Seohyun Joo Archives

Did your “Tiger Parent” help? How your Asian upbringing impacts you today

“Have you eaten?” As an Asian American, I was more likely to hear those words in place of “I love you”, and a plate of cut-up fruit replaced their way of expressing support and care for what I did.

Now that I am an adult, I’ve come to interpret the indirect ways that my parents express love, but as a child, it was nearly impossible to see any sort of warmth in their harsh, “tiger” parenting.

As therapists, we often work with adults who are only now beginning to understand the emotional toll of growing up with strict, achievement-focused parenting. Many carry invisible wounds: shame, perfectionism, emotional disconnection — even if they “turned out okay.”

You might love your parents deeply. You might even admire their sacrifices. But you also might feel exhausted, anxious, or unsure of who you are when you’re not performing. If that sounds like you, this article is for you.

What Is Tiger Parenting?

The term “tiger parenting” became popular after Amy Chua’s memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, where she described a strict, success-driven parenting style common in many immigrant families, especially among East Asian cultures.

Tiger parenting isn’t just about setting high standards. It often involves:

Emphasis on academic excellence and career success
Harsh consequences for failure or “falling behind”
Emotional withholding (love as a reward, not a constant)

A belief that discipline = love

In many families, this parenting style was rooted in survival. Immigrant parents, shaped by scarcity and sacrifice, believed success was the only path to safety. They passed down this drive, often without realizing the emotional cost.

TIGER PARENTING HAS CONSEQUENCES YOU FEEL EVERY DAY

Immigrant children often are overwhelmed with high parental expectations and suffer from its consequences, such as developing habits of self-criticism, maladaptive perfectionism, having low self-esteem, and at times even eating disorders. Needless to say, there are detrimental consequences of parenting styles that are so harsh and lack warmth.

If you’ve experienced this type of “Tiger” parenting from your immigrant parents, then there are two things that you need to know from research:

Cultural and familial context matters
We can feel more equipped for life’s struggles because of our parents

How It Affects You as an Adult

Maybe you still hear your parents’ voice in your head — the one that says, You should be doing more. Or maybe you find yourself constantly striving, but never feeling like it’s enough. You may struggle to rest, to say no, or to feel proud of yourself without external validation.

Many adult children of tiger parents experience:

Chronic anxiety or burnout
A harsh inner critic
Difficulty expressing emotions or needs
Shame around failure or “letting people down”
Struggles with identity or decision-making

Even when you intellectually understand your parents were doing their best, that doesn’t erase the emotional pain. It’s okay to name both truths: welove my parents. I’m still hurting.

DESPITE HOW BAD TIGER PARENTING SOUNDS IN OUR WESTERN SOCIETY, CULTURAL CONTEXT MATTERS!

Psychologists have found that indigenous parenting and family climate variables are culturally relevant (Fung & Lau, 2009). In other words, despite Western psychology telling us that harsh parenting leads to negative outcomes for children, that’s not always the case for other ethnic minority children, such as Asian American immigrant children. This is because there is a cultural explanation for our parents’ behaviors. For instance, in East Asian families, parents have to teach their children to maintain harmony within society, even if that requires the parent to be harsh and punitive. Parents who fail to do so would be considered irresponsible and incompetent.

Research has also found that Latino teens consider parents’ punitive parenting to be an expression of care in comparison to White American teens. Punitive parenting has been found to reduce delinquent behavior in Latino children, but not in White American children. As such, our cultural understanding for parenting goals, expression of care and love, social roles, and normative behaviors affect the way that we make sense of our parents’ behaviors.

TIGER PARENTING TAUGHT US TO BE STRONG IN OUR PERSONHOOD

In addition, harsh parenting creates a growth mindset in children that buffers the negative consequences of stress on a child (Joo et al., 2020). For example, children whose parents were harsh are more likely to believe that their intelligence and personality is flexible and can change with growth. The counterpart children believe their intelligence is fixed, and that they are born with a certain level of intelligence that can’t be changed. Having a growth mindset has the ability to make us more reluctant to stress. Instead of finding joy in only the things we succeed in, kids who have a growth mindset learn to enjoy facing challenges and overcoming them. This type of personality, as you can imagine, can be a powerful tool as we navigate our lives and grow our minds.

