Intergenerational Trauma in Asian American Families, Part 1

The Ghosts We Inherit

Have you ever caught yourself saying something to your child that sounds exactly like your mother? I don’t have children but I’ve caught myself scolding my cat in Korean the way my mother used to scold me as a child. Or have you noticed yourself reacting to stress in ways that mirror your father's coping mechanisms? I worked with a client who felt incredibly burdened by any responsibility and became very avoidant around tasks or obligations in her life. Through time, we recognized that her father modeled this particular way of coping and related avoidance behaviors. Sometimes these inherited patterns are benign and don’t cause us too much trouble, but sometimes they get in the way of goals we have for ourselves and can stunt our growth and progress.

Inherited patterns are the shadows of traumas that haven't fully healed, passing silently from one generation to the next. As a psychologist working with Asian American women, I frequently see how historical and family traumas shape present-day experiences, often outside of one’s conscious awareness. One client described it perfectly: "I feel like I'm carrying not just my own pain, but my mother's, my grandmother's, and perhaps generations before them that I never even met." In my own therapy, I’ve come to realize that connecting with my mother means also connecting to the guilt she feels for leaving her family “behind” in Korea. With that guilt comes the pressure to give and do a lot to compensate for that absence. (Quick side-note: I re-enact this with my cat too in the form of separation anxiety.)

What Is Intergenerational Trauma?

Intergenerational trauma refers to the ways in which trauma experienced by one generation can live on in the choices, inhibitions, anxieties, and desires of descendants who didn't directly experience the original traumatic events. This transmission happens through complex interactions of biological, psychological, familial, and social-cultural factors.

For Asian American families, these original traumas might include:

• War experiences (Korean War, Vietnam War aka American War, World War II)

• Genocide (e.g., Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot in Cambodia, East Timor)

• Displacement and refugee experiences

• Immigration trauma and acculturation stress

• Colonial oppression

• Poverty and economic hardship

• Political or religious persecution

• Family separations (due to war, politics, or gender oppression)

• Racism and discrimination in the U.S.

• Gender-based violence (aka “domestic” or interpersonal violence)

Let’s review some common examples to understand how these traumatic events affect later generations. Although my mother was born after the Korean War ended, she was raised in the aftermath of the war. Growing up, she experienced food shortages and extreme poverty. Given this period of extreme scarcity of resources my mother and her siblings experienced during such a formative stage of life, they are prone to persistent anxiety and hypervigilance. Moreover, a general pattern I’ve observed is that they put extreme pressure on their children to succeed academically and professionally in order to avoid the deprivation they experienced early in life. You can see how the desire for their children to “succeed” is coming from a protective and well-intentioned place. However, if the older generation does not have the capacity to take in new information, reduce their fear/anxiety, and negotiate a new understanding of life with their loved one, this pressure to succeed can be the source of chronic conflict and tension.

Let’s look at another common example. A woman in her 20s finds that despite a stable and uneventful childhood, she has a great deal of anxiety in romantic relationships and finds she has an extreme fear of abandonment. Her fear of being abandoned by someone she cares about is so great that even when she meets a person she might want to date for a while, she gets too nervous after the third date and ghosts them. She might spend some time in therapy trying to understand why this pattern has emerged for her and how to stop it. She and the therapist might spend some time excavating childhood or trying to understand her attachment style. In the end, these efforts in therapy feel a little unsatisfying because there are no outstanding experiences from earlier in life that shaped her reaction today. But then let’s say one day, this person and her therapist start talking about her mother’s life and they realize that her mother carries a great deal of unresolved grief over siblings from whom she was separated after the Korean War. Over time and through much discussion, the woman realizes that she was impacted by her mother’s profound sense of loss and sadness and internalized that the worst thing that can happen to her is to lose someone and in this way, she has a new insight about her approach to relationships.

How Trauma Gets Transmitted Across Generations

Through Stories Told and Untold

Sometimes trauma is transmitted through direct storytelling—e.g., hearing about grandmother's escape from war or grandfather's struggles as a new immigrant. But silence tells stories too. Many Asian cultures emphasize "not dwelling on the past" or "staying strong by not complaining." These cultural narratives, while well-intentioned, can prevent processing and healing from traumatic experiences.

Here’s an example. Let’s say there’s a mother who never discussed fleeing Vietnam by boat, but would become visibly distressed during rainstorms or when near large bodies of water. Without context for these reactions, her daughter internalized anxiety around water without understanding why.

Through Parenting Patterns

Trauma shapes how people parent. A mother who experienced food scarcity might show love by overfeeding her children. A father who lived through political instability might emphasize security and discourage risk-taking. Parents who experienced discrimination might teach their children to “keep their heads down” and avoid drawing attention.

These parenting adaptations made sense in the original context, but may not serve their children well in different circumstances.

Through Biological Pathways

Emerging research suggests that trauma can even affect gene expression through epigenetic changes. A recent review (2020) published in Journal of Traumatic Stress suggests that DNA methylation and other genetic changes are implicated in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. DNA methylation is “a process that can silence or activate genes without altering the DNA sequence itself” (summarized text by Consensus.app) and this is one of the mechanisms that has been identified as being induced by trauma. Among trauma researchers, it is well known that the offspring of Holocaust survivors experience what is called “epigenetic inheritance,” whereby trauma-induced changes in genes are passed on to future generations. In many cases, the genetic changes are in stress-related genes, making the descendant more vulnerable to stress and psychiatric disorders.

More About Intergenerational Trauma - Part 2

I decided to break this up into two parts after the first draft because I unfortunately don’t have the attention span to read or write something longer than this! More to come, including how to know if you’re impacted by intergenerational trauma, and what you can do about it.