Before You Sit Across From an Adoptee: What Grad School Didn’t Teach You About Adoption

Before You Sit Across From an Adoptee: What Your Training Left Out

Free Download — For MFT Students & Student Therapists

Most graduate programs mention adoption once. Maybe twice. Then move on.

But adoptees are in your future caseload right now — and the gap between what your program taught you and what they actually need has real consequences. Not hypothetical ones. Real ones. I know because I was the adoptee sitting across from clinicians who didn’t know what they were doing. And I’m now training to be the therapist I wish I’d had.

This free resource gives you five things your program likely didn’t cover:

Why the compliant, well-adjusted adoptee may be your highest-risk client. Why behavior is communication and context is the diagnosis. Why confidentiality isn’t a formality — for adoptees in controlling family systems, it’s the entire architecture of whether honesty is possible. Why you need to hold the full developmental timeline, not just the presenting problem. And why adoption-competent care isn’t a specialty to pursue after you’ve mastered everything else — it’s a baseline.

Each section includes clinical application so you can use this immediately, not just think about it.

This isn’t about making you feel guilty about what you weren’t taught. It’s about giving you what your clients need you to know.

Download it free. Your adoptee clients are counting on you.

Also by Brielle Wilson: Writing Over the Lines — a book for adoptees, adoptive families, and the clinicians who serve them. Available on Lulu.