Exit Strategies, Hypervigilance, and Pre-Verbal PTSD
I was in middle school when a man named Ishmael Beah came to my school. He came because he ran into a teacher from my school while volunteering in Haiti. Ishmael Beah was a child soldier in Africa. He wrote a best selling autobiography called a Long Way Gone. He's married now with kids, but he spoke to us during a school assembly about the power of resilience and what life was like as a survivor of being a child soldier, having his village burned to the ground, his parents slaughtered, and hundreds of orphans drugged and given machine guns to kill other orphans captured by the people who brought the destruction in the first place.
During his talk, he said something that made me pause. He said that even though life is good now, he still can't shake some things from his past. Like exits, he said. Whenever he goes into a room, he notices where the exits are. As a little kid, around eleven years old, I thought, oh my god, I do that too. And I still do. I like to sit next to the door in classrooms. Or if there's a little window on the door, I like to sit facing it so that I can see everyone in the room and anyone coming in.
I talked to my therapist about it around a year ago. She says that it's common in people with PTSD, people who may have come back from war who automatically size people up and know exactly how to dismember a person if need be. I don't have the skills to hurt anyone, but I size people up in my own way. How big are they? How fast can they run? I think of contingency plans a lot. When I was younger, our school always made us take these tests in elementary school gym class about safety. They were multiple choice and were along the lines of "Sally found a gun in her backyard. Should she a) tell an adult b) play with it c) take it with her d) do nothing" There were hundreds of these scenarios from fires to shootings to stranger danger. They didn't help me feel any safer and probably made me think I definitely needed a plan for everything. I had a plan for being kidnapped. I had a plan for being a hostage. I had a plan for being a potential rape victim. I had a plan for everything.
But I didn't have PTSD, did I? I was adopted as an infant and the idea of something happening so young felt so phony, like I was making it up. But it isn't phony, not at all. The truth is, separation from the birthmom and a year in institutionalized care probably did affect me, and I know it did because I've literally just started living my full life now, at age twenty-one. Just because I wasn't aware of how it affected me didn't mean I didn't have these problems, it just meant I couldn't see them and therefore couldn't do a thing about them. When you don't know who you are, toxic people find you.
I do other things too, like eavesdrop on conversation across the room. I have very good senses. I can smell very well. I can hear grass grow, haha. My eyesight sucks, but I am very very sensitive to bright light. I have sensitive skin and get rashes easily. I also can't have clothes that are too tight, have seams, have tags sticking out, are too "rough" (my mom would argue that it isn't rough at all). I'm basically a nightmare to buy clothes for. I hate bras. I put band-aids on tags and rough hems on my bras so they don't touch me. Is that too much information? All well. I know other adoptees struggle with the clothes thing too, so I thought it might help other adoptees know they are perfectly normal if they experience this too.
Anyway, I feel like I always need to be aware of every player in the room and everything being talked about or planned. When my parents want to talk about things in private, they whisper in their closed room or talk outside on the driveway, but I can still hear them. I told them that when I was thirteen and they immediately moved my bedroom to be further down the hall from them (they switched my room and my mom's office) so that they could have some "privacy." I just need to know what they're saying, you know, because what if it's about me (it usually is, though! They go outside and complain about me, haha!) This is just another aspect of being hyperaware or hypervigilant. Just in case. It's all for that "just in case" situation, of "what if they leave me?" or "what if something is going to happen to me?" They're plotting a secret conversation? Let me listen too!
For other adoptees, they feel more literally like their parents are going to leave them. I know intellectually my parents will not, but it doesn't stop me from feeling like it could happen. If my mom is late in picking me up, I freak out, and then she gets mad that I'm mad and accuses me of being demanding or bitchy for wanting instant pick up service. Now that she understands more about adoptees, she's since apologized and felt pretty shitty about putting myself as a little kid through hell for literally just being scared my mommy left me again. Other adoptees I know personally, though, feel as if their adoptive parents are more temporary. They feel that adoption is only a twenty year arrangement, where they are truly on their own when they hit college. They still feel like orphans and they feel more like burdens, children in a foster care system.
During his talk, he said something that made me pause. He said that even though life is good now, he still can't shake some things from his past. Like exits, he said. Whenever he goes into a room, he notices where the exits are. As a little kid, around eleven years old, I thought, oh my god, I do that too. And I still do. I like to sit next to the door in classrooms. Or if there's a little window on the door, I like to sit facing it so that I can see everyone in the room and anyone coming in.
