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Adoption Therapy
A much-needed anthology addressing a variety of potential psychological and physiological concerns, Adoption Therapy, Perspectives from Clients and Clinicians on Processing and Healing Post-Adoption Issues is a must-read for adoptees, adoptive parents, first families, and vitally, mental health professionals.
With writing by adoptees, adoptive parents, and clinicians, Adoption Therapy is a first-of-its-kind and wholly unique reference book, providing insight, advice, and personal stories which highlight the specific nature of the adoptee experience.
Topics Include:
• The psychological dangers in leaving trauma and grief buried and unaddressed
• The importance of community in healing the wounds of separation
• Understanding the physical and psychological effects of transracial adoption
• Attachment—including the inability to attach, inappropriate attachment, and the myth of Reactive Attachment Disorder
• Conception by rape: an adoptee speaks out
• Co-dependency, intimacy, and creating closeness
• The life-long effects of pre- and perinatal trauma
• Processing complex trauma, complex grief, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Specific concerns for Late Discovery Adoptees
• The relationship among trauma, anger and rage, and substance abuse
• For adoptive parents and adoptees: red flags when working with a therapist
With writing by adoptees, adoptive parents, and clinicians, Adoption Therapy is a first-of-its-kind and wholly unique reference book, providing insight, advice, and personal stories which highlight the specific nature of the adoptee experience.
Topics Include:
• The psychological dangers in leaving trauma and grief buried and unaddressed
• The importance of community in healing the wounds of separation
• Understanding the physical and psychological effects of transracial adoption
• Attachment—including the inability to attach, inappropriate attachment, and the myth of Reactive Attachment Disorder
• Conception by rape: an adoptee speaks out
• Co-dependency, intimacy, and creating closeness
• The life-long effects of pre- and perinatal trauma
• Processing complex trauma, complex grief, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Specific concerns for Late Discovery Adoptees
• The relationship among trauma, anger and rage, and substance abuse
• For adoptive parents and adoptees: red flags when working with a therapist
- GenresAdoptionNonfiction
216 pages, Paperback
First published October 6, 2014
86 people are currently reading
91 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 14, 2016
As an adoptee, this book forces me to look at issues about myself that I may have preferred to ignore. However, self-awareness is vital for growth. While I view my adoption as a very positive experience, I can't ignore that there are lasting negative effects as well. Before reading this book and others like it, I may not have attributed some of these negative issues to my adoption, but the authors consistently show, through research and experience, how adoption can lead to some of these struggles.
As a therapist, this book provides an acute awareness of the traumas involved in adoption. In most therapy/counseling programs, adoption is rarely discussed, so this book provides a lot of necessary information to educate a therapist on post-adoption issues, such as attachment problems, codependency, identity issues, implications of prenatal trauma, and transracial adoption. Specific techniques and interventions are not discussed, though information is shared through adoptees' and therapists' experiences that will inform a therapist of important things to consider when treating an adoptee.
I recommend this book to any therapist, as well any person interested in learning more about adoption, especially adoptees, adoptive parents, or prospective adoptive parents.
While this book does focus on the often unaddressed grief and trauma associated with adoption, I am still very much pro-adoption. With that said, it is crucial that adoptees and adoptive parents are educated about these common issues so as to facilitate healing and create more effective adoptive parents.
As a therapist, this book provides an acute awareness of the traumas involved in adoption. In most therapy/counseling programs, adoption is rarely discussed, so this book provides a lot of necessary information to educate a therapist on post-adoption issues, such as attachment problems, codependency, identity issues, implications of prenatal trauma, and transracial adoption. Specific techniques and interventions are not discussed, though information is shared through adoptees' and therapists' experiences that will inform a therapist of important things to consider when treating an adoptee.
I recommend this book to any therapist, as well any person interested in learning more about adoption, especially adoptees, adoptive parents, or prospective adoptive parents.
While this book does focus on the often unaddressed grief and trauma associated with adoption, I am still very much pro-adoption. With that said, it is crucial that adoptees and adoptive parents are educated about these common issues so as to facilitate healing and create more effective adoptive parents.
February 20, 2015
Adult Adoptees Share the Hard-won Wisdom of their Experiences
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 floundered without adequate empathy, validation and support for the profound demands that adoption placed on them. Parents and professionals alike, provided insufficient care whether through ignorance or denial. 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, adoptees suffer.
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
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 floundered without adequate empathy, validation and support for the profound demands that adoption placed on them. Parents and professionals alike, provided insufficient care whether through ignorance or denial. 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, adoptees suffer.
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
August 8, 2017
This is an amazingly helpful book for adoptees.The authors write about the positive role that therapy can have in assisting adoptees develop a healthy sense of self regarding trauma and issues in their lives that may be caused by the initial separation from their birth families.
October 15, 2014
Incredible book. A must read for therapists who treat adoptees, as well as family members who love them.
November 12, 2021
So profound! I'm an adoptee and therapist who has been working in mental health for a decade, and nowhere in my experiences or education has a book like this ever come up. I think it's truly a precious resource, whether you are an adoptee, an adoptive parent, a first parent, or a therapist. For some it will be a deeply confronting and uncomfortable read. It absolutely goes against the grain of dominant societal narratives on adoption in America and that is what makes it so important. So many people and professionals continue to operate from a dated and uninformed lens on how to support adoptees in therapy. The contributors to this book are unafraid to speak their truths and they are truths that desperately need to be heard.
July 14, 2024
This book is a must-read for anyone directly involved (e.g., adoptive parents) or indirectly involved (e.g., mental health professionals) in adoption. This book has an assortment of essays, from the experience of a transnational adoptee to a clinician explaining how newborn adoptees still experience trauma. The chapter I found most powerful was the one written by the adoptee conceived via rape. I found myself agreeing with both the adoptee and her biological mother. I found myself ruminating on how the rights for both women can be affirmed (e.g., accessing knowledge about family medical history and privacy protections for biological parents). This book was powerful and insightful.
January 30, 2020
Uneven but good content overall
This is a collection of essays and conversations. Probably not a good introduction for a lay person to these issues—many terms are unexplained, and the conversation transcripts are especially awkward. Best if you’ve read a book or article or 3 about adoption trauma already, but it’s not just for professionals. I learned a lot and found some writers I didn’t know about.
This is a collection of essays and conversations. Probably not a good introduction for a lay person to these issues—many terms are unexplained, and the conversation transcripts are especially awkward. Best if you’ve read a book or article or 3 about adoption trauma already, but it’s not just for professionals. I learned a lot and found some writers I didn’t know about.
April 13, 2020
Excellent, not-easy-to-read book. Important for me personally and as a therapist.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews