271 Healing Series: Ask an Adoptee Therapist with Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/271
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's episode is our last one before our holiday break, we'll be back with brand new weekly episodes on January 12th, 2024 for you. I wanted to bring you a healing series episode to make sure we all had a little extra support before the holiday rush takes over.
And this year we started a brand new event for Patreon supporters called Ask an Adoptee Therapist. It is monthly. It has been absolutely amazing for our community, and I'm [00:01:00] really proud of this offering. And today's episode is a compilation of some of the really helpful conversations we've had together this fall with Marta Isabella Sierra, one of our favorite adoptee therapists.
So I'm going to be posing some questions to her that have been submitted by the community and she gives us the answers and some really great advice. And before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.
We have monthly events called Ask an Adoptee Therapist just like this episode. Except for once we're done recording, we hang out with the therapist and get to chat with them and ask them questions off the record or ask for clarification. And it's just a really special time. We also have our book clubs and off script [00:02:00] parties and adoptee hangouts, and we'd love to have you join us.
There's a seven day free trial if you're interested. adopteeson.com/community has those details. All right, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.Com. Let's listen in.
Welcome back to Adoptees Off Script. I'm Haley Radke, and we are here with a special episode of Ask an Adoptee Therapist with one of our favorite adoptee therapists, Marta Isabella Sierra.
Marta is a qualified therapist and licensed, but they are not your therapist. Our conversation and any advice given is for education and entertainment Only. Welcome back, Marta! That's your thing now. You got it. You've got your catchphrase. I love it. Okay. We have some great questions today and I thought we could spend a little extra time on our very first one because it's one of the most common questions I get.
I even did an episode myself on [00:03:00] it super early on in the healing series because I'm such an expert at that. But here is our question. I am looking for a therapist who specializes in or has experience with adult adoptees. Is there anything I should look for or ask them before starting? Marta, what are your thoughts on that?
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: First of all, like those just seem like such different things potentially, right? Like adoption competent versus experience with adoption. So I guess just like a, really knowing what are you comfortable with. Sitting with that. And you may not know, and you may have to, try out a therapist and see is experience with adoption enough for you or do you really want someone who specializes in this area?
That's so individual. Of course, I can't name that for you, but really knowing what are you. Looking for what are you hoping for? What are non negotiables for you? It's such an [00:04:00] intimate relationship. Whatever you need, whether that's like a therapist, who's also a mom, a therapist, who's a person of color a therapist who identifies as queer, all of those might be factors in addition to the adoption piece.
And so just always want to be encouraging people to, sift through what you might need and to just honor what you need. And then there's, of course, the finding piece. I mean, resource wise of course the 1st thing I always go to Chaitra's list of adoption, competent therapist.
And, of course, not everybody's on there. I'm not on there. What's left after that, I think, is like community networking because we all know a lot and reaching out to people, maybe even if you've heard their full and just asking if they know anybody else, there's therapists that are either like done with training, maybe not licensed, but have done work in a specific area.
I, of course, get asked a lot for IFS. And [00:05:00] sometimes I have someone that I've actually had a hand in training, but maybe isn't licensed yet. So you're not going to find them on any forum, but it might be open to private clients. So you, I don't know, you just have to be relentless unfortunately, in this current mental health crisis climate of asking anybody that you think might know anything about anything and just following the path where it goes.
Haley Radke: I think a lot of people don't know too, right? You can ask questions of your therapist in advance. Yes. You can email them questions.
If they don't have time to get on the phone with you, you can preemptively sort of screen them in advance before you book a session. And what are some of the things that you think we should be sort of asking before we ever meet with somebody?
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I mean, definitely, what's their experience and training with adoption? Have they worked with multiple parts of the [00:06:00] constellation, right? You could ask all of those things. I also think you're just, I would like, encourage at least a conversation, whether that's a short zoom or phone, or some people will do a whole session for free to see to assess fit. And so you can get to know them.
For me it's also in my own history of searching for therapists has sometimes also been about how what I'm bringing is being held so I'm like flashing back to like when I was pre estrangement and I was looking for someone to support me through that in some of those like 15 minute phone calls I would just say what I was wanting to work on and the response told me everything that I needed to know about is this person safe? Is this person going to be able to help me with this? So some people were kind enough, but I was just like, nope. Okay. Just everything in my body said nope, it's not you. Okay, thanks for your time, and just keep going. But yes, and you can ask a provider anything [00:07:00] you want to know.
