THE INVISIBLE WOUND

Understanding and Working with The Impact of Adoption

Being adopted deeply influences relationships, identity, and the ability to navigate grief and transitions, it alters the lens through which adoptees experience and perceive life. Therapists who have an understanding the complexities of adoption and how to work with it in session, are rare. Let’s change that.

This training/discussion group is for mental health professionals wishing to learn more about the complexities of adoption so they can support those who are adopted with more understanding and depth.

Whether your clients are dealing with adoption-related issues or broader life struggles, this group will equip you with the knowledge and tools to more fully guide their exploration and healing.

Who is This Consultation Group For

  • Both seasoned and newer clinicians are welcome

  • Clinicians who work with adults who have been touched by adoption

  • Clinicians who are interested in exploring how early attachment disruptions impacts identity and relationships

  • Clinicians who are focused on deeper connection to self and healing relational wounds

Why Adoption Competency is So Needed…

  • Trained mental health providers who can identify, support, and guide clients through these issues are in dire need. Many adopted individuals express that they have difficulty finding an adoption-competent therapist to work with.

  • Adopted individuals are an at-risk population for addiction, eating disorders, and suicide.

  • Adoption profoundly impacts relationships, identity, and the ability to handle grief and transitions - all issues that clients come to therapy for yet the impact of their adoption is often missed or left unaddressed.

  • Adopted Individuals present in therapy at higher rates than the general population, yet school does not teach us much about adoption.

  • Most discussion and trainings regarding adoption primarily focus on parenting skills and young children.

Adoption encompasses a diverse range of experiences, no two stories alike. Adoptees may have always known they were adopted or may have discovered it later in life through a non-parental event (NPE) such as a 23andMe test. They may have been adopted domestically or internationally, at birth or after spending time in foster care. Some may have been adopted by family members, like grandparents, or raised by someone without a formal legal adoption. Despite the uniqueness of each journey, many adoptees share common challenges, and often common themes that haunt them throughout their lives.

What Makes This Group Uniquely Valuable
The combination of specialized focus, shared expertise, and a deep dive

  • Combination of Learning and Application: Learn about core adoption struggles AND apply it to your cases and approach.

  • Learn About Adoption Trauma & Resilience: Using the 7 Core Issues of Adoption to structure our deep dive into relinquishment and adoption trauma, you’ll learn about how the wound and the resilience of adoption manifests in the life and identity of those who are adopted.

  • Add Depth: Expand your ability to conceptualize your client’s challenges and invite exploration including the unexpected ways it may manifest in the client/therapist relationship.

  • Community: Connect to a therapeutic community which can provide expertise for both clients and clinicians.

  • Specialized Therapies: Explore therapeutic modalities used for healing attachment wounds and complex trauma and how they help focus therapy the adopted person. (NARM, SE, Attachment, Parts Work)

Objectives
Clinicians can expect to

  • Learn about the complexities of the 7 Core Issues of Adoption, Adoption Trauma, and Relinquishment Trauma

  • Become more fully attuned to the impact of adoption on identity formation, relationships, and stress responses

  • gain potential of adoption related experience impacting the struggles your client’s are facing and open a discussion

  • Gain an understanding the deeply embedded complex responses, emotions, and beliefs of adoption and relinquishment trauma

  • Address and educate yourself on the myths and binds that the US adoption system creates

  • Learn adoption terminology There’s just so much, it's another language in itself. 

How your Client’s Will Benefit

  • Have a space where they can explore the impact of adoption on their identity, relationships, and stress responses

  • Engage in their experience and healing with an Adoption Competent Therapist and offers Trauma Informed Care

  • Heal wounds that have been left unaddressed in past therapy

About Kimberley, Your Group Leader
A graduate of St. Edward's University, Kimberley is a seasoned grief and trauma therapist, a board approved supervisor, and certified NARM therapist. She has over 14 years of study in Attachment, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, and IPNB. She offers a trauma-informed relational approach and incorporates somatic work, parts work, applied improve, and expressive arts in her practice. Kimberley not only studies and works with adoption, she has lived experience as an adopted person. She has dedicated her professional life seeking a deeper understanding of how to heal trauma, attachment wounds, grief, and recover a sense of self.

Details:

  • Mondays 10am-11:40pm Dates TBD

  • Investment: $65 per meeting
    Requires a commitment for the entire 8 Sessions regardless of attendance

  • 8 Meetings via Zoom
    You do not have to be in Austin to be a part of this group

  • Up to 21 CEUs
    available for LPC, LMFT, and Social Workers

  • Limited to 8 participants
    (if the group is smaller and wishes to meet in person we can arrange to meet at my offices in south Austin.)

  • After the 8 Weeks members may wish to continue with an Adoption Case Consultation Group. This group will allow a deep-dive into individual clients and case conceptualization.

PLEASE NOTE:

  • We will focus on the impact that adoption has throughout life and centered on the experience and needs of those who are adopted.

  • This group is not intended to teach parenting skills or how to work with young children.

  • This group is neither pro nor anti adoption. However, some topics may challenge you to question the adoption system and pervading beliefs about adoption. I ask that you be willing to reflect on your personal beliefs and feelings about adoption and allow growth and compassion to the topics presented.