I read that many children in orphanages die due to lack of love and human touch. The longer you go without love the more it affects you. I was 18 months old when I was adopted and the people who adopted me beat and abused me. I often wonder if this is why I am an introvert and I have trouble with relationships and trusting. Do you think you suffer from long term childhood neglect?

I’m in my mid-thirties and have known about my adoption since I could form memories. Some parts of me always felt out of place and I struggled with objective confidence.

I have come to terms with being an introvert. I did a DNA search and have made contact with my family. I feel like the people that are aware of my new knowledge expect my to magically come out of this fog and just have mastery of who I am.

Has anyone else dealt with confidence issues related to their adoption and potential sensitivities from childhood? Did you ever feel more grounded in yourself after knowing more or meeting your birth parents/family?

I feel something weird that I haven't really worked on understanding yet, and I don't know if it's just me.

I talk about my adoption a lot, just randomly, not to people I care about a lot because I'm scared of being annoying but that's not the point. It feels like I always run back to talking about it, I don't like the feeling when I do, it's overwhelming and it sits heavy. But when I'm done talking it feels like I need to distract myself so I just watch some videos or something like that. But then again, no matter if I'm happy, nervous, sad. I just always run back to talking about it, and it goes in the same loop. I don't understand it. Do I like talking about it? But I don't like the emotions. Maybe I'm trying to figure something out? But there's nothing I can figure out by just talking.

So I really don't understand why I do that, why do I run back to talk about it every time?

This is embarrassing, I guess. But sometimes it feels like I say to myself "oh, well at least you have a cool backstory to you, you're not boring." Something along these lines, and sometimes I do think that way, it's not a cool backstory, I don't know. Maybe it can be very hurtful but also cool? I always wish I'm normal and "boring" rather than whatever I think I am.

I don't understand this, and frankly I don't want to go through so much just to figure it out, so maybe one of you has an answer.

I've seen quite a few people on here say that they've done a DNA test but didn't match with a close relative and so they gave up. I really want to urge you to not give up! As long as you match with someone you can find your family. It probably won't be easy, it'll take longer than you were hoping for, but you can still find your family.

I think so many of us do a DNA test thinking or hoping that someone out there is searching for us and they've already done a DNA test and are just waiting for us to do ours. That's probably not the case.

I searched for over 20 years without finding anyone. I did searches for numerous other adoptees and found their families sometimes in just a few days. This was all before DNA. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't find my own family. I finally gave up for a few years.

I did a ton of research and broke down and bought a DNA test. That was almost a decade ago. It was a huge flop. I waited a few months and did some more research. I discovered that I could upload my DNA to other companies. So I did. Didn't help. Ancestry didn't accept DNA from other companies so I bought a test from them. While Ancestry was easier to read and work with, there were still too many very distant relatives.

But - there was a 4th cousin. Enter Genetic Genealogy. That's what they use to find out who Jane Doe is or who the murderer was. It was unbelievably important to me to do my search myself. Every bit of it. So I taught myself how to do Genetic Genealogy. A year later I was pretty damn sure who my parents were. I sent off a DNA test to the man I thought was my dad and the lady I thought was my maternal sister. Sure enough they were.

Don't give up.