Trauma From Asian Parents

Jun 2

Written By Canh Tran

Why Are Asian Parents Overly Controlling?

There are many reasons why someone would be overly controlling. This can include:

Personality and temperament
Dysfunctional family dynamics
Generational trauma
Intergenerational trauma
Faith and religion
Migration experiences
Refugee experiences
Acculturation stress
Language barriers
Discrimination and exclusion
Financial stress and economic insecurity
Family separation and disruption
Trauma
War and conflict
Genocide
Mental health stigma

Sample Abusive Statements

“I should’ve never had you”
“I wish you weren’t my child”
“I don’t love you”
“You’re so stupid”
“You’re dumb”
“You don’t amount to anything”

Cutting Off Your Parents

Financial independence: Getting your own job and not relying on your parent’s money/finances
Medical independence: Getting off your parents’ health insurance plan
Healthcare independence: Getting a healthcare power of attorney to remove your parents as authority over your healthcare
Repaying debt owed back to your parents
Physical independence: Moving a city away
Moving out of state
Moving out of the country
Moving and not letting them know your new address/residence
Only visiting home during holidays or important dats
Only visiting home when you want/if you want to
Going no contact
Going low contact
Getting a new phone number
Getting a new email address
Not letting them know and just distancing yourself from them
Not responding to texts/phone calls/emails at all
Not responding to texts/phone calls/emails for a period of time
Responding to texts/phone calls/emails when you want to
Responding to texts/phone calls/emails during a set period of time
Putting do not disturb or turning off notifications when they call/text/email
Blocking their phone calls/emails/texts
Contacting them only when you want/if you want to contact them
And many more/other options

Questions To Consider & Reflect On

How do I feel around my parents?
How do I feel when I think about my parents?
How do I feel after spending time with my parents?
What are the pros/benefits of limiting contact with my parents?
What are the cons/negative effects of limiting contact with my parents?
What are the positive things I get from this relationship?
Do I feel pressure, stress, and/or fatigue being around or talking to my parents?
What sort of relationship would I like to have with my parents?

Reminders

Abuse is not a cultural experience
Your experiences are valid

Children Who Grow Up In These Environment Tend to Feel

Resentful
Powerless
Hopeless
Lack ability to make their own decisions and take accountability for their actions/choices
Low sense of Self (Self-esteem, Self-worth, Self-love, Self-acceptance)
Need for approval and and people pleasing
Discomfort around authority figures
Anxious
Overly sensitive to rejection, anger, feedback, and criticism
Guilty caring for themselves (tend to focus on others more)
Anxious, mistrustful, and insecure in relationships, particularly romantic and intimate relationships

Book Quotes On Childhood Trauma

Leaving Home: The Art of Separating From Your Difficult Family

“Despite the fact that our failed developmental history was our parents’ “fault,” each of us has the ultimate responsibility for our own life. Those of us who have been victimized by indifference, neglect, or abuse are responsible for the rest of our lives. We must work to understand our histories, to separate as best as we can from those who have hurt us, and to pursue gratifying relationships in the future.”
“Not surprisingly, his father (who was unaware of how abusive he had been), took credit for Richard’s high entrance exam scores, noting how successful his educational program had been. Richard’s father’s poorly controlled wounded self, which acted out sadistically toward him, was never openly acknowledged and thus both father and son were prevented from seeing how badly the father had undermined his son’s sense of self.”
“Our culture seems incapable of connecting cause and effect when the two events do not occur within easy recall of each other. The parents of these young adults have failed them totally, yet we as a culture refuse to connect cause and effect because we have no stomach for punishing the innocent-appearing parents.”
“Only psychologically mature young adults can tolerate the reality that their parents failed them in certain areas, because their maturity frees them from needing false but comforting illusions about their parents. That is, their identity is firm enough to allow them to stand on their own without needing the support of their parents.”
“When they no longer need parental support, they also no longer need the defense mechanisms that blinded them (in order to keep them feeling secure) to their parents’ failings.”
“The undernurtured young adult simply cannot afford to recognize that the parents he relies on are incapable of offering the support that he desperately needs.”
“developmentally unhelpful families who have been able to leave the actual family home, but are unable to prevent the severity of their defenses from disrupting their adult friendships. In effect, Sandy carried such intense and powerful images of her family in her head that she reacted to others as if they were from her family of origin.”
“This is the great paradox of defense mechanisms: they protect us from crushing anxiety during our childhoods, but then become an integral part of our personality that often damages us in adulthood.”
“Neglect and abuse are two different but closely related factors, both of which can delay development. Neglect can occur independently or it can occur as a by-product of abuse. When a child is abused, he is suffering from two damaging developmental events occurring at the same time. Returning to the example of the family dynamic between George and his mother, we see that during the time that George and his sister were being forced to eat (abuse), they were also being deprived of the support and emotional nurturing (neglect) that they should have been receiving at the dinner table. When George shifted into his wounded self at the dinner table, he was not only filled with anger and humiliation, but also felt extremely alone because his bond to his mother was broken.”
“Simply stated, our identity keeps us stable, organized, and functional when we are alone—when there is no one to supply us with feedback as to who we are. Those adults who emerged from faulty families without intact identities have to cling to others in order to keep their personality organized, just like Freda and Greta. Secondly, and equally importantly, our identity serves as our measuring stick of the universe around us. It acts as a stable point of reference that allows us to define who we are in relation to other people, to the world of work, to our community, and to our families and loved ones. Without a firm identity, we don’t know what to believe, where to go, or what to do. Comedy is often based on mistaken identities, concealed identities, or individuals who misunderstand their own identity.”
“The missing link between reading a self-help book and actually achieving positive personality growth is a network of long-term give-and-take relationships with concerned others. Human beings simply cannot develop into mature adults (regardless of their chronological age) without the love and support of people around them. When I say “love,” I am speaking in the general sense of the word meaning those who appreciate, enjoy, support, and show interest in others.”

