Parenting Shaped by Trauma: Successful Adults, Intergenerational Trauma, and Healing

Why I Became Interested in Intergenerational Trauma: A  Psychologist’s Reflection

A Few weeks ago, I had the privilege of presenting on the mental health impact of  intergenerational trauma among second-generation Asian American adults at the 3rd Convention  of Asian Pacific American Feminist Psychology. 

Although this topic is supported by research and clinical theory, my interest in it did not begin in  academia. It emerged gradually through years of listening to clients’ stories and noticing patterns  that initially seemed unrelated but eventually fit together like pieces of a puzzle. 

During my psychology internship, I worked in Asian and Pacific Islander community mental  health settings with individuals experiencing severe and persistent mental illness. Many of my  clients were older adults who had survived war, political violence, displacement, poverty, and  migration. Some had fled the Vietnam War, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge genocide, the Chinese  Cultural Revolution, or other historical tragedies across Asia. Many arrived in the United States  as refugees carrying unimaginable losses and extraordinary resilience. 

Many depended on Medicare or Medi-Cal and struggled financially. Yet despite their hardships,  there was one source of joy they consistently spoke about with pride: their children. 

They often shared these stories with remarkable emotional restraint. Their facial  expressions rarely changed, and they seldom displayed overt excitement. Yet as  I listened, I could unmistakably sense the deep pride they felt in their children. 

Our conversations often followed a familiar pattern. 

If their child had not yet been accepted into college, they worried constantly  about getting into the “right” school. Once the child was admitted, the worry  shifted to whether it was a prestigious enough university. After graduation, the  concern became finding a good job. Once a job was secured, they worried whether it was successful enough. Then came questions about marriage. If the child married, the next concern was grandchildren. If there was one grandchild, they wondered why there wasn’t a second.

The finish line seemed to keep moving. As a young therapist, I sometimes smiled to myself and wondered, “Do parents ever stop worrying?”

Over time, I realized that these worries were not simply criticism or

dissatisfaction. For many of these parents, worrying was another language of

love. It was how they expressed care, responsibility, and hope for their children’s

future.

Beneath the endless concerns was unmistakable pride. Their children’s

accomplishments represented far more than individual success. They

symbolized safety after years of uncertainty, opportunities that the parents

themselves had never had, and the fulfillment of sacrifices made through war,

migration, poverty, and displacement.

Looking back now, I understand that while they often spoke the language of

worry, what they were really trying to say was, “I love my child, and I want them

to have a life better than mine.”

Their children’s success represented hope, sacrifice fulfilled, and proof that their suffering had meant something.

At the time, I focused on treating the person sitting in front of me. I never imagined that years later, I would encounter another chapter of the same story.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, I transitioned into private practice after completing my residency in a correctional setting. Initially, I worked with a diverse range of clients from many cultural backgrounds: immigrants, Asian Americans, Jewish, White, Black, Hispanic, LGBTQAI+, and those navigating significant life transitions, trauma, loss, and identity-related challenges. As anAsian immigrant psychologist, however, I naturally began receiving more referrals from Asian and immigrant communities. My practice includes both insurance-based and private-pay clients, and over time I found myself working increasingly with highly educated, financially stable, and professionally successful individuals.

It was a dramatic shift in the socioeconomic population I served.

From the outside, these clients appeared to have everything society values. They were

physicians, attorneys, engineers, professors, executives, entrepreneurs, musicians, and

psychologists. They had achieved the very dreams that many immigrant parents hold for their children.

Yet I began noticing something curious.

Not all of these successful clients struggled emotionally. However, among some of them, I observed recurring themes: chronic guilt, relentless perfectionism, anxiety, burnout, harsh self-criticism, difficulty experiencing joy, discomfort expressing emotions, and an overwhelming fearof disappointing others.

I became increasingly curious about what connected these clients.

As I listened more carefully to their family histories, another pattern emerged. Many described parents who had arrived in the United States as refugees or who had fled war, political persecution, or instability in their countries of origin. Their parents had survived extraordinary circumstances and sacrificed tremendously to provide safety and opportunity for their children.

Yet the pieces of the puzzle still floated around in my mind without fully coming together.

Then one of the most important pieces arrived from an unexpected place.

One of the earliest clients in my private practice was a 63-year-old Jewish woman who sharedthe profound impact that intergenerational trauma had on her husband’s family. Her husband’s parents had survived the Holocaust and endured unimaginable suffering in Nazi concentration camps.

She explained that adult children of Holocaust survivors often gathered in support groups in the Jewish Service Center, because they recognized similar emotional experiences growing up.

Although their parents loved them deeply and sacrificed enormously, the trauma of the Holocaust had shaped how they expressed love and navigated relationships.