It’s easy for us to blame our parents and to lose hope in ourselves to become better in our ability to express ourselves, manage our emotions, and grow a healthy, adaptive way of thinking. However, there is hope that it is through our upbringing that we are strong in more than one way, and that we were equipped to overcome our struggles.

TIGER PARENTS HAVE BEEN HURTFUL, BUT THEY ALSO PREPPED US TO HEAL

Through gaining a better understanding of our upbringing and how it has affected us, we can rewrite our narrative and start working towards breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma to make the best out of our own experience of being influenced by more than one culture.

We can learn to parent ourselves in the ways that we wished our parents would have parented us, and we can learn to fully appreciate and accept the ways that our parents chose to love and care for us.

The first step to rewriting our narrative is to have the space that will validate the emotions you experienced throughout your life. Therapy space can be a place where you learn to accept the parts of you that needed more care and discover the parts of you with resilience that can help you heal and grow.

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Signs You Might Still Be Affected Today

You may not always connect your stress or perfectionism to your upbringing. But if you were raised by a tiger parent, those patterns often follow you into adulthood in subtle, exhausting ways.

You might:

Struggle with rest or feel guilty when not being productive
Have a hard time making decisions unless they’re “impressive”
Feel disconnected from your emotions, or fear expressing them
Avoid disappointing others at all costs
Carry a deep sense of “not enoughness” no matter what you achieve

These aren’t just personality quirks. They’re protective strategies you learned early — ones that helped you survive, but may be keeping you stuck now.

How Therapy Helps You Heal from Tiger Parenting

You don’t need to figure this out alone. In therapy, we create a space where you’re not judged, rushed, or told how to feel. Instead, we explore your experience with compassion — and without blame.

Together, we can:

Untangle your childhood story and how it still shapes your beliefs
Soften the inner critic and begin practicing self-compassion
Explore what you actually want, not what you were told to want
Develop emotional language and the safety to express it
Learn how to set boundaries without shame
Reconnect with a sense of self beyond performance

In trauma-informed therapy, we move at your pace. That might mean starting with somatic work to help you feel safe in your body, or using tools like CBT or parts work to understand the roles you’ve taken on to survive.

Healing doesn’t mean blaming. It means recognizing what happened and giving yourself the care you may have never received.

Why It Feels So Hard to Talk About This

So many adult children of tiger parents suffer in silence. There’s often no clear “abuse” to point to — just a thousand moments where you didn’t feel seen, where your tears were dismissed, or where rest felt dangerous.

And culturally, this can be taboo. Many of us are taught not to question our parents. But therapy isn’t about blaming them. It’s about making space for you. For the parts of you that learned to be quiet, perfect, and small in order to be loved.

You can start healing without betraying your culture, your family, or your love.

Not Ready for Therapy Yet? That’s Okay. Start Here.

If you’re not quite ready to begin therapy, there are still gentle ways to begin healing:

Practice noticing your inner voice. Is it kind or critical? Where did it come from?
Start journaling about what you feel, not what’s expected of you.
Give yourself permission to rest without “earning” it.
Listen to meditations or podcasts about inner child work or emotional unlearning.

Every small act of self-kindness is a step toward healing.

Working with a Therapist at Here Counseling

At Here Counseling, we understand the complexity of tiger parenting, especially for those navigating immigrant identities, cultural expectations, and family loyalty.

We don’t pathologize you. We work with you. We meet you where you are, whether you’re untangling perfectionism, exploring your identity, or simply trying to feel less overwhelmed.

You deserve to feel safe in your own skin, not just successful on paper.

Healthy Relationships

Stuck in conflict? Build boundaries to stop painful patterns in relationships

Written by Here Counseling

Do you struggle with building boundaries?
Have you paid attention to the patterns you hold in your relationships?
Do you find yourself setting no boundaries with potential friends but you swear them out of your life when they cross an invisible line?
Do you feel like you have your guard up all the time and never let anyone in despite constantly struggling with loneliness?
Maybe you seek very intimate relationships and see potential in almost anyone, even though logically you can see the red flags that all your friends have identified?

