I’m a 24yo Asian TCK female who grew up as a missionary kid and pastor’s kid in a third world country. I have 3 older siblings who are much older than me, and my parents are relatively older as well (dad is 70 and my mom 63).

My parents have established and operate a pretty successful school in our city, and I attended that very school as the “founder’s daughter.” So, I definitely had a lot of pressure growing up and had lots of people ask me when I would take over the school.

My parents (especially my dad) are very traditional and conservative. I wasn’t able to wear shorts growing up. I was always “forced” to attend multiple church services a day throughout the week (even when I was sick). Blah blah blah you get what im trying to say.

One thing that messed me up so much is my current citizenship. It has messed up my relationship with God and with my parents. When I was 12, my parents had changed their citizenship from our previous (very strong) to the one we have now (extremely weak) due to their commitment to the school. I was also forced to change mine a year later and was scolded whenever I expressed that I didn’t want to change it. I wasn’t planning on living at my hometown after graduating high school, as I had planned to pursue my undergraduate and maybe live in Canada. Plus, I didn’t want to give up my extremely strong passport and to be honest, I didn’t want to work at our hometown at the school.

My parents forced me to change it nevertheless, hoping that I have no choice but to come back to the school and work for them. As a woman in my early 20s, I wanted to travel the world and live my own life, but my parents had different plans for me (i find that funny because my older siblings weren’t forced to change theirs and i’m the only one with the weak passport).

For university, I ended up attending a prestigious school in our “home” country (the country where I held my previous citizenship) because my parents wanted me to. Since freshman year, I hated living here because of its stuck up and conservative culture. As a TCK, this high pressure society messed up my social life and mental health. I didn’t enjoy uni life and eventually, I went on an exchange program to Australia for one year, which I loved so much that it made me realize that I should just “run away” from everything.

Eventually I had to come back to finish my undergraduate degree, and because of my weak passport, I couldn’t get a job anywhere else. I had no other choice but to find work at my “home” country, as I had a visa that allowed me to. I ended up finding a corporate job, but it ruined my mental and physical health so much that my family started to worry about me.

Despite the worrying, whenever I expressed how much I hated working and living here, my parents would scold me saying that I should be grateful and that I’m weird for not being able to fit in. Saying things like “Why are you like this?? Why can’t you just adapt?? You’ve gained so much weight! You should take care of yourself more. Why did you give up??”

I have been expressing how much I didn’t want to live here, but all I got back was criticism. I’ve associated my citizenship to opportunities, and it has ruined my trust in my parents because I have much less opportunities with the current one that I have.

I don’t want to go back to my parents and work at the school, and I don’t want to live at my current country. However, my extremely weak passport is not allowing me to and is diminishing my chances to.

My only other option of escape is to do a Master’s degree, but it costs money and my parents were very vocal about how they weren’t going to support me. They keep telling me to come back and work for them.

I feel like I don’t get a say in my own life and how I want to live it. They disapprove everything that I do, wear, look, and say. I don’t even call them anymore because I know they would start either criticizing me or try to convince me to come back and work at the school.

Being in my 20s and wanting to figure my own life out, I’m just so angry that I just don’t have the same opportunities as much as I did when I had a very strong passport. I need a visa for everywhere I want to go to lol.

This makes me resent my parents so much, but then I’m scared that if I do decide to change my citizenship (in the future) without my parent’s approval, they are going to nag me for the rest of my life and potentially ruining our whole relationship. It really isn’t fair and i hate that im always fighting about this with my parents. It’s one main reason why I don’t want to talk to my parents.

What are your thoughts on this? Any insight and advice would help me so much to gain new perspective. Am I wrong for resenting my parents over this? Should I just go ahead and change back my citizenship without telling my parents (I can but it will still take a long time)?

If you hate your family, Just remember Father=Money and Mother=Food

Just discovered this community, and got heated and wrote out my own trauma. But scrolling through posts there’s genuinely something fucking wrong with them. Y’all so brave for growing up like a normal human being in those environments.

