we do have now is these cross-cultural adoptions, these are the girls and boys of 20 or 25 who's
starting to turn up in the consulting rooms with severe addiction, with parents who are tearing their
hair out thinking but we've done everything for them we sent them to boarding school, with no sense
there might be some repetition of an abandonment, I'm hearing stories of people go off to boarding
school running down drives holding onto car door handles because actually for the adoptee the issue
of abandonment is life threatening. Can we imagine if there a bigger trauma than being separated
from your mother, the one person you need in life at a pre-verbal stage it can't be recalled as there is
no words to describe it, but it is remembered in the body.

Everybody that makes out that actually everything's going to be happy ever after. Here we have a
situation where there is an enormous grief for everybody.
When the human infant is born the brain the human brain starts working before it's built unlike your
computer that you might have bought into the theory that is comes an operating system and it's all
ready to go. No. the human brain starts working before it's built, so experience is the architect of the
brain we have over a hundred billion neurons at Birth waiting just waiting to get cues from experience
to connect up and start the inner and start to make sense of the outer, there is a famous quote that
says “neurons that fire together - wire together” those neurons are just waiting a hundred billion
neurons just waiting to get cues from experience to join up.

If life begins with a trauma, that trauma feels life-threatening and that trauma is about separation
and abandonment those neurons are going to fire, the human brain is a reflective organ it constantly
reflects on past experience and thinks, unconsciously when I came across this before and how do I
respond, so it is little wonder that for a lot of adoptees there is a real sense of, a real fear of
abandonment in relationships and enormously they have got this contradictory need this desire to
attach that is so strong that has people acting against their best interests but with the contradictory
feeling of god this is not safe because if the first most significant person in your life gives you up how
do I know the next one isn't going to do just that, so we're talking about this very early wound that
cannot be recalled.

I want to make three important points about this trauma, firstly that there is a pre-verbal life
threatening trauma that can split the psyche (see Kalsched – Inner world of trauma) secondly that it
can't be recalled, it is remembered in implicit memory systems in the limbic system. It happens at the
beginning of life which means that there is no pre trauma personality. If you have a severe car
accident that causes a disassociation, you will be fearful of going in a car or driving on a particular
road, you have a trauma that actually starts to change the way that you are and way you function you
will know if you seek help for that trauma with that PTSD, you know with certainty that you had a pre
trauma personality which can be remembered, recalled, and remodeled. If you have a trauma at the
beginning of your life you don't have a ego a personality or a sense of self, one of the problems that
people with these early psychological wounds have is that they believe that their post their adaptive
post traumatic stress behavior, the feelings of shame and anxiety and our worthiness and unlovable
this they believe that is part of them because there is nothing to compare it to there was no pre-
trauma personality.

Because we call it adoption it tends to be thought of as one adoption if you think about
relinquishment, that there are nearly always more than one and sometimes is coming across in our
clinical practice five six seven relinquishment so you think about being given up by natural mother at
birth relinquishment number one sometimes case is a premature birth so into maybe an incubator if
you're in an incubator that is a containing environment that you adapt to it is a relinquishment when
you leave that place that becomes your world if you're given up into foster care okay you've got
another relinquishment you then they go you may be adopted you might go to another foster family
getting the idea this is not just one trauma this is a series and so certainly I work with people I've
worked with people who've been adopted and actually hasn't worked out and they've gone back
they've been given back because this one didn't really fit to be back into foster care and to be adopt
adopted again so there might be one adoption but then actually there are many relinquishment.

