A reflection on shame, survival, and the emotional inheritance of Asian and immigrant families.

So you’ve decided to start or are thinking about starting therapy.

You’ve realised that something hasn’t felt quite right inside you for a while. Perhaps there is something about your family dynamic that feels off, and you can sense it may be connected to what you carry within yourself.

But then another thought appears:

“Can I actually say this out loud to someone?”…

Content note: This piece contains reflections on death, dying, and bereavement. Please read only if you feel emotionally resourced to do so.

Following on from my last blog post, as I approach the seventh anniversary of my mum’s sudden death, I feel able - perhaps for the first time - to process more fully the terror of a parent dying. This has come from several relationships, including the one with Alexis*, no longer existing. With their ending, my mother is no longer still “alive” through them. I am now able to grieve her fully, as my mother - and all the projections and iterations of her - are all dead.

I have just come from therapy (yes, therapists also need their own therapists)…

How the Asian mother wound can shape adult friendships through trauma bonding, emotional labour, and enmeshment - a psychotherapist’s reflection. *all names have been changed to protect identity.

Let me start at the end. The end of my Amma’s (Mum in Tamil) life was sudden and therefore carried additional trauma – four months of ‘symptoms but no signs’ metastatic breast cancer, followed by a quick, breathless demise a week after diagnosis, felt like sudden death by car crash…