Adoption Impacts - Rejection and People Pleasing - by Gilli Bruce

The 1982 study by Kaplan and Silverstein highlighted 7 Lifelong Impacts of Adoption – one of the impacts identified was a fear of rejection that endures beyond the family into adult life. This is the subject of this piece where we will look at this impact of adoption and how we might come to recognise it operating as an adult.

As our recovery deepens, we start to notice more of the subtle triggers within the body – the body bracing, tensing and alerting the nervous system to a perceived threat on any number of the 7 impacts identified.  The messages that become embedded in the body can feel so normal that it can be hard to sift them out from other feelings.

Internal reactions such as ‘Stay Safe’ / ‘I’m not Enough’ messages that we formulated in childhood can run the show into adulthood, so our challenge is to catch them in the act and learn to respond from an adult position – rather than a vulnerable child’s position.  We may have interpreted our adoption story in distorted ways, typically our younger self made meaning of what we were told - and we have interpreted our relinquishment as meaning one, two or all of these:

• We are not safe and secure - and our needs may not be met, so we operate from a position of fear and anxiety.

• We are not enough, we are faulty in some way – or there must have been something wrong with us, so we operate from a position of shame and anxiety.

• We were powerless, we have no say in things, we weren’t considered and had no control or autonomy, so we operate from a position of resistance or anger.

Rejection

We may become vigilant for a hint of rejection and feel sensitive, angry or hurt around perceived rejection cues such as these examples:

• Not receiving contact at the usual level

• Not getting eye contact or other body language cues we can interpret negatively

• Not feeling included enough

• Friends or close others making new choices such as moving away or making plans that don’t include us or result in distance

• Being excluded or cancelled on for unknown reasons

• Mood fluctuations of others that may have nothing to do with us

• Not being selected for things being perceived as ‘not good enough’

• Not being enquired about – or other interpretations that others are not interested in us

• Or many other behaviours that our sensitive systems interpret as rejection

Rejection can be a core issue for adoptees, and our systems all adopt different leading strategies for managing this triggering fear:

• Some may get angry and operate from the ‘Fight’ response that leaps into action to perceived threat of rejection.

• Some may use the ‘Flight’ response and just leave the scene, rejecting others before they reject them.

• Some ‘Freeze’ and find themselves unable to respond in any meaningful way when perceived rejection is registered.

• Others – go into ‘Freeze– then fawn’ as the nervous system registers the freeze response, then drops automatically into the less know ‘Fawn’ response, also known as ‘Please and Appease’.

Most of us will experience some of these operating on their own or in a combination. These automatic reactions are created by the body – we don’t decide to do them - and we may feel powerless over them – awareness is the key in starting to manage these reactions.   

The Freeze – Fawn Response / Please & Appease / People Pleasing / The Please Others Driver

Whichever label we use The Freeze – Fawn response / Please & appease responses can be known to us - as the need to please others, to nurture or rescue others as an almost compulsive reaction rather than simply a kind gesture from the heart.  

The difference lies in the motivation behind our actions. Pleasing others may have been the response our body chose as its preferred way to manage the fear of rejection. Naturally, we can all act from a kind heart too, but the Fawn / Please others drive comes from a different motivation.

The ‘Please Others’ driver can be linked to adverse childhood experiences or traumatic events. People pleasing can form to protect us from negative things that happened OR around the positive conditions for secure attachment that didn’t happen – which we now know to be equally as damaging.

• Maybe we were relinquished as a baby and the maternal bond was lost.

• Maybe our parents weren’t attuned to our emotional needs and connection felt weak of non-existent, this is common in adoptees as adopting parents had no idea that we needed to talk about our adoption and be seen heard, understood and soothed.

• Maybe there was a lack of loving affection, touch and hugs that every child needs to feel securely attached and bonded.

• Maybe we never got listened to or never felt heard so we tried harder to earn the right to a voice.

• Maybe there was a deficit in attention, and we were left alone a lot, even if parents are just busy – the child felt the lack.

• Maybe there was neglect - so we didn’t feel cared for or cared about.

• Maybe we never got to feel that we belonged in our family - we felt different and we looked different, we had different talents and we had different voices.

• Or other needs that weren’t met that we felt the lack of – and thought we could maybe earn if we were pleasing enough.

And of course, negative experiences that happened could create a need to attempt to stay safe and secure by earning this too.

A ‘Please Others’ driver

This doesn’t usually operate alone – we can imagine it as the head of a team that all serve to please others and avoid displeasing, such as:

• Don’t argue / create conflict/ don’t be any trouble – it’s too risky.

• Hurry Up – don’t annoy anyone by keeping them waiting – anxiety if going to be late.

• Minimise difficult feelings – stuff them down and carry on - don’t express them.

• Try hard - become indispensable - be there whenever they need you.

