The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 2 138 Connection Several of the participants recognized they had difficulties connecting with others, and they attributed these difficulties to being adopted. Some participants expressed struggles among immediate family members, such as their own biological children, while for others, issues were localized to social situations. Yet, on a larger scale, some participants’ struggles were characterized as being global. For example, Luke stated, “I certainly always have, more often than not, viewed myself negatively . . . lots of self-doubts in terms of self-worth, very negative feelings, just not good enough. And super-sensitive to the perceptions and judgments of others, and particularly rejection.” These feelings led him to allow boundary violations and being taken advantage of in order to “please, placate, and satisfy the needs of others.” Like Luke, Carla expressed difficulties with connection and relationships that had persisted for most of her life. Carla spoke poignantly of her difficulties with “attaching” to anyone or anything, except for her own biological children: I’ve always been kind of a searcher . . . I’m searching for a home, searching for a place, searching for a person, searching for something. Though I’ve moved around the country, I’ve moved from house to house, I’ve moved from apartment to apartment, I’ve moved from boyfriend to boyfriend, I’ve moved from husband to husband, and I’ve moved all over trying to find something, which I never did. And I always kind of explained it like a piece of floating chain in the air and all the posts are standing on the sidewalk down below, but I’m not attached to any of them . . . even when I had my own children, I just kind of added their link onto mine, so then we were just freefloating a couple of links instead of by myself. I never had anything to attach to. Teresa discussed how social connection specifically was complicated for her growing up because being an international infant adoptee raised by White parents meant she was racially different than her family: I remember being really self-conscious in high school about, you know, I would see a lot of people [of my race] who had recently immigrated to [the state where I lived]. And I clearly didn’t fit in there. And then I had all of these very White people, and I was like, “I don’t know if I fit in with them either.” And so, it was like this awkward, “where do I fit?” kind of situation. But I think part of why I didn’t try immersing myself more in [my birth] culture was because I wanted to be more in the mainstream White, American culture; that’s kind of how I identified as culturally. I know racially I wasn’t. As illustrated by Luke, Carla, and Teresa, the participants possessed a deep desire for connection with others, but factors related to their adoption made this challenging at times. Relational Distrust Because of the occurrence of some participants noting that they continually struggle to trust others in relationships and certain social circumstances, this theme was notable. In our analysis, we recognized some overlap between this theme and the theme of connection, but we felt there were enough specific mentions of distrust to position it as its own theme. Luke reflected on this theme of not being able to trust others when he processed his feelings of low self-worth, which he attributed to his adoption circumstances:
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