On Asian Shame & The Holidays

With the holidays approaching, I’m sure many of us are looking forward to festivities and family time. I’m also sure that for some of us, family gatherings might bring about more complex feelings – anxiety, dread, or even shame.

Earlier this year I wrote about shame, and as the year concludes I continue to reflect on how enduring it is in so many people’s stories. Many of my clients, like myself, are East-Asian Third-Culture Kids who grew up in multicultural communities. So where does shame come in?

A person I work with who identifies as queer, but is not out to her family, shared that every year at her family’s holiday party, her aunt would probe about her marital status. Last year my client begrudgingly shared that she was still single, to which her aunt reacted in horror and proceeded to share the contact details of various male suitors. “Can’t be too picky,” she said. This brought up shame and anger in the person, but she stayed silent out of fear that her aunt would get even more upset.

People I work with often experience immense pressure to meet family expectations, ones couched in unwavering milestones. Attending a good university. Securing a reputable, well-paying job. Heterosexual marriage and children – the list goes on. These conditions of self-worth are unfortunately magnified at holiday gatherings, when conversations can feel like interrogations rather than genuine exchanges.

Shame: when worlds collide 

While Asian culture values collectivism and harmony, Western culture puts more emphasis on self-authorship and independence. These values aren’t necessarily opposed, but it can be tricky trying to balance them all at once.

Within cultures that emphasise conformity, rejection is a common outcome of challenging recognised norms, making it difficult to speak out or act differently. In Asian families, elders are respected at all costs, even if it means hiding our true feelings: this might look like appearing to agree with something even if we don’t, or going along with something even if we don’t want to.

This dissonance is jarring when we’re able to express ourselves more freely in other spaces – with friends and colleagues; at our weekly tango or tennis class. When moving between cultures, it can be hard to navigate mixed messages around “good” or “bad” behaviour, especially when one behaviour, e.g. expressing yourself freely, feels right in one context, but wrong in another.

Therein lies the crux, and perhaps the beauty, of being in between cultures: a third space emerges when cultural binaries dissolve and contradictions are embraced, creating something new altogether. In the spirit of inhabiting this third space, here are some tools to keep the stress of family gatherings at bay this season and beyond.

1. Check in with yourself
Shame is most prominent when we only hear voices of judgement in our own heads, and our own voice gets lost in the fray or takes on the critical tone of those around us. 

Going into a family gathering, we will inevitably be encountering perspectives different from our own. Setting a boundary between ourselves and others’ opinions, especially if they have shaming implications, can prevent what one person I work with describes as “getting sucked in”. Checking in with ourselves creates a base of safety we can always return to. Take a moment to pause, take a few deep breaths, and ask:

- How am I feeling at this moment?
- Where am I feeling this in my body?
- What do I need at this moment and how can I provide this for myself?
- Is there anything I can do to lessen any discomfort for myself?

2. Relocate your centre of gravity
Another way of checking in with ourselves is to picture our body’s centre of gravity. When we get overwhelmed by the worries popping up in our minds, our attention strays further and further from our bodies. When this happens, the mind and body disconnect from each other, and the worry is likely to feel more intense.

To support our nervous system in returning to safety, imagine our body as a stable, steady object, anchored to the earth by a strong centre of gravity. Our centre of gravity can be any part of our bodies that can root down to a surface, e.g. a chair or the ground. 

Some people like to focus their attention on their feet; some find it helpful, if they’re sitting, to reground their butts and backs into their chairs.

These intentional shifts in attention allow our mind and body to find each other again, so our focus can return to the here and now.

3. The Grey Rock Method
In collectivist cultures, one person’s emotions can easily blend with another’s. If one person expresses concern about something, they may be inviting us to feel the same in order to validate that concern. Interactions can feel intense when another person’s emotions start to escalate, and before we know it, we’re drawn into the same emotion. To prevent this from happening, using the Grey Rock Method can help.

Picture a grey rock: what comes to mind? Probably not much. The aim is to be as brief and boring as possible, so as to decrease the emotional intensity between ourselves and the other person. If we respond to an intrusion of our boundaries with a minimal change in facial expression, tone and body language, the intruder is likely to lose interest. For example:

Relative: So, you’ve been married for two years now.

Grey Rock: (blank face) Yup.

Relative: And you’re not getting any younger.

Grey Rock: Right.

Relative: So when are you starting a family?

Grey Rock: I don’t know.

Relative: What? Aren’t you planning on it?

Grey Rock: We’ll see.

Relative: When I was your age, I already had two kids.

Grey Rock: Okay.

Relative: Why wait? You can’t just focus on work forever.

Grey Rock: Mm-hmm.

Working with shame in the long-run
Ultimately, these are tools for coping in the moment. In the long-run, healing from shame often takes more work. Connecting with our valued communities and working with a therapist are ways of identifying childhood wounds and origins of internalised shame, so that our values and boundaries around preferred relationships can gradually develop.

Finding supportive communities where we feel seen plays a key role in growing trust and self-compassion. While it may not be possible to completely tune out the shaming voices in our lives, we can practise de-escalating their power, while regularly tuning in to the voices that nurture and empower us.

Image Source: Women’s Health