The dread of telling a therapist you're adopted in case they pull the plug
I’ve just found an EMDR therapist who sounds amazing. We had a brilliant initial chat over the phone, and we talked about felt safety, emotional regulation, fight/flight/freeze/fawn, triggers, early childhood experiences and much more. I am excited to hopefully work with her.
EMDR is one of the therapies I haven’t tried yet, after many years of talking therapy, some cranial sacral therapy and a fairly frustrating experience with CBT.
However.
I haven’t mentioned that I’m adopted.
And I’m betting that the therapist isn’t Ofsted registered.
Which means I can’t mention that I’m adopted, or she will have to cease treating me immediately. If she doesn’t cease, she will be breaking current law in England and Wales. However, if I don’t tell her I’m adopted, am I breaking the law??
This could be interesting. How many sessions can I get through without mentioning I’m adopted! There are certainly early experiences I would love to tackle that can be talked about without the pre-knowledge, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be nearly as useful as if the therapist had all that detail.
What a frustrating dilemma I find myself in. And I know hundreds of you have had similar experiences.
This is why we need to challenge the Ofsted law. It’s clearly a mistake that nobody considered properly when the responsibility of adoption moved from the Department of Health to the Department of Education.
If you haven’t yet filled in the government consultation, please do so. It takes around 15 minutes, maybe a bit longer if you have any additional educational needs – as there is a bit of reading to do to understand the way the questions are worded.
Respond to the consultation now: deadline 20 March
And importantly, please forward the consultation to any current or past therapists and counsellors. I’m sending it on to the counsellors who have turned me down in the past and said they wish they didn’t have to. Well, now is your chance to change the law and get your wish! We need as many practitioners as possible to fill it in.
And, for the record, I think therapists should still have specialist training in adoption (from an adoptee perspective, not an adoptive parent perspective as seems to be much more common), but I do not think Ofsted need to gatekeep this. We are adults and we are very capable of enquiring if a therapist has taken any specialist training. Whether the current Barnardo’s training that Osted require is adequate is another story. Let’s get this law changed first and then we can look to improve training for therapists if required.
More info on the proposed changes can be found here
Photo by Isabela Drasovean on Unsplash