• Do everything you can to earn approval, loyalty, admiration or to be valued – being a helper e.g. the one helping to clear up at parties, offering lifts or favours.

• Be perfect so that there’s no reason to be rejected.

• Open / porous boundaries, weak boundaries or no boundaries with others – holding boundaries = risky.

• Say ‘Yes’ when we’d rather say ‘NO’.

• Not stating clearly or asking for what we want, need or desire.

• Many other ways in which we may strive to please and avoid displeasing.

These are Normal Responses to Abnormal Situations. These behaviours happen due to unmet needs in childhood. We may have experienced unmet needs around felt safety, so please to feel safe and secure and to avoid rejection. We may have had unmet needs around our value or worth and carry a sense of shame, so we please others to earn the right to feel we belong, to feel loved and valued. We may have unmet needs around autonomy and control and carry underlying anger, so we may please others to earn the right to self-agency, control or to do things the way we want to.

As adoptees we may or may not use a strategy of pleasing others but if we do – we are likely to people please or attend to others to soothe our anxiety around not really belonging, or not really being loved for ourselves, there may be other subconscious reasons too.

A feature of a Please Others driver is that we may not notice red flags – whether with partners, colleagues or friends we may disregard negative behaviours, or we do notice them – but take red flag behaviours as an indication that we need to try harder or do better.  We may even up our game to be what others want / need as a result of red-flag behaviours, and become more determined to win over the person we want to impress or wish to keep on board.  

If we had adverse childhood experiences or trauma this can be our subconscious attempt to correct the past and to earn the loving care we needed, this time. Subconsciously we are trying to correct the former hurts or deficits of childhood. If care givers were ambivalent or even avoidant in their attachment style – we will seek out people like this - so that the past can be ‘fixed’ - the trouble is, what we are seeking is dysfunctional love, that whilst it feels familiar, isn’t what we actually want!

Often people pleasing starts in childhood when we didn’t get the loving attunement, attention or loving cues we needed. If a child feels unseen or unheard and their needs are not fully met, we may try to nurture, rescue or please to get it back. We are likely to either avoid displeasing in equal measures.

People pleasing is exhausting – we may be trying our hardest to be good and caring when we feel an inner loneliness or emptiness that needs to be filled up.

How to make some shifts

Reflect on the past using a journal, record in two ways:

1. What were the bad things that happened? Events, memories, feelings around things that felt hurtful, unloving, difficult, abusive or traumatic (if there are traumatic memories record these without detail for now until you can work with a trained professional).  What was hard for you?

2. What good things should have happened but didn’t? In what ways did you feel a sense of lack or absence? Which deficits in your childhood did you experience?  Maybe you became aware that friends had parenting that seemed different, richer or more loving than your own? What was missing for you?

Be aware we won’t have memories of things that didn’t happen – because nothing happened!

Build self-awareness – start to develop awareness of what happens just before the pleasing thoughts and behaviours.

• You might notice a slight tension in the tummy, tension in the jaw, shoulders or somewhere else. You might notice a slight anxiety which is so familiar you barely spot it.

• You might notice a need to move or shift, a restlessness or a fidgety feeling that could be the start of a mini-Flight response.

• You might notice emotions such as shame, anger, anxiety or panic – these may be so familiar that they seem ‘normal’.

• You might notice thoughts that you could write down in a sentence to return to later and reflect upon – were they the thoughts of an adult with a solid sense of self – or do they feel ‘young’? E.g. ‘I’d better go along tonight, he’ll be annoyed if I don’t’ – is that even true?

• Notice habitual behaviours and patterns that you feel obliged to follow even if you don’t really want to. This includes things you do because internal ‘rules’ that say you ‘Should’, ‘Ought to’, or ‘Must’.

Identify the part of you that feels the need to please / not displease – how old is that part of you?

• Having identified the younger part of you that drives people pleasing - bring compassion to that part. Ensure that you avoid criticising or berating this younger part and treat this younger part with the loving care and compassion that a loving parent would.

• Remind that part that you are now aged xyz and can now make different strategies.

• Remind the younger part that only babies, infants or young children can be abandoned (which could potentially be life-threatening) – at this adult age now, you can only be left, and it won’t be life threatening if you are left.

Practice – new behaviours may feel uncomfortable but are doable! We all have the right to; say ‘No’, assert our needs, wants, opinions and desires and we can learn the skills to do this effectively.  

You could look into exploring, for example:

• A programme of Co-dependency recovery such as CODA UK’s 12 step fellowship programme.

• Assertiveness training, setting and holding boundaries. Developing effective communication skills can be empowering at any age – it is never too late to change and grow.

Disclaimer: The inforamation contained within How To Be Adopted is not a replacement for medical or psychological advice. Always seek personalised guidance from a professional.

Photo by whoislimos on Unsplash

An update on the Ofsted regulations that obstruct counselling for adoptees in the UK

An update on the push for changes to the regulations that obstruct counselling support for those affected by adoption.

