Acknowledging the Primal Wound: How Relinquishment Can Lead to an Intimacy Disorder

by K E Garland
Ever since I was a child, I’d sensed something was wrong with me.

I used to fantasize about and crave sex, well before I understood what it was. At the end of my eighth-grade year, I succumbed to desire and lost my virginity. Afterward, I developed an art of quickly connecting with boys—and eventually men—through mutual attraction. Once I received a man’s sexual attention, I determined if I actually liked him. Sometimes I did. Many times, I did not. I thought this behavior would subside when, in my early 20s, I met and married my college sweetheart and then had two daughters. Unfortunately, the pattern persisted, so I became adept at hiding what I perceived to simply be a socially unacceptable personality flaw.

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This deep-seated desire led to a lifetime of recklessness. Whether married or not, I engaged in risky behaviors, which resulted in and included having multiple abortions. A rock-bottom moment forced me to stop and face the details of my life. In my early 40s, I self-therapized and learned that I was a sex addict. Patrick Carnes coined the term in the 1980s. Today, however, sex addiction is somewhat of a common phrase that refers to excessive sexual thoughts, desires, urges or behaviors that can’t be controlled and cause distress and harm to your relationships, finances and other aspects of your life.

Later, I found that being a female added a layer to the compulsion that isn’t a part of mainstream conversations. Marnie Ferree (2001), one of the leading female sex addiction scholars in the United States, outlined four types of female sex addicts: (1) relationship addict, (2) pornography or cybersex, (3) stereotypical (i.e., anonymous sex or sex workers), and (4) sexual anorexic. When I was in the sex addiction cycle, I was a combination of the first and third. Though I wasn’t a sex worker, I sought connection through random sex partners when what I really wanted were meaningful relationships.

I came across Gabor Maté while researching the root cause of addiction. Maté (2016) suggests that all addictions begin with unresolved childhood trauma. This idea made sense. I had endured and ignored several interrelated traumas: I was a victim of child-on-child sexual molestation when I was nine; my adoptive father molested me when I was 12; my adoptive mother died when I was 16; and my adoptive father gave up his parental rights and sent me to live in another state with my adoptive grandmother when I was 17. My lived experience confirmed what Maté says. But I was still overlooking a major life event—adoption. I had to reconcile the trauma of being an adoptee.
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The pain began in utero with my birth mother, Joyce. The information I have about my mother comes from a five-page document via the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Joyce hailed from a lineage of mental illness; her mother had endured a nervous breakdown, resulting in her and her six siblings being placed in foster care. As a young adult, Joyce was diagnosed with schizophrenia. According to the document, by the time she was pregnant with me, she had a five-year-old daughter and was in the throes of psychosis. Later, I learned she was also fleeing her husband, my sister’s father. The DCFS document makes clear that she was a woman who lived in poverty and who, during pregnancy, fluctuated between having an abortion and giving birth. Eventually, it was too late for a different choice; she birthed me. Five months after I was born, my mother left me in an apartment building for several days. A janitor found me, called the police, and eventually, I was placed in foster care and then adopted as an infant. Before I became a part of the adoption community, I would tell this story as just another bullet point of life. Now, I’m confident that the circumstances of my birth and adoption caused dysregulation, a primal wound, and, subsequently, an intimacy disorder.

Stress and Dysregulation
Co-regulation is something that usually happens between parents and their babies. It’s how children learn to manage their emotions. When a baby cries and a calm parent coddles and soothes them, they relax. Over time, the child learns how to self-soothe or self-regulate their emotions. But if a baby does not learn how to manage their emotions at an early age, they can become emotionally dysregulated; everyday events can rattle them; they either overreact with excessive tears or anger, or they underreact and show little-to-no emotion when feelings are expected.

It is possible that being incubated in Joyce’s stressed body created the conditions for the anxiety I’ve felt since I was a child and the tremors that reappear as physical and real-time reminders of dysregulation. It is highly probable that being abandoned in an apartment building for several days as an infant amplified a feeling that I wasn’t safe—in my body or in my environment. These early instances seem to be the reasons I found myself constantly crying uncontrollably over proverbial spilled milk, while also being unable to self-soothe. But when I found sex as a teenager, I also found a way to regulate my emotions, even if only temporarily.

Relinquishment and Primal Wounds
I first heard the term, primal wound, when I watched Autumn Sansom’s documentary, Reckoning with the Primal Wound. The primal wound refers to an adoptee’s first trauma—separation from their birth mother. Verrier (1993), the scholar who introduced the term, explains that it is not only unnatural for a baby to be separated from her birth mother, but it also creates a person’s first trauma, hence the primal wound. Consequently, Easterly, Ranyard, and Holden (2023) add that this separation can lead to a myriad of issues for the adoptee, one of them being addiction.

