Adoption Issues, Intimacy Issues EMDR

Adoption Issues, Intimacy Issues

Adoption issues can affect adopted children and their adoptive parents alike. Parenting biological children can be hard, but adopted children need extra special care to deal with issues of rejection, abandonment and adjustment.

Communication is often one of the most difficult of adoption issues, where families are unable to express their emotions. Adoption can also impact on biological children and other family members, causing friction.

Adoptive parents may face adoption issues that relate to secrecy and reunion issues, sensitive parenting skills and talking to their children about adoption. More complicated issues could include special needs adoption, family rejection, genetic sexual attraction and adoption breakdown.

A therapist who has specialized training  in adoption issues will be able to help you navigate the way right from making the decision to adopt to building a successful blended family. He or she will help you decide whether an international adoption or a local adoption is better for your family, and help to prepare any biological kids for the impending adoption. Adoption issues therapy can be immensely helpful in helping a family to learn how to communicate openly with one another, and express emotions in a thoughtful manner.

If your family is experiencing adoption issues, or if you want to help your adopted child to transition smoothly from childhood into adolescence, it is a good idea to consider counselling. A counsellor who is experienced in adoption issues will help everyone understand how adoption affects the adoptive family, the biological family and, most importantly, the children involved. Counselling can help you learn vital parenting skills to help your adopted child deal with low self-esteem and abandonment, two common adoption issues.

If you are looking for a counsellor or psychologist who works with adoption issues  you may want to search the directory to find a professional whose approach will suit you best.

Intimacy issues are common for people who fear vulnerability. Some people can become vulnerable in front of a few trusted friends, however, but when a relationship starts becoming too close, they feel suffocated. In this sense, the intimacy issues are seated in the fear of developing a deep and meaningful relationship with another person.

Two fears that are at the heart of intimacy issues, are the fear of abandonment (fearing the partner might leave them) and the fear of engulfment (fearing that they would lose themselves in a relationship), which sometimes co-exist. These fears, often rooted in childhood traumas, are often deeply entrenched in codependent adult relationships where they cause friction.

A therapist who works with people who have intimacy issues will first help you to learn to become comfortable with yourself and accept yourself for who you are. You will explore the complex past events that have created these intimacy issues and discover that those events don't have to cloud your present experiences.

This process is essential in discovering that rejection does not have to be a traumatic experience. Finally, you will learn how to set personal boundaries that will help you to avoid the fear of engulfment and to cope, should abandonment occur. While healing intimacy issues can be a challenging and somewhat painful task, the rewards are incredible.

If you are looking for a counsellor or psychologist who addresses intimacy issues, you may want to search the directory to find a professional whose approach will suit you best.

EMDR

EMDR, also known as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy uses a range of processes to address the full clinical situation. Dual stimulation is one of the key elements and the therapist will use tools such as bilateral eye movements, taps or tones.

Reprocessing involves the client momentarily attending to triggers, past memories or anticipated future events, all the while focusing on the supplied external stimulus. Normally, the client will experience memory changes, new associations and insights. EMDR has been found to be incredibly useful for processing past and present trauma that can continue to impact an individual in many ways.

There are eight phases to EMDR treatment and the therapist will devise a treatment plan during the first phase, and equip the client with the necessary coping skills in the second phase. Phases 3-6 cover the actual EMDR treatment, described above. Phase 7 is about closure, while phase eight is all about re-evaluation of the process.

If you are looking for a therapist who offers EMDR Therapy, please browse our list of practitioners below..

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Heather Bach

M.A., CCC
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For over 20 years, Heather Bach of Bach Counselling Group brings clinical expertise to working with those who wish to make a positive change in relationships, intimacy, depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, ADHD... Read more