Adoption Education | Is adoption trauma real?

hi my name is shelby redfield kilgore and i am the filmmaker of all these foster care and adoption videos um i i just want to say to those of you who are continuing to come to my channel and watch my videos i just can't thank you enough for supporting my work for bearing witness to all of these stories and it just means it means so much to me and to those of you new to this channel thank you so much for like clicking on this video and i hope that you will join me on this journey of this new series that i'm creating adoption education where i'm answering one question at a time it's been a while since i've added some new videos that are foster current adoption related because basically this pandemic has prevented me from filming other people's stories because usually i travel to different parts of the u.s and also because i have been battling breast cancer this past year and i've been focused on my treatment for that and still working as a freelancer on other tv shows as well and so i just haven't been able to create new content but because i am in between freelance jobs now and i'm have a few months before my next major surgery i have just had this urge to create new content and uh so i want to honor that and try and build my youtube channel and my my community in this space about foster care and adoption and without further ado i am going to introduce the first episode for adoption education and it's going to be me talking about trauma answering the question is adoption trauma real specifically for this episode i'm going to talk about the adapti and the trauma now i will say adoptees like they do not have a monolithic experience where we all are unique and we all have different stories and some adoptees as adults they may tell you that they have experienced no trauma from adoption some adoptees will say that they have and it's an ongoing journey for them for me personally i believe adoption is a lifelong journey and i i believe that i had trauma from my adoption and i remember it being as early as five years old when i understood what adoption meant and i was heartbroken to know that i had another mother out there who wasn't able to take care of me because she was too poor i was told that she loved me so much she gave me up to give me a better life that she couldn't afford to do and since then i had separation anxiety i felt like there was something missing in my life and i had a lot of low self-esteem low self-worth and to make to complicate matters uh being a transracial adoptee because i was adopted from korea and my parents are both white i had issues with how i looked like i didn't want to be asian i mean kids i remember kids bullying me and calling me flat face and doing the sing song chant chinese japanese look at these and they would pull their face back to try and make their eyes look like mine and um being called twinkie like yellow on the outside white on the inside um and i grew up in an environment where i could share about my adoption experience and experiences and the emotions and feeling conflicted like you know how sad and heartbroken i was that i didn't know who my my biological mother was and that did she love me who did i look like i mean any time i saw like an asian woman or family out in public because where i grew up in florida is very predominantly white like i would think oh am i related to them somehow that's you know what went through my head this feeling of not feeling loved enough was very predominant in my life growing up and it led me to look for love outside of myself so i would work really hard to try and get praise from my parents and my friends and teachers and that would fill me up for a time but it was only temporary and so i had to keep doing that and like living in that kind of way where you're constantly trying to get praise from people to fill a hole inside of you is draining and tiring and it's not a way to to live your life and that was hard for me to to try and change direction in as i became a young adult i remember when i was five and i thought if i didn't get straight excellence somehow i thought that my parents would send me back to korea so that was when i was in fifth grade i'm sorry not when i was five um and so these irrational fears of being rejected of losing loved ones was deeply deeply ingrained in like my dna or something because it was always a common theme that kept coming up even as an adult i have nightmares that my like loved ones will leave me and i wake up crying or you know it's pretty terrible but yeah so trauma for me has in relating it to adoption has been something i've been aware of since i was five and that's why i think adoption is a lifelong journey and for the adoptees that like don't have any memories from their adoption trauma i i completely believe them you know that they don't have memories of it because maybe it was prior to like four or five and um just because they don't remember doesn't mean it didn't happen and we've learned from experts that trauma can be delayed and then it can be manifested in different stages of our lives when it's triggered and so i have spoken with different adoptees over the years that um have said like they didn't really look at their adoption and some issues that have come up like with separation anxiety or in their relationships with people like how that's affected them until they were much older and like 30s or 40s or 50s years old 50 years old and sometimes it's like a singular event that trauma that triggers the trauma like having their own biological kids and then realizing this is the first time that someone um mirrors them that they are they have genetic ties to this little human being and so it triggers something in them um i've heard adoptees that like when their child reaches the age that they were adopted it's very hard for them because they they have these feelings of how could she give me up like i could never in my mind ever think of doing that to my child um there are times you know when the trauma is triggered when they lose an adoptive parent um [Music] this that loss that deep deep loss triggers the loss that happened when they were a baby and there's just so many things that happen that can trigger an adoptee in different ways you know i've talked to adoptees that have been adopted at birth i have talked to people that have been adopted as an older child through the foster care system um adoptees in same race adult families or racial adoptive families adoptees that were born in a different country and brought over to the us there's always this common thing theme that i have encountered and that is that a lot of them have dealt with feeling like there's something missing in their life um struggling with finding a sense of belonging uh struggling with identity and um like some feel not loved enough like me but some do feel like they're loved enough but there's still something that they can't put their finger on that makes them feel still like they're finding their place in the world and where they fit in um but also most adoptees i've spoken with struggle with separation anxiety or this fear of loss and that's why i believe that there is adoption and trauma and now with my personal experiences and the experiences of other adoptees that i've talked to over the years um and seeing the common themes of what we all struggle with um the science the neuroscience tells us that there is trauma and adoption for the adoptee and i'm going to break that down for you but i will profess that i am not a trauma therapist or an expert on the subject matter and if you want to listen to someone who is please