When Your Mother Is Still the Center of Your Life: Understanding Enmeshment and the Journey to Emotional Independence in Asian Families
- Siva Chen
- May 29
- 3 min read
“I’m 25, living on my own, but I still feel like I’m living out my mom’s plan.”
“She means well… but I feel like I’m not allowed to want something different.”
If you resonate with these words, you’re not alone. I often work with young Asian adults—many of them first-generation or children of immigrants—who find themselves caught in a deep, often invisible, tug-of-war between family loyalty and the longing to live authentically.
The dynamic often looks like this:
- A dominant mother figure, emotionally intense or controlling, who is deeply enmeshed in your life decisions.
- A distant or unavailable father, who may be emotionally absent, submissive in the family system, or removed due to divorce.
- A child—often the only child or oldest daughter—raised to accommodate, please, and yield to family expectations, especially around education, career, and emotional expression.
This system often works—on the outside. You might get good grades, earn a degree, land a stable job. But inside, there may be growing numbness, fatigue, or quiet grief. And when that inner voice begins to whisper that you’re not happy—that maybe you never wanted this life—it can feel terrifying.
The Cost of Enmeshment
What you may be experiencing isn’t uncommon. Many adult children of East Asian families experience:
- Chronic procrastination, low motivation, or lack of direction
- Emotional numbness or dissociation from desires
- Difficulty identifying your own preferences or goals
- Guilt when asserting independence
- Deep resentment mixed with love toward one’s mother
- A sense of “losing time” or “living someone else’s life”
These are not personality flaws—they are often the long-term effects of growing up in a system where self-expression was suppressed for the sake of harmony or survival.
Shift Is Happening
Many clients I work with reach a breaking point in their mid-20s to early 30s. For the first time, they begin to ask:
- “What do I actually want?”
- “Why am I so disconnected from myself?”
- “How do I deal with my mom’s expectations while building my own life?”
This is the beginning of individuation—the process of separating your identity from the one assigned to you. It’s scary, emotional, and often filled with guilt—but it is also where deep healing begins.
How to Start Reclaiming Yourself
Here are a few reflective practices that can help:
- Notice the inner script: When you feel torn, ask yourself—_Whose voice is this?_ Is it truly yours, or a part of you that learned to please, obey, or survive?
- Give space to your own truth: You don’t have to act on it right away. Just allow yourself to name your real feelings, even if they contradict what your mom or family wants.
- Explore your inner child: Parts of you may still be stuck in old roles—dutiful daughter, obedient student, emotional caretaker. Getting to know these parts can be the first step toward healing.
- Build emotional boundaries: Emotional boundaries don’t always mean cutting contact. It can start with internal awareness: This is my fear. This is her fear. They are not the same.
Books and Resources for Your Journey
If you're ready to start exploring your inner world and breaking free from inherited patterns, here are some books I recommend:
- Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents_ by Lindsay C. Gibson
- The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller
- The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (especially helpful if you're reconnecting with passion and creativity)
- The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
- What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo (memoir on trauma, identity, and self-healing)
You Are Not Broken—You’re Waking Up
Reclaiming your life after years of pleasing, performing, or surviving is no small thing. It’s brave. It’s painful. But it is also profoundly liberating.
If you’re on this journey, I hope you know that it’s okay to outgrow the roles you were given. You don’t have to abandon love for your family—but you do deserve to love yourself fully, too.
And that begins by listening—to the quiet voice within that says: I want something different. I want to feel alive.
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