Relationships and Building Boundaries as Adults

The older we get, the harder it is to connect and maintain relationships, whether platonic friendships or romantic partnerships. It is common for us to look back at our relationships and finally notice a pattern.

Maybe you have a few close friends, but you distanced yourself from others after small incidents that you never chose to surface and resolve, and now you are stuck holding resentment.
Perhaps you were in a committed, long-term relationship once or twice, but now it feels hopeless that you will find someone with whom you can be vulnerable.
Maybe you continue to be in committed relationships one after another, but you wonder if you should take a break to be alone for a while?

It’s helpful for us to reflect on our relationships and find out why we continue to be in potentially unhelpful patterns. When we are unsure of the actions we continue to take, we may fill ourselves with doubt, guilt, or shame around why we are the way we are. We end up asking ourselves, “what’s wrong with me?” But instead of blaming ourselves for the relational need we might have, we can examine and find out what it is that we are really seeking.

Exploring your Current Conflicts and Boundaries

First, we examine and try to recognize our patterns. Only when we have identified our relational patterns can we take the next step to work on changing the patterns slowly. Trying out a different behavior from our instinctive, patterned behaviors allows us to see how we feel about the change. Sometimes changing our patterns makes us feel empowered, and we are motivated to unlearn unhelpful behavioral patterns. Other times, we might finally learn the real reason why we were behaving a certain way repeatedly because we chose to act differently this time. Either way, it will give us a better understanding of who we are.

In this exploratory stage to find out more about ourselves, we try reacting in relationships in a way that’s unlike us. We resist the ways that we have interacted with others in the past. All the while, we pay attention to how it feels and process what’s going on. This stage takes time and effort. There will likely be much observing in patience and processing different emotions that we don’t yet have the words to describe. Meaningful change or gaining insight will happen at different paces for everybody, and that’s okay.

Building Boundaries and Changing Relationship Patterns

Our dynamics with our friends and loved ones are already built and developed throughout our lives. Thus, when we do something different, and out of character for us, there can be resistance from the people in our lives. For example, we express our needs instead of going along with the plans of our very direct friend. The friend could either be concerned, “I’m sorry, this is unlike you. Have I made you uncomfortable?” or annoyed, “This is what we always do, what’s gotten into you today?” This process is long and can be painful because sometimes we have to sift out some friendships that never served us well. On the other hand, we make new friends that will accept us for who we are in the moment. At times, we may have to step back and simply allow time for those around us to accept the changes we are bringing into the relational dynamics.

No matter what, we choose to grow for ourselves and continue to push, challenge, and improve the dynamics we have made with the people in our lives. I can promise you that the ones that have been in our lives for the right reasons will stay even if we change. Those who care for us will likely encourage us and love us for how we are growing.

Reminder for You as You Build Boundaries

There will also be times when we fall back into our old habits, and that’s okay. We can wonder why it might have happened, and through this process, we can develop more insight into who we are. With time, we can practice claiming our space, needs, and desires, where we face conflict, resolve and repair relationships.

Get rid of painful patterns by building boundaries in therapy

What I described above is a part of what relational work looks like in therapy. Therapy can’t teach you to be perfect, but it can help you ignite the process of learning about yourself and how you exist with others. And after the termination of therapy, clients continue to push and pull in their relationships to create healthy, meaningful intimacy that fulfills them because one thing for sure is that this journey of self-growth is life-long, no matter if you are in therapy or not.

As a therapist, I long to create a therapy space where my clients can self-reflect without fearing what they might find within, where they can express themselves without worrying about judgment or social norms. I want to assure my clients that it’s okay for us to have our needs. It can be scary to acknowledge our needs and then seek them, even ask for help from others, but when we learn to do that, we will finally learn not to stand alone for so long. If creating better relational dynamics through building boundaries is something you are looking for, we can schedule a consultation to see if we can work together.

Seohyun Joo, MA

I help people learn to resolve their anxiety and express their needs.

