About your chaotic immigrant family

• In November, we’ll be exploring what it means to grow up in a chaotic family. Our second conversation club is November 19 at 7pm ET so mark your calendars (link will be sent to paid subscribers day of).

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• Submit an anonymous question to my advice column

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What does it mean to grow up in a chaotic household?

When an experience is described as "chaotic," it means it:

• Lacks order, structure, control, direction or a general plan

• Is unpredictable and you’re unable to anticipate what will happen next

• Is overwhelming or too stimulating which can cause disorientation

• Is stressful and can cause anxiety

When a household or family is chaotic it means:

• There’s a sense of physical chaos, which can include:

  • Environmental mess/clutter

  • Inconsistent physical home base/constant moving

  • Foundational inconsistencies around bills being paid/food being on plate

• There’s a sense of emotional chaos, which can include:

  • Emotional outburst and unpredictability. There’s an instability of “who” you're going to get when you’re around family. Maybe one of your parents or family members was volatile and you never knew if they were going to be a in a good mood or a bad mood. This can lead to walking on eggshells and never feeling calm or peace

  • Inconsistent affection and a lack of support in ways that you need emotionally.

  • Overstimulation that lead to emotional instability. These can be loud noises, like the TV or music being blasted at all times, or banging of doors/cabinets, or even raised voices and sudden movements.

‘But I had my needs met, so who cares if my household/family was chaotic? I am grateful!’

Now before I share more on immigrant family dynamics and chaos, here’s the thing, y’all: It’s very obvious in my work, that many children of immigrants are dealing with the fallout of not having their emotional needs met when they were growing up, and many still don’t realize this is something they struggle with. As a child of immigrants, it can be incredibly hard to discern between different needs. It’s also uncomfortable to acknowledge that just because some needs were met doesn’t mean others were.

A part of processing and identifying the chaos we grew up in, or is reinforced in our family dynamics, involves acknowledging what is painful, uncomfortable, and not pretty.

You may reflect and realize that some of your childhood needs were met, while others weren’t. Sure, you can have a roof above your head, you could know when you were getting their next meal. You could have been monetarily provided for, protected from external harm, have stability through certain traditions, and rewarded when you acted in line of what was expected of you.

These are all valid and real needs being met. And yet…. despite this, many people still feel bad. I write about this in detail in chapter 1 of my book!

You may realize that the chaos you are used to is actually impacting you more than you realize (this is next week’s letter) and you may not be ready to confront the ways in which things weren’t working in your family. That’s okay too! I just want to remind you all:

We can honor, acknowledge, and show gratitude for all the ways we were loved and provided for as kids, and we can recognize that there were limitations on how other needs were, or weren’t, nurtured and met. Both can exist at the same time.

How culture and identity can inform the household chaos

When I asked you all if your family is chaotic, 83% of 649 of you said yes.

Growing up in chaos is not reserved for immigrant families, but it is something that I see commonly in our communities. Here are 7 reasons why your immigrant family may be chaotic:

1. Your parents/caregivers may have been living in survival mode due to any perceived or real threat to security and safety. This caused them to be less emotionally available or be navigating their own level of stress. In fact, parental stress is a significant contributor to child maltreatment, or psychological aggression, physical assault, and neglect.

2. Immigrant parents (not all!), from my research and work, tend to engage in an authoritarian parenting style which includes punitive discipline, criticism, unilateral communication (children are not encouraged to communicate openly or freely), rigid and inflexible rules. Research suggests that controlling parenting, or parents who pressure their children to think, behave, or feel in particular ways, is often more common in Eastern societies than Western societies. This level of criticism and unpredictability can feel chaotic and unstable to the kids in the household.

3. Kids in immigrant families often experience parentification which can lead to you, the child, having to be self-sufficient and figure things out yourself, manage your own emotions without any support — and in fact, put others’ emotions before yours which can create a feeling of emotional chaos and instability.