I wanted to use my favorite Netflix Kdrama show to dissect and talk about the Asian daughter and mother relationship in its layers of complexity.  If you haven't watched the show or finished episode 8, it would be advised not to read my blog because I have spoilers.

In the drama, Seok Ryu came back to Korea because she was burnt out from working as a product manager in America for a big tech company. She also decides to call off her engagement with her fiance. Her mother Mi-Sook was very ashamed of her. Mi-Sook was at the top of her class but because she was too poor to go to college, she lived as a housewife. She puts all her dreams and hopes into her daughter.

There is danger in this projection of dreams onto daughter because the mother overidentifies and stops seeing her daughter as a person, just an extension of herself. She is not allowed to separate and individuate and become her person with wants and needs. The guilt and shame stop the daughter from living the life she wants versus living the life her mother wants because she sacrificed so much. This damages the mother-daughter relationship when the daughter starts to assert herself and want to separate and the mother feels abandoned and angry. This creates a mother-daughter tension. The separation is so painful that sometimes Asian daughters would cut off their mothers completely or repress their self-growth and identity/staying small while compromising their mental health (depression, suicide, self-harm). Their repression of self creates an enmeshed relationship with no boundaries and no self-needs and wants. Since a lot of Chinese mothers grew up with no boundaries, this may be an intergenerational problem/trauma, since its all or nothing, either the mother-daughter relationship has no boundaries or is cut off (no contact) since boundaries are not respected.

I think this is a common theme in a lot of Asian mother-and-daughter relationships in that immigrant mothers sacrifice and give up their lives in Asia and start over at a low-level job in hopes that their children will get educated in America and have better opportunities than they did. As the daughter, I know there is a lot of guilt and resentment firsthand experience.

1) Guilt because daughters feel bad for the mother for not being able to live their life to the fullest and have to suffer because of them.

2) Resentment because the mother's dreams are projected onto the daughter without choice. It doesn't allow the daughter to have their dreams.

Another theme that I noticed in the show was that the mother treated the daughter unfairly and harshly compared to the son. Because the son was the identified problem child and the daughter was the "perfect" child, all the expectation of success was put onto Seok Ryu but the son was allowed and enabled to do whatever he pleased. In the Chinese culture, sons are preferred over daughters, and often mothers spoil their sons and daughters, they are more protective and critical.

Often parents will treat the one child that is sick more lenient due to guilt and overlook the other healthy child. This unfairness and inequality can cause resentment, rebellion acting out, over people pleasing, perfectionism, hyperindependence, depression, and lots of self-esteem issues (feeling not worthy, feeling not seen, feeling like they are not important).

If you resonated with what I wrote about and want a Asian American therapist  in NYC that could understand and help you have a healthy mother daugther relationship, let me help you undo the aloneness and also help you separate and individuate. please contact me to book a free 15 minutes consultation.