For those of you who may not be aware – there have been obstructive restrictions in place for many years in the UK, that dictate who and who can not offer counselling support to those adults affected by adoption.

 As it currently stands, young adoptees up to age 21 (25 in special circumstances) can access counselling with specific counsellors - who have completed specific costly training with a few specific providers (that’s a lot of specifics right there) and who are registered with Ofsted (as this work comes under the Department of Education). This counselling is available to support families with adoptees and I wholeheartedly agree that this group should be protected by regulations and that indeed adoption-specific training is necessary and beneficial. So far so good. The problem here, is that adult adoptees and birth mothers who had to have their babies adopted – also come under this regulation.

Why is this a problem? Well – due to the costs, limited availability and the whole procedural machine that is entailed with Ofsted regulations – hardly any independent counsellors undertake this costly training - or have the will to create the processes and procedures required to meet Ofsted standards (hats off and thanks to the few committed souls who have by the way).

So – Ofsted registered counsellors are a rare breed and availability is very patchy around the UK. I researched provision in the North and searched all counties between Birmingham and the borders of Scotland and only found 7 Ofsted registered counsellors listed – that’s for half the country! I’m sure there is more provision in London and the South but this paucity of provision across the UK makes finding support incredibly difficult (happily on-line working eases this situation somewhat).  

We have been doing what we can to get these restrictive regulations changed so that more adoptees and birth mothers can access the counselling support they need. We have badgered Ofsted (thanks go to Matthew Brazier who has been super-helpful and supportive) and generally made noise about this and have created our own support streams via blog posts, webinars and adult adoptee peer- support groups. So far so stuck. However – the GOOD NEWS is in!!

On May 25th 2022, there was a meeting in Parliament took place between The Joint Committee on Human Rights and representatives of the government – namely Mr. Nadhim Zahawi The Secretary of State for Education and Sarah Jennings the Deputy Director of Adoption, Family Justice and Care leavers, also from the department of Education.

The chair was Harriet Harman. The case put forward by the committee was entitled ‘A Right to a Family Life’ and covered the experience of unmarried women who had to give up babies for adoption between 1949-1976. (Bear with me here, adoptees are included too).

I have copied the exchange that occurred towards the end of the meeting that is relevant to adult adoptees below, If you would like to watch the whole meeting (it was actually more interesting than I expected) you can find it on line at Parliament TV Live – Wednesday 25th May 3.15- 4.08 pm, The Human Rights Joint Committee, ‘A Right to a Family Life: the adoption of children of Unmarried women 1949-1976’.

This is the exchange that relates to adult adoptees:

Sarah Jennings: Thank you, Baroness, for the question. The Secretary of State was just beginning to touch on the issue that we know has been raised through evidence to this inquiry about the barriers to accessing support because of the requirement that professionals providing therapy and support that relates to adoption services must be registered with Ofsted. We are aware that this has been raised as one of the reasons why people are struggling to access support. I think the Secretary of State was just going on to say that this is an issue that we are very keen to look at.

 Nadhim Zahawi: Currently, the requirement that services are Ofsted registered can be a barrier to adult adoptees accessing and receiving support. I want to try to get rid of any bureaucratic barriers where this will, I hope, improve service delivery. However, we need to be careful that we do not sacrifice quality, which cannot be compromised in any way. I will give you my commitment and pledge that my officials will look at the options as to how we do this. We will consult very shortly on removing the requirement for providers of support services for adult adoptees having to register with Ofsted. In practice, that should make it much easier, and also more cost effective, for these providers to run their businesses. It will mean that support is more accessible for the adults who need it.

Baroness Ludford: I am a Liberal Democrat Member of the House of Lords. You have pre-empted my question. Like others, I appreciate the empathy that you have shown, referring to injustices and pain, and to the huge and unending suffering from these traumatic experiences. You have emphasised the importance of the ability to access therapeutic counselling and say that you want to try to get rid of the bureaucratic hurdles of the Ofsted registration process without compromising quality, and that you are going to consult. First, can you give us an idea of timescale of that consultation? Was it already in the pipeline before this 11 Oral evidence: The right to family life: adoption of children of unmarried women 1949-1976 inquiry prompted you to think about that? Secondly, does removing altogether the need to register with Ofsted contain some dangers of quality dilution?

 Nadhim Zahawi: Baroness Ludford, thank you for the question. Because it is a regulatory matter, we need to consult on it. However, we have been following your deliberations and evidence here as well. When I looked at this with my officials, we thought that we should move on it quite quickly because it is something that we should be able to do reasonably well and rapidly, and in a way that does not compromise quality. I think we can do that, and it will, I hope, inject more capacity in the system.

