How Adopted Persons Cope, Birth Parents

by Child Welfare Information Gateway

(Page 3 of 4)

How Adopted Persons Cope

"Being adopted is a lifelong issue" says Marie Haverton. "Even if it doesn't haunt you, even if you have a job and a family and a good self-image, the fact that the family that you grew up in is not the family whose genetics you share never goes away. Some of us live in denial. Others of us make an uneasy peace with our situations. Some seek kinship in support groups. Some, like me, have to find our birth families."

Support Groups

National organizations such as ALMA, the American Adoption Congress, or local support groups such as Philadelphia's Adoption Forum, offer solace, sympathy, and an opportunity for those who have been adopted to exchange feelings and information. For many, it is one of the few places where everyone understands the unique aspects of adoption and feelings can be expressed openly. It is an environment in which adoptees can tell their stories and hear about other people's experiences. "People in your life try to be sympathetic," says Barbara Bucharis, "but there is no way you can understand what it feels like not to know where you came from. No matter how many books you read on the subject or how much research you've done, you can never understand-unless you've lived it-what it feels like to have this mystery in your life."

"Support groups help validate your feelings," confirms Marie Haverton. "You see that what you are feeling isn't crazy. There are a lot of people in the same boat and they are there to help you along." Hearing in support group meetings how others have coped with their feelings of abandonment, rejection, and loss can inspire troubled adult adoptees to work through their own issues. They might decide to talk to a counselor about these issues, possibly going to one that someone in the support group found helpful, or they might decide to search for their birth family.

Counseling

Some adult adoptees find individual counseling with a counselor who is knowledgeable about adoption issues to be very helpful. An experienced therapist can help adult adoptees untangle which of their concerns are adoption-related and which are adjustment issues that many people in their stage of life go through. According to Detroit-area adoption therapist Linda Yellin, MSW, who is an adoptee, "Therapy can assist adoptees in a number of different ways. It can help them with their interpersonal relationships; the integration of their adoption experiences; their struggles around adoption issues; and with their healing process. Therapy can also assist adoptees in sorting through the decision about whether or not to search for birth relatives. If a search is undertaken, the counselor can assist in preparing an adoptee for a possible reunion, and in understanding and integrating the new information and newly found family of origin as well as the upheaval of emotions that often accompanies a search and its aftermath."

For instance, some adoptees' reunions go very well. They find their birth family and they like them very much, and everyone is happy to have been found. For those adoptees, the issues in therapy may be the grief and loss they feel at not having been able to grow up with that family. For those who were adopted at an older age from the foster care system, therapy may help them deal with the consequences of the abuse or neglect they endured when they were younger. Even if they are happy with their place in their adoptive family, they may still be dealing with the effects of their early life experiences. Therapy is a resource that adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents can use to help them handle whatever emotions they are feeling.

Occasionally, therapists who are knowledgeable about adoption issues offer therapy groups in which all of the participants are adopted adults, or are touched by adoption in some way. Participants could be adoptive parents, birth parents, or perhaps a sibling of an adoptee. These groups go into more depth than the type of support group described above. They actually combine the best elements of a support group and individual counseling: members of the group all have the adoption experience in common and the group is facilitated by a skilled mental health professional.

The Search for Birth Parents

In the past, it was assumed that a healthy, well-adjusted adopted person would have no desire to delve into his or her birth history. Those who insisted that they needed this information and access to their birth records were considered to be ungrateful at the least, and seriously disturbed at the worst. It was startling, therefore, when the May l971 issue of the Pediatrics journal printed the following: "There is ample evidence that the adopted child retains the need for seeking his ancestry for a long time."

Later in the 1970s, a research group in California led by Arthur D. Sorosky, M.D., a clinical professor of child psychiatry at UCLA, and social workers Annette Baran and Reuben Pannor revealed that by late adolescence and young adulthood, just about all adoptees in their study felt a sense of "genealogical bewilderment," defined as "psychological confusion about their genetic origins." The researchers found that adoptees search for their birth family because of both a sociological and a biological need.

Indeed, recent research indicates that it is normal and healthy for adopted persons to want to know more about their genetic background. "There is a significant difference in the way adoptees perceive themselves when they have some information about their birth family's background," says Marcie Griffin, an adoption counselor at Hope Cottage Adoption Center in Dallas, Texas. "When adoptees learn something about their birthmother's education or special talents or are given some explanation of why they were placed, they begin to have greater self-esteem and a better idea of who they really are."

About the Author

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