Listener Response: An aspect of adopting that we didn’t hear about was how your mental health is challenged throughout the process. It’s a roller coaster of emotions, and this isn’t discussed as often as organic issues such as drug or alcohol use.
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Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Dawn Davenport 00:00
Hey, everyone, welcome to Creating a family's weekend wisdom. I'm Dawn Davenport. I'm the director of the nonprofit creating a family. And we can wisdom is what we call our short form. It's short five to 10 minutes where we answer your questions, which by the way, before I forget, make sure you submit your questions, you can submit them at info at creating a family.org. So you submit your questions, and we answer them as part of our week in wisdom. So today's question is certainly more of a statement. But anyway, she says, an aspect of adopting that we didn't hear about was how your mental health is challenged throughout the process. It's a roller coaster of emotions. And this isn't discussed as often as organic issues such as drug or alcohol use. Well, you're right. Adopting is an emotional rollercoaster, we probably don't talk about it as often as we should. And you are definitely not alone. The type of roller coaster is slightly different depending on the type of adoption. But there is still a great deal of overlap, regardless of whether it's domestic infant adoption, or whether you are adopting from foster care or whether you are adopting internationally or even whether you're adopting kin, somebody who is one of your relatives, some of the emotions that cause this to be a roller coaster, our fear of the unknown. And that goes across any type of adopting. There are so many unknowns, some of them are unknowns about the child, some of them shouldn't be unknowns about how our family will adapt how we will adapt how much work we need to do to try to understand our own triggers. So there is a lot of unknowns associated. And I don't know about you, but unknowns are scary for me. I like to think of myself as an event or some person. But the truth is, I want to define my adventures, I want to choose them carefully. And I want to choose them within my comfort zone. And sometimes adopting is outside of that. Another emotion that we I think often many of us feel that makes this an emotional roller coaster is that we're stuck waiting for something that we really want, we're going to feel like we're in a position of hurry up and wait. But the emphasis here is on the waiting. And tied to that is a lack of control, there is very little that we as the prospective adoptive parent can do. In order to speed this up, oftentimes this there are things we can do, we can get our paperwork done quickly, we could get this training as required. Hopefully it is, we can get that done quickly. But after we do all the stuff that we can do, we are often still stuck waiting. If we're adopting a domestic infant, we're waiting on a expectant mom, our couple to choose us. And there really isn't anything we can do to speed that up. And if we're adopting from foster care we are waiting for it depends of course, if the child is living with us, because they're our foster child, that's different. But if we're trying to adopt a legally free child, we're waiting for the child and family team or the matching committee to decide find a child or children that meets the criteria that we think we're the best family for an international we're waiting on. Heaven only knows what and we're waiting on the US government to process our forms. We're waiting on the foreign government, we're waiting on so many different things, including the going back to the fear of the unknown, that this country might close down or something is going to happen that's going to slow our process. Another common emotional factor is frustration, the waiting itself will cause frustration, the lack of control will cause frustration. But also most types of adoption, we feel like we are putting ourselves out there trying to show ourselves in the best light possible to be chosen. And that's frustrating, that's hard. Most of us are uncomfortable doing that. And that makes us feel like we are out of our element when we are adopted. And another common emotion is sadness. I think a lot of us feel sad for this child or this infant that we are adopting that they are not being able to be raised within their birth family and a sadness that catches us as adoptive parents off guard sometimes is a sadness for the child's birth parents. Oftentimes we don't anticipate that but when we get to know them and we understand their situation, that is something to feel sad about. And also sadness for ourselves that we're having to go through this especially for going through it because we haven't been able to conceive without the aid of fertility or the fertility treatments haven't worked, sadness and grief for having to work and a whole nother way to become parents. So how to deal with this or Guess keeping with the analogy here how to ride this roller coaster, first of all, use what's worked for you in the past. I mean, we've all faced hard times and times where we have been frightened of the unknown. In the waiting position where we feel like we don't have control, we're frustrated, we're sad, what's worked for you in the past, does journaling work this getting outside work does doing anything that can take your mind off of that work, going out with friends, binging Netflix, whatever it takes, whatever's worked for you in the past should probably work for you again. Another thing and I can't stress this enough is continue living while you're in this waiting period, it is easy to put off and say, well, I won't do this or we'll do this after the child arrives or after the baby arrives. Don't give up living you don't know how long is this going to take and you don't need to lose that time. Along those same lines, scheduled things that you enjoy. And we'll look forward to. And if you have to cancel it. So be it. Let's say that you get the call You have been matched and the baby is going to be born soon. So you have to cancel this vacation. But honestly, worst things can happen. Go ahead and schedule things that you enjoy doing. And if you find yourself obsessing over things, or spending too much time worrying, set a specific amount of time each day to work on the adoption, to think about the adoption, to hang out on the adoption forums, et cetera, et cetera, and limit yourself so that your life doesn't become just this one thing. And of course it goes without saying get therapy. If you are really struggling with this emotional roller coaster, do yourself a favor find someone to talk to a professional could really help. And because creating a family is an adoption training and support organization, I can't help but say use this time to make yourself a better parent use this time to get more information to learn more to go further than what was actually required. I hope that this has been helpful. Remember that you guys can send in your own questions to info at creating a family.org and thanks for listening to this week's weekend wisdom. Before you go. Let me share with you that we have 12 free courses that we are offering to you thanks to the jockey being Family Foundation who are supporting these courses. You could check them out at Bitly slash J B F support that's bi T dot L y slash JBf support. They're terrific. They're free. Check it out.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai