Concerns & Risks
This section includes Concerns & Risks, plus Issues We May Face.
Please check back often as we source updated content.
This is a highly sensitive area. If you experience any overwhelming feelings due to some memories or your current circumstances and relationships, please consult a professional therapist immediately. I am not a counselor, but I am here if you need further assistance
dawnstefano@sympatico.ca
Note that the *List below is not complete. After speaking and corresponding with a number of adult children, parents, and other caring family members, I found we shared some of the following concerns and risks.
- Sense of being different and not belonging
- Find peer acceptance more easily among multi-cultural, troubled or unique peers
- Feel alone or like running away
- Denial and lying, pretending everything is alright
- Shame and or embarrassment about your family situation
- Sense of abandonment and insecurity
- Anger, fear, and anxiety
- Prolonged and unresolved grief
- Sadness and depression
- Possible same-gender attraction or sexuality confusion
- Poor body image
- Possible participation in risk-taking or attention-seeking activities
- Rebellion, truancy and or juvenile delinquency
- Eating disorders
- Drug, alcohol and or sexual addiction(s)
- Suicidal ideation and or attempts
- Obsession with parent(s) and their partner(s)
- Seeking parent(s) love and acceptance
- Jealousy toward parent's partner(s)
- Pressure to accept, perform for, and or protect parent(s)/partner(s)
- Possible early exposure to diverse sexual experiences, abuse, and or experimentation
- Substitute academic and career success for personal sense of worth
- Difficulties with intimacy and trust in relationships
- Confusion around theology and sexuality
- Require therapeutic interventions
- Hide family secrets to protect parent(s) and their partner(s), sibling(s) and other family members
- Risk long-term estrangement from some family members if reveal family secrets
ISSUES WE MAY FACE
What Are Some of the Issues We May Face? This is a highly sensitive area. If you experience any overwhelming feelings due to some memories or your current circumstances and relationships, please consult a professional therapist immediately. I am not a counselor, but I am here if you need further assistance
dawnstefano@sympatico.ca
When you are ready, here are some questions for you to consider. Did you see same-sex attraction esteemed? Was there a strong emphasis on gender neutrality? Was one gender valued more often? How do you think this impacted you? At what age did you realize your family form was different from others? How many adults came into your home environment? How have you come to terms and dealt with your family form and living arrangements growing up?
Were you from a broken heterosexual union? Were you adopted or was reproductive technology accessed to bring you into the world? No matter how you came into your current family form, know you are a very special and immensely valuable person.
