![]() ![]() How Do You Heal From Intergenerational Trauma? They may also feel like they have to make their parents’ pain and sacrifice “worth it” by achieving the goals their parents never had the chance to try for. This can look like hiding their feelings in order to make sure that their parents’ feelings are not hurt. My problems could never compare, so I never told her about my feelings and troubles.”Īs children grow older, they may feel like their emotions are a burden on their parents and other people, or that they are responsible for their parents’ or others’ emotional wellbeing. She would also tell me about the constant fear of violence and danger that she experienced just going about her daily life. As a child, she would often tell me how she and my sister went hungry, and how I was lucky that I never had to worry about food. “My mom and my older sister left Viet Nam in the 1980s, after the war. To illustrate, here’s a brief story from a 25-year-old second-generation Vietnamese woman. However, this can negatively impact children, who become accustomed to hearing other people’s pain without being able to address their own. Many parents tell their children the difficult past they endured in order to motivate their children to succeed. They also learn relationship patterns through interacting with their parents. Children mirror the coping strategies of their parents and caregivers, so they may learn that keeping quiet about their feelings is the only way to cope. Intergenerational trauma can have both short-term and long-term impacts on children. What is the Impact of Intergenerational Trauma? You should not be struggling.” While these comments may come from a place of misunderstanding and a hope for their children to have better lives, they can still be hurtful. Why are you having trouble?” or “I escaped to give you a better opportunity. Many young Southeast Asian Americans have heard comments, such as “I went to school during a war. ![]() Parents might also unintentionally minimize their children’s feelings (in comparison to their own history of pain) or expect them to handle more responsibility than is age-appropriate. ![]() They might isolate themselves when they are feeling pain, or they might be irritable and impatient with their child when they are requesting assistance. Parents who are still processing their own emotional pain may not be available to care for their children’s emotional needs. For example, many Southeast Asian grandparents and parents experienced war trauma (e.g., the Viet Nam War), and that trauma can become intergenerational when those feelings of hurt, pain, or fear are passed down to their grandchildren and children. Trauma can impact a caregiver’s parenting style or behavior. The trauma that these grandparents and parents experienced can then be passed down. We believe that discussing intergenerational trauma is necessary in our support of Asian American communities, as many have experienced political conflict, war, oppression, economic turmoil, or the fear of a refugee fleeing violence and danger. I hope that others who have had the same or similar experiences may find it and know that they are not alone.We wanted to dedicate a blog specifically to intergenerational trauma, which is trauma (or pain) that gets passed down from the generation who experienced it to the following generations. Through this play, I want to add my perspective as the child of Vietnamese immigrants to the current theatre canon, and to increase awareness of intergenerational trauma and its effects on mental health. Then, I will explain how my research helped me write each of my characters. In this paper, I will first give background on the literature of refugee and intergenerational trauma. My research into the effects of trauma on mental health also inspired the ways that I represent the mental state of the characters in The Specter. I also studied other refugee populations, which gave me a broader perspective on the situations and outcomes of the refugee experience. Throughout this process, my research in intergenerational and refugee trauma allowed me to craft more realistic characters based on data collected on those affected by the Vietnamese diaspora. Over the course of a year faced with obstacles such as a worldwide pandemic caused by COVID-19, I was able to write, perform, film, and edit a production of a play about the experience of a child of Vietnamese refugees under the direction of Sabera Shaik, owner of the Masakini Theatre Company in Malaysia. My play and performance of The Specter: A First Generation Play views the experience of the Vietnamese-American diaspora from the perspective of the generation after the refugee generation and examines the effects of refugee trauma across multiple generations. ![]()
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