Again, anything that you feel like you need in order to trust this person. Some people might be like, I'm not willing to share that with a potential client. And again, I think then you have your answer. There shouldn't be anything that you're scared to ask because it's your care and it's important and it matters who it is.
Haley Radke: I know we have that amazing list that you mentioned Dr. Wirta-Leiker's list, Grow Beyond Words with all adoptees who provide adoption, competent therapy, and a lot of them are booked. If we were looking for a therapist and couldn't find one, that was an adoptee, do you think there's other providers that can adequately care for us?
And what are some ways that they could demonstrate that? Because we've talked about before we don't want to be giving our therapist lessons in coming out of the fog.
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: In my own [00:08:00] professional career working specialized in adoption, not everybody that works at the nonprofit that I work at is an adoptee and they know what they're doing and they do incredible work and they've been doing it for a really long time.
So I'm not a person that believes that a therapist has to be adopted to be able to work with it or do or do a good job. My own therapist right now is not an adoptee. She's Latina. She does EMDR. She's super trauma competent. And what she does get that I think got my buy in the beginning was she understands intergenerational trauma and she understands racial trauma.
These are things for me that are non negotiable. And so those were really important to me. And I again, I would say a mix between interviewed her about that and also just said some things and watched and waited to see how she handled them. And that was enough for me in that moment.
So I think I've seen [00:09:00] really trauma competent therapists be able to just understand it to understand the separation trauma. And again, whatever other maybe trauma layers you have on top of that to just understand the severity of it. Of course, there is always going to be a moment, right? That's true of me too.
As an adoptee therapist. I don't we're not a monolith, right? We say this so much, but I can't assume that just because of my lived experience, I'm going to get everybody that sits across from me and understand exactly how that's manifested for them. So I think there's always that risk of not being understood in a certain moment, right? But overall do you feel that this person sees what happened to you, sees the severity of it?
Haley Radke: I think that's all excellent advice. Thank you. Any thoughts about age and coming out of the fog? I'm a 50 year old lesbian and only recently discovered this adoptee and adoptee therapist community.
[00:10:00] Everything is resonating, even things I never imagined. I'm questioning my life from so many new angles. To have those dense 50 years stacked up in my face and discover a gigantic laundry list of coping mechanisms that I thought were just life experiences and emotions. It's shocking and overwhelming. I was already exhausted with my life, which is how I found this community in the first place.
So now it seems I need more strength than I can muster to be patient a bit longer to let this all in and finally show up for myself. 50 years is a very long time to reflect upon. Ooh, that's a. That's a big spot to be in. And I think just right, the question writer I think a relatable to a lot of folks in our community.
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: Yeah, it's so interesting. I do think that it is such a widespread experience of whenever you come out of the fog to feel like it's too [00:11:00] late. I hear this will be laughable probably to most people in this zoom room, but, I've had 18 year old adoptees say that to me, like, how come I'm so late to this? What am I going to do? I didn't figure this out soon enough, and I have to not laugh. Yeah, it's hard. Like we figured out ups through clients in their seventies that are newly coming to this, there is no timeline on when we come out, but I think it is a very common experience to, to have grief about the when, whenever the when is and that feeling of lost time, not having the map and what came up for me when I read this question too, is I feel like I talk about this episode all the time. Someday I need to look up which one it is Haley, but one of this episode that made such a big impact on me that was one of the late discovery adoptees and he was in his fifties [00:12:00] and talked about the Lincoln Logs, I use this with clients all the time.
He was, to my memory, he found out that he was an adoptee when he was cleaning out his adoptive parents house. They had both passed and he found his paperwork in the basement. And he talked about feeling like his whole life was constructed out of these Lincoln Logs. And that in that moment, when he found his paperwork, The whole structure collapsed and that he spent about three years sitting, I get emotional every time I tell the story, sitting in the middle of all the logs, just sitting on the floor, right?
