Adoptees and Addiction – The Functional Impact of an Early Psychological Wound

You are invited to an insightful webinar featuring Paul Sunderland, an esteemed Addictions Psychotherapist, Consultant, and Trainer. He will be delivering a talk on the topic, "Adoptees and Addiction – The Functional Impact of an Early Psychological Wound" on Wednesday 8th Nov 2023, 16:00-17:00 BST.

The term ”adoption” disguises a series of complex, developmental traumas that begin with a preverbal relinquishment and continue on, sometimes through challenging episodes of care, to the adaptions necessary to attach to a family without genetic fit. The legacy of this trauma for the relinquished infant is a conflict between wanting to attach and fearing connection. This is often experienced as a hyper vigilance that has an enormous impact on functioning and relationships, often disrupting the ability to be present, with cognitions that one is both “too much” and “not enough”.

Adoptees are overrepresented in mental health services, prisons, and addiction recovery programmes. This presentation will reframe the experience of many adoptees as a complex traumatic stress disorder made more difficult by the fact that the wound begins when memory and processing systems are developing and experiences, whilst remembered implicitly, cannot be recalled explicitly later on.

Learning Objectives:

1. An understanding of the relinquishment and adoption experience, and its impact on the developing brain.
2. Suggestions as to why adoptees might be vulnerable to substance and process addictions.
3. An understanding of complex PTSD in relation to adoptees.
4. Considerations for the treatment of adoptees in addiction recovery.