The Adopted Teen Workbook: Develop Confidence, Strength, and Resilience on the Path to Adulthood

by Barbara Neiman

Overview

Written for teens who were adopted, this compassionate workbook will help give you the strength, resilience, and confidence you need to thrive—now and on into adulthood.

If you’re like many other adopted teens, you may wonder about your birth family. You may question why you were given up. And you may even grapple with feelings of isolation, abandonment, and broken trust. These feelings are valid and deserve to be addressed. This workbook is designed to help you open the door to questioning, explore painful feelings, and develop the skills needed to be a happy and grounded adult.

The Adopted Teen Workbook teaches powerful self-resiliency, mindfulness, and somatic skills to help you explore your unique identity as an adopted teen. You’ll find tools to manage loss and grief, and activities that include checklists, contemplations, skill-building, and journaling to help you chronicle present, past, and future relationships with both your adoptive and birth parents.

This workbook begins with your first recognition of having been adopted and the feelings that come with that. You will then explore memories of the past and begin work on understanding emotions of anger, shame, and loss. Finally, you’ll learn ways to heal these wounds, learn to trust, and fully connect with both yourself and others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684031412
Publisher:	New Harbinger Publications
Publication date:	03/01/2019
Series:	Instant Help for Teens Series
Pages:	184
Sales rank:	1,212,992
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Barbara Neiman is a pediatric occupational therapist of thirty-five years, yoga teacher, body-mind centering practitioner, and national speaker on trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness strategies for professionals and adoption. Barbara is author of Mindfulness and Yoga Skills for Children and Adolescents and the card deck, My Calm Place. She is an adoptive parent who accompanied her young adult on a birth search journey.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Letter to Teen Readers xi

Part I Building Self-Resiliency Skills With Mindfulness and Breath

Activity 1 Deciding to Keep This Book Private Or Share It 2

Activity 2 Present-Moment Awareness 5

Activity 3 Facing Fears and Accepting Your Truth 10

Activity 4 Families With Different Races, Religions, Cultures, and Sexual Preferences 15

Activity 5 Guided Imagery Helps Stress 20

Activity 6 Somatic Awareness 24

Activity 7 Use Your Senses to Know Your Intuition 28

Activity 8 Your Safety Container 33

Part II Understanding Your Brain, Body Emotions, and Past Trauma

Activity 9 Managing Your Triggers and Intense Emotions 38

Activity 10 Healing Your Inner Child 42

Activity 11 Checking In With Your Body When Taking Risks 47

Activity 12 Your Stress, Your Body 53

Activity 13 Vulnerability and Strength at Your Center 57

Part III Finding and Exploring Who You Are

Activity 14 Who Is In Your Tribe? 62

Activity 15 Celebrate Your Uniqueness, Strengths, and Challenges 67

Activity 16 Healing Wounds With Creative Expression 72

Activity 17 The Roots of Your Identity 76

Activity 18 Know Yourself 79

Activity 19 Transracial or Interracial Adoption 84

Activity 20 Expressing Yourself Safely With Your Family 92

Activity 21 Restorative Yoga 97

Part IV Skills For Moving Through The Hurt

Activity 22 Forgiveness and Gratitude For The Gift of Life 102

Activity 23 Understanding Loss and Grief 108

Activity 24 Healing From Toxic Shame 114

Activity 25 Getting Over Abandonment 118

Part V Healing Early Memories

Activity 26 The First Time You Learned That You Were Adopted 124

Activity 27 Saying "I'm Adopted" Out Loud 128

Activity 28 Adverse Childhood Experiences 132

Activity 29 Recovering Early Memories 136

Activity 30 Loving Yourself and Asking, "Was I Loved?" 141

Part VI Strategies for Moving Forward

Activity 31 What Is Your Story? 148

Activity 32 Do You Want to Search for Your Birth Parents? 151

Activity 33 Empathizing With Your Parents 155

Activity 34 Expressing Gratitude 160

Resources 165

Interviews

Neiman resides in New Paltz, NY.