Sarah Jennings: We are already in active discussions with Ofsted colleagues about it. I think your point about the balance of risk and how to avoid compromising quality, as the Secretary of State alluded to, is why we are very keen to make sure that we consult and that we balance those risks and seek views from the sector as well.

Baroness Ludford: Will that be soon?

Sarah Jennings: I hope so.

Chair: There have clearly been decades of unmet need in this respect and obviously you are addressing it now, as you have told us. Do you have a budget for this? Are you confident you will be able to resource this?

Nadhim Zahawi: I think so. My department will be spending £86 billion a year by 2024. It is a big department and I think we can do this and do it well.

 Chair: Perhaps when you write to us you can give us a sense of whether there will be any ring-fenced budget of any sort and what sort of scale it might be on. For these services to be high quality and accessible to those who need them, there obviously need to be funding streams behind them.

Nadhim Zahawi: I do not want to repeat myself and repeat the numbers, but I can send you the numbers on the increased investment in the NHS that I outlined earlier.

(Joint Committee on Human Rights Oral evidence: The right to family life: the adoption of children of unmarried women 1949-1976, HC 270 Wednesday 25 May 2022 Watch the meeting Members present: Ms Harriet Harman MP (Chair); Joanna Cherry MP; Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen; Lord Dubs; Florence Eshalomi MP; Lord Henley; Baroness Ludford; Baroness Massey of Darwen; Dean Russell; David Simmonds MP; Lord Singh of Wimbledon. Questions 25 - 34 Witnesses I: Nadhim Zahawi, Secretary of State, Department for Education; Sarah Jennings, Deputy Director of Adoption, Family Justice and Care Leavers, Department for Education)

So – watch this space! Fingers crossed we will be reporting changes that affect adult adoptees sooner rather than later, although I do fully recognise that there is still a need for training so that counsellors fully understand the trauma and difficulties associated with adoption. Change must come, but it must be achieved with checks and safeguards in place to ensure that when we do get counselling – it is of the highest quality and meets the needs of adoptees and birth mothers who have suffered for too long.  (Side note from Claire: this training should not be written by an adoptive parent, as we believe the current training provided by Barnardo’s is!)

 - update from Gilli Bruce

Read the full minutes from the Parliament meeting

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

What is EMDR and why can it be helpful for adopted people? guest blog from David Benjamin

David Benjamin was adopted at six weeks old in the North East of England in 1972. His journey to finding his birth family is complete, this has given him the passion and experience to help others in his work. He is a qualified therapist and has sat on adoption and foster panels for the local authority for the past 10 years. He regularly tells his story to prospective adopters.

So what is EMDR and how can it help adoptees?

In the 1980s, American psychologist Francine Shapiro became interested in the connection between eye movement and the affect of persistent traumatic memories. She assumed that eye movements had a desensitizing effect on traumatic memories, and when she experimented with this she found that others also had the same response. She began a lifelong study developing what is now commonly known as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy. EMDR therapy is designed to resolve unprocessed traumatic memories in the brain.

According to Laurel Parnell, (who developed ‘Attachment focused EMDR’), “A trauma is an experience that causes one to develop erroneous beliefs about oneself or the world and to behave in ways that are not skillful”. For example, a child who is abused may come to believe that the world isn’t safe. They may have difficulty thriving in intimate relationships.

Trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk explains in his book ‘The Body Keeps The Score’, “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on the mind, brain, and body.”

Our brains have a natural way to recover from traumatic memories and events. This process involves communication between the amygdala (the switch triggered by stressful events), the hippocampus (which assists with learning, including memories about safety vs danger), and the prefrontal cortex (which regulates our behaviour and emotion). While many times traumatic experiences can be managed and resolved spontaneously, or with a talking therapy, sometimes the ‘stickiness’ may need to be processed with a therapy such as EMDR - which moves the trauma information from being dysfunctional to functional; it allows the cognitive and emotional parts of the brain to be online at the same time which speeds up processing. Often talking therapies may not work as they can take the person too deeply back into the trauma thus creating even more distress.

Stress responses are part of our natural instincts. When distress from a disturbing event remains, the upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions may create an overwhelming feeling of being back in that moment, or a perception of not being safe in the present. EMDR therapy helps the brain process these memories, and allows normal healing to resume. If the therapy is successful, the experience can still be remembered, but the fight, flight, or freeze response from the original event is resolved. Many people I’ve worked with describe it like they are trying to remember the feelings around the incident but it feels distant, like it’s behind them and they can no longer grasp it, and the triggers that once controlled their day-to-day lives have disappeared.

