Role of Therapy and Emotional Support
Alex continued to repair both relationships with their adoptive and biological families by seeing therapists who understood the particularly complex issues facing adopted people. It was not easy to work through the emotions surrounding a reunion that had taken place over so many decades of life. Therapy became one of the tools of necessity for Alex in the quest to work through the weight of this experience, letting Alex come to understand how it all felt about both families.
For Alex, the most difficult challenge was the reconciliation of the extreme emotional drama that came with discovering biological parents. While the reunion was joyful, it brought a flood of unresolved emotions about abandonment, loss, and identity confusion never completely healed. Alex learned these emotions didn’t supplant the love they had for their adoptive parents. Rather, they came out as part of a larger tapestry of who Alex had evolved into. Therapy helped Alex to grasp that her feelings of gratitude and love for her adopted parents could get along side the complexity of emotions placed upon her biological family.
Alex also learned how to set boundaries and communicate more effectively with both families through therapy. What an enormous amount of emotional intelligence and patience it called for to bring together two families from different histories and experiences. Alex realized while the process to build these new relationships is not easy, it presents opportunities for growth and healing and deepening connections with both sets of parents.
