The Adoptee’s Search for the Authentic Self
In the realm of adopted people, perspectives vary widely from “Adoption gave me a wonderful life” to “My identity was stolen; I was placed somewhere entirely wrong for me.” The essential difference is whether one feels their needs were met or ignored.
There is a growing body of organizations that consider adoption a form of human trafficking, arguing it should be outlawed. Their stance often draws on the Baby Scoop Era (1940s–1970s), when around four million women placed their babies for adoption in the U.S., often persuaded, often coerced, into giving up their babies because of the stigma attached to unwed motherhood. Many were told their children would be better off elsewhere. The pain of that separation has been well documented, and support networks like Origins America formed to help those mothers process the trauma.
Most public conversations about adoption focus on the birth mother, the adoptive parents, or the process itself. Rarely do they center the adoptee — the one whose entire path in life is indelibly altered. Today, that’s beginning to change.
There’s growing awareness that children are not blank slates who can be effortlessly transplanted from one environment to another. In nature, no creature separates from its origin without consequence.
For adoptees, whether adoption feels like a blessing or a wound, seven core issues identified by Sharan Kaplan Roszia, M.S., an adoption expert, author, and speaker, linger beneath the surface. These are:
Loss
Rejection
Shame and Guilt
Grief
Identity
Intimacy
Mastery and Control
Everyone wrestles with some of these, but many adoptees experience them as an interconnected constellation. This can manifest as difficulty forming close relationships, perfectionism, low self-esteem, addiction, or depression. Statistics show adoptees are significantly more likely to seek mental health care, struggle with substance use, and attempt suicide.
The separation from the birth mother is profound — physiologically, psychologically, and spiritually. Before birth, an infant knows her voice, her routines, her heartbeat. That connection is primal. When severed, the effects echo through life, even if the adoptee grows up in a loving home.
For adoptees, that early rupture creates what Nancy Verrier, LMFT and author, calls “The Primal Wound.” Healing it doesn’t mean erasing one’s adoption or rewriting the past. It’s about addressing the maladaptive behaviors that spring from the trauma —understanding them as survival strategies, not flaws, and reclaiming control. Through work like hypnosis, we can examine the subconscious messages left by that wound, release them, and forgive.
It took me decades to make that connection for myself. I’d always sensed a deep internal wound but didn’t see how thoroughly it shaped my life — through dysfunctional relationships, addiction, mistrust, need for control, and relentless perfectionism.
When the very first experience of your life is rejection by your original source of safety, it carves a wound into your subconscious. You become hypervigilant, always scanning for signs of abandonment and bending yourself to fit the expectations of others in hopes of avoiding it.
This constant adaptation suppresses the authentic self. It keeps you living in sympathetic overdrive stuck in “fight or flight,” defending against threats that aren’t really there. I tried therapy, self-help books, meditations, and affirmations, all helpful to a point, but they didn’t reach the subconscious place where the wound lived.
In my fifties, hypnosis finally opened that door. It allowed me to see the old messages for what they were: beliefs born of survival, not truth. By acknowledging them, understanding how they once tried to protect me, and forgiving them, I was finally free.
Through this process, something extraordinary happened. I began to recognize the gifts that had come out of adoption: the intuition, empathy, and deep discernment I’d developed from learning to read emotional undercurrents. The very sensitivity that once felt like a burden revealed itself as a strength.
Today I am confident, content, and grounded. My relationships are healthy and reciprocal, and I have clear boundaries that come from knowing who I truly am. The nervous system that once lived on high alert is significantly calmer, and I can be fully present for my family, my work, and my passions.
This transformation is what I want for other adoptees. The journey inward can be painful at times; it requires courage to unearth memories and challenge long-held stories. But it’s also one of the most liberating and empowering paths you can take. The wound may always be a part of you, but it doesn’t have to define you.
Healing doesn’t change the fact of adoption — it changes the relationship you have with it. In the adoptee's search for the authentic self, by facing the truth of our early separation, allowing grief and forgiveness to coexist, we can integrate both the losses and the gifts.
I can’t promise the road will be easy. But I can promise it will be worth it. If you’re ready to live fully and leave this wound behind, book a free consult and let’s talk.
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