The trauma that adoptees have experienced is beyond huge. The adoption of a child is a single event, fixed in time, with a beginning and an end. However, the impact  is far-reaching—a process that continues throughout the life of the adoptee. Removed, often as a very small child, from their mother, the safety-inducing sounds and smells which the infant responds to in that supernatural attachment between a mother and child is brutally broken. That baby or child must feel terror beyond words, given away to strangers, experiencing unfamiliar sounds and smells, the child will perceive this to be a dangerous situation. Even as adults we struggle with too much change, but this early relinquishment catapults things far into the severe trauma realm in an infant brain that is years from full development and resilience. For many adoptees, the trauma happened before we developed the language to explain the events, so our memories are primarily somatic, stored in our nervous system.

These experiences become fixed in the body and mind in the form of ‘irrational’ emotions and physical symptoms, taken forward into adulthood. Children can’t process these feelings on their own in the absence of therapeutic interventions, and post-adoption services are lacking, at best, outside of the private therapy sector. 

The affect of trauma is sticky, like the static when a balloon is rubbed on your clothes and it attaches to you. When the static is discharged the balloon falls to the floor, it is just a balloon…when the affect of trauma is gone, it is just a memory that can be thought about without the woosh of emotion or panic, the triggers disappear and a new freedom can be lived. That’s what EMDR does. I imagine our brain as if it has lots of little filing cabinet drawers that slam shut full of whatever trauma we have experienced, EMDR teases open a specific drawer and allows the effect of the trauma to escape our brain. 

I would recommend EMDR therapy to adoptees and anyone who has experienced trauma that is affecting them in the present day. Make sure you find a therapist you click with - a good therapeutic relationship is essential as trust between the two parties needs to be strong. In my opinion, the client should never be allowed to leave the therapy room in a distressed state, so I normally use visualisation resourcing exercises to calm emotions. 

EMDR therapy does not require talking in detail about the distressing issue, in fact a person embarking on EMDR therapy doesn’t have to actually remember the specific incident. Indeed, how can we remember what happened in the early days of life? ‘Floating’ back in our minds to the earliest memory of whatever feeling we are experiencing and focusing on that as the ‘target’ memory is enough for EMDR therapy to be successful. EMDR targets the unprocessed memory at the same time as the emotions, beliefs about ourselves, and associated body sensations. Bilateral stimulation (left and right movements - generally eye movements or tapping) activates the brain’s information processing system, allowing the old memories to be digested or reprocessed and stored in an adaptive way. I often use buzzers that the client holds one in each hand that pulse left and right, any bilateral stimulation is effective. Subjective Units of Distress (SUDS) are scored at the beginning and the end of the therapy and the goal is to see a shift in the bodily feelings and the overall levels of disturbance to a more adaptive state.

I hope this has been helpful and debunked EMDR somewhat!

David Benjamin

www.davidbenjamintherapy.com

Photo by Marina Vitale on Unsplash

6 things adoptees of the future need - guest post by Lara Leon

Well-being is a topical subject. People talk about it all the time, especially now.

To live with well-being, we know that we should be mindful, strive to achieve balance, exercise our minds and bodies and try to find a sense of purpose in our lives. As a practising psychotherapist, this is my daily narrative.

Yet as an adult adoptee, my own journey to well-being was a messy one.

For most of my life, I personally struggled to achieve a sense of inner peace, or what I might now call well-being. But when I was growing up, I didn’t feel as though I could reasonably attribute this to anything to do with my adoption. I had a stable family home, clean clothes, food on the table and a good education. I had two parents who were there every day and who were proud of the fact that they treated my non-adopted sister and me “exactly the same”.

It wasn’t until much later that I understood just how much my adopted status had affected me. I’d sat in front of many a therapist, questioning the point of life and describing my lack of ease in the world around me. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me, or why I kept living through the same negative patterns. Why did I keep messing up relationships? How was it that I couldn’t trust? What was the vacillation between feeling needy and pushing people away all about? Why did I feel like I didn’t fit into my family? In the end, my search for the answers brought me to psychology and ultimately psychotherapy.

When the time came to carry out my Masters dissertation, realistically there was only one topic I could consider: adoptees and how they feel. So my research question was: “Levels of well-being in adults adopted as infants: what can we learn?”

First off, I learnt that although my mum and dad had parented my (non-adopted) sister and me in the same way, this was probably a large part of the problem. Years later, my mother told me my adoption was a “non-thing” to her. Essentially, she was saying that she had always considered me “the same” as my sister. But the reality of this meant we didn’t talk about how it all felt for me. Unfortunately, this also resulted in our not talking about the issue at the very heart of my experience - the fact that I didn’t feel I was in the right place (in the family) and their resulting sadness that I was never particularly happy. I wish we’d all had conversations about my feelings.

Statistics show that adoptees are over-represented in therapy, although they often don’t even realise their feelings may be linked to their adoption. Aren’t we supposed to be grateful? Didn’t we get plucked from impending doom when our adoptive parents “saved” us? Maybe, but it’s just not that straightforward. Adoptees often experience complex and conflicting feelings towards our adoptive families. Our adoptive parents’ style is also a key factor - are they warm and open with their love and understanding? If not, we might unconsciously feel even more rejected.

