The Fixer, The Pleaser, The Desperate Seeker

Fellow adoptee Mia recently blogged about some of the things we have in common. Things like a narcissistic adoptive parent, an equally unhealthy first mother and a big fat question mark for a father. Mia has the additional burden of dealing with a bio family who mostly refuses contact and an adoptive brother who is the golden child of a her a-parents.

Still, the similarities!

I'd like to add my two cents to some of her points:

Mia:
"I am convinced they adopted me so I could take the full burden of responsibilityfor their behavior. In other words if it were just the two of them they would have nobody to blame for their dysfunction. So I was forced into the roll of the source of all that was wrong, the scapegoat. Yet I worked my butt off trying to FIX everything for years. Honestly Istill feel like I have to fix everything. It’s a hard habit to break."

It's interesting to size up your parents - their strengths and weaknesses and skills or lack thereof - from the point of view of an adult. When we're kids, we have no clue. They are big and powerful and even when it feels wrong, we believe they are right. How can they not be? They are the people in charge. Except when they are not. These kinds of couples may have thought they wanted a child, but what they really wanted was a fixer. A child to fix their marriage, their infertility, their loneliness, their fear of growing old without a daughter to help care for them.

Adoptees of such parents can sense this. Our needs as unique individuals are rarely addressed and never taken seriously. It is the way we are treated and not treated. There is the unwavering expectation that we will listen and comfort and not rock the boat and solve problems.

Adoptees like us become FIXERS. And when we finally realize we don't like the role, we have to fight against it. Not just our Pavlovian panting at the sight of a problem, but the insistence of others that we continue in our Role as Fixer. Not only did we fix our a-parents problems, we help others, too. Case in point, my troubled sister-in-law. Over the years, I spent time, energy and money as she careened from one problem to the other. I bought her clothes, took her in several times. When I finally woke up and realized she didn't even like me - in fact, wished I'd never married her brother, I stopped. Cold turkey. But my new role as neutral spectator must be threatening to the family system. My mother-in-law keeps trying to rope me back into my old role as Fixer. Couldn't I call my SIL and talk some sense into her? After all, I have a family responsibility. No. No way.

And then there's the People Pleasing! We adoptees must grow little antennaes on our heads because we're hyper-sensitive to others moods. We meet someone new and have to win them over. We compliment others. Try to make them feel good. We stay at parties longer than we want to with people we don't even like that much. We volunteer to do all sorts of crazy things in our children's school, even when we don't have time, because we need approval from the teacher. In fact, we allow ourselves to get roped into all sorts of things because we have a hard time setting boundaries. Others first. Us last.

And one more point raised by Mia:

"I suppose if I were to be totally honest there was a huge part of me that desperately wanted to find a healthy version of a mother in my natural mother E. I told myself I wanted the usual; “to know where I came from”, “to say thank you” and all of the otherload of crap sayings we feed ourselves as an excuse for wanting the most natural thingin the world which is to simply know our mother. I didn’t find a healthy anything, instead I found an equally weak and self absorbed mother."

This is tragic. I mean, you're placed in a home where the parent(s) needed a parent and not a child and you were forced to become their emotional (and/or physical) caretaker, is it any wonder that we desperately hoped for at least one parent who can act like a real parent? How pathetic! Recently, I talked to my adoptive mother's oldest friend about some of this. She had no clue. I always really liked her. She listened without interruption and asked some questions. Of course, I was apologetic for taking up so much of her time and thanked her profusely for the gift of letting me talk for what, maybe five minutes?

Of course, I would have loved for my mother to do that. But she's not capable either. She had a horrible childhood and is self-centered and is child-like and needs attention. What disappointment! What crushing disappointment! It is this fact that keeps me from calling her after reunion.

What makes it especially hard to even raise such issues is the extent to which we have internalized our roles. The good, grateful daughter should not discuss her adoptive parents faults, even giant ugly ones like narcissism. What right have we to criticize? And when we find our first mothers or fathers disappointing, we struggle to voice that too because we feel guilty. After all, we found them and now stand in judgment. How dare we? What right have we to our disappointment that our mother is not the mother we had hoped for, often desperately. After all, we have no claim on her. We sought her out and now stand, a little surprised and maybe even bereft. But at least it's finally real. She's no longer someone who haunts us. She may trouble us, as a real person can only do. When she is no longer a ghost, neither are we. And when we admit that our adoptive parents weren't so nice and maybe even narcissistic, then can become real people, too instead of Problem Fixing, People Pleasing Pretend Children.