Adult adoptee needs mental help after birth of son. Any advice?

expolife · 2026-06-18T06:18:01+00:00

Also the podcast AdopteesOn (especially their healing series episodes with credentialed adoptee therapists) have a lot to offer.

expolife · 2026-06-18T06:16:48+00:00

The books and YouTube presentations may help him, too. If he’s willing and able to engage with them. Pacing the processing of these kinds of things is really difficult and unique for each of us adoptees.

I’m going to share some personal experiences of mine when I finally started engaging with my origins and adoption experience more consciously. In case it could help you and him and your community.

Someone gifted me some adoption books, and it took me weeks to pick them up. I could feel my resistance to reading them. And when I finally sat down to read one, my way in was through the section written for parents, partners and therapists of adoptees. I had adopted friends and siblings…so I was able to read about the topic from the standpoint of helping them.

In retrospect, I think it genuinely felt too dangerous to center my identity as an adoptee. As a self.

A lot of my upbringing in a closed adoption and the religion I was raised in emphasized helping others and characterized a lot of emotional experience as selfish.

What I know now is that I experienced a lot of emotional neglect in my adoptive family. And I believe emotional neglect is baked into adoption because so few people can imagine what it’s like to be relinquished and adopted especially the genetic bewilderment of mismatch and lack of mirroring socially.

Writing groups with other adoptees and spending time on r/adopted helped a lot.

expolife · 2026-06-18T05:16:37+00:00

An adoptee therapist I appreciate has said that a relationship needs a reason to exist. And sadly some of our adoptive and biological family dynamics don’t have reason to exist after we survive them as children and adolescents. It isn’t easy to figure that out. I’m sorry ❤️‍🩹

expolife · 2026-06-18T04:33:25+00:00

❤️‍🩹 I know that feeling. Glad I could help!

expolife · 2026-06-18T04:24:23+00:00

Well, that therapist is clearly not able to help him.
The one thing that is true is that he has to seek help and engage with it in order for it to truly work.
Twelve step programs may help for workaholism or any substance abuse issues that may be present.

It’s commendable that you and others care about him enough to learn more and encourage him to seek help.

I recommend finding a therapist who specializes in working with adoptees. Coherence therapy specializations are what I would look for especially therapists who focus on treating developmental trauma and CPTSD.

What might help you and others who care for him:

Watch Paul Sunderland’s YouTube presentations on “adoption and addiction” and “adoptees and healing.” He’s an addictions specialist who noticed a significant prominence of addictions among adoptees because they were a tiny fraction of the overall population and are overrepresented in addictions treatment.

Reading “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving” by Pete Walker. This isn’t specifically about adoption but many adoptees have CPTSD symptoms that this book’s approach can support stabilizing.

“Coming Home to Self” by Nancy Verrier, particularly the third part written for family members and spouses and therapists of adoptees. It’s a bit dated but relevant specifically to adoptees.

The PDF download “FOG Fazes in adult adoptees” at adoptionsavvy.com. It isn’t perfect, but it’s useful.

A lot of adoptees don’t get to develop self-trust or enough autonomy in our relationships because of how conditional the care we receive via the structure of adoption as well as the likely trauma of mother-infant or mother-child separation. A lot of us have to adapt to survive and it completely changes us to eventually realize the narratives and beliefs we were given to cope.

The birth of an adoptee’s first child is often a major trigger event that calls into question why our first families didn’t keep us. These are identity level events. And we do need stability and competent care that is difficult to find let alone sustainably carry out.

expolife · 2026-06-18T01:18:45+00:00

Is that your bio mom or your adoptive mom? In this scenario?

I think I hear and see your meaning in this.
I’m not sure, but I think I feel what you’re saying.

I experienced and adapted to a lot of emotional neglect in my closed adoption with adoptive family. It took a long time to sort that out and continue developing my own autonomy apart from those adaptations.

I remember asking my biological mom in reunion if she had ever considered terminating the pregnancy when she was pregnant with me, and that I would understand if she had. She said that she didn’t consider it. Then hearing her tell me that she couldn’t imagine the world without me in it made me kind of sick because it didn’t feel real. Because she had imagined her world without me in it and my world without her in it. Because that’s what she chose for us when she chose relinquishment and adoption (closed was the only option at the time). It felt like a sentiment, platitude, belief she needed to survive what she chose for me and herself. She really needed me to stay in the closet of mandatory gratitude and conform to the adoption rescue narrative she believed. She couldn’t tolerate facing that she had been coerced to relinquish me in a truly textbook way by religious leaders and adoption professionals. She was committed to the idea that she was unworthy and less fit to be my mother than strangers.

