Healing intergenerational trauma can be complex and can take time. How Do You Heal From Intergenerational Trauma? They may also feel like they have to make their parents’ pain and sacrifice “worth it” by achieving the goals their parents never had the chance to try for. This can look like hiding their feelings in order to make sure that their parents’ feelings are not hurt. My problems could never compare, so I never told her about my feelings and troubles.”Īs children grow older, they may feel like their emotions are a burden on their parents and other people, or that they are responsible for their parents’ or others’ emotional wellbeing. She would also tell me about the constant fear of violence and danger that she experienced just going about her daily life. As a child, she would often tell me how she and my sister went hungry, and how I was lucky that I never had to worry about food. “My mom and my older sister left Viet Nam in the 1980s, after the war. To illustrate, here’s a brief story from a 25-year-old second-generation Vietnamese woman. However, this can negatively impact children, who become accustomed to hearing other people’s pain without being able to address their own. Many parents tell their children the difficult past they endured in order to motivate their children to succeed. They also learn relationship patterns through interacting with their parents. Children mirror the coping strategies of their parents and caregivers, so they may learn that keeping quiet about their feelings is the only way to cope. Intergenerational trauma can have both short-term and long-term impacts on children. What is the Impact of Intergenerational Trauma? You should not be struggling.” While these comments may come from a place of misunderstanding and a hope for their children to have better lives, they can still be hurtful. Why are you having trouble?” or “I escaped to give you a better opportunity. Many young Southeast Asian Americans have heard comments, such as “I went to school during a war. Parents might also unintentionally minimize their children’s feelings (in comparison to their own history of pain) or expect them to handle more responsibility than is age-appropriate. They might isolate themselves when they are feeling pain, or they might be irritable and impatient with their child when they are requesting assistance. Parents who are still processing their own emotional pain may not be available to care for their children’s emotional needs. For example, many Southeast Asian grandparents and parents experienced war trauma (e.g., the Viet Nam War), and that trauma can become intergenerational when those feelings of hurt, pain, or fear are passed down to their grandchildren and children. ![]() Trauma can impact a caregiver’s parenting style or behavior. The trauma that these grandparents and parents experienced can then be passed down. We believe that discussing intergenerational trauma is necessary in our support of Asian American communities, as many have experienced political conflict, war, oppression, economic turmoil, or the fear of a refugee fleeing violence and danger. Healing is celebrating our resilience, our knowledge, our culture and language, and the ways we surmounted obstacles as a people.We wanted to dedicate a blog specifically to intergenerational trauma, which is trauma (or pain) that gets passed down from the generation who experienced it to the following generations. Healing is transcending inherited patterns of thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that don’t serve us. Part of collective healing is to recognize how global, structural racism damaged our sense of peoplehood, divided us, and reinforced inter-generational trauma. This blog is for my Vietnamese people, to support our collective healing and unity. The chances of seeing me on Instagram is a bit higher – you can also look there. I publish a blog post as often as I can, but as you can see, that’s not often. Since I became a mom in 2020, I have very little free time. I only post pieces that are worth your time reading and send out new articles to my email subscribers – you can sign up on the right side of this page. Sometimes I edit a draft over the course of months. I put a lot of thought into each article. I see my writing as a healing tool, for Vietnamese people and also for all historically oppressed communities/peoples whose descendants are grappling with inherited trauma. My primary targeted audience is Vietnamese millennials like myself. I write to heal intergenerational trauma for myself, my community, and Vietnamese people worldwide. ![]() I’m a writer of creative nonfiction – essays, memoir, opinion pieces, research-based articles.
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