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Adoptee Therapy Across the Lifespan in Washington State

Diego Vitelli | Adoption and Couples Therapy | Washington

Adoption can shape identity, relationships, and emotional experience in ways that are deeply personal and often misunderstood. Whether you are a child, adolescent, or adult adoptee, therapy can offer space to explore identity, attachment, belonging, loss, culture, and lived experience with someone who understands the unique complexities adoption can bring.

At Aurenza Therapy, adoptee-focused therapy centers relational healing, identity development, and culturally responsive care across the lifespan.

Who This Work Supports

This work supports:

  • Child and teen adoptees navigating identity and developmental transitions

  • Adult adoptees exploring identity, belonging, and relational patterns

  • Transracial and transcultural adoptees exploring race, culture, and heritage

  • Adoptees navigating search and reunion experiences

  • Adoptees processing grief, loss, or complex family dynamics

  • Adoptees exploring relationship and attachment patterns

Understanding Adoption, Identity, and Belonging

Adoption is not a single event. It is a lifelong experience that can shape how individuals understand themselves, their relationships, and their place in the world.

Common themes adoptees may explore in therapy include:

  • Identity development and self-understanding

  • Attachment and relational safety

  • Loss and ambiguous grief

  • Cultural and racial identity

  • Family dynamics across adoptive and biological systems

  • Shame, secrecy, or feeling different

  • Navigating life transitions as an adoptee

Diego Vitelli | Adoption and Couples Therapy | Washington
Diego Vitelli | Adoption and Couples Therapy | Washington

Therapy for Adoptees at Different Life Stages

Adoption can emerge differently across development.

For Youth and Adolescents

Therapy may focus on identity formation, emotional regulation, school transitions, peer relationships, and family communication.

For Adults

Therapy often explores relational patterns, belonging, attachment experiences, identity integration, and navigating search or reunion processes.

Relational and Identity-Centered Therapy

My therapeutic approach integrates:

  • Attachment-informed therapy

  • Trauma-informed care

  • Identity-centered and culturally responsive therapy

  • Relational and systemic therapy perspectives

This work is collaborative, affirming, and grounded in honoring lived experience.

What Working Together Can Look Like

Therapy is tailored to each individual or family system. Sessions may involve:

  • Exploring identity narratives

  • Processing relational experiences

  • Building emotional regulation skills

  • Strengthening communication and relational safety

  • Supporting integration of cultural and family identity

Getting Started

Beginning therapy can feel vulnerable. I offer consultation calls to help determine whether this work feels like the right fit for you or your family.

Diego Vitelli | Adoption and Couples Therapy | Washington

• family separation trauma • broken attachments • ambiguous loss • cultural annihilation • cultural dissociation • coming out of the fog • adoptee identity development • adoptive family dynamics • processing childhood abuse • childhood emotional neglect • complex trauma/CPTSD • intergenerational patterns • race-based fatigue/racialized trauma • sexual violence • search and contact • post-traumatic growth • understanding / healing our parts • self-love attunement •

Diego Vitelli, LMFT provides adoptee therapy services for clients located throughout Washington State via telehealth.


$175.00 - 50 minute sessions

Silencing Grief

"Why don't adoptees talk about their grief? They are petrified of rejection. They worry that if someone knew how needy or hurting they were inside, they may be rejected all over again. This is true even in the best adoptive homes and families. Add the fear of rejection with the fear of hurting their adoptive parents' feelings and often the grief goes underground. 

Grief Speaks

INSURANCE 

I am out of network with all insurance companies. Many clients are able to utilize their out-of-network benefits for counseling services and get reimbursed by their insurance company. I will provide you with a copy of a superbill which you can submit for possible reimbursement. I also encourage you to verify your out-of-network benefits prior to your session. If you have access to HRA/FSA/HAS funds, I accept those funds as forms of payment along with credit cards.

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