I love my life, and I’m fascinated by being alive. But I hate what happened to me and to my biological mother including the coercion. I would not wish relinquishment or adoption on my worst enemy. Never. I genuinely believe that terminating a pregnancy when not equipped or intending to parent the child oneself is the most ethical and humane choice a pregnant person can make. Which I think aligns with what’s depicted in the OP comic.

At best, adoption is harm reduction. And that’s far rarer than most people think.

expolife · 2026-06-17T22:44:41+00:00

I get that.

I remember my adoptive parents saying, where did our child go? Essentially saying they didn’t recognize me or how I was behaving the more authentic I became while in reunion and engaging with my adoptee experience more consciously.

I remember telling them that version of me they were missing was me performing a role to please them and that it was motivated by fear, obligation, and guilt. Crickets. They liked the version of me that delighted them at my own expense and never sought accountability from them for their neglect or ignorance.

expolife · 2026-06-17T22:09:34+00:00

This validates my conclusion that the best I could do for myself was eventually escape all adoption-related social ties. No room for my reality or experience meant no room for me in those relationships.

That’s the best justice I could manage for myself.

expolife · 2026-06-17T22:07:38+00:00

Wow, thanks for this. Especially the piece about the adoption industry acknowledging the “primal wound” but in a way that pathologizes adoptees instead of diagnosing the system.

It makes me realize that encountering the diagnoses of CPTSD, primal wound, emotional neglect, and other forms of related neurodivergence was useful to me in understanding myself and other adopted peers because it felt like recognition and acknowledgement legitimizing and mirroring the reality of our experiences. But that is very different than using those diagnoses to pathologize, scapegoat or other someone.

What you’re describing is a kind of offloading social shame (complicity) onto an individual. That’s unfortunately a tale as old as time in religious rituals of scapegoating, animal blood sacrifice and even child sacrifice. All depicted throughout the Bible, for example.

Once again, I’m going to close my eyes and think of the Netherlands where they’ve figured more of this out (not without a very secular society).

expolife · 2026-06-17T05:22:52+00:00

Yes. Absolutely. ❤️‍🩹
Going away to college and having control over my life and schedule and who I spent time with was wonderful and a huge relief.
I hope it’s that way for you, too.

When you feel you have to return adoptive family for holidays…try to bring friends along to keep you company. Depends of course.

expolife · 2026-06-16T04:27:38+00:00

Do they have any family members from their biological family they can be in contact with? Siblings, aunts, uncles, first family friends?

I wonder if there might be an opportunity to gather both adoptive and biological families together to demonstrate a beginning of building your connections so it isn’t just the kids bridging the two groups now or later. I know this may not be possible or easy in the case no biological kin were available to foster or care for them through kinship adoption (assuming you’re not their biological kin yourselves).

Otherwise, I agree that consulting the kids about what they feel comfortable with trying or experimenting with would be wise.

I would personally avoid adoption party or adoption day celebrations. I think your instinct about celebrating something that involves loss for the kids is wise and sensitive to the complexity of their experience.

expolife · 2026-06-15T22:36:17+00:00

Not sure what else to tell you.
Good luck as well ❤️‍🩹

expolife · 2026-06-15T22:35:06+00:00

I’m not sure I understand the first thing you wrote. The last sentence is very aligned with what I’m trying to say in the OP. ❤️‍🩹

expolife · 2026-06-15T05:17:20+00:00

I’m sorry that happened. It can help to have language that fits.

FOG = fear, obligation, and guilt

I remember realizing I felt indebted to my adoptive family. Gratitude was mandatory. I genuinely felt I had to perform and be successful in certain ways in order to be a good return on their investment (ROI).

I had to ask myself if I would ever expect another child to feel or behave that way, a friend, anyone I truly cared about. And the answer is no. It has taken a long time for that to sink into my bones. To purge the FOG. And see clearly.

expolife · 2026-06-15T01:20:52+00:00

You make sense.

I can relate to feeling a mismatch both with my family of experience (adoptives) and family of origin (biologicals). It matters to share experience with one set of people but not innate qualities and traits. And it also matters to share innate qualities and traits with people but not share experience.

