"I don't think my mom and I can communicate, but we both just haven't stopped trying to communicate."
In October of 2023, I realized for the first time that I might have Borderline Personality Disorder.
This psychological diagnosis connected the dots between the myriad of self-awarenesses I had had, and in my attempts to figure out why I had this personality disorder, I read that most borderline personality disorders stem from discontinuous parental love at an early age, when an emotionally unstable parent takes out his or her fire on a child for no apparent reason, it can leave the child unconvinced that he or she deserves to be loved.
Many things are instantly explained. The relationship that straddled my mother and me gradually cleared up from a jumbled mess. Prior to this, I formally told my parents that I wanted to cut back on video calls with them: from once or twice a day to once or twice a week, because I found that I always seemed to fear that I would not be able to make the right choices without their intervention.
Funny thing is, I'm 27 years old this year.
Part.2
"sometimes parents' constraints and lack of understanding can make me very tired, and what I've learned now is to understand each other and tolerate each other."
In my nightmares, my parents areparents, are very common characters. When they appear in my nightmares, nothing too outrageous happens in terms of drama; instead, what we experience is as ordinary as every day of our lives.
The uncommon part is that in those recurring nightmares, they would wrong me for the smallest of things. They would throw accusations at me, complain, and remind me whenever they could that I wasn't good enough, or even bad enough. They'd even have a calm tone, no drama whatsoever.
These nightmares always end with me crying bitterly in my dreams and then waking up in real tears.
Relationships in East Asian families always seem to be slightly more complicated. Children and parents always seem to rely on each other and try to exclude each other at certain ages. "Close" is a frequent adjective used to describe East Asian family relationships, but "close" does not mean "intimate". This is the dilemma that some East Asian children may face: their relationship with their family of origin is bound by "blood" and deeply influenced by Confucianism, and both parents and children naturally accept the traditional cultural setting for parent-child relationships, and sometimes it takes many years for both parties to understand whether this model is appropriate for the functioning of the family. for the functioning of the family.
This gamble-like exploration is sometimes filled with love and warmth, and can also be filled with pain and tears.
Part.3
"My mom and dad really love me, but they're always pushing me to get married, which makes me very anxious."
Sophia is Chinese and has a pair of patriarchal parents. Her younger brother was always favored by her family, and the same achievements were undermined by the fact that she was a girl.
Sophia finished her master's degree in the United States and successfully found a job in New York. With a salary of 100,000 dollars a year, she lives her life to the fullest: she takes scuba diving lessons, crossfit groups, goes to Broadway to see musicals, and meets up with friends to talk about her life., and I'm one of thoseher friends.
For Mother's Day this year, Sophia took out her own salary and bought a few hundred dollars worth of gifts for her mom in China, but when her mom received the gifts, she didn't even open them and asked her when she was going to get married.
The gift prepared by her brother was carefully placed on the cabinet at home by her mom and admired over and over again.
Sophia on the other end of the video call didn't have any particular reaction to her mom's questioning and disdain for the gift. She prevaricated for a few moments before hanging up.
When I met with her last week, I talked about my research into everyone's dreams. I asked her what her worst nightmare was, and to my surprise, Sophia's worst nightmare was "both of my parents died."
I asked her, "Do you still feel terrible about losing your mom after the way she treated you?"
Sophia didn't say anything.
Part 4.
"Support each other, love each other, and live in harmony!"
Among the dozens of questionnaires I sent out, the most impressive nightmares about family were the most numerous: dreams about the death of one's parents, dreams about female elders in the family going crazy and trying to hurt the dreamer, dreams about being scolded by the dreamer’s parents, dreams about monsters appearing in the dreamer’s house chasing her frantically from behind... Many dreamers often woke up crying from such dreams, and that included Dylan.
Dylan is the youngest child in a family of three older siblings with a pair of wealthy parents, who are not loving each other properly.
Dylan is resentful of his father. Several births have left his mother bloated and deformed, and Dylan has the impression that his mom ONLY exists for the family: submissive and silent. And the person who made his mom that way happened to be his own father.
Dylan told me about aan impressive nightmare he had where he dreamed his father had died. In the dream, instead of feeling sad, he felt happy, as if all the oppressive, strict, almost unkind discipline he had received from his father since he was a child would just disappear.
Dylan woke up to find himself covered in tears.
