When You are Adopted and the Therapist Asks if You Are on Drugs

“Are you on anything now?” the therapist asked.

I looked at her, shocked, and started laughing. “What? No. Why do you ask?”

She laughed, too. I was still laughing. My new therapist just asked if I was on drugs as I was telling her about my life.

“Because the gap is too wide between how you present. One moment you are deep in grief because your brothers died and then a minute later you are laughing about your daughter’s wedding.”

“This is why I had said in my intake call that I just wanted an ADHD diagnosis, not therapy,” I said. “What you are seeing is how a brain like mine works. I have been balancing grief and life forever. Of course the gap is too wide for you to understand because you don’t live with such consistent disparities of emotion, I told the doctor most therapists haven’t been trained in adoption trauma and that normal therapy would be a waste of time. I told him I’d end up having to teach the therapist about CPTSD and early mother loss and adoption.”

“Well, how can I help you then?” the therapist asked.

“You can get me an ADHD diagnosis so I can try Adderall.” I’d tried everything in the past two years, but still no book. I was ready to try drugs. Medicine. Whatever you want to call it. Whatever stimulant Gabor Mate took in order to write Scattered Minds.

“Given your age, that isn’t an option,” she said.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, and I closed my computer before she could feed me more bullshit.

I was so angry.

And I was so happy. I’d found my stick.

Maybe now I could fly.

In Wayfinder Life Coach training, Martha Beck had told us a story the Buddha had taught about a bird needing something--a stick, a finger--to push against in order to take flight. I’d found my stick for You Don’t Look Adopted when my boyfriend at the time had told me I talked too much about adoption. This is too much? I’d thought, furious. I haven’t even started. Next thing you know, in three months I had written a whole book about adoption.

Ten years later, I’m the one who tells myself I talk too much about adoption. There must be more to life, I tell myself. You’re turning into a one-trick pony.There’s beauty and gratitude and adventure and other people. Why do you still need to talk about what it’s like to be adopted?How are you going to have a good life like this?  If you focus on abandonment and loss, that’s what you are going to see everywhere. What’s wrong with you? Stop it. Grow up. Diversify.

But then the therapist asked if I was on something when I was being my vulnerable self, and I was off to the races. Fuck her. Fuck fear. Just say what you need to say. You got this.

This is why I am a writing coach for adopted people. My soul knows their stories matter. My soul knows their stories can change the world.

My soul knows that therapist needs their books, needs mine, so she can do no harm with other adopted people instead of questioning their truthiest truths.