Adult Adoptees
Relationship anxiety, difficulty trusting a partner’s commitment, a persistent sense of being fundamentally unknowable — often connected to attachment templates formed decades earlier, even when the connection isn’t conscious.
Specialty Focus
Adoption-competent therapy.
For adult adoptees, adoptive parents, and adoptive families — grounded in current attachment research, not outdated assumptions.
Adoption is a risk factor worth taking seriously — not a life sentence. Most adoptees build full, satisfying lives; outcomes are shaped by attachment repair long after the earliest chapter.
An American Psychological Association practice review found that adult adoptees show elevated rates of certain difficulties — higher levels of depression, anxiety, and insecure attachment — while also reporting life satisfaction statistically similar to non-adoptees. Held together, those findings say something clinicians in this space have long observed: early relational disruption leaves a mark, and most adoptees build full lives anyway. Outcomes vary enormously based on factors well within a family’s or a therapist’s influence.
Areas of focus.
Adoptive Parents
The unprocessed grief many parents carry — around infertility, around the loss of the biological-family narrative — and how it shapes the family’s emotional environment. Supporting the parent is part of supporting the child.
Adoptive Families
Systems-level work when a child’s adjustment is complicated by unresolved patterns in the parents. Attachment recovery happens in relationship, not in isolation.
Domestic, International & Foster-to-Adopt
Different paths carry different clinical considerations. Care attuned to the specific attachment history and identity questions raised by each.
Identity & Origin Questions
Search, reunion, DNA discoveries, and the complex identity work that accompanies knowing (or not knowing) one’s biological history.
How we work.
Grounded in current research
Longitudinal studies show early disorganized attachment does not, by itself, reliably predict adult attachment insecurity. What matters is what happens after — the stability of new relationships, the family’s capacity to provide a secure base.
Naming the connection
Adult adoptees often arrive with issues that don’t obviously announce themselves as adoption-related. An untrained clinician can spend months on the surface issue without ever reaching the attachment template that’s driving it.
Full life, full attention
The research is clear that most adoptees build satisfying lives. Our work assumes that outcome is possible — and does the specific attachment work that makes it more likely.
Research Cited
- “Research roundup: Working with adults adopted as children.” American Psychological Association Services, 2018.
- “Attachment in adoptees and non-adoptees from infancy to young adulthood: the Greek Metera study.” Attachment & Human Development, 2026.
- “Adoption, attachment, and relationship concerns: A study of adult adoptees.” Journal of Family Psychology, 2007.
Interested in this focus area?
Our practice is expanding to include specialized clinicians in this area. Join the waitlist to be notified when sessions become available, or reach out to discuss your situation with our practice manager.
Telephone
(916) 990-2326
Email
[email protected]