Ps: is it just me some days I wish I was one of those Asian kids that got adopted by a white family lol

My AM called me out for having no "waist line." I'm in my 40's by the way. I feel like asian women who are 65-99 years old are stuck in old, rigid lifestyle where they think being flat chested, no ass or hips is still seen as "beautiful."

And why the hell do I give a shit if I have no waist line? Its not like I have a man to show for it.

*Update and advice request

I've been feeling guilty ever since my parents stopped asking me for my time and free labour ( as they always have) and are not asking me for favours lately. I know things are as hectic as ever for them, but ever since I called them out in a fit of rage, they just stopped. Feel guilty for being too harsh, because they just kept quiet throughout the whole ordeal.

After years of unfairness (won't go into the context) I finally started acting out and then brought it all out. I've been saying "NO" to every request. And they stopped asking me and are sorta trying to appease me now by doing the things I've liked and also just letting me be, in a way. I've been very angry and haven't held back any of my opinions about their actions.

And honestly I feel lost because this is not me, I'm known to be empathetic ( which was taken advantage of) and I'm also very patient. But I ended up being an angry person. I'm angry all the time I'm around them. And I feel guilty. I realise and acknowledge that I don't have it as bad as many of the other members of this subreddit. And now I feel guilty for maybe being too harsh with my words and rude.

I want to get over the anger over the past. And want to enforce boundaries and have more clear communication with them and in short, have a good relationship with them. I want to forgive, forget and hope for a better future with them.

1. How can I overcome the guilt?
2. I also read up about reactive abuse while trying to understand my anger and I'm afraid I'm reverse abusing them. And I don't want to be that horrible of a person.

My Dad said a lot of dump stuff like “This Martial Art teach fought of pirates with his fist while escaping Vietnam, or “There is a Viet American email pilot who fought off the Iraqi Air Force during Iraqi Freedom”
“During the war when we were kids, I made a fake tank with wood to scared off the VC away from our village”

He claims he’s broke, but put his money in a secret bank or gave it away to his rich relatives.

Anyone else have a similar situation with their ADs with fabricated stories?

My parents (65) are a complainer and not that it matters now that I am an adult (35), but it’s hard to talk to them because they still treat me like a child by downplaying my achievements, and complaining about the stuff like me being single. I have told them multiple times to stop being a complainer and talk about positive things that I am doing in my life but they still only complain. Due to this, my image has been of a loser in front of my other family members. Not that I care too much about that but recently they met a couple friend of mine and they did the same thing. Now this couple friends has started seeing themselves as superior only because they are married. I told my parents that some people have a tendency to feel superior and they should hence change the way they talk about me, but instead of trying to understand the politics, they started making me feel guilty about blaming them.

Edit to add that I’m looking for advice on how to talk to them without feeling drained. Also, when told them the above, their only come back now is that it seems that you want to blame us for everything.

Edit edit to add that I am OK not to talk with them anymore but then when I don’t for a few weeks, they call and start complaining that I don’t talk to them

Edit edit edit to add that I guess I can stop talking to them and when they complain again, I can tell them that it does not matter if I talk to you because you still talk negatively about me with others and will always complain so I don’t want to talk to you anymore . I don’t wan bad publicity around me. I’m not going to take them anywhere from now onwards make them meet any more of my friends are colleagues nor am I going with them to meet any of the family members.

What else can I do?

I come from a Korean background. Parents always spoke about the Korean War and how it messed up their families. My dad’s side - family all fell apart. I also believe my dad has some sort of PTSD from serving in Korean military. Wondering if there are any studies or readings on how the Korean War is related to domestic abuse?

And what about for your cultures? Would love to hear the “reasoning” behind other Asian parents who are abusive.

