About the Book

One of the reasons I chose to specialize in adoption therapy is because I kept hearing over and over from adoptive parents “we went to a therapist and they made it worse” or from adoptees “the therapists I saw just didn’t get it”. While not all concerns relate back to adoption, it is important to work with someone who understands the impact that adoption can have on an individual and a family.

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 that 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

• “Untherapied” Adoption Wounds—by Karen Belanger
• Red Flags that a Therapist Could Do More Harm Than Good—by Brooke Randolph, LMHC
• Approaches for Repairing the Wounds of Separation—by Rebecca Hawkes and Suzanne Schecker, Ed.D, LMHC
• The Myth of Reactive Attachment Disorder—by Jodi Haywood
• Heeding the Body’s Messages: Physiological Implications of Prenatal Trauma—by Marcy Axness, Ph.D.
• Creating Closeness and Creating Distance: What Therapists Need to Know To Help Adoptees Increase Their Capacity for Emotional Connection—by Karen Caffrey, LPC, JD
• Perspective of an Adoptee Conceived by Rape—by Kristi Lado
• The Transracial Adoptee and Body Dysmorphia—by Lucy Sheen
• Late Discovery Adoptees: The Original Victims of Identity Theft—by Lesli Maul, LCSW
• Adoptees and Intimacy:Of Fear, Yearning, and Restoring the Capacity for Connection—by Jodi Haywood and Karen Caffrey, LPC, JD
• Beauty, Control, and Adoption—by Mila C. Konomos
• Co-Dependency in Adoptees—by Lisa Floyd and Corie Skolnick