27/04/2026
This therapeutic workshop is designed for adoptive parents who want to develop a deeper, more reflective understanding of how adoption-related trauma impacts their child and how adult responses can either support healing or unintentionally reinforce harm.
Adoption is a significant and non-neutral rupture for the child. Even when adoption occurs early and within loving families, experiences of loss, separation, and identity disruption can shape how adopted children relate to themselves, others, and the world around them. These impacts often emerge through behaviour, emotional withdrawal, heightened reactivity, or difficulties with trust and closeness rather than through words.
This workshop invites adoptive parents to move beyond surface-level understanding and into a therapeutic exploration of both the child’s inner world and the adult’s role within the relationship. Drawing on attachment theory, trauma-informed practice, somatic and psychodynamic approaches, the session will explore how adoptee trauma may show up in relationships and how parenting responses are shaped by adult attachment patterns, emotional regulation, and unresolved experiences.
Particular attention will be given to the ways unexamined adult needs, triggers, and expectations can collide with an adopted child’s need for safety, autonomy, and emotional containment. The workshop supports parents to reflect on how good intentions do not always translate into therapeutic responses, and how accountability, rather than blame, is essential in supporting healing.
An intersectional lens is woven throughout, recognising how adoption-related trauma interacts with race, culture, class, sexuality, gender, disability, and other social locations. This is especially relevant in transracial and cross-cultural adoptions, where power, difference, and systemic inequality can influence family dynamics and a child’s sense of belonging.
This is a reflective, psychoeducational workshop. It is not therapy and not a support group. The focus is on learning, reflection, and developing greater awareness to support emotionally attuned parenting.
Book through link in bio