"Why do you think that is?" I asked.
"I'd like to know, too." He said. "Sometimes my feelings for my parents are so complicated that I have trouble understanding them myself."
Part 5.
"My parents spoiled me very much and whatever I wanted or did since I was a child, they fulfilled me. They believed that I was a great success, but I have not achieved a single thing through my own efforts until now."
For many East Asian children, a major theme in their lives is finding their true place in the coordinate system of their family of origin. As a child, can I never "disobey" my parents? Do I always need to consult my parents? Do I try to exist independently of my parents? Am I not to be their equal? Do I have to set specific boundaries to persuade them not to have a say in my love life? Do I have the right to wear clothes they don't like and eat things they consider unhealthy? Should I argue my own ideas and find my own rhythm in life? Should I move out? Do I really want my parents to give me complete permission to make my own decisions? Do I love them? Do I hate them? What do I really want for them?
Interestingly, in dreams about the death of a parent, most of the dreamers did not directly see their parents "pass away". They heard someone else telling them in the dream that their parent was no longer with them. For the rest of the dream, they digested the "fact" that their parents had passed away.
See, these nightmares about family and home may not be about family, but about themselves.
After being "bound" and "lifted up" for our entire lives, where do we go when the force that occasionally makes us want to run away suddenly disappears?
Part.6
"Traditional, Depressing"
I made an appointment for counseling on Wednesday.
In a recent nightmare about my parents, my mother told me she was disappointed in me. My math grades made her look bad in front of her relatives. My father stood beside her, silent and unspoken.
I remembered a quote I had read on social media: control freak mother, silent father, repressed child: the East Asian family structure has survived the waves of time and stands tall.
It was ironic, but I still laughed.
Perhaps some East Asian children, or mothers in the 'Everything, everywhere, all at once', have more to say on such topics as how to relate, reconcile, and move forward in the family. "Self-awakening," as nebulous as it may sound, seems to be the key to unlocking an independent life in the lives of East Asian children.
When I woke up from that nightmare, surprisingly, I didn’t cry. I don't know if it was because I realized that whether or not my parents were proud of me couldn't determine what kind of person I was, or if I just didn't have math class in my life anymore either.
Part.7
“At a certain age, looking back at my parents' lives actually makes me feel sorry for them...they didn't seem to be able to break out of what they knew.” Levi is 26 years old and lives in Shanghai on his own working as a car designer, his father was strict with him when he was younger, he then suffered from manic depression for almost a year.
Of the over 70 nightmares I received from East Asians, 20 were about home, family. Nearly 1/3 of the pages are filled with the buried fears, struggles, helplessness, and silent resistance of being the least vocal member of the family, of being a daughter, a son, an adult who is not yet financially independent, one of the links in the blood bond, of being loved or not loved at all. As they grow up, they may realize with hindsight that the love from their parents may be conditional, or that as children, their own voices will always be difficult to be heard. "Being heard and being seen, two basic needs of herd animals, are often time suppressed in some East Asian children.
The repression experienced as a child is projected onto another kind of dream: three Asian female dreamers dreamed of giving birth unprepared, and without exception they said it was one of the scariest nightmares they'd ever had. "I woke up I was so scared for the first second, how could I even think of having such a dream" says Andrea, whose mother always linked her grades to her life when she was growing up: "If you don't do well in your exams, then I'll really suffer for the rest of my life" This somewhat peculiar mother-daughter relationship has left Andrea equally fearful of marriage and having children, while Grace dreamed of becoming a single mother: "I dreamt that I was being wheeled out of the delivery room with a baby in my arms, and I was like, fuck it, my life is ruined." Growing up in a family with a controlling mother, Grace always retained a skeptical attitude about her ability to love her children with all her heart.
Such dreams seem to be a byproduct of family relationships: growing up in a family over which one has no control also seems to lead to adulthood in which one wonders if one has the ability to form a good family, even if these things haven't happened yet.
Dreams are soft and intangible, but soft dreams from time to time are wrapped in the repressed fears we have long taken for granted. As they flow into your waking consciousness, perhaps you realize that the word family can be so multifaceted: it can be a shelter from the elements, or it can carry the shadow of a shackle.
How are we going to wake up from a nightmare when reality has become a nightmare itself? We are all still exploring the process of growing up.