why am I so unhappy ?

It is a paradox and difficult to explain beyond the fact that fear and trauma put the child into a survival mechanism.  Yes, even with a loving and kind, caring adoptive family, an adoptee can feel messed up a lot of the time.  The adoptee may rationally feel like they should be okay with having been adopted by such nice people.  Yet, they are sad.  There is a trauma that exists deep down in every adoptee whether they ever become aware of it or not.  Adoption by strangers is never a normal experience in reality.

Adoptive parents may say, “My adopted child is so close to me.  It is like they are attached at the hip.”  While this may seem like a good thing, and the adoptive parent interprets this to mean that their child is well adjusted and/or bonded to them, it is actually a fear driven survival instinct in response to an abandonment, even if the child could never define it as such to their adoptive parent.

Sadly, the perspective of many adoptive parents is something akin to owning a possession.  In some adoptees, the response to the adoptive parents is similar to repulsion.  While an adoptee may attach, it is an attachment based on a longing for what is not there between the adopted child and the adoptive parents.  It is inescapable that all adoptees are deprived of something fundamental that affects them developmentally.

The young adopted child will eventually stop crying for the need that can never be met.  Unfortunately, in this surrender, the adoptee is seen as “such a good baby”.  By the time this happens, the adoptee’s attachment style has already been deeply altered.  They adapt.

Adoptees know how to use all of the different attachment coping styles, and switch between them based on the specific situation they find themselves in. Very little of what they are expressing outside reflects their true internal feelings.  It is not how they are really feeling or what they are really needing.  Mostly it is about appeasing the adult who is caring for them.  It is a survival tactic.  Always, what is seen, is even so, coming out of a deep and unaddressed trauma.