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The experience of adoption can affect all members of the adoption triad. This typically includes the adoptee, the birth parent(s) and the adoptive parents.

While the experience of adoption is unique to each individual, feelings such as grief, loss, a sense of not belonging, a lack of identity, trust, abandonment, secrecy and shame can be salient themes that occur.

It can also be challenging for an adoptee to navigate the search and reunion stage with birth parent(s) and/or siblings as this may further compound feelings of guilt or fear of rejection.

Adoption is a lifelong process, the experience does not end once the infant is placed for adoption, rather this process can carry through into adolescence and adulthood.

Psychotherapy Can Help You Explore This Issue

“Adoption isn’t a concept to be learnt, a theory to be understood, or an idea to be developed. It’s a real-life experience about which
adoptees have had and are continuing to have constant and conflicting feelings, all of which are legitimate”

(Verrier, 2017)