The human infant can detect different smells within 24 hours of birth a baby can detect mother's
breast milk on a pad of 10 different mother's breast milks within 24 hours they’ll show a preference
by respiration, sucking, head-turning, we know that the human infant in the last two months of
pregnancy can actually hear sounds, in Washington they had mothers reading The Cat in the Hat quite
frequently in the last two months of pregnancy the babies showed a preference to the cat in the hat
as opposed to any other reading a preference, again indicated by respiration, head-turning and
sucking responses, so we're talking about a bonding that starts very early on we're talking about being
dressed up and ready to meet somebody is ready to smell that breast milk ready to find that breast
because even babies you probably know, can't see to save their lives but it can certainly smell the way
to the teat ready to meet someone. I'm talking about attachment theory it seems extraordinary now
but up until the 50s and 60s nobody really realized that actually there was an inbuilt system that
motivated humans and indeed ducklings and puppies and kittens to seek proximity to their caregivers
I mean now it just seems so obvious, one of the big things that it changed was allowing parents to go
to hospital with children

The human animal and many other animals, in the absence of mother they will make a lot of noise
people who are adopted they often tell this story that apparently I just cried and cried apparently I
just crying but what is it surprising is it surprising I just cried in fright. (loss of bond to mother and
universe at large?)

One of the fears, if you have a difficult early life experience is how are you going to be as a parent?
We know that an awful lot of adults come and say that my mum did this with me and I do completely
the opposite, my dad did this I did completely opposite but we also know that 180 degrees from sick
is actually is not resolved it's just 180 degrees is someplace in the middle.

Studies show that the emotional stability of the human child is seventy-five percent dependent on the
parent, particularly the mother being able to know herself, is being an emotionally coherent story, if
the mother can tell an emotionally coherent story, I'd say emotion world about herself and her life if
the mother can do that then the child has a very very good chance of being well balanced, which i
think is really another really important thing.

I became interested in this as an addictions counselor about twenty plus years ago we had the
manager of the unit that I worked in there were four trainees on a work placement for a year and one
of the two other trainees was adopted what has to be interesting the set the next year of trainees
there was one who was adopted.
Now I didn't think I really took much notice of that, other than I clocked it I'd met a girl once at
University who told me she was adopted and frankly I thought she was making rather a lot of it and I
think I remember saying something like well look you can't remember you're only a baby the sort of
stuff the old lie that people tell which in a sense is a logical one but actually it's a nonsense because
actually it can be remembered it just can't be recalled.

So we just start to notice this and I remember sitting in case conferences talking about people fifteen
years ago you would hearing a story of an addiction case “and he was adopted” along with a whole lot
of other stuff, and when I started working in private practice and I started to hear it again and
somehow start to take you think wait a minute there's something going on here and start to think and
start to notice is that the people who were adopted we're very often presenting and were really quite
put together.
One of the things that we often do at the beginning of a treatment episode and outpatient treatment
episode is to give people a bank of psychometric tests you'd be measuring maybe anxiety or levels of
depression and I started to notice that these people who had come along not because they were
adopted by the way they tended to be in outpatient settings certainly addicts.
Addiction is all about anxiety and shame it's about, regulating anxiety by having the positive regard of
someone else and it's that point in which they tip into some depression, which takes them into
therapy and what very rarely talked about the fact that they're adopted it's usually I'll read a piece of
client material from somebody who I remember them saying at the end of taking a history by the way
I was adopted! by the way I was adopted!! as if somehow it wasn't relevant yeah just sort of shocking
but what was also interesting about this client group is a lot of them when you measure their levels of
depression on the depression index, if you were over a score of about 22 you probably want to have
a serious chat about maybe taking some antidepressant medication. These people are scoring up near
the 30s and above and yet you wouldn't see it most people when they turn up depressed you can see
that you can see severe depression it's held isn't it in the body you can see it these are people are
actually really quite together and actually you do the psychometric and like something wrong here
she started to think something really is going on

Addiction is is genetically proposed and environmentally disposed we don't know how much but we
know that there is a genetic proposition doesn't mean that everybody who has a parent who's an
addict is going to be an addict but genetically proposed environmentally disposed so for a lot of
adoptees actually they've got bits of both these things now also of course many people are given up
for adoption because of substance misuse or alcohol misuse issues so there's going to be somewhere
there is going to be at a genetic proposition but I think then on top of that if we start thinking about
the trauma of being given up at Birth from the one person that you need to feel safe, It is no surprise
to me that adoptees are over represented in treatment so what we also know from traumatology is
that where there is mother infant bonding it has an enormous impact on brain chemicals and
neurotransmitters so we know that actually levels of cortisol and adrenaline in trauma we know with
mother infant bonding you're going to get that but also reduced levels of serotonin so we're talking
about people who very early on have very different chemicals in their systems and then hold in mind
it might not be just one relinquishment,
if the baby could speak - I've been relinquished gosh Here I am I'm somewhere else don't know these
voices I'm getting used to them and being fed I'm still alive. The human infant instinctively knows
without care that he or she will die and then that suddenly changes again suddenly changes and the
voices change and the smells change there's a whole lot of stuff it's just like where am I?

