141 The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 2 There was a moderate overlap between the themes of connection and relational distrust, which afforded us a deeper understanding of the participants’ adoption narrative. For example, our participants revealed struggles connecting with others, supporting existing research that shows people who have been adopted often struggle to form relationships (DeLuca et al., 2019), and that the quality of relationships with adoptive families is an influential component of the ability of adoptees to form healthy connections with others (Melero & Sánchez-Sandoval, 2017). As it pertains to relational distrust, our findings were similar to the Shahab et al. (2021) study, which found that adults with a history of childhood maltreatment are more likely to experience distrust; feel distant from others; and develop an insecure attachment style, which may also affect relationship quality. Our final theme concerning involvement with counseling connected to the notion of adoptees potentially experiencing ambivalence regarding how they feel toward their adoption experience. Our participants expressed a wide range of information regarding their reasons for seeking out counseling, as well as the prominence of the topic of adoption within the therapeutic setting. Thankfully, the need for adoption-competent counselors has been the subject of numerous studies (Baden et al., 2017; Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, 2010; Freundlich, 2006; Lenerz et al., 2006), and our participants echoed this need for someone who could understand their experiences and help them explore the impact adoption had on their lives. Baden et al. (2017) found that adoptees in counseling reported greater satisfaction in proportion to the amount of attention the therapist paid to the topic of adoption. Implications This study explored the experiences of adoptees with counseling, loss, and grief, leading to important implications for professional counselors. Counselors should recognize that adoptees value mental health professionals who address the topic of adoption and are competent in working with clients who are adoptees. Counselors working with adoptees may benefit from treating a client’s adoptee status as an area of multicultural diversity and studying the relevant literature to help develop competence (Remley & Herlihy, 2020). Being more aware of the challenges adoptees experience integrating loss and grief into their life narrative could help a counselor successfully engage with such clients. An ability to address these intricacies through a relationally oriented counseling technique such as existential therapy’s here-and-now processing approach (Yalom, 2002) might be warranted. Additionally, it is important to recognize that grief is a unique process for everyone, including every adoptee. Grief that arises from a recognition and acceptance process when coming to terms with one’s adoption is likely to be complex and interwoven with accepting the fact and circumstances of one’s adoption. A narrative therapy approach could offer clients an opportunity to re-author both their adoption story (unique and alternate outcomes) and the future story they want to have (White & Epston, 1990). Kessler (2019) suggested that a sixth stage of grief (added to the traditional stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) is finding meaning, and this additional stage would appear to be resonant in the lives of virtually all of our study’s participants. Limitations The findings and discussion of this study should be considered within the context of its limitations. One limitation is the sample used by the researchers. The study included seven purposefully selected participants to represent adult adoptees, including four males and three females, and more minorities than White participants. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2020) reported that White children (50%) are adopted at approximately the same rate as other ethnicities, and male children (51%) are adopted slightly more frequently than female children (49%). Although this study’s sample is representative of the current racial and gender makeup of adoptees, expanding on the diversity of participants could make for a more robust description of the lived experiences of adult adoptees.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDU5MTM1