Frequently we are consumed with a need to understand who we came from (genetic bewilderment) and we may feel we’re betraying our adoptive parents for feeling like this. It’s entirely normal as a human being to want to know where we came from, but often there isn’t the communication within families to enable adoptees to speak about it.

And this is one of the key findings of my research. Prospective adopters need to be aware of the need for open communication around the fact of being adopted - not just a commitment themselves to parent the child in the same way they would their “own” baby. The adopted infant has complex needs and must experience a safe space in which to explore their feelings. They are expected to grow, develop and thrive in an environment that is alien to them and they will need a space where they are not made to feel ungrateful or disloyal for feeling the way they do.

So, what’s the answer?

An infant’s separation from their biological parent(s) results in trauma, it’s as simple as that. So, ideally families would be supported to stay together, but of course this is not always possible. My research findings are that adoptees struggle to achieve well-being compared with the general population. Separation trauma, problems of attachment, issues of identity, depression and anxiety are just some of the problems faced by adult adoptees.

But it can be made better.

I conclude with a suggested model of adoption - one that aims to ensure that adoptive parents are a good match for the child they intend to parent. Controversial? Well, when I was adopted there was a lot of emphasis on my being “an ideal baby” for my adoptive parents but no consideration given to whether they were “ideal” for me as I grew up and attempted to live with well-being. It doesn’t need to be this way.

This model would go some way to making sure that is the case for future adoptees:

1. Adoptive parent(s) with secure attachment style

If parents are insecure, anxious or avoidant, they are likely to make an already traumatised child feel more disconnected

2. Adoptive parent(s) who have grieved for, had therapy and overcome an inability to conceive naturally

Parents who would have never considered adoption as an option, often turn to it out of desperation when they have tried and failed to conceive. Let’s be real, in these circumstances they are adopting for themselves, not the child. Research suggests they need to grieve for their own loss before they can “be” what the adopted child needs

3. Adoptive parent(s) with the ability to mentalize the experience of their adopted child

Essentially, a parent who can put themselves in the “feelings” of the adopted child. The parent needs to accept that a baby or infant will be traumatised, suffer issues of fear, loss and rejection. Parents need to attempt to empathise with this in order to allow their child to explore/express their feelings

4. Adoptive parent(s) who are psychologically ready, prepared and willing to work with issues of separation, trauma, loss, identity and contact

As above, but adoptive parents should expect these issues and be prepared to discuss them in an open, supportive environment. This should continue as the child grows and develops and begins to question their identity.

5. Adoptive parent(s) who encourage open and supportive discourse about issues of separation, trauma, loss, identity and contact.

This should include the adoptee’s siblings (adopted or otherwise)

Again, the parents should initiate and encourage these conversations.

6. Therapy to be available as standard as adoptees reach adolescence and young adulthood

All adoptees should benefit from therapy or adoption competent support as they mature and question their experiences and identity.

This model does not include the right of the adoptee to access their birth records automatically which would lessen health anxiety and discoveries of health risk too late in life. Since this is a legal argument, it falls outside the scope of this model

Well-being matters. In the UK, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) tracks citizens’ well-being. Everyone benefits from a society high in well-being because it lowers the suicide rate and increases productivity, among many other positives.

And anyway, don’t we all seek to live with happiness?

At the moment in the UK, some 6,000 infants or children are up for adoption each year. This means that in 20 years’ time there will be an additional 120,000 adults living in Britain who were adopted as infants or children. They too deserve a fair chance.

You can find Lara on Instagram @Iamlaraleon and Twitter @IamLaraLeon

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

References:

Koivumaa-Honkanen et al, (2001) Williamson, 2014

Office for National Statistics (ONS), 2020 Verrier, 2013

11.01.2021 Corrected 60,000 to 6,000; babies to infants and children; 240,000 adults to 120,000 adults

Long Lost Family's response to my open letter

Last year when Long Lost Family was back on our screens, I wrote a rather cross open letter to the LLF team. Having recently come out of the fog and working with adoptees both in London and online, I felt the show wasn’t a realistic portrayal of adoption reunion. I also said that in the episodes I watched the adoptee often appeared alone with no family or friends, and the adoptee always called the birth parent ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ upon meeting. I added that I was concerned about what support was given to adoptees who appeared in the programme.

Here is an excerpt from my open letter to Long Lost Family:

“While I was still in the adoption fog, I watched you avidly. I delighted in the resemblances between the reunited relatives and looked forward to a good cry at the emotional climax of the programme (…) Now, with two adoption reunions under my belt, and being firmly out of the fog, I can no longer watch you. I’m sorry (…) While non-adopted people delight in the drama, you are a source of frustration and bewilderment for me and many adoptees I know. “

This year, when the new series came out, my open letter caught the attention of the LLF team and I received this reply. I’d love to know whether you watch Long Lost Family or What Happened Next and and what you think of this detailed and thoughtful reply from the executive producer.