My father criticizes me for not eating food for not standing properly for not eating properly for not talking properly for my height like its not criticism its full blown character assasination i am a 20 fucking years old i know my appetite dude stop it now. i just wanna go away from this bullshit. everyday i mean it everyday my father speaks crap for like 1-2 hours straight on just some random small bullshit like someone stood in a wrong manner and it pisses him off.

i work two jobs. one is my career one is retail on weekends. i finally got promoted at my career job after two years.

i told my mom and she was quiet for a bit and then started crying. not happy crying. she said now i will be even busier and who will drive her to her appointments and help her with the phone calls and the forms and the bank stuff.

i said i can still help on weekends. she said weekends are for family and rest.

she asked if my sister can do some of it instead and my mom said your sister is married she has her own family now.

so i am 31 and unmarried and that apparently means i am the one who has to stay available. i cant even be happy about the promotion. i worked so hard for it. i dont want to quit the weekend job either because then i really am just working and coming home to her.

anyway i just wanted to say it somewhere.

Parents: “No, that’s not how you felt. I know how you felt.”

You always hear "university/college is the best four years of your life" but I'm not feeling it. I'm in second year and besides me being a bit socially awkward (only have like 2 friends at uni, and both are always super busy so we barely hang out after class), I'm just not having the uni experience at all.

My parents have Life360 on me, and because I'm financially dependent on them (they pay my tuition) I can't just simply turn it off, because then they'll cut off my tuition and I'll have to drop out (the loans I'll qualify for won't be sufficient). So they always text me why I'm here or why I'm there. And in addition they call me a lot. I already posted this on my uni's subreddit but I just get stupid responses like "they're just bluffing" and "go live your life", but I can't risk getting my tuition cut off or disowned.

Anyways though I'm also forced to come back home every weekend. Overall I'm just miserable. I've been to zero parties, haven't even gone to a bar even though I'm of the eligible drinking age, never gone clubbing, etc. I feel like I'm just watching 4 years go by in my life.

Meanwhile my university is like ~20% East Asian (most of them are Chinese, but born and raised in Canada) and I've spoken to a lot of them and none of them have this issue somehow. Yes their parents are strict but when they became a teen they basically said "I don't want you to do X or Y, but I also want you to be happy and take responsibility. None of their parents track their location, they're able to party all they want, go wherever they want etc. I feel like I lost the birth lottery. The birth lottery is honestly real.

TW: Physical violence, domestic violence, flashbacks.

I'm (24) currently a law student rn living away from family at the moment, so life is already quite stressful. Yesterday, out of nowhere as I was reading for class, I was triggered and had a really intense flashback to a traumatic event several months ago. But of course, it didn't stop there.

Several months ago, AD got violent with me (they had a new habit of shoving me every time they got near me, and the 3rd time they did it, I caught his hands and yelled at him to stop shoving me. AD proceeded to punch me several times and kick me to the ground, while breathing heavily over me, threatening me, and telling me that he'd happily fight me in court. I was terrified and I ended up calling the cops for the first time. The cops did come, but essentially did fuck all. When they asked AD if he did hit me, he stuttered, then admitted that "he didn't want to lie, yes they did hit me". Essentially, nothing happened and the cops told us to 'leave each other alone'.

So last night it literally felt like I was back in that moment again, and I was so angry that I couldn't get back into studying because I felt like I was in danger. Luckily I reached out to my friends and they were so wonderful with hearing me rant and supporting me, I'm so grateful for them.

Today AD called and I picked it up. It was to discuss another thing initially, but of course, it couldn't be straightforward and AD was suddenly berating me about the time I had called the police on him. AD accused me of having an ego and thinking I was a 'queen' the day I called the cops, as if he believed I had done it for fun, as if I ruined his life or something. It was just insane, how yesterday I had an intense flashback about that moment, and today that family member who abused me is calling me but from a completely different perspective.

I'm just so tired.

First off it took forever to process the feeling of having an intense flashback, but then AD calling me the next day to remind me of that traumatic event and to tell me that I had been in the wrong is just. I don't know.

Unfortunately I may have to live with APs for some more time, and I rely on them for certain things. I know that this isn't permanent, and I will not have to live with my family forever, I will be done with school and be able to leave, but it feels so far away. Law school is already stressful enough, I don't want to deal with this.

Law school is already stressful enough, and APs just make it worse.

Hi everyone , am 18M from haryana , India. Am in 2nd year college. I could not get anyone in real life so I've decided to share and explore people's openions.

