Numbing

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Thriving Adoptees Podcast. So it's just me again today, uh, and I was thinking about what I was going to share with you today, and this is prompted by a few things that have been going on in the last few days, um, and I was thinking about numbing, right, numbing our, our painful painful feelings. And this was actually prompted by seeing a, a dad and his, uh, and his kid in the, in the swimming pool yesterday. And she, um, she fell over in this one, in the— not in the pool itself. She, she, she fell over and started, um, started crying. And obviously a dad— She's about 2, perhaps. Little girl, um, year and a half, one, two, something like that, not sure. Uh, and they— so the dad went over to, to her, asked her for, you know, is she okay, and, uh, started, started soothing her. And something like that popped into my head later yesterday about me and um, my first experience, my first memory of being really upset. And it was when my, my granddad died, when my— we called him Pop— my dad's dad died. And all I can really remember about this was lying on the bed with my, my teddy bear, right? And confiding in my teddy bear, telling, passing the bad news on to my my teddy bear and, and, and crying the fact that I wasn't going to see my, my pop again. I was about 7 or so. And it got me thinking about— we, we don't try and talk people out of grief, do we? Um, we just let them be in it, and we We we we hug them and we show them that we're we're there for them. We don't try and talk them out of grief, but most other what people would call negative emotions, we try and talk people out of that and trying to assure them it's okay. And so I'm thinking about you know that. you know, when you lose your, uh, you lose a girlfriend, when your boyfriend, when you're a kid, and somebody says, oh, there's plenty more fish in the sea, or, you know, like, we— are we in, like, are we in denial? Are we in denial of our feelings? We're trying to make the other people, the other person feel better. But, you know, has ever, has, has ever a comment like that actually made people feel better, you know. So if we're angry, say, or frustrated, some traffic jam, something like that, and, you know, we say to— we can see this happening for somebody else and we say, you know, why are you getting so mad about this? And they say, no, I'm not getting mad about this. And it's like, you clearly are. And it works exactly the same on us as well, doesn't it? Like, you know, we're in denial of our— we deny our— what we believe to be negative emotions. I remember being said, somebody told me, um, well, your problem, Simon, is you're just insecure. Oh no, I'm not. You know, it's like, it's, um, the, the kind of the ego rises up and, and that thing called, um, uh, emotophobia. No, there's nothing wrong with me. What, you know, what on earth? What's so wrong with me? And, and, and, you know, what, what are we doing internally on that? What, what have I done internally on that? You know, there's some stuff coming up at the moment, right? There's some, uh, there's some— I'm, uh, I, I saw something from, um, a fellow adoptee called Peggy Arvidson. Uh, she commented on something I put on Facebook and she said, oh, look, look at me learning to feel. You know, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. And, and I thought, yeah, she, she's, she's proud of, you know, she's, she's been numbing her stuff, um, as we all have, uh, we've been shoving it down, we've been trying to, um, exclude, uh, I, I think it's called exile. We try, we try to exclude what, uh, a guy— there's a guy called Richard Schwartz, Dick Schwartz, He's the, he's the founder of, inventor of Internal Family Systems, and his book's called No Bad Parts, right? But what, but nothing. But I, I, this is what I'm listening to that at the moment. I finished listening to it. And there's that, there's that part of me that's, that's angry. And, and, and there's that, you know, so it, it's, it's locked in time. The idea is basically that this, this part of us is, is locked in time. Uh, and, uh, at a certain time, And we're trying to exile it, we're trying to push it away, we're trying to numb it, we're trying to exclude it from who, who we are. And I was thinking, what that, you know, what do I, what I, what do I remember about anger? What do I remember, you know, my first memory of anger? And I remember I'd, uh, we'd been on a school trip, I'd lost my Rucksack. I was late on the coach getting back because I've been looking for my rucksack, and some kid sneered at me. Another kid called Simon, you might have heard the story before, sneered at me and said, ha ha ha, you've lost your rucksack, or words to that effect. And I just snapped and punched him. I was 10, I think, 10, maybe 11. And I think some part of us, you know, one of the reasons that we numb, or one of the reasons that I've maybe numbed my anger, is because I've seen what that can cause me to do. Right? I've seen its impact on other people. And it doesn't, it doesn't didn't feel— it doesn't feel good, right? Um, and so am I exiling that angry, angry part? And, and, uh, the, you know, the— back to the telly story and the anger to my birth mum that I, I talked about, 20 seconds of anger, if that, to her. Um, and, and then there's other— the, the other pain. What are the pains are we— uh, what are the pains we're trying to, to, to numb? Have I been trying to numb the the kind of the upset stuff. You're trying to— no, not— I'm, I'm not upset. And, you know, say to other people, no, I'm not upset, they didn't upset me. And then in, in inside you're crying your little heart out, right? And, and it's that feeling, um, maybe the upset and the grief are, uh, are, are one in the same. And, and we're concerned that that will engulf us, right? We're afraid of drowning, drowning in our tears, drowning. You know, people talk about drowning their sorrow, don't they? Having a drink to drown your sorrow, drown your sorrow. But I think we're— and some people obviously we do that. There's a lot of adoptees who are alcoholics. It's more uh, prevalent. Uh, it's more prevalent in academic— in, in alcoholics. Sorry, alcoholism is more prevalent in, in adoptees than it is in, uh, yeah, people that weren't adopted. That, um, I think there's a word for them called kept, kept kids, kept children. That's the opposite of adoptees. It's funny how you pick up all these little words and terminology. Um, and did a great interview with a fantastic adoptee called Pam, Pamela Karanova, about, um, about her, you know, her facing her demons. So she had a long relationship with alcohol. I can't remember how long she, she talks about a bit. It was, it was long. And she talked about The, the, the time, the start of her sobriety, or a big part of her sobriety story is when she faced her feelings. And instead of trying to numb them, because they're so big, they're so overwhelming, we're, we're trying to— she was trying to numb them through, through, um, booze. And, and obviously, it was working to some extent for a short time, and then it doesn't work anymore. You get the hangover, and you— if we try to numb stuff, then it comes back and it's even more powerful. Or we think that we need to go off and do the same thing again. So, and that's how I think— that's how people talk about addiction starting. Needs more and more to have the same numbing effect. So we're afraid of our feelings. That's what it comes down to. I think we're afraid of our feelings. We're afraid to feel them. We're afraid that they're going to overtake us. We're afraid of of how our feelings, when we've been overtaken by our feelings. is going to impact other people. And yeah, I'm doing some work on this at the moment, uh, and it, it feels— there was some tightness across my chest with anger, uh, and it felt like I was lying on the floor with 2 heavy metal weights, and these metal weights were rising and falling with my, with my in-breath and my out-breath. And we just felt, felt the feelings, just felt the feelings, and then did this for a while. I had some help with this with a With the therapist, and it went after that. A couple of hours after that, I I just felt lighter because I'd been feeling this the weight of this anger on my chest pushing me down, holding me back, and and and you know he wasn't stopping me. Breathing, but I don't know whether it had any effect on my breathing. I don't know. It wasn't quite heavy enough, but I'm sure that if it was heavier, then I would have felt basically suffocated by this weight. And yeah, the the weight of expectations, the weight of expectations to be okay, the weight of expectations to. achieve stuff, the weight of our self-expectations, our expectations of ourself to achieve in the world, and my desire to make a difference. And it weighs heavy, right? It weighs heavy. And then it doesn't. Thanks a lot for listening. We'll speak to you again very soon. Bye-bye.