Adoption Therapy: Perspectives from Clients and Clinicians on Processing and Healing Post-Adoption Issues

As an adoptive parent, an adoption coach, a proponent of acknowledging the realities of adoption, as well as an author who writes about adoption and family issues, I eagerly anticipated the anthology, Adoption Therapy. It did not disappoint.Most of the stories are based on the Closed Adoption experience. But the lessons learned have great value not only for adult adoptees and their families but also for those adopting now as well. With raw honesty, they reveal the painful costs of secrecy, shame and disconnection from identity and birth family. They tell of loyalty binds in which adoptees felt compelled to choose valuing their adoptive families at the cost of denying their interest in their origins and birth families. Some adoptees were fed outright lies. Adoptees tell how they floundered without adequate empathy, validation and support for the profound demands that adoption placed on them. Parents and professionals alike, delivered insufficient support. Choosing to see only the benefits adoption offered, they turned a blind eye and responded through rose-colored glasses. Yes, many benefits accrue to a child adopted into a loving adoption-attuned home. But too often, inadequate preparation, education and support is provided. As a result, these adoptees experienced great challenges in learning how to navigate life as an adoptee.Adoption Therapy unmasks the myth of adoption as the "perfect" solution AND offers insights and strategies for solutions. While the current trends in adoption practice move towards more openness, cultural resistance persists as well as cultural denial of the emotional and identity costs adoption creates.Many of the personal stories shared in Adoption Therapy, allow us to peek behind the veil of personal privacy to learn of the private struggles that adoptees confront. Often they struggle/d without support from therapists, friends, and sadly occasionally without the empathy and understanding of their adoptive parents.This ignorance must be remedied. Parents, therapists, adoptive parents must become thoroughly immersed in the reality of adoption grief, loss/identity issues and the neurobiological effects that result from adverse prenatal experiences. Our culture must wake up to the realities and make the appropriate changes to support adoptees, birth parents, and their families. Adoption Therapy offers a wonderful tool for opening, minds, hearts and spirits so that when adoption is the choice, it can be a gentler, more affirming experience for the adoptee. Gayle H; Swift, ABC, Adoption & Me: A Multicultural Picture Book

I've been in and out of therapy ever since I found my, allegedly deceased but very much alive, birth mother twenty-three years ago. Oh how I wish I'd had this affirming and helpful book back then when I was first diagnosed bi-polar!Although I've just started reading this wonderful tool - Laura's ADOPTION THERAPY book has already had a strong positive impact on my life. Recently hubby and I began IMAGO THERAPY due to major struggles in our relationship (this is marriage # 4 for me). I am going to heed the books advise and purchase a copy for our therapist because I have complete confidence that it will help our therapist not only assist me more thoroughly, but I also want her to have it in order to help other adoptee clients.BTW . . . one of my former husbands is also an adoptee (he'll soon be getting out of prison...again), and my youngest son is also an adoptee (he has already served time for DUI manslaughter) and I plan to also share this book with each of them. It's sad I won't be able to share it with my adoptee sister who passed away 3 years ago . . . drug overdose . . . as it may very well have been able to help her, too. Adoptees . . . more of us than not share a life of tragedy due to tragic choices we've made. We need specialized help by people who have the best tools for understanding us....and I believe this book is one such tool, perhaps the first ever.I also want to say that I hope every adoptee makes a better choice by seeking help and utilizing support tools that target what is most likely their core issue - that of adoption. I hope they purchase two books - one for themselves and one for their therapist!Thank you, Laura Dennis.

I gave this book a low grade because it deserved it. This is not the book to buy if you need to learn about psychological issues of an adoptee.The book is a collection of essays written by women who were adoptees from closed adoptions and who had bad adoptive home lives. These authors treated their own psychological issues then decided to become experts themselves. Their clients are all women. They admit they have few male clients. So the book is based on a very select population by a very select group of therapists.The book focuses on domestic closed adoptions where the adoptive home life was not very good. It does not relate in any way to an open adoption with a happy adoptive home life. It does not pertain to International Adoptions at all except insofar as loss, grief, and identity are questions that can, but not necessarily, arise in those kinds of adoptions.It does not even start at the beginning which would be that 45% of who we are comes from our DNA and that frankly the DNA of birth parents tend to lean toward the problem side of the curve. See Judith Harris’ books for more.It does not discuss ADHD being highly prevalent among adoptees and the issues resulting from that. These are not adoptee issues. They do not discuss FAS/FASD, OCD. Anxiety and how they are more prevalent among this population. Again these are not adoptee issues.One article dismissed RAD and is written by someone who clearly has no idea what the symptoms are or how it is diagnosed and treated. None of the authors has ever dealt with international adoption yet they mention it is as if they did. I used to give seminars on Eastern European adoptions and have been inside several Children’s Homes in Russia and have written books on the subject. These authors know zero about this.The author’s praise EMDR as being this great technique for adoptees with issues. EMDR consists of two parts. The first is the usual CBT wherein you bring the issues out into the open and discuss them. CBT is always helpful under any guise. The other part is this voodoo eyeball thing and the research on that is pretty conclusive that it has no effect. I doubt if these authors have actually looked at the research. Bottom line is that closed adoptions are bad for an adoptee. Plain and simple. They are rarer now, but still exist. Not all adoptees have issues. I would say based on observation that most do not. Most process their birth, adoption, and life and move on. Some do have issues however. They may be part of an ADHD/anxiety mosaic or may be that they need help understanding that their life has two roots and to process that and move on.I would read many other adoptions books before I would deem this collection helpful.

I enjoyed this book very much ,it gave the in sight to adoptees feelings on being adopted in parts it was very in tenseglad i was able to read it and pass it on .

Excellent resource for using in my practice

Interesting book.