But we know when this stuff happens we know that adrenaline goes up and cortisol goes up we know
that when adrenaline goes up and cortisol goes up the concentration and focus okay are affected
which is why it is no surprise that ninety percent of adoptees were diagnosed with what ADD.
attention deficit like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder because what's happening is like living on
red alert all my life. (Kalsched said it’s like having a diabolic caretaker who says I've got a job, make
sure it doesn't happen again), all of this very unconscious I will make a mental note to not get into this
situation again! right here are these people what do I need to do? what you have to do to get on and
belong around here okay and the slow slow loss of self and the belief that I can't be myself in
relationship because the first time I was it was pretty disastrous, I'm going to have to be hyper-vigilant
I'm going to have to live on red alert okay.

Now the problem with all of this extra adrenaline or cortisol it effects sleep regulation gastrointestinal
problems which is why so many adoptees talk to me about having having stomach issues, if I had
them in as children as well real difficulties just managing mood and but we also know is serotonin
levels go down, so you're taking a drug that is trying to make the most of the serotonin you have in
order to help you feel good well serotonin is about soothing.
If you have low levels of serotonin it's very hard to feel soothed so again think about addiction and
the need to self-soothe which begins here it's so often in terms of issues around an awful shame
around an early compulsive masturbation early use of sugar (hits the bliss point – similar to opiates)
these attempts to self-soothe that later on become attempts to self-soothe with alcohol prescription
drugs and illegal drugs, the financial addictions eating disorders set and the sex and love addiction
there is a need to self-soothe serotonin has done the other thing about a low levels of serotonin is it
serotonin is the sort of stuff that helps you manage shame it's the sort of drug that helped is the drug
in our system that actually when we're feeling pretty awful about ourselves can say actually it's okay
and then when the levels are low we don't have a defense against that when the levels are low it's not
okay and I'm not okay so we know and this stuff is known we know that we know that trauma creates,
we know that early failed mother infant bonding creates this stuff, so we're talking about people who
are actually in a sense of sort of chemical factories from quite early on in their lives.

No surprise that actually I need to hire people in my office who who actually get quite hooked on
adrenaline because in a sense they need to keep it because actually what's happening is that the
adrenaline they've had these shots of adrenaline and it goes down they feel like there's something go
into a drawer I've had people who swim to the Sharks do it doesn't seem like a normal thing to do
maybe once but not to do it more than once if people doing all sorts of dangerous sports putting
themselves in dangerous situations, I suggest that these people are trying to regulate their levels of
adrenaline and cortisol they're trying to create some stressed and manage mood.
So here we have it we have a trauma an early trauma enormous a whole bunch of chemicals that are
around they'd actually give sleep disturbance stop mood regulation gastrointestinal problems actually
are also associated with things like rashes and some of nervous disorders the evidence isn't
completely clear but they're certainly seem to be some associations with sort of skin disorders and
stuff like that we have this trauma that cannot be remembered okay what cannot be at it keep saying
that can't be recalled so there's a real sense and actually

When they talk my session I have a few people that records the psychotherapy sessions with me, we
feel slightly anxious about litigation and that sort of thing, and one of the reasons is because actually
when they're talking about their trauma actually we're talking about it in the session when they go it's
just gone from their minds there are some link to it not being possible to recall it so actually part of
their creative mind goes, so I've given up my fear of Education and people will write out notes and all
sorts of things from the sessions because there's a link between a pre verbal wound and the inability
to recall it to recall a session when you're talking about that that stuff (selective memories – easy
dissociation) I think adds fact I think that's fascinating and I really do there's all sorts of other
interesting links I have done you see of course

