NHS therapy for adoptees

Is it a battle worth fighting?

Today I start a round of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), a therapy recommended for treating the effects of complex trauma, under the NHS. It’s taken me four long years to get here, with frustration and disappointments along the way. With all the hurdles I faced, there were times I thought I would give up. 

I know some adoptees don’t like the term ‘adoptee fog’ but it’s the best descriptor I have. While in the fog I still had significant mental health issues, I just didn’t ascribe them to adoption. Nor did anyone else–and that’s one of the biggest problems. So many adoption-related traumas go unchecked by mental health professionals. The popular assumption that those of us who were adopted as babies were ‘blank slates’ is so ingrained that it’s difficult to refute. But no baby is a blank slate. We spend nine months forming a bond with someone. We know her voice, her smell and for some of us, her touch. It is ALL we know, and then without warning or ceremony she disappears. 

I’m a baby. I have no voice, I have no autonomy, I am a pawn in someone else’s game. I don’t even have the neuro pathways developed to effectively manage this catastrophic event. I freeze in that moment. Then I’m passed off to strangers I don’t know. Their voice, smell and touch are unfamiliar. I haven’t been waiting nine months to meet them. In fact, when I am born they don’t even know I exist. As they celebrate, I’m enveloped in grief. I still am. 

Although the fact I’m adopted was never hidden from me, it was also never talked about in any depth. I was a black child living in a white family with all the privilege that entails but it didn’t feel right, something was missing. The naivety about race with which my adopters approached me was not the only factor, although they do hold some culpability. Everyone was parroting the ‘grateful’ trope most adoptees know only too well, and I wasn’t grateful. I was furious. I hated being adopted, I hated being different, I hated that I had no one who looked like me. I hated the fact my birth mother was some sort of mythical creature who birthed me then disappeared forever.

I was a very angry teenager. My first experience of therapy was being led into a room with beanbags and a chap with a beard who seemed to sigh a lot. There were large periods of silence because I wasn’t talking and it seems he wasn’t either. I think I went twice before I started skipping sessions. 

I would like mental health professionals to take a more critical look at adoption. Then maybe it wouldn’t take so long to get the appropriate care. After a three year stint in the army, my mental health collapsed completely but now apparently the army was to blame. Still no mention of adoption. I had a nervous breakdown. During weeks as an inpatient, not once did any of the numerous mental health professionals I saw even ask me if I was an adoptee or identify that as the root cause of my distress. And in fairness, neither did I. 

At the beginning of 2019 I took a DNA test and found the other half of my family. My head imploded, and as the fog lifted I started speaking to other adoptees. They introduced me to Paul Sunderland’s video. The realisation that adoption is probably at the root of many of my issues hit me hard in the face. I sought help from the self-referral talking therapies in my area. I saw a lovely therapist but when I said I wanted to talk about my adoption she kept steering me away. It was frustrating but I didn’t know then that there was an Ofsted rule about counselling adoptees. She was probably trying to obey the law that said counselling for adoption issues could only be given by those who had done a completely pointless course, which in no way prepared you to be working with adult adoptees. 

After some weeks, it seemed that I was going nowhere with this counsellor so I finished with her and went back to the drawing board. I went right back to basics and spoke to my GP. Initial consults weren’t encouraging. Although he acknowledged my long and colourful mental health history, he wasn’t ready to link that with my adoption. Now I’m quite lucky that he didn’t dismiss it entirely. A conversation was started. Many adoptees are dismissed at the first gate. The lack of knowledge and acknowledgement of either relinquishment trauma or adoption trauma (yes they are separate events so each has its own trauma) is jaw-dropping. Loss of a parent in any other situation is considered an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE), but not in adoption. We are supposed to be grateful and to put the grief at the loss of a parent to one side and carry on because we have “new” parents. In fact that sudden loss is traumatic, and suppressing that trauma is exhausting and more than some adoptees can bear. It’s no wonder our attempted suicide rate is four times higher. It’s also no wonder that we as a community suffer from higher rates of autoimmune conditions. The irony that even our bodies reject us is not lost on this MS sufferer. 

After about two years of talking to my GP, I was awarded a Zoom call with a singularly disinterested Community Psychiatric Nurse. When I read what she had written it was clear that she hadn’t even bothered to listen to me and simple facts were wrong. She told me that adoption trauma and relinquishment trauma weren’t recognised by the NHS. As far as she was concerned, that was the end of that! But now my GP was fully on board. He referred me to a psychologist in the mental health trust, with a promise to find outside funding if this failed, and urged me not to give up. 

The psychologist was a turning point. I actually felt listened to and understood. I could stop banging my head against the wall, at least for a while. That was still not the end of the hurdles though. I wanted EMDR and I wanted a black therapist. In Somerset, a black therapist is a rarity, let alone one who offers EMDR. I still had to go through consultations with professionals and services I knew were wrong for me, just so I could evidence how wrong they were. At that point my psychologist told me I could look out of area but it was up to me to source someone, and I would only qualify for 20 weeks. I didn’t care, it was further than I had got within the system before. And I liked that I had some autonomy in looking for a therapist. I emailed, I researched and I interviewed. I had ownership of my treatment. 

During this period I had a crisis and rang the local crisis line only to have the most ridiculous conversation of this whole episode. I was explaining things when I was hit with “well, if I went to see a therapist and they were black and I asked to change, heads would turn.” I was speechless, which is not good if you have phoned a telephone helpline. I complained and spoke to someone higher up about it but the damage was done. Trust was broken and that’s a massive issue for me. I shan’t be phoning them again in a crisis. 

This whole time my GP was still there supporting me, as was the practice manager who was aware of everything. Eventually I found someone, not local, anything but. He was however black, and he practised EMDR, he was also an adoptee and a veteran. With all boxes ticked I went back to my psychologist who then had to plead my case at some kind of panel. She did this with success and I was approved for 20 weeks of therapy. I don’t know how effective it will be but I’m going to give it my best effort and at the end of the day that’s all any of us can do.