As a baby, and for much of my life, I didn’t have the language to express that I was in pain and missed my mother, but as an adult, it is clear. Verrier doesn’t distinguish between being relinquished in a safe loving way, such as through a gentle handoff to new parents or a jarring one, such as being abandoned and found by a janitor. The premise is this: the very act of mother-child separation creates a void. In my case, being suddenly released to policemen and then to a foster care system of strangers compounded additional pain. Regardless of the care my adoptive family later provided, I subconsciously sought my birth mother’s touch, love, and affection. Eventually, sex with random men mirrored the search for my mother and momentarily fulfilled the longing for affection.

Intimacy/Intimacy Disorder
Silverstein and Kaplan (1982) discovered that there are seven core issues of adoption:
1. Loss
2. Rejection
3. Guilt and Shame
4. Grief
5. Identity
6. Intimacy
7. Mastery/control

The premise of these core issues is that if an adoptee is not supported through the first five traits in healthy ways, then intimacy issues can develop. Kaplan Roszia and Maxon (2019) add this: Intimate attachments provide the network through which all social, emotional, physical and psychological needs get met. Intimate attachment relationships require trust, respect, acceptance, empathy, and reciprocity. I learned of my adoption when I was ten years old. Additionally, my adoptive mother dismissed the immediate grief I felt after realizing my family was not biologically related to me. Furthermore, my adoptive family never equated my emotions with loss. What ensued was an immense amount of shame of being an adoptee. For many decades, I was unclear about who I was as a member of my adoptive family, which led to further confusion about my identity and who I should be in society at-large.

For me, primarily engaging with men in sexual ways manifested not only as a core issue with intimacy, but as a full-blown intimacy disorder. This disorder is seen when people have problems developing, maintaining, and expressing appropriate kinds and levels of intimacy. Many scholars, psychologists, and certified sex addiction therapists (CSATs) have noted that sex addiction is an intimacy disorder created and exacerbated by unresolved childhood trauma.

The sex addiction literature and theories centered on trauma helped me to begin a healing journey; however, it is the work of the adoption community that has provided overarching clarity. Understanding concepts like the primal wound and the seven core issues of adoption have helped me to define my experiences with language and ideas that describe root conditions. Adoption is trauma. To be separated from one’s mother is to begin life traumatized. As adoptees, it is imperative that we come to terms with these ideas if we are to become fully actualized as adults.

(Parts of this article were published in In Search of a Salve: Memoir of a Sex Addict and “Memoir of a Sex Addict by K E Garland” )

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
K E Garland is an award-winning writer, blogger, and author based in Florida. She uses creative nonfiction to de-marginalize women’s experiences and to highlight and humanize contemporary issues. Her debut memoir, In Search of a Salve: Memoir of a Sex Addict, weaves her adoption story throughout a coming-of-age narrative to demonstrate the interrelated issues that can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms. She is also the co-founder of Black Adoptees Meetup, a non-profit organization that creates a safe space for Black adoptees to connect.

LINKS: Personal blog: kwoted.wordpress.com Substack (forthcoming): https://kegarland.substack.com/ Author website: kegarland.com
IG: @kegarland

Works referenced in this article:
Patrick Carnes, Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction (Hazelden Publishing, 1983).

“Sex Addiction, Hypersexuality and Compulsive Sexual Behavior” https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22690-sex-addiction-hypersexuality-and-compulsive-sexual-behavior

Marnie C. Ferree. (2001). “Females and Sex Addiction: Myths and Diagnostic Implications.” Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention 8, no. 3-4 (2001): 287-300.

Carolyn Gregoire, “Why This Doctor Believes Addictions Start in Childhood,” Huffpost, January 27, 2016,
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gabor-mate-addiction_n_569fd18ae4b0fca5ba76415c

Janette E. Herbers, J. J. Cutuli, Laura M. Supkoff, Angela J. Narayan, and Ann S. Masten. “Parenting and Coregulation: Adaptive Systems for Competence in Children Experiencing Homelessness.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 84, no. 4 (2014): 420.

Nicole B. Perry, Jessica M. Dollar, Susan D. Calkins, Susan P. Keane, and Lilly Shanahan. “Maternal Socialization of Child Emotion and Adolescent Adjustment: Indirect Effects Through Emotion Regulation.” Developmental psychology 56, no. 3 (2020): 541.

WebMD Editorial Contributors, “What is Emotional Dysregulation?” WebMD, June 22, 2021, https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what- is-emotional-dysregulation#091e9c5e8216e0b7-1-3

Nancy Newton Verrier. The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. (1993).

Sara Easterly, Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and Lori Holden. Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents and Allies. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023).

“Reckoning with the Primal Wound” https://www.reckoningwiththeprimalwound.com/

Silverstein, Deborah N., and Sharon Kaplan. “Seven Core Issues in Adoption.” September 10 (1982): 2004.