Some people aren't given up at at birth some people are given up maybe at two weeks i had two
clients who was given up at eleven days and I was talking to me about getting into recovery lots of
relapsing starting good intentions I manage but somewhere around about two weeks I just give up
on myself what is she saying this is somebody who has given up on that much indeed there has to be
a connection and when you listen to the words once you tuned into it when you listen to the words.

it's too real for me there's so much evidence that there is a trauma of relinquishment that it hatches
so much evidence that actually these chemicals in the brain start to be very different for people who
have early psychological wounds and that they take an enormous amount of management but also of
course we get the hyper vigilance the anxieties that go with all of that the constant anxiety

An awful lot of adoptees are presenting with some really catastrophic thinking the sort of thinking
that they receive an envelope with some writing on they don't recognize it's going to be a complaint
or a confrontation of some kind they are very easily being just tipped into catastrophic thinking
because the wound was a life-threatening one that's why things can feel so catastrophic, whatever is
happening that doesn't feel right feels it has a life-threatening quality to it.

Now we've also got all the stuff around shame and anxiety underpinning addictions so shame in the
female anxiety world is not a safe place, they'll push you when you're falling, stab you when you're
down, kick you when you're down, better not tell, or be vulnerable, don't show who you really are
keep yourself to yourself, if you want to get anything done do it yourself, this the at its extreme and
everyone needs some anxiety otherwise we wouldn't run away from man-eating tigers, but people
with early psychological wounds have shame in bucketfuls okay shame is in the thoughts, I'm not
good enough, it's the bad baby, it's the unworthy, I'm unlovable and flawed, there's something wrong
with me, I better not tell anybody. How do I need to be in order to be accepted? Because being me isn't
okay because last time it was almost catastrophic, so these are feelings that actually talk to people
with addictions.
These feelings are around for all addicts what I want to suggest you is that people with these early
wounds have them probably at vol.10 as opposed to vol.9 The 12-step program is a mood-altering
program but it's one that actually mood alters by keeping you in a reality that’s realistic, but I think
that's why it's been so successful is along with the whole notion of fellowship and buddy -ing and
having a sense of meaning but ultimately their shame and anxiety management programs and all
addictions are about shame and anxiety the biggest addiction that we're seeing at the moment is
eating disorders anorexia, as you may know the unhealthy obsession with unhealthy eating the
fixation about must do this that or the other it's going to be vol.9 not 8, it's all about managing
anxiety and attempt to manage an insecurity in here and anxiety in here by managing things
elsewhere.

Workaholic religiosity these things are all about anxiety and shame management as long as I keep
busy, as long as I'm busy then I don't have to actually feel that anxious I can focus my anxiety on the
job that I've got to get done by nine o'clock tonight ok these become places to put anxiety and give it
another meaning to make the inexplicable explicable.

You see it a lot with people with compulsive debtors for whom actually recovering from the debt
addiction does not happen after a few days of detox that you work with people who maybe for three
or four or five years have a debt payment plan are trying to keep their figures trying to pay off vast
amounts of debt that they've suddenly got themselves into. Again it’s about trying to manage self
esteem by spending money and all of that and when they come towards the end there's been a sense
for them that gosh when I've paid my debt off everything's going to be okay and they really really
believe this and what starts to happen is when the end is in sight they start to get really anxious very
often sabotage and create another debt, right towards the end they get really anxious because the
anxiety doesn't belong to the money it's just found the stage, money is just a stage for it to play itself
out and it's sort of works because it's a way how we get on with our lives

If you have suffered an addiction It’s enormously creative it's not just destructive, there's a creativity
it's an attempt to contain because all the time I'm worried about this money at least I can get on and
do some other stuff but you're not at vol.10.

