Helping Your Reunion to be the Best it Can Be for All Concerned.

Naming and taming the problems that you may encounter.

Written from our experience and expertise and also with help from research: The Adoption Reunion Handbook by Julia Feast, David Howe and Liz Trinder.(Wiley 2004 p.43)

This page helps to address all of those ‘What If’ questions that are bound to come into your mind if you are going through an adoption search and if someone has approached you for contact as well as some of the challenges you may have to face. You can talk with our Adoption Counselling Service about these and we can support you. The first step is to identify the problem so that it can be discussed. We call this naming and taming the problem.

Challenges you may face.

Despite all of this you don’t feel as loved as you thought you would be.

The other person is not committed to the reunion or at least not as committed as you. This may leave you feeling frustrated, let down, sad or disappointed.

You sense your feelings are not being taken into account, and you fear that you are being taken advantage of or dumped on by a family member.

You don’t feel fully part of the birth mother or father’s family.

The other person has poor boundaries, leaving you feeling overwhelmed or maybe guilty if you keep them at arm’s length.

It feels this is a competition for love where adoptive parents, birth parents, siblings are in competition for who gets the love.You may find your loyalties are torn and you may try to please everyone.

You only get on with some birth family members but not everyone.

You feel overwhelmed by the intense emotions stirred up by the reunion concerning adoption, childhood or simply managing the reunion itself.

You are confused by memories about the past.You wonder if your birth parent was wrong to have you adopted.

You find you don’t have anything in common with the birth relatives – you don’t like them, and you lost interest in the reunion.

The reunion is with a birth relative who may have personal problems such as mental health difficulties, addiction, criminal record etc.

Finding time to deal with all these new emotions is difficult.

Your relationship with your current family (partner, children, adoptive parents) may change, and these people may feel rejected because you are excited by your new relationships.

And the answer is……

There are no easy answers, but talking and discussing your thoughts and feelings will help to put things in order. Joanna North Adoption is there to offer adoption counselling throughout these problems.Please let us know if you are struggling so that we can set up a counselling session for you and talk things over with you.We really want to hear from you if you struggle.

Dr. Joanna North.

Consultant Psychotherapist Adoption.

September 2024.

Joanna North Adoption (Ofsted registered)