As a professional with adoption knowledge and experience, I can help families identify connections between problems and adoption and plan effective treatment strategies.

Feelings Associated with Adoption

Loss, grief and anger are experienced at some point by most adoptees. These feelings may appear, disappear, and then return at different times in the child's development. Trust and attachment are two other areas that can be problematic especially for children who are placed from foster care or children who have experienced abuse, neglect, or institutionalization prior to joining their adoptive families. Identity issues are faced by every child but can be especially problematic for adopted children and for transracial and transcultural adoptees.

Sometimes a difficulty that someone is experiencing can be directly linked to adoption, but sometimes the connection is not readily apparent. In other situations, issues that seem on the surface to be related to adoption turn out not to be at all. Although the adoptive family is often not the source of someone's problems, it will be within the context of the adoptive family relationships that the healing begins. Approaches to Therapy

The type of treatment or the combination of treatments chosen may depend on the type and severity of the presenting issue, the age and developmental level of the client, and even the experience and preferences of the professional and family.

Adoption and Attachment

Many of us who have been adopted as children experience problems that may be the result of breaks in attachment that occurred during the first few years of life. These problems impair, sometimes severely, our ability to trust and bond - to attach - to other human beings. Children who have experienced maltreatment or traumatic separations may be hesitant to trust others enough to attach quickly or easily. Sometimes we carry this into adulthood.

Attachment can be viewed as a continuum, with healthy attachment at one end and attachment disorder at the other. Signs of attachment problems can vary. Milder signs can be something like poor boundaries, anxiety and depression, whereas more servere problems include lack of conscience and lack of cause-and-effect thinking.

Attachment Therapy

The focus of any attachment therapy should be to foster the ability to build a secure emotional attachment between the client and others.The basis of attachment therapy is that the development of a trusting attachment relationship will provide the security essential to healing the psychological, emotional, and behavioral issues that may have developed as a result of earlier disruptions and trauma. These issues may include posttraumatic stress disorder, grief and loss, depression, and anxiety.