All my life I’ve usually been able to look into the eyes of someone at work, at church, and in my social outings and be able, to some degree, to determine their thoughts and reactions to a situation. Obviously one’s deepest thoughts are unfathomable, but one’s reactions can be fairly predictable.

Regular people smile when happy, cry when sad, and laugh when amused.

“Exposure to complex trauma can lead to severe problems with affect regulation.”

Once again I am deep in Focal Point in my continuous quest to comprehend.

I have since encountered traumatized children with no affect. One in particular is severely RAD, unable to mimic daily responses to social situations. A very intelligent young lady, I’ve often wondered why she didn’t just look at the other children and copy their reactions. In reality she does not comprehend that one would react in any way.

“Affect regulation begins with the accurate identification of internal emotional experiences. This requires the ability to differentiate among states of arousal, interpret those states, and apply appropriate labels (e.g. “happy,” “frightened”). When children are provided with inconsistent models of affect and behavior (e.g. a smiling expression paired with rejecting behavior) or with inconsistent responses to affective display (e.g. child distress is met inconsistently with anger, rejection, nurturance, or neutrality), no coherent framework is provided through which to interpret experience.”

When my daughter was young she lived in unimaginable chaos and confusion, often homeless, always in filth as her birth mother was inhaling paints, destroying her own brain wiring connections, and rendering incoherent any remaining maternal instincts. Inconsistent would have been a step up. I remain astonished, not only at a lack of structure and stability, but at the depths of bedlam, neglect and cruelty from which my children joined our family.

All adopted as older children, they’d lived long enough in exploitation and the denial of their childhood, no needs ever being met, and often severely abused, that it is no mere wonder, upon arrival in our family, that they were disoriented and panicky. Baffled by my consistency of three meals a day, school expectations and being provided for, that normal reactions were sometimes not apparent.

A caseworker told me yesterday that she remains amazed at innocent, naïve parents who tell her, “I just wanted to give him a better life. I didn’t expect the anger and the rage.”

Nor did I. I was once that green as well. But I’ve come to slowly understand the root causes of this unmitigated fury in children, the seething resentment of what has happened to them. I’m slowly learning to deal with it in their therapy sessions.

It is this total lack of affect that is unusual to me. Another adoption psychological concept for me to grapple with and cope, make plans, and help. “This chronic numbing of emotional responses, and avoidance of emotional situations,” leaves us with few clues as to how to properly respond and redirect.

Therapeutic intervention is a must for us adoptive parents. We are on a lifelong journey.