And picking them up one by one. And really looking at it, is this mine? Is this really me? Is this, was this something else? Is this meant for me? Three years, right? Of course, we know in that time, he was also paying his bills and being a [00:13:00] person and, but we have to do both. That's what we're tasked with to continue living somehow.
And also have this side project of who am I? How did I come to be here. And how do I feel about all of that? So I'd love that, like the patience a bit longer. I mean, and there, there truly is no race. Like we are on this train for as long as we are on this earth. Like it's and we make sense of it as we can.
And I think there's that initial urgency sometimes when we come out of the fog of I want to know it all right. And that comes from, of course, I'm sure so many different parts of us that want it to be different and it will and it won't. And I think, what also struck me about this was that this person has found [00:14:00] the community.
And yes, do you need more strength to hold what. We hold. Yes, and we don't have to do it alone once we get connected. And so don't, again, it's becoming quite the Marta quote, but don't be alone with it.
Haley Radke: What are some things you tell clients to do sort of in that very first stages? I can't really remember.
I feel like I was pretty gradually, like a gradual, I didn't have this big awakening. But I can just imagine like the overwhelm as you described, but let's talk about the first month what are some things like people will binge my show and I'm like, whoa, that's too much, I don't know if I think that's a good idea or not.
Things not to do, things to do. What do you see people doing and what do you wish they were [00:15:00] doing?
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: It's funny, right? I think we go in one of two directions. So that's one. So actually, I would say more often than not. And again I'm seeing this subset of our community that is wanting to lean in.
And so I'm often the playing the role of the brakes more often than not of please don't binge that. How about this week? We don't watch a film about adoption trauma and take the week off and let it start to filter down. And then in other case, and then I would say there is the other direction, right?
Have I, I feel parts of me that want some of this knowledge or yearning, but I'm terrified about how I'll feel if I read X, Y, Z, watch this, listen to this. And so at the other end of the spectrum, I might invite someone to do that stuff in session again to not be alone with it. Okay. Primal wound is terrifying. Let's read it out loud together and talk about it as it's happening. And you say, stop, we stop. [00:16:00] So I think in both directions pacing. Because the feelings are so intense, so our desire to go 90 miles an hour or stop an armadillo in the middle of the road can be very intense.
Haley Radke: I think this is the kind of situation where I would really want, if they're wanting to lean into therapy you don't want to find someone that's not adoption competent, adoptee competent.
Because if we're uncovering like, oh my gosh, adoption, my maternal separation is responsible for this trauma. We don't want to go to someone that's okay. I mean, maybe and someone that's not going to validate those things for us because they don't know.
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: Absolutely.
Haley Radke: Any other thoughts on that one?
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I think also just making time for either writing or talking, however you express yourself, right? Again, I think we have this [00:17:00] looking out thing, right? Like I'll, I want to look outside of myself to figure out how I feel. And so that some of coming out of the fog is being with ourselves, our own thoughts and feelings and being a witness to our own process.
Yeah, it's a great to read a memoir and see like where your feelings and thoughts and lived experience lines up with that person's. Absolutely. As a means of shining a light on where you're hurting and then maybe you take a break and you journal for a little while so that it's not just that external mirror, but that you're really mirroring yourself and giving yourself some time to think hard things, feel hard things, be in the confusion that not knowing
Haley Radke: I like what you said about this discovery of Who am I? And I guess the piece for me is, when you're diving into community, we know the adoptee community contains [00:18:00] multitudes. Do you want to join up with us radicalized adoptees? Do you want to just be nice to yourself and just take care of yourself first? There's a lot of different ways to go. So I love that reflecting to yourself I think is super important.
On to the next question. After 28 years in reunion, I'm estranged from my biological mother. We met when I was 20. Looking back at our relationship now through therapy, etc. I can see how unhealthy it was. Talk about attachment trauma. Before coming out of the fog this spring, hard and fast, I might add. Oh, that's very recent.
I was the perfect grateful adopted in reunion. Now, I'm effing furious about the whole thing. Because my adopted parents have passed in the last five years, and I'm also estranged from my adopted brother, I'm hearing, but she's the only family you've got, way too much, and I'm having a hard time not losing my cool with each conversation.