Editorial Reviews

This workbook is a valuable contribution to the adoption literature. Barbara has provided teens, young adults, and their family members a treasure trove of creative and practical activities to help guide them through the myriad of feelings and experiences related to their adoption journey. Therapists will find this a welcome resource in their work with adoptees and their families.”
—Ricki Bernstein, adoptive parent and psychotherapist

Ricki Bernstein

Barbara Neiman’s workbook provides a practical, empowering tool for fostered and adopted teens that acknowledges their trauma and provides resourceful tools to assist them in their physical and emotional self-care and self-actualization. A resource which would be valuable to all fostered and adopted teens.”
—Judith Craig, BSW, transracial adoptee, and subject of the documentary Adopted ID

Judith Craig

What a wonderful resource for adopted teens and families! Neiman deftly captures the central themes of identity and loss, putting words to feelings that often go unspoken. Her workbook includes mindfulness and self-care, so needed in today’s technology-saturated world. I love how she interweaves mindfulness and managing stress with difficult feelings and their adoption narrative. I’ll be recommending this to all of the adoptive families I know and work with!”
—Katie Naftzger, LICSW, author of Parenting in the Eye of the Storm

Katie Naftzger

Adolescence is a joyous yet often challenging time for families as teens work through issues involved in identity formation. This is particularly true for adopted teens, who not only must determine who they are and where they came from but must face the issue of abandonment by their birth parents. Resources for adoptive families in this area have been lacking, but this void has been filled. In The Adopted Teen Workbook, Barbara Neiman offers a practical road map that will greatly assist adoptees and their parents in jointly navigating a safe passage to adulthood.”
—Dana E. Johnson, MD, PhD, professor in the department of pediatrics, Adoption Medicine Clinic, University of Minnesota

Dana E. Johnson

Barbara Neiman has created a wonderful, easy-to-understand resource for the entire family, with a focus on adoption. The personalized, real-life case studies are an added gift that help teens relate to the subject and guide them through the exercises.”
—Carolyn Bosa, adoptive parent

Carolyn Bosa

Barbara Neiman’s The Adopted Teen Workbook is a remarkable intervention in the challenges facing adopted youth and teens in foster or kinship care. Drawing on years of experience in the discipline of mindfulness, Neiman’s workbook provides a series of carefully devised exercises that engage body and mind, opening a space for meditation and reflection on the realities of loss and abandonment. This workbook has the potential to be a powerful tool not only for the adopted, but for those whose lives have been transformed by adoptive kinship.”
—Barbara Yngvesson, professor emerita of anthropology at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, and author of Belonging in an Adopted World

Barbara Yngvesson

I am happy to share that I reviewed The Adopted Teen Workbook by Barbara Neiman. Having worked as a psychologist with adopted teens for the past twenty years, the book offers some very useful resources that can be used to further explore issues that adoptees experience. I think the workbook would be most useful as a supplemental resource for therapists so that teens can continue to explore along with the support of their therapists.”
—Amanda L. Baden, PhD, professor and licensed psychologist in New York City, NY

Amanda L. Baden

The exercises in this workbook, both written and physical, can benefit and empower all of us—not just adopted teens. The case examples that Barbara Neiman presents shine light on a once secretive topic, and the scenarios provide language and context for discussion, thought, and self-realization. I was adopted in 1957, in an era when the topic was unspeakable. As a young person I would have more than welcomed the support and guidance that this workbook affords.”
—Lauree Feldman, artist

Lauree Feldman

This workbook is a comprehensive and compassionate guide, written by a woman who is both an adoptive mother and a skilled teacher of meditation, yoga, and wellness. Barbara Neiman covers a range of issues— from ethnic and racial family differences to feelings of vulnerability, abandonment, hurt, and shame—with sensitivity, real-life stories of those she’s served, and easy-to-follow tips and practices. Use of these practices will enable any reader to handle the myriad challenges that might arise for an adopted or foster teen. I cannot recommend this book highly enough!”
—Sharon Rosen, LMT, CWC, is a self-care coach, meditation teacher, and author of Crazy World, Peaceful Heart

Sharon Rosen

Kudos to Barbara Neiman for meeting an extraordinary but often neglected need—how to support adoptive children in their process of claiming identity. This process, especially for preteens and teens, involves feeling whole while negotiating diverse environments—biological and cultural—and doing all of this ‘within their own skin.’ Building on the outcomes of research from researchers like Beatrice Beebe and Suzi Tortora who understand the importance of movement and the body in feeling connected, trusting, and content, The Adoptive Teen Workbook provides practical steps and wise advice. The workbook activities stem from real life—the depths of experience—as a mother and as a professional. This is a book I will recommend wholeheartedly to families, somatic educators, and mental health workers.”
—Martha Eddy, CMA, RSMT, EdD, author of Mindful Movement, and founding director of Dynamic Embodiment

Martha Eddy

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