Adoption Counselling & Psychotherapy Clinic

Category: Counselling

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Address: c/o The Centre for Professional Therapy, 16 Harcourt Street, D2, Dublin, County Dublin, 2

About Adoption Counselling & Psychotherapy

I am a qualified Psychotherapist & Supervisor in private practice. I worked as a volunteer counsellor for Barnardos Post Adoption Service seeing adopted adults for individual counselling sessions. I also assisted the project leader in parent training and support groups for adult adoptees. More recently I completed my MSc dissertation on adoption: Developing a sense of self as an adopted person. In addition, my work in primary schools includes engaging with adoptive and foster families around school and family issues. Overall, I have extensive experience in working with questions related to adoption, domestic adoption and inter-country adoption. • MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy @ TCD • Post Grad Dipl Clinical Supervision @ TCD • Higher Dipl in Counselling and Psychotherapy @ DBS • Cert Systemic Family Psychotherapy @ UCD • Cert in Addiction Studies @ MNUI • Cert in Theories of 'Race' and Ethnicity @ TCD I provide general support and information, Counselling & Psychotherapy for adopted adults, adoptive parents and foster parents. Adopted Adults Some adopted adults do reflect on their adoption and the emotions & thoughts that are stirred up in doing so. Questions related to the adoption often arise at times of life transitions such as adolescence, marriage, the birth of their own children, or in later life/old age. Common themes adopted adults talk about in therapy are: • Questions about birth family members. • Feelings about the loss of birth family members, especially birth mothers and fathers. • Feelings of anger at the birth family, adoptive family, or the adoption system. • Feelings of not belonging or feeling different - unlike everyone else they know. • Questions about identity / feelings of confusion about identity. • Feelings of shame about disclosing feelings about being adopted. • Difficulties in intimate relationships/ trust issues. • Some adoptees experience an ongoing fear of rejection. • Some adopted people (all ages) have a need to know more about their origins, and want access their adoption records. • Some adopted people have a desire to search for and have contact with your birth family. • Many adopted people feel guilt based on a belief that their need to search for birth family conflicts with their connection with their adoptive family. • Questions, hopes and fears about reunion. • Conflicting feelings about making contact with birth family members. • Fear of rejection by birth family members after contact was made. • How do I tell my family that I have made contact with birth relatives? How do I tell my children about it. • Adoptees born abroad (inter-country adoption, inter-racial adoption) may have questions about their cultural background, ethnic identity, racial identity, or racism. Core Issues of Adoption ‘Adoption is created through loss’ (Silverstein& Kaplan, 1982). Indeed without loss there is no adoption. Birth parents lose the child to whom they are genetically connected (possibly forever), adoptees experience their first loss when separated from their birth mother/birth family and with that they lose a significant part of their personal history which is can be crucial for a grounded identity. Adoptive parents lose the child that would have been born to them through infertility, failed pregnancy, stillbirth, or the death of a child and therefore have suffered great loss prior to adopting. Adoption is a fundamental life-altering event. Loss and heartache is experienced by all parties involved in the adoption triangle. Unfortunately, society generally encourages birth parents, adoptees and adoptive parents to ignore their losses. Adoptive parents are expected to be happy to have a child, adoptees perhaps experience that they ought to be grateful that they were adopted as opposed to have grown up in state care or an orphanage in a different country ‘a third-world country’. Birth parents also are urged to forget their loss or made to feel that they do not deserve to feel their loss (Silverstein & Kaplan, 1982). Adoptive Parents In parent support sessions parents can talk and think about specific concerns related to adoption with an experienced professional. Emerging themes might be ‘How do I speak to my child about adoption?’, ‘When do I tell my child that he is adopted?’, ‘Are some of his behaviours related to adoption? If so what can I do to help him?’, ‘What if my child wants to find his birth mother/birth father?’ How I work I believe that thinking & talking about the concerns you have with a trained psychotherapist can help you to start dealing with emotions, worries and concerns related to adoption, tracing and reunion. Doing so can help to improve the quality, contentment and satisfaction of your life to emerge. Psychotherapy sessions last 50 minutes. Fee: Euro 70 per session (sliding scale, student rates). Counselling & Psychotherapy is governed by a strict professional code of ethics, a