[00:19:00] There's a lot of grateful being tossed around, if you know what I mean, and I'm just getting madder. Okay. This is pretty relatable Marta, what are your thoughts on this?
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I mean, first just, I'm so sorry for this adoptee, like the, that sounds all like a really rough unfolding, both the long term reunion and then for it to go that way at the end to end up, needing to set those boundaries. And so I just want to say I trust that person really did what they had to do and now how to sit with it.
I think that a being really protective about who we're talking to about this stuff is like a first one and I know that can be hard and maybe there's just like questions that are out of this person's control.
But it's okay to just say I'm just, I can't talk about that anymore today or any more this week, or, maybe we can circle back when I have the energy, but right now I'm fresh out. If you feel like you can't even hold a [00:20:00] boundary in a conversation, I think what jumped out to me like the most was this but she's the only family you've got piece.
Which also just made me think about, I know a barrier to estrangement sometimes for people is I don't want to feel family-less. And so again, like what I know about that then is that this had to have been tremendously painful for the decision to have been this much space and so to hear that, I think there is this like assumption that goes like way past relationship, right? That something is better than nothing, but something that hurts you all the time is not better than nothing. It's just not and loneliness is painful, but we again, I think there's this black and white view. Of like relationship equals connectedness and solitude equals loneliness, but you can be [00:21:00] incredibly lonely in an unhealthy dynamic and that can be more piercing and the loneliness that you might experience in solitude, while painful can sometimes also be extremely peaceful and the reference here to like the attachment trauma, the attachment wound, I'm going to just make an assumption that there was a lot of like push pull, right? And that is so exhausting when we're like, never sure what it's going to be. We're never sure what we're gonna get so to get off of that ride and choose peace, even if, again, that means more grief, more loss, more loneliness definitely can be the right thing and is something that not a lot of people are going to understand.
Haley Radke: It's hard to avoid the topic. So I liked what you said at first about some responses you can give. Do you have [00:22:00] some language that you can say to someone that like maybe, a friend that kind of is constantly on the topic to just be like, this is a no go zone for me if we're going to continue to be in relationship.
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: Yeah, I just again, you could try to get in front of it with the pieces about if I'm going to talk to you about this you have to understand how sensitive this is for me right now and how much I'm hearing about how grateful I should be in this situation. A I just cannot hear that word from you. You'll have to take those feelings somewhere else if you have them, because it's. You can't bring them to me and then if, if one gets thrown at you from here you didn't see coming. I think it's and this is a vulnerable choice, of course, but to say, ouch, right? To say, you can literally just say, ouch. If that's all you can get out, but to be transparent about the impact that was really hard to hear. What you just said, like that [00:23:00] landed really rough on me. And I'm feeling like more unseen and I don't, and then you can maybe set the boundary right there. Maybe we can come back to this later. Maybe not. But that wasn't it for me. That was not what I needed. This is so one of my favorite lines from my favorite series, which I've been referencing that I've been rewatching is. This is so not how I need you to be right now, which I think is just like a really lovely general like reflection of you're not attuning to me.
This is so not what I need from you right now. You're not seeing me. And so like until you can approach this theme or this topic with me from curiosity, I'm not going to be able to engage with you about it.
Haley Radke: Can you make a comment on this feeling that this person has about being [censored] furious, getting madder?
Because I don't want to shame someone for being an [00:24:00] angry adoptee. We all have stages we go through, so I want to hear your thoughts on that.
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I mean, I love rage. But I mean, there's just so much of it. I think even in the healthiest of reunion, there's so much rage that comes up about even the original like situation, relinquishment, separation.
Sometimes there's multiple separations in there in the first year, two years. And never mind, on top of that, to maybe not have been aware of how I'm hearing that this person was maybe disconnected from their anger, and so it wasn't just like reunion anger and like primal wound anger, but like all mixed in together, plus whatever anger about whatever was going on in the relational dynamic during the reunion.
It sounds as happens when we come out of the fog one tile gets pulled and then the whole thing comes crashing in. Yeah, of course it's big, right? Cause it's really, [00:25:00] it's rage over time. It's not like rage about today. It's really has such depth of, like, how long this anger has been there and been untouched and unseen and unvalidated.