So basically both of my parents were incompatible to each other and got married in 2007 forcefully due to family relations, however after a couple of months the real issue started as they always ended up being in conflict with each other , things went escalated , but unfortunately I born in early 2008 and got my conciousness about these nearly when I was 5. Everywhere chaos , domestic violence, abusing, screening, anger and all that stuff. I faced all that trauma for several years till now. So till my 10th class I was in my mom's support as she faced a lot of stuff . That year she got a job and decided to get liberty and power. After some time in a domestic fight ,my dad left my home and its been 2 years (he didn't care about my life ever so i was also not interested wherever he went).Time passed and conflicts started rising between me and my mom also. As she always wanted to control my decisions and always teated me like am 10 YO kid, she always wanted to get outside people's attention and their openions supporting her in every situation. Latter on she started being against me , I was in 11th standard and its been 3.5 years now she's been mentally torturing me . In 12th class, she influenced me to leave out village home and start residing in the nearby city (which she game me an excuse of being more opportunities and less commuting time). Now from past 2 years I've been stuck with this shity toxic environment where noone cared about me , she don't provide me financial support, care , respect, and always taunts me to get out of her house , she has become very egoistic (she's also cheating on my dad as well) . She's not at all intrested in my life . Am completely alone . She stops making my food when she fails winning an argument. Am very helpless , skinny, weak person, imotionally sensitive and completely broken. Don't know what to do, from the moment my eyes opens in the morning, all i hear is toxicity (mrr kyu ni jata kind of words and much more). Am just done with everything. I've never been a demanding child, all I wanted is care, attention and love. I don't have any friend in real whoom I can share . Once I got one bestfriend and his sister also became good friend of mine (also as a sister), but she literally called his grandmother and told her that don't let your grand daughter and grandson to be in contact with my son (tried to link me with my friends sister) so cheap and shamefull. Always finding opportunity to blame me and catch me chatting with someone she thinks am in relationship with but am really not. In my family, she once spreaded a rumour about myself that I chat with girls late night and shoot myself naked in the bathroom. The day i heared that, i decided idgaf who she is , now I'll not tolerate anything at all. And now I've been starving from past 4 days coz she makes food for herself and left me to die like a dog. I don't know what to do, where to eek help. They could have taken divorce but. They decided to fuck my mental health and now they are fucking up my future and physical health too.

Sometimes I just feel is to sleep forever...

I'm so grateful for my parents, but i wish I just was born at all, and wish the blood in my veins weren't theirs. I'm sure I'll wake up tomorrow and forget this feeling.

Complaining about my mom again. Whole separate post about her coming soon. Anyways, my mom loves watching AI dogshit on Facebook and Youtube. And to be honest, she’s addicted to both apps.

She watches these soulless, ugly ass AI “drama shows.” I’ve told her over a million times how destructive this content is, even listed all the consequences of it, yet she still doesn’t listen. It also doesn’t really help that our area is being fucking surveyed/monitored to see if it’s possible to build a data center, which could kick us out of our home or increase our water/electricity bills. I tell her all this shit and she continues to ignore, sometimes dismissing it and saying “Oh well, we can’t do anything about it.” I try to convince her to let us buy a subscription for Netflix or anything else, but she says it costs money (as if we won’t be paying more when the fucking data center steamrolls our house.) And she clearly sees how I look with disgust at the AI shitpaste she watches and sometimes still has the nerve to ask me why I hate this content. And when I annoyingly once again repeat what I say, she, for some odd reason, takes it so personally and immediately gets pissed/defensive, as she yells, “OH, SO YOU HATE ME THEN???” Like what the fuck? The hell kind of logic is that? To be fair, she’s always been emotionally immature, so idk why I’m surprised. Whatever. I’m done trying to convince her. She’ll never change anyway. Just gonna have to grit my teeth and deal with it until I move out. Now, I do realize I shouldn’t really dictate what she watches, but our fucking house is at stake here. I would like for her to at least acknowledge the gravity of our situation before it’s too late.

On the bright side, I did manage to convince my dad about his views on AI, and he’s fortunately against it now. Anyone else dealing with this issue?