Dealing with the Emotional Roller Coaster of Trying to Adopt - Weekend Wisdom

Question: 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.

Resources:

• Creating a Family Online Support Group
• Adoption Process & Important Considerations
• Self-Care for Parents and Caregivers

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this an automated transcript.

Hello and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. My name is Tracy Whitney. I'm the content
director for creating a family, the national nonprofit that brings you this podcast.
Today, we are revisiting the sage wisdom of our former director, Dawn Davenport. She
shared advice and empathy for a listener who talked about the emotional roller
coaster of adoption. I think you'll appreciate her candid conversation with our
listener. So today's question is, it's really 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 roller coaster. 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 Ken, somebody who is one of your relatives. Some of
the emotions that cause this to be a roller coaster are 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 should 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 adventuresome person, but the truth is I want to define my adventures.
I want to choose them carefully and 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 the
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. There are things we
can do. We can get our paperwork done quickly. We could get the training is
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 an expectant mom or 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. In international, we are waiting on heaven only
knows what, and we're waiting on the U .S. government to process our forums. We're
waiting on the foreign government. We're waiting on so many different things,
including 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 adopting.
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 adopted 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 if we're 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 in a whole other way to become
parents. So how to deal with this, or I guess keeping with the analogy here, how
to ride this roller coaster, first of all, use what's work 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 work for you in the past? Does journaling work? Does
getting outside work? Does doing anything that can take your mind off of the work?
Going out with friends, binging Netflix, whatever it takes. Whatever's work 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. We'll do this after the child arrives or
after the baby arrives. Don't give up living. You don't know how long this is going
to take, and you don't need to lose that time. Along those same lines, schedule
things that you enjoy and will 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. Well, honestly, worse
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 were 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. Thanks for listening to this
week's Weekend Wisdom. If this advice resonated with you and if it spurs more
questions for you about adoption, foster care or kinship care, we would love to hear
from you. Please send your questions about adoption, foster care, or kinship care to
info at creatingafamily .org. We'll research an answer that we think will strengthen
your family and prepare you well to raise great kids. Thanks for listening and I'll
talk to you next week.