Shame and anxiety that's what we're talking about right from early life now the thing about the
shame for adoptees is it's what we call the bad baby syndrome, the sense that somewhere if I was
given up by my mother, I must be bad, I don't have value.
Now if we think about that it again it's an attempt by the infant as an attempt by the infant to explain
the unexplainable or explain the unacceptable by saying it's my fault it's the same thing that we see
with child sexual abuse, ninety-nine percent of victims of child sexual abuse think that in some way it
was their fault there is something in the mind that feels like this was so fucking out of control thing
responsible because then at least I can sort of manage.

Freud talked about his majesty the baby (what Freud talked about the enormous self-centeredness of
the human infant who up until the age of about nine or ten believes everything that happens to them
happens because of them) that's just how it is developmentally so remember this the human brain
there's no frontal cortex it starts working before it's built it's off it's not really built at around age
twenty. Most of you will know that and those of you have teenagers know that they behave as if
they've all got personality disorders because the brain is just not fully there, it's not fully developed.
Freud talks about his Majesty the baby (King-baby)so on top of any bad possible bad baby syndrome
hypothesis you've got this idea that it's my fault I had this when I was doing training I was with a
family, dad was an alcoholic the family the parents were separating they had a family therapy session
to talk about dad was newly in recovery for children that started talking a little bit the youngest child
was seven the oldest one was 14 and there was one in the middle about 12 three girls and they were
talking about what was happening what had been happening in the fact that mum and dad were in a
separate and this is how it was going to be and where everybody was going to live the seven-year-old
girl was really silent throughout almost the whole session towards the end she s she says is daddy
leaving because of the way I eat my crisps dad had had a hangover she had eaten her crisps it had
sounded presumably like Krakatoa or something with a hangover he would shout at her she would
leave the room she felt that Daddy was leaving because of the way she ain't her crisps.

So this is His Majesty the baby this is the self centeredness of the human child so you think about this
wound early on in life where there's no previous personality so you're sort of thinking this is all it's all
about me I'm not good enough and you start thinking that all these things are happening because of
me, developmentally that's how it works so Bowlby in all his attachment theory what these guys
were doing when they were investigating attachment is they were dividing up what they called secure
and insecure attachments. but what they do know having done all the follow up is that actually it's
not so much what happens to you in life that throws you it's actually how secure your beginnings are.
It's a bit like the storm analogy in a storm the trees don't blow down but just because the wind is
strong the ones that blow down blow down because the roots aren't strong enough to hold them up
it's the same sort of thing. they did a lot of research with the Palestinian children in the refugee
camps again not making any political comment but actually I'm sure you would all agree if your house
is being bulldoze it's a bit dramatic that's all the only bit you need to grasp here that actually the
psychologist thought these kids yeah they're gonna be in a real state and they're giving interviews and
banks of psychometric testing and just really only expecting these kids to be really distressed they
weren't and they realized that the reason they weren't is because they had people around them who
said this shouldn't be happening there was a secure base there were people there who were saying
this shouldn't be happening it's not normal we're all in this together we don't like it.

So think about that and then think about being relinquished and adopted into family that might not
actually talk about it because actually talking about it might involve an enormous grief it might involve
talking about mom or dad's infertility I mean not always and i'm really generalized, if you have a
secure base actually you're going to be more resilient when the wind comes along if your roots are
attached you're just going to be more resilient.

So we know that these things these early experiences that make an enormous amount of difference
and one of the functions of trauma you lose the part of your brain that actually regulates time.
here we have something that we're calling by the wrong name we're calling it adoption it's about
relinquishment there's not just one at relinquishment everything we know about child development
tells us that early trauma has an enormous impact on brain function, brain development and on
neurotransmitters particularly serotonin, cortisol and adrenaline, when there is a trauma it’s actually
like a plant that's trying to grow up around a stone, it has to adapt, the child has to adapt.

