How the parents’ expectations of their young, trap them into that VICIOUS cycle, as this still gets passed down from one generation to the next, until, one generation decides: hey, I need to, stop this SHIT, and steer life into, a new, direction, but that’s not that easy, so…translated…
One Day, the Children Will Ultimately Come to Understand, that Their Success & Achievements, Had Been, Birthed Out of Their Own Parents’, Insecurities, and We’d, Mistakenly Believed, that the Problems Were, Our from Before………………
There’s a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that belonged to the Asian female actress Wen Min Na. From “The Joy Luck Club”, “Mulan”, to “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, in the primarily white movie industries of America, she’d walked through her long career in acting. At age sixty-one, she’d tweeted a line on social media, which busted the wound of many Asian children wide, open, “when I showed off my achievements to my mother, she’d still used provocative words to try to get under my, skins”, and her mother is past age ninety.
In the comments sections, came the endless support to her. There was, “if Min Na Wen who voice-acted for ‘Mulan’ couldn’t get approval from her own, mother, then, which one of us, can?”
Our Parents’ Words, Take Them with a Grain of, Salt
I’d realized, that I’d felt, that strong connection over the response for that anonymous reader. It’s just, that it’d happened to me, when I was, before age thirty: the me then, had already been established in my career, with sizable, income already, by age eighteen, I’d become, self-sufficient, part-timed through my graduate studies, earned my, master’s degree; and I can proudly state, that compared to my younger and older brothers, I was the one, that my parents, didn’t need to worry as much over. The only thing I can think of, that would upset my own mother, was that I didn’t have a boyfriend, that I’d been single, for, many, years on, end.
And so, for a very long, long time, my mother started, becoming overly critical of my, appearances, my hairstyles, my makeup, she’d talked badly about the clothes I’d gone out and bought for myself. She’d believed, that my tastes weren’t as good as, hers, that I wasn’t, rounded enough, that was why I couldn’t, attract a, man.
how verbal abuse gets “masked” as love…illustration from UDN.com
And thinking of all of this now, these are, all very, subjective prejudices, and nagging from her, but it’d made me upset, hearing her nag still. I’d asked my mother, why she’d still picked on me, even though I was, more outstanding than my older and younger brothers? And she’d, given me a principle which a ton of Chinese women went shopping by, “being picky means you know what you’re, choosing!”, and the real meaning was, “picking on you, I’m actually, praising, you.”
Or maybe, this sort of a “verbally talking down meant praising”, we shouldn’t read too much into them, and that we must, adapt ourselves to them, to the point of, training ourselves to, stay half-deaf on.
The Forms of Love, Sometimes is Really, Distorted
The criticisms that recurred often within the families, usually come from the experiences, the emotions of our, former generations, sometimes, it’s more like that deeply rooted down culture, and we take its existence as, matter-of-fact—the adults believe that this is a form of love, that included the supervising of their young, protecting them, and care and concerns; and yet, in the minds of the offspring, it’d become interpreted as negative, to the point of, burdening.
Even as we entered into midlife and older years of life, we’d still felt, injured by these sorts of statements. Min Na Wen’s situation, it isn’t hard, to see, how a mother and daughter who are close to thirty years apart, argued hard, how humorous the scene, yet, how resigned it must, be.
Clearly, Min Na Wen cared a whole lot about what her mother thinks of, her, to the point of how she couldn’t, ignored her mother’s attitudes toward her for long. To how she’d responded to the fans’ support of her, that becoming an actress was the only way she could prove that she could do something, and stated, that she knew her mother loves her, but they couldn’t find that emotional connection toward, each other still, and she could only find the emotional support she needed from the fans.
And, there were the empathetic comments which had, “in some parents’ minds, no matter how successful their kids became, they still fall short, because they didn’t live up to the expectations of their, parents’.”
Many children are doing excellently in the academia, always wind up too tightly, with the motivations of being not good enough, that they may let their parents, down. And one day, the children will ultimately come to, understand, that their achievements, their successes, had been birthed out of their own parents’, insecurities, and mistakenly believed, that they were the problem from when they were young, and it was never, that.
it’s for your OWN good, stated the adult! Illustration from online, and how do YOU think the one on the “receiving end” of this feels???
The criticisms, the talking down, may be how our parents expressed their love for us, in a distorted, manner, but undeniably, this form of love, doesn’t, feel at all, like love to, us. The American psychologists’ advice for this problem is: through ignoring the words, and not listening to them, to avoid getting, damaged, to reduce the impacts of our parents’ words have on us. But, then again, this initiation of a protective mechanism, isn’t it cyclic of how the parents believed that their parents are, “rebellious” and “misbehaving”?
And so, this IS, a vicious cycle, that we are all living under, we always felt that we have to, live up to our parents’ expectations for us, to get high grades, to get high-end jobs, to marry, to have children, blah-blah-blah, and our parents are only, passing the exact IDENTICAL expectations that their own parents oppressed them with, to us, but because our parents aren’t aware of this enough, they couldn’t stop this SHIT, but in our generations (hopefully, we are all, WISE enough, because of how much SHIT we’d bore witness to???), we can actively decide, to NOT pass this same kind of SHIT down to our young, but that’s, rarely the case, because this SHIT is EXACTLY like DNA! It WILL pass down from one generation to the next, because, we ain’t got no clue of what happened, and, even IF we got a CLUE, it still takes a whole lot of work, to decide: HEY we gotta change, to NOT pass this SHIT down to our own young, to NOT make them go through the exact same HELL we’d been put through by our own fucking stupid, parents, and that’s not that easy to do, so yeah, shit still rolls!
Mirroring the World 