Primal Wound

To protect ourselves from feeling the primal wound, we create a false world and a false self.
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Some birth mothers have spoken of the love they directed to their child in the uterus before the adoption. If feelings and emotions get through to a fetus, it was exposed to and felt that love.

What is a Primal Wound? How Does It Relate to Adoption?

However, it makes no sense that only love gets through. Thus, a baby still in the womb could feel abandoned, unwanted, insecure, sad, angry, and unable to trust even his mother. Not surprisingly, too many teenagers who were adopted soon after birth feel the same way.

Healing the primal wound with an empathic holding environment in adulthood

Skeptics may deny any link between the teenage feelings and the time in the uterus because those teens cannot consciously remember that time. However, neither can they consciously recall their infancy including leaving the original mother.


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Thus, if the skeptics are right, the primal wound theory also falls. These babies such as the howler, the cheery one, the placid one, the stubborn one, and the withdrawn one have their own usual way of dealing with the world. Furthermore, some women say they got a preview of what their offspring would be like from how it acted e.

The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child

Studies confirm that human beings can and do learn before birth. Clearly, fetuses learn from both good and bad experiences e. Also clearly, infants recall some things learned in the womb. Furthermore, humans may, consciously or unconsciously, retain fetal memories past infancy.

Adoption from the Adoptee point of view - The primal Wound - Speak up

According to Nancy Verrier herself, evidence exists of people being able to remember, through hypnosis, attempted abortions. Moreover, a growing body of research supports the view that too much stress on an expectant mother can, as our ancestors knew, have negative consequences for her fetus. This is true even in cases where the child stays with his genetic mother, i.

Studies indicate that excessive maternal stress during pregnancy can have adverse effects - including physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral effects - on the child even years later. That stress can be linked to, among other conditions, depression, anxiety, behavioral problems, emotional problems, learning problems, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - conditions often found in adopted children. In other words, researchers relate to prenatal stress various conditions Ms.

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Verrier relates to the separation from the biological mother. Indeed, various teenagers born to and kept by an unwed mother could pass for poster children for the primal wound. They suffer from depression, anxiety, behavioral problems, emotional problems, difficulties in relationships with significant others, etc.


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In any event, getting pregnant young, unmarried, unable to support oneself, and semi-educated is a recipe for a drama-filled pregnancy. The primal wound theory provides some helpful insights. However, it predates much of the research on fetal learning and the dangers of a stressful pregnancy and is too simplistic. As discussed above, a preemie who should still be in utero can already have a personality and his own approach to life, a fetus learns from good and bad experiences in the uterus, an infant has prenatal memories, and a traumatic pregnancy can adversely impact a child in the womb and for years afterward in physical and non-physical ways.

In short, a newborn is by no means a blank slate.

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Pregnancy under traumatic circumstances can have negative effects on the child after birth, whether or not that child remains with his first mother i. I worry that this theory is more limiting than empowering and furthers negative stereotypes. I finally had my ah-ha moment, when I read this article: Axness, an adoption therapist and an adoptee herself, was able to explain the importance of the primal wound theory in a way that helped me get it or at least parts of it. Axness was able to help me understand that the primal wound should not be about blame and guilt— it should be about understanding.

What Adoptive Parents Need to Know about the Primal Wound | Creating a Family

A few years ago my husband was suffering from a mysterious, ever-worsening pain in his heels. The pain, and its intrusion on his lifestyle, was depressing for him, and even more depressing was the sense that this seemed to be one of those things that might never get explained but would rather, hopefully, go away on its own. One day he came home from the podiatrist happy and hopeful.

He had seen his problem on the X-rays, he had seen in black and white exactly what was causing his pain. There was a name for what was hurting him. There are no X-rays for hearts, for souls. There are only courageous people willing to step forward and speak of certain difficult truths. It is the interruption of this natural evolution, due to post-partum separation of mother and child, that creates a primal wound, according to Verrier, who went on to publish her findings in The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. Confined, and puzzled as to why…. In the long run, I agree….

It ironically stunts growth rather than hurrying it along. And to worry that a struggling adoptee will remain in the grip of this archetype-based idea of the primal wound, so that everything for that person will forevermore be explained by that theory, is to reveal a cynicism about the emotional and spiritual resources of the adopted person to continue the process of integration, the process of pursuing wholeness along whatever paths lead the way. Adoption , Adoption Blog , Blog 12 Comments. I never realized that something that happened to me when I was 3 months old placed for adoption, after having been with bio mom 3 months would affect me the rest of my life.

My quote on the front cover of the book: Is it possible that mothers giving up children have a depressed state during their pregnancy? And that this is passed onto the child? I am wondering if this has been studied? I just found your blog by chance. I grew up feeling completely separate, different and alone, like an alien. Imagine their little spirits knowing exactly how their mothers feel about themselves and their lives.

Is it possible that babies feel our worries, joys, anxiety, hopes, fears, faith, disappointments, and excitement? They begin to feel any intense emotion as their own. Some pulled away from her, judged her, or perhaps even criticized her decision to place her child for adoption. It can be a very isolating experience. Allow me to be extremely clear here. Rather SHE felt unwanted and unloved by others and perhaps herself and those emotions transferred to him. The unkind feelings I mentioned earlier were about herself or perhaps her life situation not her unborn child.

Prevention is the best medicine. If possible, encourage expectant mothers planning to place or parent to love and care for themselves. Their unborn child will appreciate the good vibes and feelings sent their way as their mom offers them to herself. When a child is placed for adoption, there is more to the story than the psychology of birth. There is a loss of the bonding, attachment, and connections they had physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually with their birth mother. This concept can be emotional for all members of the triad to acknowledge.