If you look successful on the outside but feel alone inside, you’re not the only one. This is a talk I gave about why so many South Asians feel that way, how generational trauma plays a part, and how to find your way back to your own inner adult.
When We Can’t Turn to Our Elders
Traditionally in South Asian cultures often we would go to our elders when we were struggling in life to ask them for support and guidance. And what was underneath it was a sense of humility, a sense of openness in reaching out to our elders who have cultivated wisdom, whose life experience has taught them and they were able to offer us the guidance.
What I see in my work is people tell me they cannot approach the elders. They often share that they can’t go to them because what they experience with their elders is not their hearts. It is not their wisdom. It is not their guidance.
Let me start by saying—our elders do have life experience and wisdom in the hearts of hearts. Yet, why so many say this is missing in their relationships is something most haven’t considered. It’s because they, like us, have been wounded and hurt in this life. This is the core of generational trauma: because of these unprocessed wounds passed down through our families and histories, many of us experience our elders as hurtful to us.
Often, this leaves us feeling like we can manage the whole world but emotionally we may feel like orphans. And what we may not realize is that emotionally maybe our elders also experienced being orphans. That their wounds and their hurts also got consolidated and they learned how to be in the world, but they didn’t know what to do with the things that hurt them. They didn’t know what to do with the ways that they weren’t seen or acknowledged. Instead they focused on what they needed to do to survive.
What we don’t realize is that they, like us, also experienced things that didn’t nurture and nourish the part of them that could come into wisdom. That they weren’t taught either how to connect with their heart of hearts and be here for themselves and for us.
And we get into a battle sometimes with them wishing they were different.
The reality is they are humans. Elders are humans. We are humans. And we all got caught up in not feeling seen, not knowing what to do with our hurts in life.
Recovering Your Inner Adult
What I do in my work is I help people to start to connect or continue to connect with their inner wisdom, with their inner guidance. It happens through feeling and sensing the body. Not identifying as we do—we end up becoming very identified with our hurts. Our hurts end up taking up so much of who we are.
In my work, we look at those hurts. We give them space where they need to be felt. Yet, we also don’t give our hurts all of who we are—because we need to make room for other parts of us. We are actually not orphans.
Many of the people that I work with, we have an inner adult. This inner adult is often covered over by our hurts.
And what we need to do is to find our way back through feeling the body. We start seeing that we can actually feel our feelings without getting lost in them, or completely caught up in them. We see that our feelings are actually bearable. We realize that we don’t have to disconnect or dissociate.
It’s not all easy—we have to work at it so that we can build our inner muscles too. It’s not like we just go right into the deepest of feelings when we don’t have the capacity to be with them. Yet, what we do is we start to become our own elders—emotionally mature adults.
Finding Your Elders’ Heart of Hearts
As we connect and show up for ourselves, we open to feel the heart of hearts of our elders. Their hearts and love for us are there too. They love us deeply. Some of us already know that they love us deeply. Some of us have forgotten it because they also hurt us. None of this means excusing harm, or going back to anyone who isn’t safe for you.
When we come to our own hearts of hearts, when we start to become our own inner guide, inner truth seeker, inner wisdom, and we start to feel—oh wow, I’m not an orphan emotionally. We don’t have to defend and protect ourselves from feeling the heart of hearts of our elders. Their hearts may be covered over.
Because of the values in South Asian cultures, often our bond and love in relationships is strong. At the same time, we can experience that it’s elusive and sometimes even fought against. At the same time, underneath all of the hurt and not feeling seen, is their wounds and trauma. And what we find underneath their wounds is their hearts and love.
So, what do we do with feeling orphaned emotionally, lack of support? We might harden our hearts. We might feel like we really need to stand up for ourselves. We might just disconnect or dissociate rather than attend to our own feelings. We might focus on achievement, financial success, career success, and success as an image—amazing vacations and experiences, gatherings, etc. Striving. Goals. Everything that looks great (at least on the outside).
Yet, on the inside, we’re needing something and we don’t know how to access it. There’s a feeling of emptiness. Lack of fulfillment and pleasure. Stress. Feeling unworthy or unvalued. Lost or striving for a goal to cover up depression or anxiety.
My Own Path Back
When I was 23/24, I knew there was something that I needed. I knew I was in pain. A lot of pain. But I didn’t know what to do with it. Gratefully, I found a way to come back to learn slowly, slowly what to do with my pain. I learned how to not make that pain all of me, not let that pain rule me completely. And to find that there’s actually other aspects of me—the adult me, the wise me, the guided me.
So if you find that you are struggling, if you are in pain and trying to cover your pain with external validation or blame, there is a way to get out of that loop.
I help people to get connected with their bodies, come into the moment more. To learn how to be more than our pain. To start to feel, to tackle, to address the pain—not to become it and then to cover it up.
If this speaks to you, you’re welcome to reach out for a free 20-minute consultation. I offer culturally attuned somatic therapy for South Asian adults in California, and psychospiritual integration mentorship worldwide through South Asian Healing.
This post is educational and isn’t a substitute for therapy.
If this article resonated, you may also find support in these reflections on family, aloneness, and finding your inner adult:
- How We Lose Ourselves in the Name of Love — on the unconscious loyalty to our parents’ suffering, and how loving them and being ourselves aren’t either/or
- Why You Can Feel Loved and Still Feel Alone — on the ache of being loved but not quite reached
- Reparenting Yourself Through the Body — on becoming the steady, caring adult we needed, through what we feel in the body
- Nectars in the Air: What Many South Asians in the West Have Lost Touch With — on the richness of our roots that can get lost between two worlds