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“If your parents’ faces never lit up when they looked at you, it’s hard to know what it feels like to be loved and cherished. If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear, it’s almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured. If you grew up unwanted and ignored, it is a major challenge to develop a visceral sense of agency and self-worth.”

CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker

“The worst thing that can happen to a child is to be unwelcomed in his family of origin - to never feel included. Moreover, many survivors have little or no experience of any social arena that feels safe and welcoming.”
“Chronic emotional abandonment devastates a child. It naturally makes her feel and appear deadened and depressed. Functional parents respond to a child’s depression with concern and comfort. Abandoning parents respond to the child with anger, disgust and/or further abandonment, which in turn exacerbate the fear, shame and despair that become the abandonment mélange.”
”Emotional neglect, alone, causes children to abandon themselves, and to give up on the formation of a self. They do so to preserve an illusion of connection with the parent and to protect themselves from the danger of losing that tenuous connection. This typically requires a great deal of self-abdication, e.g., the forfeiture of self-esteem, self-confidence, self-care, self-interest, and self-protection.”
”If this is what you suffered, you then grew up feeling that no one likes you. No one ever listened to you or seemed to want you around. No one had empathy for you, showed you warmth, or invited closeness. No one cared about what you thought, felt, did, wanted or dreamed of. You learned early that, no matter how hurt, alienated, or terrified you were, turning to a parent would do nothing more than exacerbate your experience of rejection.”
”Unrelenting criticism, especially when it is ground in with parental rage and scorn, is so injurious that it changes the structure of the child’s brain.”
”Repeated messages of disdain are internalized and adopted by the child, who eventually repeats them over and over to himself. Incessant repetitions result in the construction of thick neural pathways of self-hate and self-disgust. Over time a self-hate response attaches to more and more of the child’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors.”
”Verbal abuse is the use of language to shame, scare or hurt another. Dysfunctional parents routinely use name-calling, sarcasm, and destructive criticism to overpower and control their children. Verbal abuse is as commonplace in the American family as homework and table manners. It is modeled as socially acceptable in almost every sitcom on television.”

Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress

“Emotional competence requires the capacity to feel our emotions, so that we are aware when we are experiencing stress; the ability to express our emotions effectively and thereby to assert our needs and to maintain the integrity of our emotional boundaries; the facility to distinguish between psychological reactions that are pertinent to the present situation and those that represent residue from the past.”

Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

“The art of not experiencing feelings. A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.”
“Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.”

Bruce D. Perry, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook

The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.
What I’ve learned from talking to so many victims of traumatic events, abuse, or neglect is that after absorbing these painful experiences, the child begins to ache. A deep longing to feel needed, validated, and valued begins to take hold. As these children grow, they lack the ability to set a standard for what they deserve. And if that lack is not addressed, what often follows is a complicated, frustrating pattern of self-sabotage, violence, promiscuity, or addiction.
Relationships matter: the currency for systemic change was trust, and trust comes through forming healthy working relationships. People, not programs, change people.

