How Intergenerational Trauma Shapes Healing
50 Years After the Vietnam War: How Intergenerational Trauma Shapes Healing Today
A Psychologist’s Reflections as a Daughter of Refugees
Fifty years after the Fall of Saigon, I’m reflecting on the legacies we carry and the healing we choose.
As a psychologist and daughter of refugees, this story is personal. Healing is personal, it’s political, cultural and collective.
If any part of this resonates with you, I’d love to hear: Which small shifts have helped you begin rewriting what was passed down?
There’s often a quiet pause before I share parts of my story. Not because of shame but that sometimes I feel like I am speaking the words my parents never had the space, safety or language for. For me, growing up as a second generation Vietnamese Australian, I did not always know or even consciously hold the identity that I was the daughter of refugees. Not because I did not ask but there weren’t words for what we were living through.
What we carried was simply our normal. For instance: there were roles, responsibilities and unspoken rules. No one named them, but we lived by them. And deep down, I knew without knowing how to say it that our lives looked different from my peers’.
Now, when I speak about trauma, especially trauma born from war, displacement and loss (with colleagues, friends, acquaintances), I sometimes see people freeze or offer sympathetic responses like:
“That’s intense.”
“I can’t imagine.”
As though it is a distant story. As though it did not happen here.
But it did.
I wasn’t on the boat.
I didn’t grow up in a warzone.
But my parents were.
And they did.
They crossed oceans.
They carried silence.
They carried survival.
They carried the weight of family, legacy and future children without ever calling it trauma.
Because there wasn’t time.
There wasn’t space. Nor perhaps language, literacy or privilege.
“It’s not like we had a choice.”
“We had to survive.”
Even now, telling these stories feels like an act of resistance.
Because having a voice and having language for pain, injustice and survival is a privilege.
What about those who were never taught the words? What about those whose stories didn’t fit the "right" kind of trauma?
That’s what anchors me to I speak now and why I share my stories where I can, weaving them carefully into the intersection of my personal life and professional work as a psychologist.
Professionally, I was taught to self-disclose with intention and care. And so, I make an intentional, mindful choice to share: because I can, because I know it’s a privilege and that stories like mine are never mine alone.
I share knowing that there are people at different stages of their own processing and narrative work.
I have learnt that language can sometimes create a bridge in naming, witnessing and connecting, where silence may have once stood.
I share knowing that what I carry is not unique to me, or even just to the Vietnamese diaspora. These patterns, this legacy of survival and silence echo across many diasporas, many histories and many lives still unravelling around the world.
If you’ve ever wondered what intergenerational trauma really looks like - beyond theory, here is a glimpse:
Grief that never had a place to go
Losing people at sea, without goodbye
War shaping how your family sees the world
Sexual violence that was never spoken of
The pressure to assimilate at the cost of identity
Parents surviving, not thriving
Mental health never named, only endured
Constant hyper-vigilance
Feeling like you owe everything
Perfectionism as protection
Strength mistaken for peace
Guilt for needing rest
Gratitude weaponised against your own needs
If any of this feels familiar, I invite you to pause and let it land.
Then get curious and ask:
How much of what you carry today began long before you?
How much of what you hold was shaped by histories of migration, displacement, or survival, inherited, not chosen?
This isn’t about staying in the pain.
There’s also something else present across our stories:
Meaning-making.
Post-traumatic growth.
Compassion.
Strength.
Clarity.
We carry that too across generations and, across diasporas.
As a psychologist and as the daughter of refugees, I’ve come to understand what we couldn’t name back then:
Intergenerational trauma: The fear, silence, and grief passed quietly through families and communities.
Cultural grief: The ache for language, land, belonging.
Intergenerational wisdom: The brilliance of doing what was necessary, even when misunderstood.
Meaning making through an anti-oppressive reparative lens: Making space for stories that were never “neat” enough to be told, especially those shaped by migration, colonisation or displacement.
We name these not to stay stuck but to break the patterns that kept us small.
To honour those who couldn’t speak. And to speak, when we can for ourselves and for the communities we are part of.
Alongside this reflection, I wanted to share a visual that maps what breaking generational patterns can look like across daily life (you can see the whole post on my instagram @middlebridgeproject.)
These aren’t grand transformations and can be small, deliberate choices that interrupt silence and shame. They are how we quietly rewrite what survival once demanded of us across generations, across diasporas.
Because survival is not the end of the story. Repair is possible too.
Shifting generational patterns is not just personal.
It’s political.
It’s cultural.
It’s collective.
