Rebirth of Passion for Asian Americans

I want to write today about a topic that is central to my life and my life’s work. The topic is the rebirth and revitalization of Asian Americans as creative and passionate human beings.

The Asian America I grew up in was one in a standstill. I and many of my Asian American peers (but definitely not all) experienced a very comfortable material upbringing, growing up in a big house in a good neighborhood with enough disposable household income to make regular trips to Asia and attend college. We were taught that our good fortune came directly from the suffering and hard work of our immigrant parents. Our feelings were placed on a binary scale. Either our feelings praised and validated the narrative of our parents and justified their choices and experiences. Or our feelings were ungrateful and a mistake, if we dared to express discontentment or displeasure.

I think expressing discontentment and displeasure is one matter, but very often we Asian Americans wanted to express that we were hurt and wounded. We were also displaced, in a country that we do not physically or culturally fit in. We also did not have a manual to navigate a bicultural existence. We were also youths, experiencing the universal confusion and emotion of life. There was a lot we had to express, didn’t know how to express, and were essentially forbid from expressing.

We were told by our parents that we were fortunate because we had clothes on our back, food on the table, and prospects for a good education and career. We were told that we were the winners. And yet, most of us were never encouraged to leverage these blessings for self-actualization and happiness.

Self-Actualization means to become the best possible version of yourself that you have the potential to be. As logical and natural as this would be for parents to wish this for their children, it is very understandable from a historical trauma perspective why Asian parents frequently do not wish this.

Many Asian cultures have been consumed with fear and scarcity dynamics that threaten people’s existence if they choose to individuate against the preferences of the collective. In some senses, staying within the safety of a collective is smart, but most Asians are wired through an intergenerational context that is dangerous to individuate. Historical examples will include any time there has been national persecution and censorship for expressing different beliefs or any kind of caste or class-based social hierarchy system. If you stay in the confines of your role that has been time-tested and vetted by tradition, at the least you will survive. If you ever dare to pursue your dreams or speak your mind, you may starve on the streets or worse, lose your life.

Elder worship schemes are incredibly prevalent in Asian culture, and as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I find them as one of the biggest obstacles to family harmony. Elder worship is another distorted concept that has been used to exert oppressive power dynamics over young people and children. It maintains that elders are never wrong in their wisdom or that it is disrespectful to correct or offer a different opinion than an elder. It abuses a child’s natural inclination to seek bonding with their adult caregivers and sets them up to be people pleasers with weak boundaries in order to maintain a sense of belonging and community. It teaches children to bypass their own intuition that tells them to leave hurtful people and situations and replaces it with the idea that even if they are not happy or safe, at least they won’t be alone. The elder worship scheme is rarely challenged systemically, because the young people rationalize that one day they will become elders and it will be their turn to mete out abuse to the new young people. In a way, you can conceptualize this as ‘fair’, but it irrevocably damages families and societies. This family system produces descendants that are not able to trust their own thoughts and intuition, which means they cannot take fresh and innovative actions. A system that always defers to the past cannot progress and will deteriorate.

For Asian parents to support their child’s self-actualization, it means that they must hold a framework that it is healthy and natural for their children to think differently and do things differently than them. It entails developing emotional regulation and healthy communication skills to facilitate a trust rapport even when parents and children actively hold different opinions. It would also require Asian parents to relinquish their fear of the unknown as the child’s self-actualization means they are expanding into the unknown.

Alas, I do not write this post for Asian immigrant parents, because even though I can name the skills it would take for them to be better parents, they must first do their own emotional work for themselves and sift through their intergenerational trauma. Unfortunately, I don’t see this happening very often.

I write this post for the Asian Americans, so that they can have a framework and idea for the intergenerational patterns that hold them back and find their autonomy as humans. The ingrained fear and scarcity mindset does not help us fulfill our dreams and support our community. In order to make a difference, we Asian Americans will need to do something different. We can make contributions into industries that meet our passions and support society, rather than lean on a ‘safe’ career that only temporarily pacifies your fear of insecurity. We can explore our inner worlds and emotions as a full human, not as a humanoid playing a role that must be vetted or vetoed by an Asian elder.

I spent my youth as an Asian American, feeling that most of my Asian American peers weren’t alive. We followed rules and duties - went to school and got good grades. We existed in Asian subcommunities of Anime and Kpop in order to cope with the pain of having to live invisibly in front of our parents and in front of American society. We were not given explicit space to be or want. In Polyvagal theory, they discuss how humans need to see warm and smiling faces in order to for nervous systems to know that we are in a safe space. As Asian Americans, we didn’t really smile. Our Asian immigrant parents didn’t really smile either. In a nutshell, this means that nobody in this cultural/family system is feeling truly safe… with outsiders or even with the family. And if this occurs on a macro-context, we Asian Americans are in big trouble. I grew up thinking Asians didn’t smile because it was a cultural trait to be modest and reserved. As a mental health professional, I now see this as a powerful marker of how emotionally traumatized Asians are in family contexts and societal contexts. It’s literally on our faces.

Spiritually, there is a need for us Asian Americans to accelerate this particular healing topic. We keep looping, staying in these dense and stagnant patterns because we internalize it as our identity as an Asian person or Asian child. We have been conditioned not to question our status even when we are visibly suffering. I can see Asian Americans stagnating further than other groups to shift into a 5D frequency because we are so attached to our cultural identity of suffering.

What is the action step here? I guess the action step is to treat yourself as you treat your non-Asian friends. Actually listen to your wants and needs and pursue them. Care for yourself tenderly like you matter. Support your nervous system as you challenge the layered social conditioning that has told you that you are just a subordinate in somebody else’s world. Cry and scream, because you are a human too.

Helpful links: Self Actualization and Our Face and the Vagus Nerve