Trauma Practitioner and Adoptive Mom Stacy Uhrig Redefines Adoption Anxiety

Stacy Uhrig brings a dual perspective to the adoption conversation that few practitioners can match. As a certified trauma care practitioner trained through the Global Trauma Institute, a mother through international adoption from South Korea, and the creator of the course and podcast Flip Your Mindset, she has spent years studying the nervous system while also living the daily realities of adoptive parenting. Her 30-year personal history with anxiety adds another layer to her clinical understanding.

In this episode of Voices of Adoption, host Donna Pope speaks with Stacy about the gap between the hopeful adoption narrative and the nervous system reality that many families live with quietly. Their conversation covers early rupture, diagnostic confusion, parental triggers, and a path toward healing that starts with awareness and personal responsibility.

Early Rupture and Hidden Loss  

Stacy describes the adoption journey of her sons from South Korea. What once appeared to be a thoughtful system of foster care later revealed a series of disruptions through a baby's lens: leaving the birth mother, moving to a first foster home, transferring to Seoul, traveling across the world, and then arriving with a brand new family. Adults see paperwork and logistics. A baby's body registers repeated loss of a primary caregiver.

Those early breaks land in the nervous system long before language develops. The landmark English and Romanian Adoptees Study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found that children adopted into stable families showed substantial recovery in physical growth and cognitive ability, yet a significant minority continued to experience attachment and emotional difficulties years later. Adoption reshapes the trajectory in positive ways, and the early stress still leaves a mark.

According to the Evergreen Psychotherapy Center, adopted children who make up roughly 2.5 percent of children under 18 represent approximately one third of those placed in residential treatment and adolescent psychiatric centers, a disproportion that points to the weight of unaddressed early experiences.

Behaviors, Labels, and Deeper Questions  

By the time many adoptive parents seek help, they are dealing with big reactions and confusing behavior. Stacy meets families whose children have received labels like anxiety disorder, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, depression, and reactive attachment disorder. Those labels can be useful at times, but they do not always answer the deeper question.

A child who shouts, argues, or pushes against limits may have learned that getting big was the only way anyone responded. A child who shuts down or goes flat may have learned that withdrawing felt safer than reaching out again. Stacy invites a shift in questioning. Instead of only asking what is wrong with this child, she encourages parents to consider what happened to this child and what their nervous system has been trying to survive. That single reframe changes everything. Behaviors that once felt personal start making a different kind of sense, and how a parent responds to every meltdown, every shutdown, and every moment of resistance begins to shift with it.

Research backs this reframing. A systematic review published in Children and Youth Services Review found that adult adoptees showed higher levels of depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and neuroticism compared to non-adoptees, while also noting that the adopted population is quite heterogeneous, with individual and contextual variables playing a significant role in outcomes. Labels alone miss that complexity.

Parental Triggers and Inherited Rules  

The conversation also turns toward parents' inner worlds. Stacy and Donna both name their own histories and how those stories collided with their children's behavior. Many adults grow up with strong ideas about what a "good family" looks like and how children "should" act. Those ideas are often inherited from earlier generations without much examination.

When an adopted child arrives with a different history, culture, or nervous system sensitivity, those rigid expectations can hit a wall. Arguments escalate, everyone feels misunderstood, and both parent and child end up triggered. Stacy encourages parents to notice:

1. Which expectations come from genuine values in this home?

2. Which expectations simply repeat patterns from earlier generations

3. Which reactions come from old wounds rather than the present moment?

4. Which responses shut-down the connection instead of building it

Doing this personal work does not remove the child's responsibility, but it can make the home safer and more regulated for everyone. Research on adoptive families published by PMC confirms that adoptive parents' attachment representations are associated with their children's attachment behaviors, reinforcing the idea that parental self-awareness directly shapes the relational environment.

Anxiety, the Calm Code, and Personal Responsibility  

Alongside adoption, Stacy shares her own 30-year struggle with anxiety. On the outside, she managed work and life successfully. Inside, her body lived in constant overdrive: chest tightness, stomach distress, shallow breathing, and a sense of never fully relaxing. Therapy and medication helped for a while, but eventually she hit a breaking point.

That crisis pushed her to study trauma, polyvagal theory, and hypnotherapy, focusing on the nervous system and subconscious beliefs rather than just rational thoughts. Over time, she created the Calm Code, an eight-week group program for anxiety, and launched Flip Your Mindset to share this knowledge freely for people who might not have access to therapy. National surveys confirm the need for accessible resources: about 85 percent of adopted children are reported to be in excellent or very good health according to LifeLong Adoptions, yet adoptive families still face higher rates of behavioral and emotional challenges that often go unaddressed without the right framework.

A key idea in Stacy's work is both simple and hard. You did not cause many of your early wounds, especially in adoption, yet your healing still belongs to you. Personal responsibility here is not about blame. It is about restoring a sense of agency. The work is yours, but it should never be work you attempt in isolation.

Donna and Stacy both speak to the mixed emotions common in adoption. Adoptees are often told to be thankful. Many are. Simultaneously, they may carry grief about separation, lost history, or unanswered questions. When only gratitude is allowed, grief tends to leak out as anxiety, depression, or relationship struggles. A wider lens can hold several truths at once: that adoption offers safety and belonging, that every adoption story includes loss and adjustment, that early moves shape the nervous system over time, and that healing grows best in supported, honest relationships.

If these themes resonate with your family's story, listen to the full episode of Voices of Adoption featuring Stacy Uhrig to hear the nuances in her own words. Visit VoicesofAdoption.org for resources, stories, and support across the adoption constellation. For tools focused on anxiety and mindset, explore Stacy's Calm Code program and her podcast Flip Your Mindset.

Subscribe to the Voices of Adoption show for real stories and expert insights that help families across the adoption constellation find support and healing.

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