We're talking about something that is associated with enormous amounts of grief for everybody
involved as I say my experience of the birth mothers who do turn up in treatment really traumatized
often very young often persuaded to do something that they didn't really want to do often regret
regretting it we're talking about adoptive families who often can't live without having a child have an
enormous grief that can't actually be faced and a sense that maybe this would fix it. So we're talking
about a trauma we're talking about a trauma that can't be recalled but can be remembered it repeats
itself later in life there is a compulsion to repeat, there is a whole sense for adoptees which is why the
sex and love addiction is just so prevalent particularly as an addiction amongst this population
desperately trying to hunger for attachment that has them acting against their best interest just
desperate to bond but in a way the need is so high it could never happen so actually and very often
you get the partners say “god I just don't know what I can't do it what you want is not is something
that I just can't provide”

There's an enormous hunger for attachment so we have a trauma we have a trauma that can't be
remembered it's played out, played out with anxiety and shame and fear and real catastrophic
thinking that the next thing that goes wrong will be the end of the world not just this thing going
wrong but somehow actually I'm on the streets and everybody knows it's my fault and that's the end
of the world, and we're talking about a trauma that at that by definition has no pre trauma personality
so that the sufferer believes that actually the person they've adapted to become is actually who they
are and that's not the case that is not the case because they are unable to remember a time before the
trauma and I'm also saying is that addiction & adoption will really go together particularly as people
are given up for substance misuse reasons but also because if it's addiction is genetically proposed
and environmentally disposed there is an enormous wound and at the beginning of life.

I want to suggest that most people who have been relinquished will at some point need to see
themselves as having a co-occurring disorder of both addiction and I suggest post-traumatic stress
disorder and I do not think it will be long until adoption or relinquishment is seen as and will be put in
the journals and will be seen as developmental PTSD and it's a trauma.

The other thing is about this is that trauma is stored in the limbic system as you probably know the
limbic system kicks in nano seconds before the frontal cortex it's the limbic system that when the
man-eating tiger enters the room gets you to run before you see and say what a nice specimen,

That's why we have it it's the limbic system that deals with trauma fight/flight freeze ok now the
problem is if you've had an early trauma which is why I meet a lot of people that just like a mystic
garden some people say I think I'm schizophrenic because people end up in almost two minds,
(Kalsched split psyche) I really want this but I really don't want this I can't decide, enormous amounts
of ambivalence as well in this population real difficulties making a decision because decisions are life
threatening if I decide to do this and the real task for the therapist is to never give in when somebody
ask you for advice because what will happen is they'll say that's great and they'll come back next we
can say you bloody taught me to do this and it wasn't the right thing to do. I'm sure a purpose for so
far more than they need to well it's just that actually the problem is is the limic system will kick in so
actually in a situation where you get the catastrophic thinking

Like here I get some envelope I haven't seen there before it's all there it's the limbic systems is
pummeled something unknown going to be rejected do before come we can sit out nice handwriting
let's read the letter wonder what's in the news is it's just as kicking in nanoseconds before,
 it's when the boyfriend or the girlfriend says I think I'm going to stay at home tonight let's not meet
up then it's the limbic system that kicks in and think she just wants to get rid of me this is it's all over
now yeah it's the limbic system that does that that just goes straight to the catastrophe there will be
another abandonment rather than actually maybe she needs to do her nails or patty needs to go and
hang out with his mate
if you've had an attachment wound one of the things you haven't managed to do is to become a
separate person because actually what happens is you have an attachment wound and you spend
your time trying to work out what you have to do to be accepted here and the thing about being able
to be separate, to be a separate person
In any successful relationship actually exists in separateness when you do couples counseling and you
say to them when do you find attractive or when do you find her attractive, what they'll say to you is
it actually I went to his office and I saw him giving a talk and I really turn me on because actually he
was doing something different or he'll say I saw her came home early and she was playing with the
kids in the garden then I saw part if I'd never seen and I just really the erotic exists in the space
between the two okay because you can't find someone attractive unless you're complete narcissist
you can't find somebody attractive who is exactly like you just trying to sort of fit in and be everything
you want they think that you might want them to be

So the real challenge in relationship for the adopted population is to actually is to be themselves is to
be myself in relationship that is the challenge because unless you can do that you can also put you
can't be attractive but very hard to do that because everything in the limbic system is saying don't it's
going to be an emergency look around make sure you're going to be safe.