Beverly Engel, The Nice Girl Syndrome: Stop Being Manipulated and Abused -- And Start Standing Up for Yourself

“Hypercritical and shaming parents send the same message to their children as perfectionistic parents do - that they are never good enough. Parents often deliberately shame their children into minding them without realizing the disruptive impact shame can have on a child's sense of self. Statements such as "You should be ashamed of yourself" or "Shame on you" are obvious examples. Yet these types of overtly shaming statements are actually easier for the child to defend against than are more subtle forms of shaming, such as contempt, humiliation, and public shaming.“
“There are many ways that parents shame their children. These include belittling, blaming, contempt, humiliation, and disabling expectations.“

Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“...repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.”

What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

“Trauma isn’t just the sadness that comes from being beaten, or neglected, or insulted. That’s just one layer of it. Trauma also is mourning the childhood you could have had. The childhood other kids around you had. The fact that you could have had a mom who hugged and kissed you when you skinned your knee. Or a dad who stayed and brought you a bouquet of flowers at your graduation. Trauma is mourning the fact that, as an adult, you have to parent yourself. You have to stand in your kitchen, starving, near tears, next to a burnt chicken, and you can’t call your mom to tell her about it, to listen to her tell you that it’s okay, to ask if you can come over for some of her cooking. Instead, you have to pull up your bootstraps and solve the painful puzzle of your life by yourself. What other choice do you have? Nobody else is going to solve it for you.”
“Being healed isn’t about feeling nothing. Being healed is about feeling the appropriate emotions at the appropriate times and still being able to come back to yourself. That’s just life.”
“The literature says this is normal for traumatized people. Experts say it’s all part of the three P’s: We think our sadness is personal, pervasive, and permanent. Personal, in that we have caused all the problems we face. Pervasive, in that our entire life is defined by our failings. And permanent, in that the sadness will last forever.”
“Because of its repetitive nature, complex trauma is fundamentally relational trauma. In other words, this is trauma caused by bad relationships with other people—people who were supposed to be caring and trustworthy and instead were hurtful. That meant future relationships with anybody would be harder for people with complex trauma because they were wired to believe that other people could not be trusted. The only way you could heal from relational trauma, he figured, was through practicing that relational dance with other people. Not just reading self-help books or meditating alone. We had to go out and practice maintaining relationships in order to reinforce our shattered belief that the world could be a safe place.”
“The essence of what trauma does to a person is it makes them feel like they don’t deserve love,” the voice in my headphones said. I was on the train, on my way to yet another doctor’s appointment, but this statement rang so true that I dug furiously through my bag and pulled out a notebook to write it down. I was about to put away my pen when I heard another especially good line, so I kept it out, writing furiously on my lap. My friend Jen, who often sends me little poems and links throughout the day, sent me this podcast—Road to Resilience,”
“But the sadness of a lost childhood feels like yearning, impossible desire. It feels like a hollow, insatiable hunger.”
“The results of the study were astoundingly clear: The more childhood trauma someone had suffered, the worse their health outcomes were in adulthood. And their risk for contracting diseases didn’t go up just a few percentage points. People with high ACE scores were about three times as likely to develop liver disease, twice as likely to develop cancer or heart disease, four times as likely to develop emphysema. They were seven and a half times more likely to become alcoholics, four and a half times more likely to suffer from depression, and a whopping twelve times more likely to attempt suicide. Scientists have learned that stress is literally toxic. Stress chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline surging through our bodies are healthy in moderation—you wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning without a good dose of cortisol. But in overwhelming quantities, they become toxic and can change the structure of our brains. Stress and depression wear our bodies out. And childhood trauma affects our telomeres. Telomeres are like little caps on the ends of our strands of DNA that keep them from unraveling. As we get older, those telomeres get shorter and shorter. When they’ve finally disappeared, our DNA itself begins to unravel, increasing our chances of getting cancer and making us especially susceptible to disease. Because of this tendency, telomeres are linked to human lifespan. And studies have shown that people who suffered from childhood trauma have significantly shortened telomeres.”
“The difference between regular PTSD and complex PTSD is that traditional PTSD is often associated with a moment of trauma. Sufferers of complex PTSD have undergone continual abuse—trauma that has occurred over a long period of time, over the course of years. Child abuse is a common cause of complex PTSD.”
“people with C-PTSD can often assume problems are about them—not out of selfishness or narcissism but because they want to have enough control to be able to solve the problem.”
“Hatred, I learned quickly, was the antidote to sadness. It was the only safe feeling. Hatred does not make you cry at school. It isn’t vulnerable. Hatred is efficient. It does not grovel. It is pure power.”
“Brain scans prove that patients who’ve sustained significant childhood trauma have brains that look different from people who haven’t. Traumatized brains tend to have an enlarged amygdala—a part of the brain that is generally associated with producing feelings of fear. Which makes sense. But it goes further than that: For survivors of emotional abuse, the part of their brain that is associated with self-awareness and self-evaluation is shrunken and thin.”
“In Gretchen Schmelzer’s excellent, gentle book, Journey Through Trauma, she insists on the fifth page: “Some of you may choose a therapist: a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, counselor, or member of the clergy. Some of you may choose some form of group therapy. But I am telling you up front, at the beginning: in order to heal, you will need to get help. I know you will try to look for the loophole in this argument—try to find a way that you can do this on your own—but you need to trust me on this. If there were a way to do it on your own I would have found it. No one looked harder for that loophole than I did.”
“These negative emotions are not simply something to endure and erase. They are purposeful. Beneficial. They tell us what we need. Anger inspires action. Sadness is necessary to process grief. Fear helps keep us safe. Completely eradicating these emotions is not just impossible—it’s unhealthy. These negative emotions only become toxic when they block out all the other emotions. When we feel so much sadness that we can’t let any joy in. When we feel so much anger that we cannot soften around others. True mental health looks like a balance of these good and bad feelings. As Lori Gottlieb says in her book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, “Many people come to therapy seeking closure. Help me not to feel. What they eventually discover is that you can’t mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You’ll also mute the joy.”

