Adoption – Therapist Support
Therapists who support clients with adoption.
Therapist Support for Adoption
What this concern or topic means (neutral, non-clinical)
Adoption can be a meaningful, complicated, and emotional experience for everyone involved. It often includes layers of family history, culture, identity, loss, love, and change. People connected to adoption sometimes explore support around experiences that feel hard to put into words, especially when different emotions appear at the same time.
Many people who seek support related to adoption may identify with one or more of these roles:
- Adoptees who were adopted as infants, children, teens, or adults
- Birth / first parents and sometimes extended birth families
- Adoptive parents and caregivers
- Siblings, partners, and other relatives connected to adoption stories
Someone exploring adoption-related support may be thinking about topics such as:
- Questions about identity, belonging, or “where I come from”
- Mixed feelings about birth families and adoptive families
- Experiences of loss, separation, or changes in caregiving
- Managing contact, reunion, or estrangement with relatives
- Cultural or racial identity, especially in transracial or international adoption
- Grief related to pregnancies, infertility, or placement decisions
- Stories of state systems, foster care, or institutional care
These experiences can be influenced by culture, race, language, migration, religion, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and family structure. Each person’s relationship with adoption is unique, and their feelings about it may shift over time.
How trauma-informed therapists may approach it
Trauma-informed therapists who have experience with adoption typically recognize that adoption can include both care and disruption, both safety and loss. They tend to approach adoption as a complex life context rather than assuming it is only positive or only negative.
Some key themes in a trauma-informed approach to adoption-related concerns may include:
- Centering the person’s lived experience instead of relying only on legal or social definitions of family.
- Honoring multiple truths, such as feeling grateful for some aspects of adoption while also feeling grief, anger, or confusion about others.
- Awareness of power and systems, including child welfare systems, institutions, and the ways oppression, racism, and poverty may shape adoption stories.
- Cultural and racial humility, especially when adoption crossed lines of race, culture, or country, or when Indigenous children were placed outside their communities.
- Attention to attachment and safety in broad, non-clinical terms, noticing how early relationships and changes in caregivers may influence current relationships and sense of security.
- Consent and pace, allowing the person to decide what parts of their adoption story feel okay to explore and when.
- Respect for language, such as “first parent,” “birth parent,” “natural parent,” “adoptee,” or other terms people prefer.
Some people find it helpful to connect adoption experiences with other life events, such as migration, relationship changes, or experiences of domestic or family violence. Resources like dv.support offer educational information about relationship safety that some may find useful alongside adoption-focused support.
What clients might expect from support
People seeking adoption-related support may come to therapy with many different hopes. Some may want a space to tell their story for the first time. Others may be focused on very current questions, such as whether to pursue reunion, how to navigate contact with birth or adoptive relatives, or how to talk with children about their origins.
Depending on their training and style, a therapist who focuses on adoption may:
- Invite exploration of family stories, timelines, and important transitions in caregiving
- Make room for anger, grief, relief, love, numbness, or uncertainty without labeling these reactions as “good” or “bad”
- Explore how adoption experiences may show up in relationships, parenting, or daily life
- Gently notice how body sensations, emotions, and thoughts may connect to themes of safety, belonging, and loss
- Support reflection around culture, race, and identity, including experiences with discrimination or feeling “in between” communities
- Offer space to prepare emotionally for possible contact, no contact, or complex reunions
- Hold space for people with conflicting roles, such as being both a birth parent and an adoptive parent, or an adoptee who is now parenting
Choosing a therapist with this specialization
When looking for a therapist who understands adoption, some people prefer to seek out providers who name this specialization clearly and describe how they approach it. Reading profiles, websites, or directory listings can offer hints about a therapist’s perspective and lived or professional experience with adoption-related topics.
Questions someone might consider when choosing a therapist for adoption-related support could include:
- Role understanding: Does the therapist name whether they have experience working with adoptees, first/birth parents, adoptive parents, kinship caregivers, foster care, or adult adoption?
- View of adoption: Do they acknowledge both the potential benefits and the possible losses or harms that may be connected to adoption?
- Cultural and racial awareness: If adoption crossed racial, cultural, or national lines, does the therapist speak about race, culture, language, and colonization in a thoughtful way?
- Trauma-informed orientation: Do they mention being trauma-informed, person-centered, or using approaches that focus on safety, collaboration, and choice?
- Language and identity: Do they respect the terms people use for themselves and their families, and avoid assumptions about “real” parents or “real” children?
- Openness to complex feelings: Do they explicitly welcome mixed or changing emotions about birth families, adoptive families, systems involvement, or reunion?
Some people also choose to look for therapists who share aspects of their identity, such as being an adoptee, a first parent, or an adoptive parent themselves, or sharing similar cultural or linguistic backgrounds. Others may prefer a therapist with different backgrounds who shows a strong commitment to listening, learning, and ongoing self-education.
It is common for people to meet with more than one therapist before deciding who feels like a good fit. Over time, many people find that feeling respected, believed, and gently supported matters more than any specific method or label.