Unlearning Fear, Finding Authenticity: Navigating First-Gen [Immigrant] Upbringings.

Written by Maraam Haque, Registered Psychotherapist, qualifying

Growing up in strict households, many experiences a unique blend of love and structure; warmth and rigidity. Our families cheer us on with their support for our academic efforts -  maybe not with words- but with a plate of freshly cut fruit after a tough day of reminding us how valuable hard work is. Yet, the same loving homes that nurture us can also set strong expectations about who we should become and what we ought to achieve, sometimes leaving us with less space to express ourselves and find our way.

I did not meet the immigrant parents’ standard of success: a doctor, lawyer or engineer. Even worse, I became a mental health care professional working with others who share similar lived experiences and I have begun to notice a pattern. Between forced piano lessons, birthday presents only after straight As, and buying snacks over and over again - because I said I liked it once -  there is indefinite love and affection. However, that same environment also reinforced rigid expectations about success, worth, and obedience. To be loved meant pleasing my parents first, disconnecting from myself which led to a lot of inauthenticity. Becoming a psychotherapist and following my values and wishes was the first act of deviance against my parents. Despite the discomfort within myself, it helped me understand more about my upbringing and patterns.

                ....Intergenerational Trauma

It was hard to recognize that my upbringing was not ideal. It was hard to complain when I had two parents, food on the table, and they did show care for me. However, these environments can become invalidating, especially for emotional and psychological needs. I grew up with strong patterns of fear-based parenting to teach myself and my siblings which often felt like being on a rollercoaster I never got in line for. Young people are often impacted immensely by the intergenerational trauma that many families face stemming from displacement, cultural dissonance, and systemic inequities 

Fear-based parenting: characterized by instilling punishment, shame, and strict control through fear to motivate children, often becomes a default approach in families with intergenerational trauma. Parents, grappling with their emotional dysregulation and past traumas, may unintentionally project their anxieties onto their children. In these households, success and failure are framed in stark binaries: one is either an exemplary achiever or a disappointment. Even doing well sometimes had challenges, it was common to hear about your friends over dinner, “Did you hear she got straight As? Why can’t you be more like that?” building animosity between cousins, or worse - siblings. Such rigid expectations can leave children to navigate a fine line between gaining parental approval and not feeding into division or fear.

Parents who endure the pressures of survival and assimilation often focus on ensuring their children’s success through very narrow perspectives, and domineering choices. Furthermore, they reassure that once the rules they set out are achieved, emotional balance and peace will fall into place. “You must work hard now. You will have fun, rest and be able to go on vacation when you are 30.” The other underlying message is that until you have your career you cannot go on vacation. (The first time I went somewhere with my friends, I was 21. I bought my “non-refundable” plane tickets first, then told my parents).

The repeated use of an anxious and fear-based approach and the child’s need for parental approval and emotional support can override emotional nourishment and starve certain attachment needs. It posits a strong theory for why these relationships can become lifelong self-fulfilling prophecies or patterns that perpetuate when not challenged.

These families often experience enmeshment: an intense closeness and blurring of lines between people and experiences. An incredibly strict household, with emotionally unsupportive parents who ride on the possibility of success and emotional support of children, can be an incredibly difficult relationship to separate feelings, maintain autonomy, and establish healthy boundaries between parents and children. At the end of that rope is a spectrum of experiences, lives, and life outcomes. Childhood dynamics with parents can often play a huge part in understanding the world: rules, how to succeed, and love. 

Attachment is fundamental to a child’s development. Scientists state that when caretakers provide a sense of holistic safety and security, a child can grow to be confident, emotionally regulated and have a strong sense of self-worth that often sets the stage for adult life. However, when children must choose between parental attachment and authentic selves, they often sacrifice authenticity to preserve emotional connection. This dynamic fosters a survival mechanism where children suppress their true thoughts and emotions to align with parental expectations, creating a lifelong struggle between external validation and self-acceptance.  

Here are some common patterns of how such experiences may show up in life:

Toxic Productivity 

Growing up, working hard in school, building a career, and gaining knowledge were essential. When certain grades are not kept, privileges may be taken away. I remember feeling shame or fear based on certain results. Could you travel to go to a conference for school? Yes. Could you go to the library or a cafe to study, no questions asked? Of course! I do not have enough fingers or toes to count how many times I went to summer festivals, concerts, amusement parks, or downtown but could not have left the house unless I said I was going to “study.” The other option was to over-explain - with who, what, where, when, and how many boys would be there - and not be allowed to go out the next time I was honest.

Productivity above all else was praised. In my household birthday gifts were not guaranteed, or only received if good grades were achieved. There was a direct message: you don’t get a gift for eating, or breathing, in my house, you only get it if you do well in school. Another message that young folk may wonder as well is, “Am I valuable if I am not productive or achieving?”

This constant negligence of other facets of life can create a rift between what you do and what you desire. Do you have a strong sense of who you are outside of work and your career? Do you have hobbies or ways of expression? 

Chronic Lying 

Children naturally desire to show up authentically, but societal norms and familial pressures can push them to lie or hide their true selves. People may learn early on that appearances are more important to maintain in order to prevent punishment. They can find themselves doing more to portray meeting parental expectations, instead of actually achieving milestones.

Fear-based parenting can indirectly encourage lying as a safety mechanism to avoid punishment and to maintain attachment. This lying can take the form of fawning—a submissive behaviour aimed at ensuring safety and approval. While fawning may protect children in emotionally volatile households, it often manifests maladaptively in adulthood.