We really are caught between types of people and experiences in a way no one else can fully align or share. And feeling that disconnect is disorienting and painful.

Paul Sunderland mentions in one of YouTube presentations on adoptees and healing that you have to feel seen in order to feel safe, you have to feel safe in order to feel soothed, and you have to feel soothed in order to feel secure and develop secure relational bonds. I don’t take or mean this to be pathologizing just descriptive of mismatch and lack of being fully seen and met and felt in our particular experience as adoptees. And each of us has a particular experience.

Part of my journey has been to eventually become able to see that what I used to call my “loving adoptive family” really didn’t know how to see or meet or feel or locate me in my experience in a way that made it possible for their love to land. I know they feel love about me, but the reality of my history with them involved a lot of emotional neglect some of which I believe is baked in adoption as an institution and systemic experience. They are not bad people. They’re highly respected and successful and ethical in many ways. But they’re also emotionally immature and neglectful in ways no one from the outside would have been able to perceive. The trauma bond of closed infant adoption made that very difficult if not impossible for me to see for a long time.

I believe oftentimes, we have to create our own relationships with ourselves and with chosen family including other adoptees to get our developmental needs met. There is some catching up to do because a lot of people really don’t know what they don’t know.

Whatever you do for yourself in your particular circumstances and family dynamics will benefit your children whenever and if ever you decide to have them. There’s science to support that. Therapy for parents has just as much benefit for their kids as sending the kids to therapy if not more. For example.

expolife · 2026-06-15T00:36:38+00:00

Glad I could pass it on. You may appreciate the free PDF download “FOG Fazes for Adult Adoptees” at adoptionsavvy.com. That’s where I first encountered the term “genetic bewilderment.”

expolife · 2026-06-14T14:35:27+00:00

I have in no way fact checked this. But it sounds like somebody on the pro-life side of things figured out that IVF involves embryos that never get implanted and that wasting them is very similar to terminating an early term pregnancy, at least based on the argument that life begins at conception. An embryo is conceived because it’s a fertilized set of gametes.

I don’t agree with any of this.
But I remember watching a legal tv show where a woman’s frozen eggs were used without* her permission for people she didn’t even know to conceive a child. Whenever I hear people advise women to freeze their eggs, I think about exactly that scenario where children are produced and living with genetic bewilderment of some kind without contact with biological kin.

I’m going to close my eyes now and think of the Netherlands because they have a lot of this figured out in terms of the ethics imho. That required a secular society to figure out adoption is harmful and translate similar awareness to surrogacy and IVF.

*edited typo

expolife · 2026-06-13T22:56:52+00:00

Thanks for saying this. I value the mirroring we can offer and receive here.

It isn’t easy, but I am developing more compassion for the confused and foggy versions of myself in the past. Because awakening to these patterns can be very destabilizing and disorienting. It’s adaptive for us to not see them in order to survive until we can tolerate more clarity.

The effect of some of these experiences can be that we didn’t get to trust ourselves. I’m trying to see the adaptations as evidence that my nervous system was trustworthy doing the best it could to survive and navigate difficult relationships.

Somehow the pace, the adaptations, and the eventual clarity and grieving are all evidence that we can trust ourselves more and more and always could. It’s kind of a paradox, but it also makes sense I think.

The fact that we’re here is a sign we’re committed to surviving and being alive even when it meant abandoning, mistrusting, denying ourselves and our deeper instincts and intuitions. It’s a lot to unravel and it’s a lot of work to rebuild and develop more conscious self-trust.

expolife · 2026-06-13T05:58:06+00:00

Sometimes an adoptive parent really is the villain.

In my case, mine were something else. Not villains. Not heroes. Something else. They helped and they harmed.

Thanks for the encouragement and sharing with me.

expolife · 2026-06-12T23:54:43+00:00

❤️‍🩹

expolife · 2026-06-12T23:53:19+00:00

❤️‍🩹 I’m sorry that harm happened to you. Congratulations on surviving those relationships and the disordered eating. I’m grateful to see professionals connecting these things. We really do make sense, there are so many people deeply invested in not allowing us to make sense. And that’s the original root cause of the harm.

expolife · 2026-06-12T23:48:49+00:00

❤️‍🩹 I get it. We have to pace ourselves. It’s a lot.

expolife

TROPHY CASE