I Just Took A DNA Test
What happens when you discover your parents aren’t who they thought they were? Or that something from their past is now about to change your present, and your future?
With the rise of commercial DNA tests like 23andMe.com and Ancestry.com, the rise in consumer DNA testing has become commonplace. While this usually starts out as exciting and fun – sometimes they it isn’t.
More and more people are discovering that the people they thought were their parents, are not. The revelations of DNA testing can bring about surprises, as it has for the estimated 10 percent of commercial test-takers, equaling approximately 3 million people.
Discovering that the person you thought was your parent is not can be a life-altering experience. Feelings of confusion about your identity and grief are common, not to mention the complexities that come with how to respond to this new information.
The term used is MPE (Misattributed Parentage Experience) or NPE (Not Parent Expected).
What is Misattributed Parentage?
Misattributed parentage is defined as the misattribution of genetic parentage: that is, that the generally considered parent of an individual is not that individual’s genetic parent.
Although most of what you find online tends to focus on misattributed paternity, with the presumption that it results from infidelity, there are a variety of cases in which researchers may discover that an individual’s paternity or maternity is misattributed.
An individual may not know that they are adopted, or the wrong egg and sperm may have been used during in vitro fertilization (IVF), or a child may have been switched at birth.
An MPE discovery is best understood as a kind of trauma on a spectrum – sometimes mild and other times just the opposite it’s different for everybody. How we deal with that experience matters.
I can help you deal with the unique challenges that come with discovery of MPE, and also a non-parental event (NPE) to gain the necessary skills to cope with them and make sense of the confusion you might be feeling. Contact me for more information.
I know firsthand what you may be going through; I, too, have lived through this.