I talked to my therapist about it around a year ago. She says that it's common in people with PTSD, people who may have come back from war who automatically size people up and know exactly how to dismember a person if need be. I don't have the skills to hurt anyone, but I size people up in my own way. How big are they? How fast can they run? I think of contingency plans a lot. When I was younger, our school always made us take these tests in elementary school gym class about safety. They were multiple choice and were along the lines of "Sally found a gun in her backyard. Should she a) tell an adult b) play with it c) take it with her d) do nothing" There were hundreds of these scenarios from fires to shootings to stranger danger. They didn't help me feel any safer and probably made me think I definitely needed a plan for everything. I had a plan for being kidnapped. I had a plan for being a hostage. I had a plan for being a potential rape victim. I had a plan for everything.
But I didn't have PTSD, did I? I was adopted as an infant and the idea of something happening so young felt so phony, like I was making it up. But it isn't phony, not at all. The truth is, separation from the birthmom and a year in institutionalized care probably did affect me, and I know it did because I've literally just started living my full life now, at age twenty-one. Just because I wasn't aware of how it affected me didn't mean I didn't have these problems, it just meant I couldn't see them and therefore couldn't do a thing about them. When you don't know who you are, toxic people find you.
I do other things too, like eavesdrop on conversation across the room. I have very good senses. I can smell very well. I can hear grass grow, haha. My eyesight sucks, but I am very very sensitive to bright light. I have sensitive skin and get rashes easily. I also can't have clothes that are too tight, have seams, have tags sticking out, are too "rough" (my mom would argue that it isn't rough at all). I'm basically a nightmare to buy clothes for. I hate bras. I put band-aids on tags and rough hems on my bras so they don't touch me. Is that too much information? All well. I know other adoptees struggle with the clothes thing too, so I thought it might help other adoptees know they are perfectly normal if they experience this too.
Anyway, I feel like I always need to be aware of every player in the room and everything being talked about or planned. When my parents want to talk about things in private, they whisper in their closed room or talk outside on the driveway, but I can still hear them. I told them that when I was thirteen and they immediately moved my bedroom to be further down the hall from them (they switched my room and my mom's office) so that they could have some "privacy." I just need to know what they're saying, you know, because what if it's about me (it usually is, though! They go outside and complain about me, haha!) This is just another aspect of being hyperaware or hypervigilant. Just in case. It's all for that "just in case" situation, of "what if they leave me?" or "what if something is going to happen to me?" They're plotting a secret conversation? Let me listen too!
For other adoptees, they feel more literally like their parents are going to leave them. I know intellectually my parents will not, but it doesn't stop me from feeling like it could happen. If my mom is late in picking me up, I freak out, and then she gets mad that I'm mad and accuses me of being demanding or bitchy for wanting instant pick up service. Now that she understands more about adoptees, she's since apologized and felt pretty shitty about putting myself as a little kid through hell for literally just being scared my mommy left me again. Other adoptees I know personally, though, feel as if their adoptive parents are more temporary. They feel that adoption is only a twenty year arrangement, where they are truly on their own when they hit college. They still feel like orphans and they feel more like burdens, children in a foster care system.
Why do they feel this way? Is it because of the way our culture treats adoptees like burdens and charity work? Is it because adoptive parents just assume that the adoptee is just like them growing up, that babies understand the concept of adoption and never have fears or doubts or very real concerns about our security in this new family situation? Whatever it is, these adoptees have had exit strategies since the beginning. They know where they want to move. They know what house they want to live in. They have been planning on moving out since they were thirteen. One wrong move, one more fight, and they are getting out of there.
I didn't know that what I was doing when I was younger was unusual. I didn't actually count the exits or anything weird. It was just something I noticed, something I did naturally, something which I didn't fully know I was doing. Just because adoptive parents are more aware of it now, doesn't necessarily mean that adoptive parents should encourage the behavior, give it a special name, or normalize it. It really isn't normal. It's typical for an adoptee, but it isn't necessarily healthy or cool. You also can't stop it or force someone to cut it out. This is a part of us and should just be treated as another part of us. I have black hair, but there's no need to talk about it every day like it's very very very normal, my dear, to have black hair. Because that's just going to make me feel weird. If anything, people should just know that they need to be extra careful about being on time for picking adoptees up from activities and letting them know being late doesn't mean they aren't coming. They should also let adoptees know if there's a change in plans without springing something up on them.
