Healing Your Inner Child 

In an early episode of Netflix’s “Beef,” Ali Wong’s character admits that growing up with her parents led her to repress her feelings. Her therapist responds, “When we’re stressed, we revert to the pathways we’ve created as children … But acknowledging this is just the first step. In order to create new neural pathways, we have to uncover what lies underneath our awareness.”

Wong’s character, Amy, and many of us, have lived much of our lives repressing or ignoring what lies beneath. Childhood influences, experiences, and traumas have led us to be our own tiger parent, our own source of judgment, shame, people-pleasing tendencies — and we may not even recognize these patterns in ourselves. Family culture, capitalistic culture, and white supremacy culture all keep our focus outward, discouraging reflexivity. Looking inward could disrupt the status quo, and doing so is absolutely necessary for healing and growth.

It’s time to heal our inner child and stop being our own tiger parent.

Like Amy’s therapist says, “acknowledging this is just the first step.” Sometimes, even that first step may be hard to reach. Angela Tam, a Seattle-based mental health therapist and coach, emphasizes that our inability to be aware of the root problems means we are simply managing the hurt versus feeling and addressing it. Many of us have not learned or been encouraged to sit with uncomfortable feelings.

Trauma, in particular, is uncomfortable to address, but it is key to healing. Tam defines trauma as the lingering response to “anything that happens too much, too fast, and too soon … anything that your body’s not able to process fast enough, and that comes at you too quickly with too much unexpected intensity.”

Common responses to conflict, trauma, or triggers that rehash trauma include denial, avoidance, and dismissiveness. In our families, many of us minimize problems by excusing conflict as typical family or cultural dysfunction: “My mom is hard on me and critical of every career decision, because that’s how a lot of Asian moms are,” or “My boss micromanages me and scrutinizes my work, because he’s entitled to being involved in each step of the process.” We don’t recognize the correlation between the frequent stomachaches or chest pains — our body’s intuition — and time spent with our parents or meetings with our boss. To cope with dysfunction, we dismiss, justify, and accept it.

“Our bodies are telling us that this is not safe, but we’re going to disregard it,” Tam says. “The idea is that we would rather settle for what is unsafe than be alone or without a job. The heart of it is that we have not learned how to sit with those feelings and sensations, and have bypassed them so much that the bypassing is actually now part of the norm.”

Stress at work, in relationships, and with family is being suppressed in our bodies, swirling through us, but unable to fully pass through when unaddressed. Tam likens this process to our digestive system, which metabolizes what we eat and then pushes it out of our bodies. “[The stress] is supposed to leave your body, but a lot of us are constipated; we hold the toxic stuff in, and we don’t actually allow it to pass through our body,” Tam says.

Retracing Our Steps

To begin the healing process, we need to revisit the past, to identify invisible threads throughout our lives.

Examine childhood wounds

“Were your parents making really shitty decisions and … enacting harm unintentionally?” Tam asks. “This is one of the hardest steps for Asians because we still — to this day — see our parents as gods. There’s a sense of idealization, like they’re untouchable and you can’t talk shit about them because it’ll feel like you’re airing your dirty laundry … That is just not the case. It’s really about seeing your parents as human beings.”

When we are dismissive of their humanity, we can’t explore the depth of the pain that we’ve experienced as children that directly impact current-day patterns. Tam describes how children often live in the binary of good and bad. When the idealization of their caregivers goes unchecked, children often build a fantasy world that centers their caregiver’s behaviors as the ideal. If a parent is seen as “good,” the child may put all their energy into feeling indebted to them, to the point of the child — as a youth or an adult — sacrificing their own desires in an unhealthy way. On the flip side, if a parent is seen as “bad,” the child may become stubborn and refuse to do anything for them (and eventually, in their workplace or adult relationships), and see themselves as a victim.

Examining childhood wounds means traveling back in time and identifying the imprints of past experiences. For example, you have a critical and harsh manager, and your brain tells you that you’re used to that. You know how to function and accept it, because that response is stamped in your brain. Tam challenges us to dive into the experiences that created those imprints. In your childhood times of need, what did you get and what did you actually need?

Identify the “Parent Gap” and then grieve and accept your parents
for who they are

The crux of this step is recognizing and accepting “the gap between the fantasy of who you thought [your parents] were and who they actually are,” as Tam defines the “Parent Gap.” Truly see your parents for who they are and not who your younger or current self wants them to be, which takes much unlearning. “You may need to hold many, many funerals for your fantasy parents,” Tam says.