check out my beyond biological series episode 2 i have put the link down in the video description and also a card should pop up as well but jules alvarado is a trauma therapist well-renowned in like around the world actually for the work that she does but basically um in this series i filmed her giving a talk to a group of people in appalachia about how trauma impacts the brain and the big thing that really hit me uh was that trauma impacts the brain the same for everyone regardless of what the trauma is and uh there is this doctor named karen purvis who wrote a book with another person i believe called the connected child where she talks about the six hard places of trauma and she lists in utero at birth immediately after birth if there's abuse neglect in the childhood [Music] those also are could be hard places of trauma as well as a isolated event um and so why there is a trauma in adoption is it can happen in utero most mothers that are struggling with whether or not they are able to parent the child a lot of the times that stress can be very traumatic for them and at six months the amygdala is functioning for the baby in utero and so if mom is experiencing trauma so is baby the amygdala is uh the fear response of the brain and so basically it's what kicks us into fight flight or freeze um and how the amygdala takes an information in our brain is through the five senses so what we see here taste smell and touch and um basically when um your baby and even as an adult anything novel like new can elicit fear and when that fear is elicited it can kick your brain into the amygdala into fight flight or freeze and what happens is it signal the amygdala signals to the hippocampus um that something is wrong and like the hippocampus starts to um kick out this natural hormone like a cortisol to help bring the brain back to regulation and that cortisol floods the frontal cortex like the front part of our brain which is in charge of executive decisions emotional decisions because the amygdala is referred to as also the reptilian brain or the primitive brain so we haven't gotten to a point where we know how to shut that off like when it's kicked into the fight flight or freeze as cortisol is being pumped into the front part of the brain the brain cannot function optimally and if that is occurring over and over again if the the child or the baby is experiencing trauma over and over again like the brain will not develop properly over time and this can cause major issues down the road this is why experts say that even babies separated at birth from their mother and handed over to strangers their adoptive parents like at birth the day that they are born is traumatic because the baby is used to its mother's smell its mother's voice everything about its mother um and then being placed into the arms of someone new this elicits fear and therefore their their brain is kicked into fight flight or freeze and they're crying or however they're responding um for the loss of of their mother um what they are familiar with what they have known up until that point so that's why there is trauma at birth and in utero if the mother is experiencing trauma so is baby and immediately after birth is usually the 72-hour hour window it's like a critical period to try and minimize the trauma that the baby may be experiencing as much as possible when you really look at it by the time a baby even at birth goes to its adopted parents it's probably experienced through traumas in its life at that point and then babies even adopted below the age of two usually there would be trauma in utero trauma at birth immediately after birth and then they would be placed with a foster care parent when they removed from their foster care placement to their permanent placement their adopted parents that's traumatic as well so usually four times for even a child having to go from a foster placement to their deaf appearance um and then there is the possibility of trauma happening later on in life that triggers their adoption trauma so it's just important to be aware of like the impact of trauma to the brain and everyone of course respond to it differently it may be triggered you know at different times for different people as like the child grows older um but it's important to to be aware of that because um what i've learned with some adoptees that grew up in an environment where they didn't feel safe to express their conflicting emotions about adoption when their voices are or how they feel is minimized or diminished or they are told like not to feel that way when that's not validated then a lot of times children try and push that down suppress those emotions and then what happens is they're delaying a process of healing a process of grieving a process of allowing the trauma to unfold in a healthier way rather than to be triggered down the road unexpectedly basically me sharing with you about the trauma and adoption for the adoptee it is to educate hopeful adoptive parents people looking to foster even people looking to go into social work or into therapy counseling it's important to know about the trauma in adoption to better understand your child and to better understand how you can help your child walk through this trauma because if it's not recognized when the child starts bringing it up in whatever way verbally or through actions like it's important for parents to be ready to support their child in the way that they need to be supported and to help them walk and to help walk them through that trauma um and so to go into an adoption especially parents that adopt children at birth thinking that their child has had no trauma and that it should be much easier to raise them that's not the case and i it's just important for adoptive parents for you guys to know and for foster care parents as well that this trauma is um real and not to ignore it not to think that it's not a part of this story and maybe your child will not express or really maybe that trauma won't be triggered until they're adults but also be ready to help them as an adult too because adoption is a lifelong journey and i think the minute that you come to accept that the better you will be as a parent and i just want to say thank you so much for joining me on this journey as i uh start this new series about adoption education and the best way to support my work so i can continue to make these films is to make sure to subscribe like comment and ring that notifications bell as well as share this with your friends family and community you never know who this might help i also helped co-author a book with another adoptee named veronica it's a book called rooted in adoption a collection of adopting reflections and that was published back in 2020 and i will put down a link uh below in the video descriptions also i will put down a link for etsy in redbubble with some merchandise that will also help veronica and i in our endeavors to help foster and promote awareness about foster care and adoption so thank you so much for watching and next week i will be answering the question should adoptive families celebrate gotcha day or adoption day

Channel: Shelby Redfield Kilgore

Views: 616

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: adoption education, adoption awareness, adoption trauma, adoption process, korean american adoptee, adoption resources, adoption tips, adoption advice, adoption and mental health, adoption is a lifelong journey, hopeful adoptive parent, domestic adoption, infant adoption, domestic infant adoption, foster to adopt, adoption documentary, adoptee identity

Id: xfo2JRQAdcc

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021