Doing The Work (Byron Katie’s Questions) on a Common Thought Adoptees Have
“My mother did not want me.”
Is this true.
Yes.
2. Can I absolutely know this is true. My mother did not want me.
No.
3. How do I react when I believe the thought “My mother did not want me.?
I feel crushed. I breathe shallowly. I feel small, hopeless. I don’t know how I am supposed to live as the child of a mother who did not want her.
4. How do I treat others when I believe the thought “My mother did not want me.”?
I feel a distance between me and others. I feel a little hostile. I don’t want to connect. I close up.
5. How would my life be different if I could not have the thought, “My mother did not want me.”?
I would feel free. I would feel happy, like someone let me out of prison. I would feel like a kid.
6. Try some turnarounds and see if you can come up with specific examples showing they are as true or truer than the original thought.
“My mother did want me.”
She did not abort me.
That’s the only example I can think of, but it feels good. It’s true. She did not abort me.
“I did not want my mother.”
Apparently I didn’t since I went to another mother. Maybe my spirit knew she was not the right one for me. Anything is possible, right?
There are lots of times in the past when I wasn’t thinking about wanting her.
The thing about doing thought work is to look at how the thought itself affects you. It’s not so much about true or not true, but helpful or not helpful. So much about not knowing my complete story as an adopted person means my mind has filled in a lot of blanks with things I don’t know for sure are true or not (She never held me.) — thoughts that cause me suffering as they send me down rabbit holes of grief as I weave ever more complicated stories around one imagined thought.
There’s clean pain and there’s dirty pain. Clean pain is someone punching you in the head. Dirty pain is remembering the punch ten years later and all the stories associated with the now painful memory.
The thing is, creating stories can feel powerful when stories have been turned into secrets. The other thing is that any stories we create that also create suffering are worthy of questioning as clean pain perhaps has become dirty. I can choose to suffer. I can want that life, a life that continues to reverberate the grief of loss. That’s a fair and understandable choice.
And I am so curious about what it’s like to not buy into my thoughts and to feel the afternoon breeze on my face and not automatically go to the thought, “The breeze leaves me like she did,” and turn a perfectly nice moment into a bruise.
I have to question my thoughts slowly because these thoughts of mine were hard-earned. I am not trying to get to a place when I can say, I am now unscarred from adoption and all is good. I am trying to get to a place when I can know what I went through and work to help others not have to suffer in similar ways while enjoying the breeze.
Both and.
To hear the master in action, listen to a Byron Katie podcast episode. Hold onto the top of your head. Some people can feel her work is a kind of gaslighting. I get it. See what you think for yourself.
