195: The Trauma Of Adoption

Aug 23, 2019

Amy Sugeno, a trauma therapist specializing in attachment and adoption, discusses how attachment trauma can affect adopted children behaviorally. She explores how trauma can impact adoptive parents and the family dynamic. Amy also shares her use of non-verbal trauma processing techniques and nature-based therapy in her practice.

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Introduction

00:00 • 3min

Understanding Attachment Trauma in Adoption and Foster Care

03:04 • 19min

Healing Trauma Through EMDR Therapy and Adoption Challenges

22:01 • 7min

Navigating Attachment Trauma in Parenting

29:24 • 13min

Empowering Trauma Therapists with EMDR Training and Dissociation Understanding

42:50 • 4min

Healing Trauma Through Nature-Based Therapies

47:02 • 10min

Upcoming Conference and Workshops for Foster and Adoptive Parents

57:22 • 3min

Thank you to this episode's sponsor, TherapyNotes. Get a 2-month free trial of TherapyNotes by going to www.TherapyNotes.com and using the promo code TherapyChat.

Welcome back to Therapy Chat! In today's podcast host Laura Reagan revisits an earlier episode speaking to Amy Sugeno, LCSW. Amy is a clinical social worker in private practice who specializes in working with survivors of trauma related to attachment, particularly related to adoption.

Amy explains how attachment trauma can affect children who were adopted, even if the adoption went as smoothly as it possibly could. She describes how children who have been adopted may act out behaviorally to tell their parents how they feel. Amy also talks about a surprising way adoptive parents (and others parenting traumatized children) may experience trauma themselves and how to recognize the symptoms.

She and Laura discuss how prior difficulty with conceiving a child can contribute to the experience for parents, how the parent’s own attachment style and trauma history is “churned up” through the process of adoption. She describes how adoption can change relationships within a family and between the family and their community. She explains some of the non-verbal ways of processing trauma that she uses with her clients. Amy describes Nature as her “co-therapist.” She tells listeners how to get on her mailing list and offers opportunities to hear her speak around the country.

Resources:

http://www.amysugenocounseling.com

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