Maybe some people tell you you’re not Asian enough. Perhaps others tell you that you are too white in the way you dress and speak.

Some of this may even come from your own friends and family members. This can be confusing and painful.

Perhaps you’re bi-racial or multi-racial and finding your way toward belonging and community.

Maybe you’re a trans racial adoptee who yearns to define what your identity means specifically for you and your complex experiences.

Your parents are survivors. Survivors of the Khmer Genocide. Survivors of the Vietnam War.

The impacts of intergenerational trauma were normalized growing up. Parents waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares screaming. Living in scarcity saving every little thing in case a war breaks out again. Always on edge and worried something bad might happen.

You grew up with a scarcity mindset. You didn't have much and need much. You didn’t ask for much either. You learned to internalize a lot, like your feelings and thoughts.

Perhaps you grew up too quickly and became emotional caretaker in your family. You were really good at this, but it was so exhausting and tiring.

• You grew up with a parent who immigrated to the United States. Perhaps your parent escaped their country due to war, persecution, and/or oppression. They experienced difficulty adjusting to a new country, a new language, new customs, and lacked community.

• They were wary, frustrated, confused, scared, and untrusting of others growing up and passed these feelings onto you.

• They told you not to trust certain people. They told you the only way to success was to study hard, keep to yourself, and avoid conflicts.

You were born overseas and came to the United States as a child. Or perhaps you immigrated during your early teenage years and attended high school in the United States

You grew up as a cultural broker for your parents (translating documents, navigating new systems like healthcare, banking, transportation, etc.)

You feel the push and pull of career expectations of your parents to become work in finance, business, law, engineering, computer science, and/or medicine

Your parents often compare your experience as luxury compared to theirs growing up with less privilege and resources

• Wanting excessive control, certainty, and answers at work, home, in relationships

• Difficulty relaxing and turning off your mind

• Avoidance and fear of emotions and feelings

• Prioritizing logic, thoughts, evidence, and pragmatism

• Procrastination due to fear of not completing it perfectly

• People pleasing and wanting to appease others at expense of self

• Feeling stressed and anxious with not knowing and uncertainty

• Excessive self criticism and judgement toward self and others

• Fear of failure and making mistakes

• Shame (“I am bad”)

• Guilt (“I did something bad”)

• Depression and mood shifts

• Anxiety, stress, panic, and worry

Questions to ask yourself:

• Where did I learn about perfectionism?

• How has perfectionism helped me survive?

• How has perfection not helped me?

• What do I feel when I strive for perfectionism (what is underneath)?

• Self Doubt: Feeling like you’re a fraud despite your achievements

• Emptiness: Feeling never good enough

• Feeling like others will discover you should not have been admitted to college or received that job promotion

• Working twice as hard to compensate and make up for your perceived inadequacies

• Difficulties accepting compliments from others

• Striving for perfection

Questions to ask yourself:

• Where do I derive my worthiness from? Where did I learn this?

• How do I love myself? (Do I?)

• How do I ask for what I need? (Do I?)

• What is “enough” for me? How will I know? How will I feel?

  • Enough money

  • Enough accomplishments

  • Etc.

• Growing up with someone with undiagnosed mental health issues

• Feeling overly responsible for others’ needs/wants

• Not openly communicating thoughts and feelings about the effects

• Not seeking professional treatment and help

• Internalizing feelings and thoughts

• Feeling torn between your parents/caregivers after a divorce due to conflicting messages of a “bad” parent/caregiver

• Feeling worried if one parent/caregivers will leave you and not come back (e.g. abandonment, worry, anxiety, depression)

• Being held to secrets and promises by one parent/caregiver and feeling stuck unsure what to do

• Losing friends and support system when you had to move to a new city and home

• It wasn’t uncommon to hear things like, “Why are you crying? You shouldn’t be sad.” Or “Stop your anger. Now you’re making me angry.” These questions didn’t make sense to you. You came to your parents so they could soothe, comfort, and love you, but instead you were met with criticism, demand, and judgement.

• Perhaps your parents left you alone. You craved connection, care, and attention, yet never received it. So you slowly learned to internalized your needs in silence. You became self-reliant and sought to control what you could control. Perhaps you studied and became a great student. Maybe you learned to protect yourself through self-attack, self-judgement, and self-sabotage, denying your own wishes and desire because you feared rejection and abandonment.

• So you learned to soothe and comfort yourself. Perhaps you learned emotions are unhelpful and stuffed them down by pretending you didn’t have feelings. Now, you find it difficult to form and sustain relationships long term.

The cumulative/ongoing traumatizing impact of racism, which can include individual acts of racial discrimination combined with systemic racism, and typically includes

• Historical, cultural, and community trauma

• Micro and macro aggressions

• Different levels of racial trauma (historical, systemic, institutional, individual)

• Impacts on mental health, health, education, housing, employment

• You’ve navigated predominately white institutions your entire life, but never took time to slow down to see how this impacted your mind, body, and spirit

• You wanted to change your non-Eurocentric name growing up to better fit i

• You were repeatedly told to “go back to your country” growing up, but that was confusing and frustrating because you were born in the United States

• Maybe you grew up in a small, conservative town/city where you and your family were the only people of color

• You slowly internalized messages of inferiority and now want to unpack these myths and replace them with more realistic and loving messages

• The death of a sibling or parent marked your upbringing with sadness, pain, confusion, and anger.

• Maybe you never really got over this loss. Secretly, you are envious and angry at others who still have their parents and siblings, while you do not. The holidays, anniversaries, and birthdays are especially difficult, but you don’t let others know how you feel. You suffer alone.

• Chaos, conflict, worry, and unpredictability sums up your childhood environment.

• To survive, you learned to take care of others, managed conflict, and attempted to maintain peace. Now, you feel overly responsible for other’s needs, wants, and emotions. Perhaps you offer advice and help to others, even when it’s not asked for.

• As a child, you were often the parent and your parent was often the child due to the role reversal. Boundaries were blurred. Maybe there weren’t any boundaries.

• You were burdened with your parents’ intimate emotions, fears, and worries. Perhaps you took on household duties and responsibilities.

• Many people hear this when they are parentified, “You are so mature for your age”. While this is meant as a compliment, it can be harmful for children because their self worth is tied into what they can do for others.

• In every family, there are roles. Perhaps your role was the “bad” child. No matter what you did, it was never enough and you were blamed.

• Or you were the caretaker, productive child, or martyr.

• Other roles include: peacemaker, mediator, golden child, lost child, truth teller, rescuer, and problem child.