In the concentration camps, expressing emotions could be dangerous. Fear, grief, anger, hope, and vulnerability had to be tightly controlled. Emotional restraint became a survival skill.

When survivors returned to ordinary life, married, and became parents, those survival strategies often remained.

According to my client, her husband’s parents were devoted caregivers. They worked hard, provided food, education, transportation, and safety. Their love was evident through sacrifice and service.

However, affection was rarely expressed verbally or physically. There were few hugs. “I lov you” was rarely spoken. Emotional conversations felt uncomfortable. Sleepovers were

discouraged because safety remained an overriding concern.

As these children became adults, many found themselves confused. They knew intellectually that they had been loved, yet emotionally they often felt disconnected from their parents. Some struggled with intimacy, emotional expression, and parenting because they had never experienced those forms of connection themselves.

My client described how challenging it had been to raise her own children with her husband, while carrying the invisible legacy of trauma inherited from the his previous generation.

At the time, I listened primarily as her therapist. Yet her husband’s story lingered in my mind long after our sessions ended.

Then, as I continued listening to the stories of my Asian American clients, it felt as though the final missing piece of the puzzle suddenly clicked into place.

I realized that many of the highly successful second-generation Asian American adults I was treating were, in some ways, the children of the refugee and immigrant clients I had worked with years earlier during my internship.

The severe trauma I had witnessed in one generation had not disappeared.

It had quietly shaped parenting practices, emotional expression, expectations, and family relationships in the next generation.

This realization transformed the way I understood my clients’ struggles.

Their pain made sense.

But so did their parents’.

It was a transformative moment as a clinician.

I realized that Holocaust survivors were not the only parents whose trauma shaped the next generation. Across cultures, unprocessed trauma often leaves remarkably similar footprints in family relationships.

Whether the trauma originated from war, genocide, political persecution, famine, forced

migration, or displacement, the parenting patterns often looked surprisingly familiar: emotional restraint, hypervigilance, overprotection, intense focus on achievement, and difficulty expressing affection.

The parents were trying to survive.

The children were trying to live.

One aspect of Asian parenting that has become famous worldwide is the phenomenon known as the “Tiger Mom.”

Growing up in an Asian family, many of us did not realize our childhood experiences would one  day become Netflix content. 

What many of us considered normal—extra math workbooks during summer vacation, parents  checking grades before asking if we had eaten, and the belief that a B+ required an immediate  family meeting about our future—has now become a topic of global fascination. 

And let’s be honest: Asian parents had a reputation for helicopter parenting long before the term  became popular. 

Some parents did not simply know where their children were; in fact, they knew where they  were, who they were with, what they were doing, what they should have been doing instead, and  had already selected a respectable profession before the child had learned multiplication. 

Today, thanks to Netflix, documentaries, and social media, the rest of the world has become  fascinated by parenting practices that many second-generation Asian Americans would describe  as a fairly ordinary Tuesday afternoon. 

But as a psychologist, I became interested in a deeper question. 

Why did so many immigrant parents become Tiger Moms and Helicopter Parents in the first  place? 

The answer, I believe, is often found in history. 

Many first-generation Asian immigrants did not grow up in stable environments. They grew up  during wars, military occupations, revolutions, famines, genocide, and political upheaval. For  many families across Asia, survival was not a theoretical concern. It was a daily reality. 

When you have experienced food shortages, family separation, political persecution, refugee  camps, or the loss of everything you once knew, uncertainty becomes terrifying. 

From this perspective, Tiger Parenting begins to make more sense. 

Straight A’s are no longer just grades. 

They are safety. 

A stable career is no longer simply a career. 

It is protection against future suffering. 

Saving money is not merely responsibility. 

It is insurance against catastrophe. 

Monitoring your child’s every move is not necessarily about control. 

Sometimes it is about fear. 

Fear that opportunities can disappear overnight. 

Fear that something terrible might happen. 

Fear that your child may experience the same hardships you endured. 

The irony is that many parents who worked tirelessly to protect their children from external  dangers unintentionally created internal pressures. 

The children succeeded. 

They graduated from prestigious universities. 

They became physicians, attorneys, engineers, psychologists, executives, and entrepreneurs. Many achieved the American Dream. 

Unfortunately, nobody told them that after achieving the dream, they were supposed to enjoy it. Instead, many arrived in my office exhausted. 

Some struggled with perfectionism, anxiety, chronic guilt, emotional numbness, imposter  syndrome, people-pleasing, and a relentless feeling that nothing they accomplished was ever  quite enough. 

Perhaps the most common symptom is not anxiety or perfectionism at all. It is that many clients genuinely do not know: 

• How to relax. 

• How to know when they are good enough. 