Haley Radke: Okay. Thank you. All right. Our next question is, I hold a lot of anger inside for obvious reasons related to trauma as an adoptee and double trauma of being a transracial adoptee adopted by a white family. The white family has no idea about white privilege. How can I release this anger in a healing way so the anger doesn't eat away at me? My health is affected by this trauma.
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I'm just going to be a broken record around this. I feel like this is one of my new catchphrases. Don't go through it alone. Don't go through it alone. Check out resources in your area or get connected with other adoptees of color specifically given this question. It seems like the racial identity piece is really important for this person.
And get around other adoptees of color who [00:26:00] are dealing with white privilege and racism and white supremacy culture in their adoptive family systems, carrying the weight of that, whether or not they're estranged, right? There's a heavy weight to it either way and to be in spaces where you can just really talk about that with the safety of knowing that everybody else understands.
I run some POC groups, and it's just such a sacred space to name some of this stuff.
Haley Radke: Can I interject a little question here? Yes. What do you see happens to adoptees of color when they take on the job of I'm going to teach my family that they're racist?
That last line, my health is affected not only by the trauma, but also by the explaining, right? And by the desperation, I think, unless you have willing listeners, like curious adoptive parents that do want to learn[00:27:00] but if you're trying to make somebody care about something that they don't already care about, every time you knock on that door and it doesn't get answered, you're deepening the wound.
And it's getting like more and more infected because you're feeling unseen. Which is so central for us. And so you're really not saying can we talk about racism? You're saying, do you see me? Do I matter to you? Does my experience in this world and the way that it's different from your experience in this world matter to you?
So that's an incredibly painful question to ask over and get a no. And the how to release it in a healthy way again also connecting to people of color who aren't adoptees necessarily, who again are also holding this wound of racialized trauma. I'm [00:28:00] reading one of the books I'm reading right now is My Grandmother's Hands.
It's an incredible book around racialized trauma and healing from it. It's full of exercises that literally help you. It's the answer to this question, right? Move the trauma out of your body because it's physical, this experience of being raised in white supremacy is physical. And again, that's people of color who aren't adoptees and who are, and so it does need movement.
I mean, my other answers were all movement based. Like you have a somatic therapist you're talking to. So rage rooms, if you have one in your area are a great resource.
Haley Radke: Okay. Wait, tell people what that is. If they haven't heard of that, I just learned about these this summer.
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: Oh, cool. Yes. So you go and you get to sign up for a room and usually they have different packages, things you can destroy, whether that's like a bunch of glasses and plates, or they usually have a dummy that you can beat on if you want to.
There's like office set up [00:29:00] sometimes with printers and old TVs and they're all a little bit different, but I think a, it's, really safe. They give you a lot of safety gear versus just going off in your own space one night and that can be really physically unsafe for your body.
So you get like all the good gear and then you also don't have to clean it up after. Which I think is like also an act of the self love, right? Of I'm going to break all this shit and you can deal with it. It's their job, they're consenting, but, then you get to just have that lightness after and I'm personally really passionate about boxing.
I box most days and I really feel the brain chemistry is very different when I don't get there or, martial arts, any kind of movement that feels strong and empowering and also has that impact.
Haley Radke: I didn't know that about you. We learned a new interesting fact about you If you need a little extra [00:30:00] support for holidays we have our surviving the holidays episodes linked in the show notes for you and Lesli Johnson has been on several times where we have talked through some of your holiday themed problems, I guess you would call it.
So you can go all the way back in your feed to episode 14, 126, and 166 for those themed shows. Oh my goodness. I'm so thankful for our amazing Adoptee Therapists Marta Isabella Sierra has been on, Lesli Johnson has been on, Pam Cordano has been on with us, Janet Nordine, so many amazing therapists with tons of wisdom.
And if you ever have a question you want to submit, you can go to adopteeson.com/ask and our questions will always be asked at the next Ask an Adoptee Therapist event. I'd love to have you join us at [00:31:00] adopteeson.com/community, which would be an amazing holiday gift to me if you would join us.
And thank you so much for listening this year. It has been a wonderful 2023. I hope you have a nourishing and restful break if you get one. I hope you find some ways to add joy into your holiday season. And I will see you in 2024. Thanks for listening. Let's talk again soon.
