Therapy for adoptees | Shoreline & Olympia, WA
Heal in a space where your adoption story is understood.
You don’t have to explain why adoption feels complicated. I already believe you.
My focus is on working with people from all kinds of experiences with adoption to help them navigate whatever challenges they face with the clarity and validation they need to flourish.
Many people are unfamiliar with talking about adoption other than reflecting how our communities and society deal with the topic. In America, popular narratives about adoption tend to focus on happy endings. Many adoptees feel intense pressure to conform with this idealized idea of a very complicated situation and play the role of the “good adoptee”. As children we want to be like everyone else and do not really learn how to talk about our experience.
What would it feel like to be confident that you have tools to:
Understand and navigate depression, anxiety, and adoption trauma?
Change unhelpful relationship /attachment patterns?
Interrupt self-defeating thoughts, habits and self-sabotage?
Gain clarity about your identity, sense of self and life purpose?
Adoption is lifelong and its impact changes throughout our lifetime.
Adoption competent therapy is provided by someone who has specialized training and lived experience to amplify adoptee voice and navigate the complexities and the impact of adoption across the lifespan.
Have you been frustrated that mainstream psychotherapeutic approaches are not effective and sometimes even backfire?
Do you wonder why you feel resentment when you are told to be grateful?
Do you want to feel connection but connection is triggering-creating confusion?
Do you stay in harmful relationships, because you are afraid of losing connection and you do not want to face another loss?
Do you have trouble keeping/sustaining connections with people? friends?
Are you confused about what love is?
Is your internal world anxious? Characterized by perfectionism and burnout? Fawning and people pleasing?
Hi, my name is Becky.
I was relinquished at birth and adopted as an infant, during the pre-Roe baby scoop era.
I am a same race, domestic adoptee matched to my adoptive parents who were unable to conceive. I have been in reunion for 6 years. I experienced cognitive dissonance and rupture about 7 years ago when I walked into an adoptee support group and began crying uncontrollably. All my life I struggled with symptoms of depression and anxiety, identity confusion and unstable relationships. Mainstream psychotherapy sought to “fix” me. However, working with someone aware of adoption I learned that I am not the problem. Being adopted does not explain all things for adopted people. However, it's a foundational experience for a person that also carries meaning in a society and dominant culture in which most people are not adopted.
As a psychotherapist, and an adoptee, I can't ignore adoption's potential significance in providing support and healing for people whose lives are affected by adoption.
Together, we can create space to honor all the parts of yourself and lean into unexpressed thoughts and feelings that may not align with the dominant adoption narrative in our culture. Therapy can be a safe place to grieve, heal, and discover what’s next.
My Specialties
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Adoptees often live with unanswered questions and incomplete stories. The loss of access to fundamental information about ourselves can create a deep sense of uncertainty. These ambiguous losses are often unacknowledged, leaving adoptees to carry grief that is hard to name and even harder to share.
When this grief goes unexpressed, it can show up as depression, anxiety, and complex trauma. These feelings are not always constant. They may surface suddenly during life transitions, such as adolescence, parenthood, or major relationship changes.
Adoptee anxiety often has a specific shape. You might feel like people dislike you, even when there is no clear evidence. Your mind may not let you ignore this fear, no matter how hard you try.
Standard approaches to therapy do not always work for adoptees. The goal is not to erase how you feel, but to understand it, validate the experience and empower you to reclaim your narrative.
Adoption-competent therapy involves learning a new emotional language that helps you connect your anxiety to your lived experience.
Healing often includes recovery as a way of life. This might mean using tools and skills, developing compassionate self-talk, and building support as you move through change.
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Love and attachment for adoptees may originate from a place of survival. Maternal separation is traumatic for children at any age and may result in rejection sensitivity where the brain is hyper-vigilant about people and potential experiences that could cause them pain that they do not believe they could recover from.
Adoptees may experience extreme emotional pain when they think they’ve been rejected or criticized, making it hard to feel secure and function in everyday life.
Adoptees have been told from childhood that some rejections are good and loving. This may not feel protective to an adoptee to believe someone’s promises of “I’ll always be here.”
There may be additional layers of trauma, including racial, cultural, or developmental trauma. Many adoptees are also birth parents, adoptive parents, or therapists. The experience of being adopted may intersect with other adverse experiences adding to the complexity of sorting it all out.
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For many adoptees, identity does not come together easily. There can be pressure to be perfect, to meet everyone’s expectations, to avoid being abandoned. This can lead to people pleasing or shape-shifting just to stay connected.
You might struggle with a sense of self that feels scattered or uncertain. You might find yourself asking, “Who am I when I am not performing?” or “Do I even feel safe enough to be myself?”
Some adoptees feel a strong sense of loyalty to others that keeps them silent. Others feel shame or self-doubt about being curious. These internal conflicts can lead to self-stigma and emotional exhaustion.
Therapy can be a space to explore and hold the contradictions. It is possible to feel gratitude and grief. To love and feel anger. To belong and still feel different. Talking about these layers openly can be freeing.
Adoptees can live full of loyalty, gratitude and loss, anger and estrangement. This duality can be hard to understand. There are no easy solutions to a complex – multifaceted experience.
We are not a good fit if…
You are seeking brief, solution-focused therapy with no exploration of identity
You are uncomfortable exploring the emotional or relational aspects of adoption
You are looking for quick fixes without reflection
We are a good fit if…
You want to explore the long-term impact of adoption
You feel grief, confusion, or resentment about your adoption story
You are ready to go deeper, even if it is hard sometimes
Adoption is lifelong and its impact changes throughout our lifetime.
Adoption competent therapy is provided by someone who has specialized training and lived experience to amplify adoptee voice and navigate the complexities and the impact of adoption across the lifespan. Starting therapy can feel overwhelming, especially if past experiences have not been helpful. My goal is to make the process feel clear, collaborative, and respectful of your pace.
Here is what working together looks like:
01
Schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation
We will talk briefly about what you are looking for in therapy and whether we feel like a good fit.
02
Complete simple online intake forms
If we decide to move forward, I will send you digital forms that include consent, background, and some initial reflection questions.
03
Begin ongoing sessions
We will meet weekly or biweekly, depending on your needs. Together, we will explore your story at a pace that feels safe and supportive.
Therapy can be a space to name what has felt confusing or unspoken. When we begin to say the things we were taught to keep quiet, we open the door to feeling seen and understood. Adoption impacts every person differently. I offer space to explore how it has shaped your life, your relationships, and your sense of self—without judgment or expectation.
Begin to understand the impact adoption has had on your life.
Give language to the grief that others may not see or acknowledge. Reconnect with the parts of yourself that have been hidden or silenced. Know that healing is possible, even if it has felt out of reach. You are not alone. If you’re ready to begin, I’d love to meet you.