My mom was infamous for picking me up late for so many things, and because she was usually late because of a bad reason (stuck in traffic, other unexpected problem), she was not in a great mood when I got in the car. I'd be upset because I was having PTSD feeling like I was abandoned again and without a family and I'd ask her why she was so late, that I had been looking at each and every car as it went by feeling so incredibly awful. Then she'd start screaming at me that I was basically asking her to be perfect and pick me up on time when didn't I understand that there's more to life than just me? And didn't I understand that she was busy and who in the hell was I to feel upset for her being just twenty minutes late? Which just made me feel like I was ungrateful and didn't deserve a family, didn't deserve love, didn't deserve food, and I should just be dead. Which just made me sadder.
I didn't know that what I was doing when I was younger was unusual. I didn't actually count the exits or anything weird. It was just something I noticed, something I did naturally, something which I didn't fully know I was doing. Just because adoptive parents are more aware of it now, doesn't necessarily mean that adoptive parents should encourage the behavior, give it a special name, or normalize it. It really isn't normal. It's typical for an adoptee, but it isn't necessarily healthy or cool. You also can't stop it or force someone to cut it out. This is a part of us and should just be treated as another part of us. I have black hair, but there's no need to talk about it every day like it's very very very normal, my dear, to have black hair. Because that's just going to make me feel weird. If anything, people should just know that they need to be extra careful about being on time for picking adoptees up from activities and letting them know being late doesn't mean they aren't coming. They should also let adoptees know if there's a change in plans without springing something up on them.
My mom was infamous for picking me up late for so many things, and because she was usually late because of a bad reason (stuck in traffic, other unexpected problem), she was not in a great mood when I got in the car. I'd be upset because I was having PTSD feeling like I was abandoned again and without a family and I'd ask her why she was so late, that I had been looking at each and every car as it went by feeling so incredibly awful. Then she'd start screaming at me that I was basically asking her to be perfect and pick me up on time when didn't I understand that there's more to life than just me? And didn't I understand that she was busy and who in the hell was I to feel upset for her being just twenty minutes late? Which just made me feel like I was ungrateful and didn't deserve a family, didn't deserve love, didn't deserve food, and I should just be dead. Which just made me sadder.
Sometimes I would feel so guilty for making my mom or dad upset that I would shut myself in the guest room closet and just hide in there. One time I slept in the guest room closet, and it was not a walk in closet, by the way, on the floor in my sleeping bag, feeling like I didn't deserve the bed. Did my parents know about this? No. I told them two years ago and they were like, what they hell? We didn't know you did this. But it just goes to show that you don't know what life is like for us, that there's something horrible and hurting in us that we don't feel all the time, that we don't need to think about all the time, but is still there. Sometimes very negative emotions make me spiral back there and in undergrad college this has led me to panic attacks, where I'll hyperventilate in the bathroom or something because of something bad happening (like a psychotic teacher screaming at me and telling me I think I'm better than her because she has an inferiority complex with Asians when I literally think I'm worthless. That was an hour panic attack...) There are parts inside of us that hold onto something that is in pain. Our hypervigilance, exit strategies, and PTSD are just natural consequences of that trauma.
If adoptive parents would just simply understand that sometimes "anger" or "annoyance" or "irritation" on adoptees are really just what PTSD looks like, then maybe they'd understand that they need to be kinder and more understanding and not just assume we are just like them when they were little. We are not like you. We are fundamentally different from you. You can't say things to us that your parents said to you. You can't scream that we're ungrateful. You can't tell us you'll throw us out. You can't threaten to leave us. If all you wanted was to adopt a punching bag, then maybe you shouldn't have adopted. We are NOT receptacles for your hate, so don't abuse us. This means stop using words that hurt us.
You now know better, so now you should do better.
To watch more about hypervigilant adoptees, watch Yes I'm Adopted, Don't Make it Weird
You might also see EMDR lauded as the miracle therapy for these issues, read my experience here and do your research before buying into pseudoscience.
If adoptive parents would just simply understand that sometimes "anger" or "annoyance" or "irritation" on adoptees are really just what PTSD looks like, then maybe they'd understand that they need to be kinder and more understanding and not just assume we are just like them when they were little. We are not like you. We are fundamentally different from you. You can't say things to us that your parents said to you. You can't scream that we're ungrateful. You can't tell us you'll throw us out. You can't threaten to leave us. If all you wanted was to adopt a punching bag, then maybe you shouldn't have adopted. We are NOT receptacles for your hate, so don't abuse us. This means stop using words that hurt us.
You now know better, so now you should do better.
To watch more about hypervigilant adoptees, watch Yes I'm Adopted, Don't Make it Weird
You might also see EMDR lauded as the miracle therapy for these issues, read my experience here and do your research before buying into pseudoscience.
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