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Growing Up With Parents Who Had PTSD
I did not realize until I was an adult how anxious and fearful my parents’ household was
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I’ve unknowingly absorbed much of my parent’s trauma wounds as a child who grew up in the household of two Vietnamese War refugees. My perfectionism, anxiety, inability to form lasting romantic relationships stemmed from the unconscious beliefs that I developed by observing my parents. It didn’t occur to me until I was an adult that my parents and extended family operated at a heightened state of tension and anxiety at all times. After seeing how my father had low stress tolerance and overreacted to surprises as if they were emergencies, it started to dawn on me that my parents were emotionally stunted and may be suffering from PTSD. It seemed as if they had lost their ability to approach issues with a metered attitude, jumping straight to near-panic whenever something unexpected occurred.
My parents are refugees of the Vietnam War (or “American War” as it is called in Vietnam). Although more than forty years have passed since they emigrated to the United States from Vietnam, the echoes of their trauma still cast a shadow over many aspects of their everyday lives. The untreated PTSD of immigrants manifests in their attitudes about the world, affecting all those who live in the same households as them, and how…