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…
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