Dear Claire,  

I am writing to you in response to your letter to Long Lost Family, which has been brought to my attention by Nicky Campbell. We are aware that the stories that we include cannot reflect every adoption and separation experience. I am sorry that this means you choose not to watch the programme.

We acknowledge that the series represents the stories of only a few of the 4,000 applications we receive each year from people searching for their families. This is a fact which we do acknowledge in the opening commentary of the programme.

The reality is that some searches are impossible for us to solve; some birth relatives do not want contact in any circumstances; and some do want contact but without LLF cameras being present. All of these variables we understand and must take into account. However, this means that the stories which can be told do tend to be those with positive outcomes. In our follow-up series, 'What Happened Next', we have deliberately chosen to include stories in which the relationships did not work out, or which show the enormous complexity of building a relationship after a lifetime apart.

'LLF' and 'What Happened Next' should be seen in tandem. They are watched by the same audience and demographic.

To answer some of your specific complaints:

• We do try to include family members whose lives have been impacted by adoption, from the adoptee to their spouses and children, sometimes even their adoptive parents. These decisions are predicated on the wishes of the people involved.

• We have included examples of adoptees talking to their adopting parents about the impact that the search process has had on them. For example, we have shown an adopting mother expressing concerns. In another instance, an adopting mother chose to meet the birth parent of her daughter. They chose for their meeting to be filmed.

• We do not dictate the names that adoptees choose to call their birth parents. This is certainly not something that is scripted or requested; all of the contributors use whatever terminology they are most comfortable with, be that Christian names or formal/informal titles. There may be deep rooted explanations for why some adopted people choose to use the terms "Mum" and "Dad"; it is their choice.

• Most importantly, both the searcher and the found person are offered intermediary support by a qualified ASA, qualified social workers, and counsellors or psychologists if needed.

The countless complexities and sensitivities of individual searches are difficult to reflect. No single story can ever be a universal truth.

However, we feel that in creating a documentary series that reaches 5 million viewers, we have helped to shift public opinion by removing the stigma and shame that has for many years surrounded those separated from the family of origin. The programme has inspired many people to search for the answers to their own family mysteries. It is a known fact that fostering and adoption teams deal with many more enquiries in the period after these documentaries have been aired.

While some of those people searching will find further difficulties and complexes as a result of their search, statistically, many are happy that they searched even if it is only to have answers to their questions.

Finally, the Long Lost Family search and social work team have provided answers for, and reunited, more than a 1,000 searchers over the past 10 years; of whom less than 20% are filmed. The remaining 80% are given the exact same duty of care search experience and support as the 20% who are filmed. This is something of which the entire team at LLF are justifiably proud.

Thank you very much for your letter and for raising your concerns with us. I do hope we have been able to answer the points that you have raised about the search process and the duty of care that lies behind the programme.

The Executive Producer at Long Lost Family

Photo by Erika Giraud on Unsplash

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I’d like to thank the producer for this thoughtful and detailed reply and for giving permission for it to be published in entirety. It is still my hope that within my lifetime we see the full adoptee experience realistically portrayed in the mainstream media.

I’d love to know what you think of Long Lost Family, so let me know in the comments below or find me on social media (links below).

Here are my other blogs on adoption reunion:

• Adoption Reunion: Top Tips

• Reunion Rocks, Reunion Sucks

• Sorry These Seats Are Taken

And my most popular blog post: Why Are You So Angry?

Finding the pieces - an adoptee's journey to feeling whole

I hope you enjoy this moving and inspiring guest blog from adoptee Gilli Bruce.

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Finding the pieces of your jigsaw is one thing… you also need some glue.

As an adoptee I felt like a hotch potch of pieces, many pieces were missing, some were broken and some were from the wrong box all together. My attempt to piece together my fractured identity started quite late, I was 43 before I could steel myself to brave it.

Childless, an only child and in a decidedly dodgy second marriage – the need to literally pull myself / my ‘self’ together grew too strong to remain marginalised in my sub-conscious. By this point the missing pieces, blanks and questions had gathered enough collective force to propel me into action.  

All that - and the pain of course. Up until then I’d squashed down the emotional turmoil and buried it under the pile of nonsense, cultural myth and family legend that insisted I was lucky to be adopted. There are many different tales and chapters in my adoption story – but this short account deals with the aspect of ‘pieces’.

If you are raised with your birth family – it is taken as established fact that you get trait A from this person, feature B from her, talent C from him – this ailment from her and so on and every one in your family knows these things too – so you belong. Being adopted in 1962 – I knew nothing. Nada. Zilch. I minimised the need to find my ‘pieces’ telling myself; “I’ll just find the bit about my medical history – fill the information void so I can answer doctors’ questions, see what’s in the blood that I should know about.”

