Adoptees' PTSD

Like many adoptees who blog or write, I find there is never a shortage of topics.Adoption is a rich seam to mine with enough areas to write about to last a lifetime.It is encouraging to see the numbers of books available by adoptees who write about their personal experiences, or about particular areas of adoption.Hopefully these books are reaching library shelves, the hands of those who are not adoptees and not just the ones who 'get it', but those who definitely don't get it who will have the opportunity to see the other side of adoption, the one that is not saccharine sweet with abundant love, entitlement and the joy at the beauty and 'rightness' of adoption.
Others have their place in changing the adoption story - legislators, comics, good counsellors,supportive families, friends and humanitarians.You may have noticed that some groups who like to call themselves humanitarian won't touch adoption issues or adoptees' rights.One of those is Amnesty.
The internet has been the most invaluable tool for change with adoptees, who no longer have to feel isolation unless they want it, are able to find their clan, the like-minded and the ones who understand.It doesn't take away the deep sense of isolation and aloneness, 'the hole in the heart' but it sure helps!The internet may prove to big the biggest assistance to change in adoption.For instance if adoptees were to get up class actions against the big name adoption agencies, how easy the internet would make it!
That isolation and aloneness has been alleviated partly because it is now possible for adoptees to 'chat', compare notes, exchange experiences and realise that things they thought they alone suffered are experienced by others and are not unusual but quite 'normal' for adoptees.Many adoptees suffer Post Trauma Stress Disorder.We have our own paticular 'own brand' in which, I believe, our flash-backs are not like those of other PTSD sufferers.Ours may date to a time when the trauma/s we suffered happened before we had words.We experience flashbacks of feelings, emotions, sensations, rather than scenes, 'incidents and accidents' to quote Paul Simon, although we may have those too.We also have our own type of nightmares.In my own case lasting a lifetime so far and with recurring themes - searching for something unknown and never finding, displacement, being lost in an unknown city without identification, the Holocaust and so on and on.They are nightly and part of life.
Rainbow kids addresses the issue for transnationally adopted children. Adoption Under One Roof has posts on PTSD in adoptees.It is well documented here in a paper about children from Roumania  which credits the late Betty Jean Lifton and other sources.
It's time for those amongst you who are adopters to support the efforts of others to make help available for all, to recognise that PTSD is part of adoption for most adoptees and to take it seriously.The time for disbelief, argument and non-acceptance is over.Time to get real if you haven't already and if you have, time to make sure other adopters know what to look for and what to do.