I was adopted as a baby. I've always known it. There was no discovery, no secret. But knowing a fact and understanding what it did to you are different things, and it took me a long time, and a lot of my own counselling, to understand the second part.
For me, it showed up as two things mainly.
One was a habit of drifting off. Daydreaming, being somewhere else instead of in the room. A psychologist once described it to me as a way a baby copes with being separated from its mother. When you can't do anything about what's happening to you, some part of you leaves. I've carried a version of that my whole life. It's quieter now than it used to be, but I recognise it the moment I see it in someone else.
The other was abandonment, and it never seemed to scale to the event. Someone cancelling lunch could drop me into a hollow, sick feeling that had nothing to do with lunch. A relationship ending could floor me completely. I remember one, in my thirties, that left me barely able to function for a while, the pain was that intense. My partner at the time called it clingy. She wasn't wrong about what she was seeing. She just didn't know what she was seeing.
Why I'm telling you this
If any of it sounds familiar, you don't have to explain the shape of it to me first. I already know that adoption isn't a single event you get over. It's something that can sit underneath a life, quietly setting the terms for how safe connection feels, long after you've consciously made peace with the story.
It gets better
I want to tell you that too. Not gone, necessarily, but different. Less loud, less in charge. That happened for me through the same kind of work I now do with others: not fixing, not managing symptoms, but finally being understood by someone who could reflect it back clearly enough that I could see it myself.
If I've been useful to people in crisis calls over the years, it's often been in exactly this territory. Recognising that particular flavour of aloneness, and naming it gently enough that someone feels met instead of diagnosed.
If this is you
If you're an adoptee and some of this resonates, the drifting, the disproportionate abandonment, the sense that people who love you can still trigger something enormous by pulling away even slightly, I'd be glad to talk with you. Not because I'll fix it faster than another counsellor, but because you won't have to teach me the terrain first.
If you're in crisis right now, you need support that's available immediately, not an appointment. Please call Lifeline on 13 11 14, any hour, or 000 in an emergency.
If this sounds like what you've been looking for
Sessions are online, 55 minutes, $150. No referral needed. If you'd rather get a feel for me first, I'm happy to have a free 15-minute call. No cost, no obligation, and no expectation that you'll book afterwards.