Secretly I wanted ALL the pieces – every last scrap that could tell me who I am, every clue that could complete the puzzle and help me to feel whole, I just couldn’t admit it even to myself. The fear of not being able to find anyone or anything was too real and the fear of being rejected again – unthinkable, so ‘I’ll just go for medical details’ felt like the safest route forwards. And still……

Massively curious by nature anyway (who does that come from?) I wanted to know whose nose I have. Whose genes gave me this unruly hair? Whose sense of rhythm has me up on the dance floor at the first opportunity? Whose love of colour draws me to art and design? And who’s to blame for my weird digestive system that makes me need to eat painfully slowly? None of these aspects were from my adoptive family. I was different. I didn’t fit.

Bigger questions such as ‘What the hell happened?’ Have you thought about me AT ALL?’ ‘What were you bloody THINKING of?’ would come later and belong to a different account - at the beginning these were still buried.

I really believed that finding these genetic pieces would make me feel whole – bring some  sense of who I am….if I could just find who I’m meant to belong to I’ll be all fixed I thought. Again way down in the sub-conscious was an idea that went something like…’ I will find this family, we’ll all bond and I will belong to them and all will be well’.

I hadn’t factored in that pieces don’t just stick together on their own – you need some glue. In families that glue comes from early infant bonding and shared history – naively, impatient to belong immediately I didn’t really acknowledge that, I had no genetic belonging experience to refer to.

So – finding the pieces as I did, was and is a wonderful and helpful thing – it WAS a good start – but I was disappointed (this sounds a bit bonkers now) at the start of my family finding - to NOT feel magically transformed. I realise now that at that first starting point when we all met, we didn’t really know if we all wanted to belong to each other, to even BE bonded. The glue was still in the shop. We hadn’t even set off to town to buy it – we weren’t certain we wanted it. But, really quite quickly I did piece together the picture:

• Nose – Birth Father 

• Unruly hair – An Aunt 

• Sense of rhythm – Birth Father

• Love of colour / art – Birth Mother

• Weird digestion – Birth Father 

Now, 12 years later, I have nice relationships with both birth parents (we get together a few times a year) and I have 4 siblings; 2 lovely brothers and 2 amazing sisters, a wonderful brother-in-law, great nieces and nephews – all lovely people. So by now, I now know where a fair bit of ‘me’ comes from:

• Being something of an organiser – Birth Mother

• Being sensitive and needing of solitude – Birth Father

• Being independent, strong and determined – Birth Mother

• Being a gentle, softy too – Birth Father  

• Being madly affectionate and tactile – both sides of my birth family – all cuddlers (no wonder it was tough growing up with non-cuddlers)

• Being a mad animal lover – an Uncle and Sister too

And so it goes on and we are all still learning. The younger of my two brothers sees his mother in my gestures, the elder of my two sisters sees her sensitivity in me and we see each other’s vulnerability in each other. I saw myself at 17 in a photograph of my younger sister they showed me of her at 17 – I actually thought they’d somehow got a picture of me in an outfit I couldn’t remember!

The stories of the search, the finding and meeting along with the aspects of finding my birth family that have been tough are for another time. My early years, the rebellion, the mad times in the fog, the life lived on the run all have some value in the sharing along with a life lived as a joyful soul who has been successful and had lots of fun despite it all.

Thanks go to my birth family for welcoming me back and their willingness to keep on building and bonding with me, for this is what I learned – the pieces of information did help but the glue was time. Time and shared history, commitment and patience allow me to share that today I have a soul-mate relationship with my elder sister who I’d choose as a dear friend even if we weren’t related.  My younger brother is wonderful, he and I are building our closeness when we get chance and I value his presence in my life. It seems we had to make some shared pieces and create our own glue along the way – the ‘Superglue quick fix’ simply isn’t available for human bonding.

As for feeling more whole – I realise that actually in the end – that was down to me. The King’s horses and the King’s men couldn’t put this Humpty together again – I had to do it myself. 

I now have a solid sense of self that became actualised through the process of fighting to find my records, pushing on when it was tough, working with tenacity to reach career goals, caring for myself with costly therapy and finding a non-religious spiritual practice. I’ve worked hard to create lasting friendships, a lovely relationship and found what works for me through sheer hard work. So in being my own best friend I am finally standing on solid ground, feeling mostly whole, most of the time which feels like some kind of ‘normal’ whatever that is.

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Deep thanks to Gilli for sharing this moving and inspiring piece. I think many of us can relate to the feeling of squashing things down until such a time when it feels unavoidable and necessary. I also relate to Gilli’s description of the bonding challenges created by adoption reunion. I’d love to know what you think, and I will pass all comments on to Gilli. Thanks for reading x

 Photo credit: "031 - Irony" by Del Amitri is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0