In the book “Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent,” author Iris Chen encourages readers to know their parents’ stories and complicated histories to understand their parenting styles and decisions. 

“Instead of simply blaming them for our pain, we can choose to understand the family trauma and social injustices that set the stage for their own stories. We can extend grace as we become more aware of our shared wounds,” Chen writes.

Reparent yourself

This is where the main work of healing comes in. Many of us are independent adults who function daily without our parents’ assistance, yet we still give them ultimate authority in our lives. We may still seek their approval and base big and small decisions on their opinions — or what we believe their opinions would be. This can translate into a need for external validation from romantic partners, co-workers, managers, and friends because we haven’t developed the muscle of reparenting ourselves and being our own nurturing parent.

Tam describes the goal of connecting with the highest version of ourselves and creating a secure home base to return to — a home that is not messy or traumatic, the home you never got. “See yourself as a home that you can return to and kick your shoes off, [where you] can be totally yourself, where you can access the part of us that’s completely untouched by trauma,” Tam says.

Once we see ourselves as a secure home base, we need to practice stepping out and building new beliefs that disconfirm our existing biases. Tam gives the example of engaging with hypercritical parents who are quick to criticize every decision you make or provide unsolicited advice. 

Many of us wrestle with our boundaries

Do I stay in touch with my parents? If so, how often? Do I bring up my frustrations and try to work through them together? Or do I cut ties?

If we choose to continue engaging, it’s important to try to create experiences that differ from expectations formed by previous interactions. In this scenario, you may expect or assume that your parents will, once again, express their disapproval of your job, your partner, your haircut. You cannot change your parents’ reaction, but you can change your internal response in a way that leaves you feeling more positive about your time with them. 

Before, during, and after seeing your parents, care for your inner child who has, for so long, sought approval from your parents, Tam says. This may mean telling your 8-year-old self, “I can see you’re doing your OCD behaviors before you see your parents. You’re pacing back and forth, you’re sweating, you’re procrastinating and resisting,” and then comforting and soothing your inner child with affirmations of her worth, even in the midst of a conversation with your parents.

In Chen’s book, she suggests focusing on a mantra, prayer, word, song, or image to rewrite the scripts imprinted on our minds and bodies. Chen chose the word “delight” for herself, describing it as a source of joyful intimacy that she lacked as a child “who was driven by dutiful obedience.”

As we practice reparenting ourselves, the hope is that we will walk away from previously stressful situations feeling less scathed, feeling more self-assured and comforted than before. Instead of needing several days to emotionally recover, we may only need a few hours. Being our own nurturing parent means we no longer see our parents as the ones we long to get approval from. Instead, we will long for approval from ourselves.

From Awareness to Healing: How Do I Get There?

The task of reparenting oneself may feel like a monumental task, but help exists for those who need it. Tam compares this journey of healing to a life goal, such as getting a promotion or finding a romantic partner. En route to reaching that goal, we may face mental roadblocks or construction that forces us to reroute.

“Some of those construction sites, metaphorically, are in your heart and hidden deep in your brain for a reason. … They don’t want to be touched. So you can do a lot of the work, like journaling, reflecting on social media, consuming content, but the work that is required is for someone else to look inside, from the outside,” Tam says.

An outsider can point out roadblocks that you may not see or you may even deny. Sometimes a solid friend will be that person, though that can be dicey because their truth-telling can create resentment, especially if you have not asked for their insight. Friends also may become overwhelmed to unofficially serve as your therapist.

Tam offers individual and group coaching for Asian female, nonbinary, and trans entrepreneurs who are seeking healing from attachment wounds, but she also recommends working with trauma-informed coaches and healers focused on decolonization work. Regardless of the route, Tam emphasizes that “it requires a community, which is exponentially more powerful than a single person or therapist.”

To find a therapist or to learn more about healing your inner child and reparenting yourself, Tam recommends the following resources:

• Therapy Den and Inclusive Therapists: Directories for culturally responsive, LGBTQ+ affirming, and social justice-oriented therapy
• The Unburnout Strategy: Mind-body coaching program for Asian female, nonbinary, trans entrepreneurs who want to release generational burdens in order to stop overworking and undercharging in their businesses
• Books: “What My Bones Know”: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma” by Stephanie Foo and  “Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans” by Jenny Wang

Cover Credit: Puwadon Sang-ngern/ Pexels