How Can I Deal With My Family Better?

Educate yourself on family dynamics, roles, rituals, and patterns by reading books, listening to podcasts, watching interviews, etc.
Engage in healthy coping skills/strategies
Identify your triggers and vulnerabilities
Identify your personal boundaries
Assert your personal boundaries
Let others know the consequence of not respecting your personal boundaries
Name, feel, and process your emotions
Learn how to manage your feelings
Find ways to self soothe and regulate yourself when overwhelmed
Take time away from them
Move away from them
Talk to those you trust and love
Join a support group like Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families
Join social media forums and read about others’ experiences to feel less alone and more connected like Asian Parents or Subtle Asian Mental Health
Seek professional help from a licensed therapist

Healthier Coping Skills

Push the situation away by leaving it for a while
Squeeze a rubber ball very hard
Take a hot or cold shower
Take a long hot bath
Have a massage
Soak your feet
Work on a puzzle
Color
Count to 10; count colors in a painting or poster or out the window; count anything
Hold ice in your hand or mouth
Compare how you are feeling now to a time when you felt different
Find an event to go to
Go out for a meal or eat a favorite food
Do crossword puzzles or Sudoku
Build something
Drink your favorite soothing drink, such as herbal tea, hot chocolate, a latté, or smoothie
Go for a drive
Wrap up in a blanket
Put a cold compress on your forehead
Pet your dog or cat
Spending time with friends and loved ones
Call or go out with a friend
Moving your body and/or engaging in exercise
Taking a break/pause
Listening to music
Taking a bath
Watching a movie
Reading a book
Journaling
Stretching
Going for a bike ride
Going for a walk
Going on a hike
Playing my guitar/piano/etc.
Cooking
Baking
Deep breathing

Unhealthier Coping Skills

Restricting food
Binging or overeating food
Numbing your feelings
Buying things you don’t need/shopping to numb or distract
Using substances to numb/distract yourself
Drinking alcohol until you black out
Watching Netflix/Hulu for hours on end to numb/distract yourself
Engaging in problematic use behaviors (e.g. addiction, gambling)
Self harming
Internalizing my thoughts
Internalizing my feelings
Acting out my feelings instead of processing and expressing my feelings
Throwing things
Breaking things
Screaming at others
Threatening others
Anything used to an extreme will be not as healthy

Pearlin and Schooler (1978) have identified three personal psychological resources that may help family members deal with extra familial stress affecting one family member which includes:

The self esteem of each family member
Attitudes about the world by family members (belief in mastery)
Interpersonal skills (communication skills, competence, and ease in interpersonal interaction)

Morris and Engle (1981) suggest that coping styles and efforts are important factors for helping individual family members deal with stress in the family systems.

Coping styles are the strategies individuals use for approaching problems: coping efforts are specific action that the stressed family members take to deal with a problem.

The presence or absence of these factors in the family system will have a tremendous influence on how the family system deals with the stressed family member.

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Canh Tran