In households marked by fear-based parenting, control becomes a central theme. Parents use power and discipline to enforce compliance, while children seek small avenues for autonomy. This dynamic often results in rebellion or thrill-seeking behaviors, as individuals attempt to assert their independence within rigid frameworks. 

Emotional Dysregulation

Adults raised in emotionally invalidating households often struggle with emotional dysregulation: difficulty in managing and responding to their emotions in healthy ways. This stems from years of suppressing their feelings to align with external expectations which debilitates recognition, processing, and expression of emotions

Fear-based parenting discipline or direction is often imbued with shame or punishment in the form of shouting or losing privileges. Therefore, there is an emotional association with authority. Pointing out issues and shaming can be incredibly triggering in a relatively safe environment. Such heightened sensitivity can also carry over to emotional expression, which often leads to punishment or rejection. This can lead to further difficulty expressing emotions, which in turn inhibits the development of emotional regulation skills.

Over time, unresolved emotional dysregulation can lead to long-term feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, and depression. The persistent belief that they must conform to gain approval continues a cycle of emotional suppression and dissatisfaction, making it challenging to develop a stable sense of self-worth and emotional resilience.

Inauthenticity to Self and People-Pleasing

Children who grow up in emotionally invalidating households may internalize the belief that they are undeserving of love unless they meet specific expectations. At home, they learn to suppress emotions to avoid punishment or the loss of privileges invalidating their own needs and emotions in self-sacrifice. Such patterns of treatment can lead to a pervasive internal dialogue of “my emotions are not important,” “others needs are more important than mine” or “I am not important.”

While communal cultures often emphasize supporting others—a deeply fulfilling value for some. This support can become unsustainable at the cost of one’s well-being, through normalizing abusive behaviours or one-sided relationships. Striking a balance between others’ needs and one’s own is vital for fostering healthy, reciprocal relationships.

As adults, these individuals may overextend themselves at work, overcommit in relationships, or hide their true thoughts and feelings to avoid conflict. This perpetual denial of their authentic emotions can be isolating, leading to a disconnect from their needs, values, and well-being. Bottled-up emotions can eventually result in burnout or emotional breakdowns. Recognizing and addressing these patterns is essential for building healthier relationships and reconnecting with one’s authentic self.

Seeking Autonomy and Control

Over time, the suppression of autonomy leads to frustration and a lack of age-appropriate decision-making skills. Many children, even at a young age, sense the inconsistencies in their parents’ emotion-based rules and begin to question their validity. However, the absence of space for dialogue or negotiation leaves these doubts unspoken, fostering resentment and emotional distance.

When rules and expectations become overly restrictive, children may develop a strong desire for autonomy and control. Such environments often stunt mature decision-making, leaving children unprepared to navigate independence later in life. Families with histories of anxiety, PTSD, or emotional dysregulation perpetuate cycles of intergenerational trauma, where decisions are often guided by immediate emotional relief rather than long-term values.

Breaking the Cycle

A lot of the mechanisms reflected above can represent natural responses to an emotionally neglectful, invalidating, high-pressure household with dysregulation and a lack of support. Understanding the roots of disconnection, inauthenticity and intergenerational trauma can be a difficult turning point, and very varied in lived experience.

As a psychotherapist working with clients one-on-one, we always highlight important goals for the treatment. Time and time again, the first steps with clients often entail speaking to unresolved feelings, feeling present in their bodies, bolstering pre-existing supportive resources, and rebuilding a sense of self. 

Although every approach must be specific to each case, here are some evidence-based approaches that have shown success in supporting some of these challenges:

Prioritize Emotional Expression: Advocating for ways to be more authentic and moving from your values. If you are still in a household where it feels difficult to speak out honestly, there are still ways to be expressive and true to yourself. Poetry, art, story writing, friends you can be yourself around and journal keeping, can be wonderful outlets for authenticity.

Seek Professional Support: Therapy can provide tools for healing and help individuals navigate their histories and develop healthier patterns. There are various psychotherapists of various modalities who may be able to support processing and skill building to improve functioning and coping with such experiences.

Finding Secure Love and Friendship: Create safe spaces for processing and sharing feelings without fear of judgment. It’s important to seek support from your trusted, chosen family and communities.

Practicing mindfulness: Mindfulness can help in being present and letting go of internalized criticism and judgement. Often just observing internal mechanisms without judgement makes room to truly understand what your true values are, how to recognize what comes from you authentically and learn to brush away the avoidance.

Self-Compassion: This last one, often can result from mindfulness as the two of them can go hand-in-hand, and specifically work on parenting the self, and facilitating an internal environment of being supportive to yourself in ways that are healing.

Progress, not Perfection

Breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma is not easy—it’s a journey filled with self-reflection, unlearning, and the courage to choose differently. But it’s also an incredibly empowering path, one that allows us to reclaim our authentic selves and nurture a future rooted in compassion and understanding.

As adults, we have the unique opportunity to rewrite the narratives we grew up with - to honour the lessons our families passed down while consciously leaving behind what no longer serves us. We can learn to prioritize our emotional needs, embrace our imperfections, and celebrate our worth beyond achievements. Healing doesn’t mean erasing the past; it means finding ways to integrate it while making space for growth and self-compassion.

By breaking free of old patterns, you’re creating a legacy of authenticity, resilience, and love. In doing so, you’re not just breaking cycles—you’re building something beautiful and new.