• How to make mistakes without feeling they have failed their family. 

• How to enjoy the life they worked so hard to build. 

As I reflected more deeply on my clients’ stories, I became increasingly interested in how trauma  quietly shapes the ordinary moments of family life. 

Trauma does not only exist in flashbacks, nightmares, or dramatic events. Often, it changes the way people love. 

Parents who have survived war, genocide, political persecution, forced migration, famine,  poverty, or prolonged uncertainty may continue to experience the world as unpredictable and  unsafe long after the danger has passed. 

As a result, parenting may become shaped by fear rather than emotional availability. 

Parents who experienced scarcity may insist that their children pursue financially secure careers  because achievement represents protection. 

Parents who learned that emotions were dangerous may discourage crying, avoid emotional  conversations, or respond to distress with statements such as, “Be strong” or “Other people have  it worse.” 

Parents who lived through profound losses may become overprotective, restricting independence  because letting go feels dangerous. 

Some parents express love primarily through sacrifice and acts of service rather than emotional  connection. 

Children growing up in these environments often adapt in remarkable ways. They become highly responsible. 

They become experts at reading other people’s emotions. 

They learn to prioritize harmony over authenticity. 

Many unconsciously develop beliefs such as: 

“If I achieve enough, my parents will worry less.” 

“If I don’t make mistakes, everyone will be okay.” 

“My needs are less important than keeping peace.” 

“I should be grateful.” 

“I don’t have the right to complain.” 

These beliefs help children maintain attachment and connection. 

However, the very strategies that helped them survive emotionally in childhood may become  sources of suffering in adulthood. 

I often hear statements such as: 

“I have to answer my mother’s phone calls immediately because it might be an emergency.” 

(The emergency sometimes turns out to be that it might rain later and I should bring an  umbrella.) 

“I don’t want to take care of everyone, but I feel like it’s my duty.” 

“I don’t know who I am outside of my job.” 

“I can’t divorce because that would mean I failed.” 

“My parents sacrificed everything for me. How can I choose my own needs?”

“I know they love me, but I don’t know if they know me.” 

“I have everything I was supposed to want, but I still don’t feel happy.” 

Not every second-generation Asian American adult experiences these struggles. Many grow up in emotionally attuned, flexible, and supportive families. 

However, among some individuals whose parents carried significant histories of displacement,  refugee experiences, or unprocessed trauma, these patterns emerge with striking consistency. 

This is where feminist therapy has been profoundly meaningful in my clinical work. 

Rather than asking, “What is wrong with this client?” Feminist therapy asks, “What happened  within this client’s family, culture, history, and social environment that shaped these beliefs and  coping strategies?” 

It recognizes that many struggles are not simply individual deficits. They are responses to  systems of power, survival, immigration, racism, patriarchy, and family hierarchy. 

Feminist therapy also helps reduce shame. 

Clients often blame themselves for not being happier, more grateful, or more resilient. They  wonder why they cannot simply “get over it” when their parents suffered so much more. 

Through a feminist lens, they begin to understand that acknowledging their pain does not  dishonor their parents’ sacrifices. 

Both realities can coexist. 

Their parents endured extraordinary hardships.

They also experienced emotional wounds.

Compassion for one generation does not require silence from the next.

Healing often begins when clients recognize that guilt is not always evidence that they are doing something wrong. Sometimes guilt reflects the discomfort of changing long-standing relational patterns.

Through therapy, clients begin identifying which values genuinely belong to them and which were inherited through fear.

They learn that boundaries are not betrayals.

They practice expressing emotions that were once forbidden.

They develop self-compassion to soften the harsh inner critic that has driven them for years.

As my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh often taught, healing begins with understanding.

Awareness creates choice.

Perhaps most importantly, clients discover that they can honor their cultural heritage without abandoning themselves.

They can appreciate their parents’ resilience without inheriting all of their fears.

They can remain connected to family while also cultivating autonomy.

In many ways, feminist therapy offers permission to move from survival toward choice, from obligation toward authenticity, and from inherited silence toward voice.

This is not a rejection of previous generations.

It is an act of healing across generations.

Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of sitting with both generations: parents who survived unimaginable hardships and children who inherited the emotional echoes of those hardships.

The parents taught me about resilience.

The children taught me about the hidden costs of survival.

Both taught me the same lesson:

Trauma can be passed from one generation to the next.

But healing can be passed down, too.

Perhaps that is the most hopeful part of this work. We cannot change the past, but we can change what gets carried forward.

As psychologists, we have the privilege of helping people understand both the burdens and the strengths they inherit while supporting them in creating futures guided not only by survival, but also by choice, connection, authenticity, and hope.

Best Regard,

Dr Jeongmi Moon