Learn more about therapy with Seohyun

Anxiety, Healthy Relationships, Managing emotions

Difficulty Trusting Others? Here’s how you can feel safe again

Written by Here Counseling

Once, exhausted after a long day, I let my body droop from the edge of my couch to lay next to my dog on the floor. Hoping I could live the comfortable life that my dog does without a worry in the world, I stared into my dog’s innocent eyes and sought comfort – the comfort of her gentle, furry touch, her warmth and a beating heart, her loyal love, and encouragement to get up another day to take care of her. In our silent exchange of emotions, as I lay quietly wiping my tears, I was in disbelief. Though my feelings may have been precipitated by my rough day and already heightened emotions, they were indisputable: I was finally feeling what it feels like to trust another being.

Trust is a funny thing. Trust may build quickly or slowly, but it often catches me off guard with its presence. And when trust is broken, the feeling of betrayal has so many facets and phases – anger, sadness, feeling lost, unsafe and unloved.

Is it even possible to figure out what it means to trust?

Is it possible to manage my emotions after betrayal, and by learning to cope, make the whole painful process worthwhile?

How did I, on this random night, experience a whole new level of trust with my dog I adopted a year ago of all living creatures on this earth, including the ones that gave birth to me and raised me?

Trust is learned in our earliest relationships, but no parent in this world is perfect.

I would go as far as to say that to be a responsible parent, you must not be 100% attentive to your child’s needs all the time. Children need to be encouraged to do things on their own without the help of their parents. Children need to learn to be self-sufficient and to self-soothe at times because parents can’t realistically be there for the child to save them every time they desire assistance.

Some parents, however, with or without faults of their own, are busier, less affectionate physically or verbally, or have their own mental health issues ranging from depression to maladaptive communication skills to intergenerational trauma that may get in the way of being present and caring for their child. And unfortunately, some parents even pass away unexpectedly early and leave their children behind too soon.

So how are we supposed to trust, when even our own parents neglect, betray, or abandon us?

What should I do with this need to trust, to be comforted, to be held?

Learning to hold oneself, balancing to stay afloat, protecting ourselves from the pain of betrayal, resisting the urge to just collapse onto any stranger that provides the slightest glimpse of comfort, feels so exhausting at times. When am I going to fall?

No matter how independent and strong we want to be, we can’t avoid the act of trusting others at some point in our lives.

And, as hard as it is to say, we have to deal with the pain that may or may not follow. The Chinese character “ren (人)” which means “person” or “people” is made of two human stick figures that are leaning on one another for support. Humans are social creatures, and we cannot survive alone. We must trust others with our feelings, hearts, and even lives. So how do we encourage ourselves to trust well in this seemingly hopeless world?

Even when we have trauma around trust, a part of us, like a seed in the ground, is waiting to trust someone.

You don’t have to tell your body to try to trust, but you can listen to the ways it’s trying to trust. It might look like sharing something small, inviting another’s interest, or expressing frustration. Like a person who will put a few pounds of weight on a bridge to see if it is safe to walk across, we do things to ensure ourselves in order to trust. We hope that the few pounds of weight on the bridge will give us the courage to walk across. Leaning on someone, letting go of our fears, taking a step not knowing if we will fall – trusting is hard work. Realistically, the best that we can do when it comes to trusting is to take that step forward while acknowledging the potential consequences of it. This sounds scary, I know. The word, consequences, does not do justice to describe the potential agony we might be putting ourselves through.

But, I’ve come to find that the following things are within our control and can make this situation less hopeless.

We can try our best to discern whom to trust and how much to trust at what pace.
We can learn to regulate our emotions before, during, and after we choose to trust no matter what the outcome is.
We can learn to appreciate the worth in our choices to trust, and value our bravery in choosing to live fully.
We can learn to comfort ourselves when things don’t go as we had hoped.
We can also learn to ask for help to be comforted from those around us.
Most importantly, we can respect and love the choices we make, and be okay with falling, even if it hurts.

In the end, the goal is to survive the sometimes painful consequences of life events. We can’t give up on trusting others because we’ve been hurt before or because no one has taught us how to. We can’t give up because we depend on one another for survival. All we can do is to take care of ourselves as best as we can so that we can get up again even if someone intentionally has pulled the rug out from under our feet. We will learn to trust by first trusting ourselves that we will catch ourselves when we fall, even if that means, on some nights, I’m ugly-crying on the floor with my dog.