Is Your Childhood Sabotaging Your Relationship

“But that’s just how immigrant families are.”

I hear this sentence a lot in my practice. And honestly? It angers me when I hear this.

As the daughter of Chinese immigrants myself, I understand. I grew up thinking emotional distance was “cultural.” That parents working seven days a week and never talking about feelings was just “the immigrant way.” That criticism disguised as love was how you showed you cared.

But here’s what I’ve learned after my own healing journey and helping thousands heal their relationships: Just because something is normalized doesn’t mean it’s healthy.

The same survival strategies that helped our parents build new lives in foreign countries often created attachment wounds that we’re still carrying today.

Don’t get me wrong. Our parents come from a different generation that didn’t have the luxury of focusing on their emotional well-being. They just hustled to survive and did the best they could to raise us.

AND we were wounded because of the trauma passed on to us.

In my practice, I work with countless adult children of immigrant families. While our stories look different on the surface, the emotional patterns are remarkably similar: being shamed when you messed up, getting the silent treatment as punishment, corporal punishment disguised as discipline, being praised only for achievements, and having your emotions dismissed.

These weren’t seen as harmful—our parents just raised us the way they were raised. But shame-based parenting results in shame-based adults, who parent with shame-based parenting, and so on…one generation after the next.

How Your Wounds Show Up in Relationships Today

From childhood shame comes adult defensiveness. You can’t apologize because it feels like admitting you’re fundamentally flawed.

From silent treatment comes conflict terror. When your partner needs space, your nervous system screams “abandonment.”

From conditional love comes perfectionism. You exhaust yourself trying to be the “perfect” person because your worth still feels tied to performance.

From emotional dismissal comes disconnection. You focus on logistics but struggle to connect heart-to-heart because feelings were never safe.

The Life-Changing Truth About Healing

Here’s what changes everything: The relationship patterns that wounded you can also heal you.

When you understand that your reactions aren’t about your partner—they’re about your past—you can start responding from your adult self instead of your wounded child.

But here’s the catch—this work requires more than just understanding. Healing happens in relationship, with witnesses, in real-time.

Imagine apologizing without feeling like you’re admitting you’re fundamentally broken. Picture giving your partner space during disagreements without spiraling into abandonment terror. What would it feel like to connect with your children emotionally—not just about their achievements, but about their inner world?

Because when immigrant children heal their attachment wounds, we don’t just change our own lives. We change our family’s entire legacy.